An impeccably dressed woman in her 70s with carefully turned out hair sits on a sunny terrace not far from the famed tower of St. Botolph’s Church in the the English town of Boston, making a fervent wish.

“I want to be out. I want, want, want, want — please God! — let us be out.”

This is Yvonne Stevens, a local councillor for the U.K. Independence Party or UKIP. Its roots date back to the 1990s and British opposition to the signing of the Maastricht Treaty enshrining key tenets of European integration.