There's only one British politician who had the bottle to stand up to the EU and I'm no great admirer of hers (although I know Cashy holds her in specially high regard
) and that's Margaret Thatcher. She won our rebate by the simple expedient of threatening to withold our contribution - no other British politician has had the resolve to do that. Of course, the grovelling, supine Blair gave a large part of it away later.
Unfortunately, our political class don't have the guts to take the laissez faire attitude that other nations do, so we're better off out.