Election result discredits pollsters' view on Brexit

THE forthcoming campaign towards a referendum on possible British departure from the European Union will represent one of Britain's most difficult two-year periods in the post-war era.

The plebiscite, a near-certainty in 2017 following the victory of PM David Cameron's Conservatives in last Thursday's general election, is much more important than the UK's referendum in 1975 on whether to stay in the European Economic Community that Britain joined two years earlier. It eclipses previous votes in other countries on whether to back new European treaties or to join the European single currency.

Large sections of the political and business leadership and the press claim there is so much wrong with the EU that only a major renegotiation of the UK's status can put it right.