Hammond: UK to Vote in Favor of Brexit if Brussels Grants No Reforms

If Brussels provides no guarantees of irreversible reforms, people in the United Kingdom will vote in favor of British exit from the European Union, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told The Telegraph.

LONDON (Sputnik) – A YouGov poll released earlier this week said that some 40 percent of Britons support exiting the European Union, against 38 percent who would vote to stay in the bloc. According to the poll, the number of Brexit supporters has reached its highest point since November 2014.

"That’s why the package will have to be a robust, substantial and irreversible package of change with proper binding legal force. Because if we try to put to the British people a package which is anything less, we will get a raspberry from them," Hammond warned on Friday.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged to hold a so-called Brexit referendum by the end of 2017. Prior to the vote, Cameron is seeking to revise the terms of UK’s EU membership, including greater autonomy in defining national immigration policy.

"Between the Polish elections [at the end of October] and the December European Council, we expect there to be a significant step up in the level of activity of negotiation and discussion between us and our partners," Hammond said on Friday.

The Foreign Secretary warned that if the United Kingdom does not get the commitments it needs from the European Union, British voters will vote in favor of Brexit.

Hammond predicted that while the United Kingdom would most likely "survive" outside the European Union, it would be "economically damaging."

London-based Open Europe political think tank said in a Friday report that every fifth lawmaker in the UK Conservative Party, led by Cameron, is likely to vote for the country's exit from the European Union.