Not team players

摘要

The European Union does not have many ardent fans in the Butcher's Arms pub in Pudsey, a town near Leeds. "If we had not joined, we would not know the difference," says Barry Harman, a carpet-fitter. "We all think it's basically absolute crap," says Richard Smeeton, a pensioner. Others complain of immigrants claiming benefits or of the cost of membership-which punters in the pub put at around £70m ($107m) a day (it is actually less than half that). "What good does it do?" shrugs Tony Allen, a chef. Britons are generally pretty Eurosceptical. They view the EU with more wariness than other Europeans. It is partly because of this scepticism that Britain has not joined the euro and is not in the Schengen passport-free area. Although support for leaving the EU is not as high as it was in the depths of the recession, over the past year the opinion polls, which had tended to show a majority for staying in, have tightened and even in one case found a small majority for "Brexit" in the government's promised referendum (see chart).