Welcome to In Conversation, the regular podcast of InCampus. Go to InCompus-Hifference.combe

for free access to all our podcasts to date. This is Paul Adamson and I'm in conversation with Martin

Westlake. Martin Westlake is a former senior European Union civil servant,

a biographer of Neil Kinnock, an author of a new book, Slipping Loose, the UK's long drift away from

the European Union. So the long drift away, Martin, how long has this drifting away been taking

place? Well, without wishing to be too recondite, I think the slipping loose process began even before the

United Kingdom joined the European economic communities it then was in terms of public opinion,

because public opinion in the UK in the 1950s, for example, was pretty highly in favour of joining

such an exercise.

But of course that opportunity was lost, like the earlier one with the Schumann Declaration.

So one could argue that the UK has been slipping loose for a long time.

But the key moment for me in existential terms was probably in retrospect the Maastricht Treaty,

despite the way John Major thought that he'd

won game-setter match, it really set up a fundamental tension between the UK and the European

Union around the issue of the single currency, which of course was then embryonic in the treaty,

but later became reality. And by 2008, the members of the currency zone had become a qualified

majority within the single market. And that, of course, was an issue for British politicians, especially

once David Cameron had acknowledged in 2010 that the UK and the Stirling would never be a

part of the single currency.

Right.

So the UK opt-out single currency was a kind of accommodation for the UK, not one of many,

you would argue, I'm sure you're doing your book, but it didn't actually solve the problem for the UK government.

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