Comment by graemep
> This is a little misleading because this has actually been the main contention, not the very existence of the EU/EC even since the days of Margaret Thatcher.
Why is Thatcher significant here? She was strongly pro-EEC - she supported remain in the 1975 referendum but she had been long out of any significant political influence by the time integration became more political.
Looking at more recent British politics at the time of the 2016 referendum it was very common for remainers to claim that the EU was just a trade organisation and not going to evolve into a full political union or federal state.
I think part of the problem is that the EU's founding treaties both indicate it is a supranational organisation and promise ever closer union. I would argue that just reflects differences in what different groups of people want.
> Why is Thatcher significant here? She was strongly pro-EEC
Exactly, she was pro-EEC but "Eurosceptic" in that she didn't want this to morph into a political union. I mentioned her to illustrate that the debate on what the EU should be and how far political integration should go, if go anywhere at all, has been going on forever but is more and more "smothered" by accusations of being "far right" for often being not too different from Thatcher.
Remember a famous speech in Parliament in which she said that the single currency was political union by the backdoor. Exactly right.
> it was very common for remainers to claim that the EU was just a trade organisation and not going to evolve into a full political union or federal state.
That's not true. Of course it was a political union, and that was the point of the referendum. Remember the pro-Brexit's line that the people had been sold a trade organisation (in 1975) but got a political union, instead. Now there were claims that the EU would not evolve into a federal state, and this aligns with what I wrote about EU political integration being insiduous and often deceiptful