It would be cool if European countries joined together to make a European nuclear force (starting with French and British nukes I guess, and then they can pool money to fund further weapons development).

Maybe this will happen in the future, but it might be a while until then.

I don’t think that’s necessarily true. And surely the Ukraine war shows that nukes are useful for deterrence. Biden was reluctant to give things to Ukraine (tanks and planes) because he feared escalation from Russia - i.e. the use of tactical nukes.

If Ukraine had nukes, maybe they wouldn’t have been invaded.

I assume the 27% are mostly fans of Marine Le Pen and they quite like Donald Trump.

I don’t think xenophobia is motivating Labour to stay clear of the EU at the moment… I think it’s just political reality, unfortunately. There are quite a few working class people who traditionally vote for Labour, but they also backed Brexit, and Labour doesn’t want to lose those voters to the Conservatives or Reform.

Maybe I’m wrong but that’s my perception.

The xenophobes are mostly outside of London. In London, 60% of voters wanted to remain in the EU. But in the UK overall, 52% of voters wanted to leave the EU.

But yes I think the EEA would be too politically risky at the moment. The EU Customs Union might be more realistic (Turkey is part of this) but I think the current UK government don’t even want to do that. They don’t want to lose the votes of people who wanted Brexit.

I wonder if Brits will campaign for another referendum on EU membership in the next few years. At the moment I think there is fatigue around the subject, but there are still many Brits who want to be in the EU.