Chanceries, political elites and business federations across Europe, regardless of whether they are on the Left or the Right, are hoping theConservative Party loses this week's general election.

All the better if a motley Labour government is strapped to a bloc of triumphant Scottish Nationalists, guaranteeing a double-lock against any further flirtations with Brexit. Or so goes the argument.

They should be careful what they wish for. David Cameron is perhaps the only man who can ultimately prevent Britain breaking away from the EU, and therefore prevent a fatal body blow to an ailing project that lost its emotional hold over Europe's people long ago and no longer has a plausible claim to economic legitimacy.

Lest we forget - carried away by a short-term cyclical rebound - the eurozone is only just beginning to recover from an economic slump that has proved deeper and more intractable over the past six years than the Great Depression, with four sovereign insolvencies and mass unemployment to match. Nor should we forget either that the second leg of this episode was entirely caused by policy blunders and the unworkable structure of EMU governance.

A Labour-SNP arrangement would be inherently weak and unstable, like the string of Gladstone governments dependent on the swing vote of the Irish Home Rule movement in the late 19th century.

There might be no referendum on EU withdrawal in 2017, but that would settle nothing. "While a Labour victory might reduce the prospect of Brexit over the next five years, it could increase them over the next 10," writes the think-tank Open Europe.

A Tory defeat would flush out the last EU dreamers and leave a post-Cameron party with even less tolerance for the posturing of Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker, who this week accused the Anglo-Saxon world of trying to destroy the euro and vowed to stop Britain imposing its "exclusive agenda on all the other member states of Europe”.

There is a high likelihood that such a party would let it rip on euroscepticism while in opposition and then come roaring back in five years time, led by Boris Johnson if the bookies are right, fully-immunized against the illusionary seductions of europhilia by his childhood in Brussels.

His economic report on the pros and cons of Brexit concluded that the City of London could continue to flourish in a free-trade world outside the EU. Such an outcome might not be ideal - he argued - but the worst of all worlds would be for Britain to stay shackled to a political construction that failed to reform. This is a warning shot.

David Fuller's view

Here is a PDF of the article.

A voluntary alliance of previously independent nations in a single currency is bound to lose support within member countries which are weakened by that union over lengthy periods.  For the EU, this becomes inevitable if GDP growth persistently underperforms and there is no federal system to support the weakest countries. 

Mario Draghi’s ECB is a monetary lifeline for the EU but it cannot change Greece’s economic policies or those of any other state.  ‘Brexit’ will eventually occur if there is no political and economic reform within the EU.  Wolfgang Schauble’s comments on this point, which you can find a little further along in the article above, are telling.  In fact, I strongly recommend the entire article to anyone interested in this topic.