‘Brexit’ not as cut-and-dried as Osborne suggests

Is it conceivable that Britain will leave the EU? While “Brexit” is now a universally recognised acronym, no British politician of chancellor George Osborne’s seniority has previously threatened so explicitly to pull out.

Osborne’s rhetoric may sound strident, but actually it suggests the opposite conclusion when British politics and European economics are taken into account.

British PM David Cameron leads a fractious coalition between his mostly “euro-sceptical” Conservatives and “Europhile” Liberal Democrats. The coalition faces a general election in May 2015 and the biggest threat to its survival comes from a haemorrhage of right-wing votes to the UK Independence Party, an upstart populist movement whose main objective is to get Britain out of the EU.