"We are actually quite well-placed to take advantage of the economic opportunities that the EU offers and to contribute to Western European solidarity," Sir Tony Brenton said.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron is seeking to renegotiate UK’s relationship with Brussels. The nation’s membership of the 28-nation bloc will be put to vote no later than end 2017. Cameron said the government’s position was to campaign for Britain to stay in the European Union.
Brenton told Sputnik he expected the "in" option to prevail if the campaign, which is about to start, went well, and believed the majority of British political establishment would be arguing that Britain should stay.
Cameron has spent months going between London and Brussels in an effort to clinch a deal on better EU membership terms, including an exemption from the EU principle of an ever-closer union, stripping the euro of its sole official EU currency status and restricting in-work benefits to EU migrants.