The EU has not been this unpopular in Britain since 1983

Blimey.

There is a very important poll result in the Commission's new Eurobarometer poll which has been completely overlooked amid the frenzy about Ireland.

We finally got round to looking back at the previous results of the Eurobarometer to put the most recent result into context. We have pieced together the series of Eurobarometers back to the eighties.

The result is really striking. The EU has not been this unpopular in Britain since 1983.

Here is the finding from the latest poll:

UK, June 2008

Generally speaking, do you think that the UK's membership of the European Union is...?

32% Bad thing (+4 since December 2007)
30% Good thing (-4% since December 2007)
30% Neither
8% Don't know

Taking everything into account, would you say that (OUR COUNTRY) has on balance benefited or not from being a member of the European Union?

50% Not benefited
36% Benefited
14% Don't know

That is striking enough.

But if you put that in historic context, the last time the EU/EEC was this unpopular was during the run up to the UK rebate negotiations.

Back then Mrs T was frantically battling to get the famous "rebate" in order to stop what was then one of Europe's poorest countries from paying the lion's share of contributions.

Have a look:

Here is the proportion saying membership is a "good thing" in blue and a "bad thing" in pink.



Or here is the proportion saying good minus that saying bad.



As you can see, from a lead of 44% in the summer of 1991, support for the EU has collapsed and 2% more now think the is a bad thing than good thing.

As EU leaders arrogantly try to ram through the Lisbon Treaty despite the Irish "no" vote they should reflect on this - they really are dancing on a volcano.