The governor of the Bank of England things we need it sooner rather than later.
Ukip’s Patrick O’Flynn thinks his party should make it their top priority.
An in/out referendum was one of the biggest election issues: there was a huge amount of angst about if and when Britain should get the chance to vote on membership of the EU.
Now it looks like people will finally get the chance to decide whether Britain stays in Europe – so how will people vote?
Opinion polls
YouGov have done more on this than any other pollster. The company has been asking people the same question for years: “If there was a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union, how would you vote?”
http://static.data.c4news.com/aY0Jr/index.html
In most of 2012 and 2013 leaving the EU was consistently the more popular choice.
At several points in 2014 the “stay in” and “leave” camps were neck and neck.
Then, late last year, there was a swing towards “stay in” that has continued into this year.
In late April a YouGov survey showed the biggest lead for the “stay in” camp on record – 47 per cent compared to 33 per cent (we’re ignoring the “don’t knows” for simplicity’s sake).
Other pollsters do occasionally pop the EU question too, and some have found even more support for staying in than YouGov.
A Comres/ITV/Daily Mail survey in the first week of May found that a massive 56 per cent wanted to stay in the European Union as opposed to 34 per cent who wanted to leave.
Including YouGov and others, we have found 21 national polls carried out so far in 2015, and only two found a majority of people asked wanted to leave the EU.
Of course this could all change after what will no doubt be a spirited campaign.
And as we have just seen in the general election, the polls don’t always give an accurate view of how people will really vote.
And massive questions about how the referendum will be organised remain – including the crucial issue of who will be eligible to vote.
Just British citizens? Or citizens of Ireland and Commonwealth countries too (like in a general election)? Or EU citizens living in the UK as well – like in a local or European parliamentary election?
Current polling suggests there are big differences between attitudes to the EU in various regions of the UK.
Voters in Scotland are considerably keener on staying in the union than people in most parts of England.
In the latest YouGov poll Scots wanted to stay in by 58 per cent compared to 28 per cent.
