The majority of citizens want closer ties with Brussels but don’t believe the new government will try to return to the bloc, according to a survey
More than half of UK citizens would vote to rejoin the EU if a new referendum were held, a nationwide survey has shown. The poll comes eight years after the Brexit vote led to Britain leaving the bloc.
According to the YouGov poll, which surveyed over 2,000 British citizens late last month and was published on Tuesday, as many as 59% of respondents said they would vote for a return to the EU in a hypothetical new referendum. In contrast, 41% said they would be against rejoining the bloc.
Over 60% of voters said they would support closer relations with Brussels that would not involve formally rejoining the bloc or its single market or customs union. This was opposed by only 17% of respondents, while another 20% were unsure.
YouGov also reported that among British voters, as many as 55% believe that the UK’s decision to leave the European Union was the wrong move, while 34% stand by the decision.
At the same time, the issue of Britain’s relations with the EU appears to have become of less interest to voters. According to YouGov, the question of Brexit was listed as one of the top issues facing the country by 63% of voters in 2019. Following the 2024 general election, only 7% said that UK-EU relations were a key area of national concern.
Following the Labour Party’s landslide victory in the general election last month, Prime Minister Keir Starmer stressed that the new government would not take the country back into the EU, the single market, or the customs union, and would not seek closer relations with Brussels for as long as he is in office. He went as far as to say that the UK’s return to the EU would not happen within his lifetime.
Britain’s exit from the EU, which was finalized in 2020, has widely been described as disastrous and costly for London. According to a Bloomberg report in February citing economists from Goldman Sachs, the departure reduced the UK’s real GDP by about 5% compared to the performance of its economic peers, and left it with an underperforming economy and a soaring cost of living due to reduced trade and weak business investment. The economists admitted, however, that some of these issues could also be linked to the Coronavirus pandemic.
