LONDON, Nov. 9 (UPI) — British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday threatened a potential British exit from the European Union if reform talks fail.
During a speech at a Confederation of British Industry conference in London, Cameron said he was “deadly serious” about securing EU reforms, adding that if renegotiations failed Britain “will have to ask ourselves — ‘is this organization for us?’”
Cameron was heckled by anti-EU student protesters during his speech, whom Cameron called “fools.” The student protesters chanted that the CBI was the “Voice of Brussels” — where the headquarters of the EU is located in Belgium. Cameron later said that he wasn’t going to “pretend for a second that Britain couldn’t survive” outside of the EU.
“The status quo isn’t good enough for Britain,” Cameron said, calling for flexibility within the union.
He is expected announce his EU reform proposals on Tuesday. The prime minister said if the reforms were enacted, he would strongly defend Britain’s place in a reformed EU.
Cameron has said Britain will hold a referendum by the end of 2017 on whether citizens want the country to stay or to leave the EU.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, a close ally to Cameron on EU reform, warned that a British exit from the EU would be a “killer” for the British economy, warning the country would become “a mid-sized economy in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, in neither America nor Europe.”
“It would no doubt take away a lot of economic potential, and be a killer for the London financial center,” Rutte told Bloomberg.
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