ABSTRACT
The leadership faced little opposition from within the Conservative party and was able to occupy the political mainstream in the face of Labour’s leftwing Euroscepticism. In a context of global change and domestic political crisis, Eurosceptic Britain emerges as an essentialist articulation of distinct and exceptional interests and identities. The Major government struggled to maintain governing autonomy in the face of party rebellions and Eurosceptic mobilisations. The only viable option for the Coalition government was to attempt to depoliticise the European issue and turn it into a pragmatic issue of government. In one sense, Eurosceptic populists made explicit what depoliticised governing elites had for the most part denied, that European integration was not simply a matter of national interest but a choice over political values and identities. It meant a commitment to shaping a European political economy, which was always more than a single market, and a European cosmopolitan civil society that challenged national communities of fate.
