Buyers Regret Over Brexit?

This week marked five years since the UK voted to leave the European Union, a decision which has shaken British politics in a way that few would have foreseen.

To mark the occasion, Savanta ComRes this week published polling suggesting that if the referendum were held today, remain would just win, with 51% of respondents saying they would vote to stay in the EU compared to 49% who would vote to leave.

The poll shows that there would be little switching from either side, with 6% of those who voted remain in 2016 saying they would not vote to leave, and 7% of those who originally voted to leave saying they would now vote remain. Savanta ComRes go on to say: “That means the Remain edge in this poll comes from those who did not vote in 2016, with this group being more than twice as likely to vote for Remain (71%) than Leave (29%).”

The poll found however that if the public were asked instead to choose between joining the EU or not, 51% would vote not to become a member, whilst 49% would vote to join.

In a sign of the ongoing divisions caused by Brexit, whilst 31% said it has been a success. 34% say it has been a failure. 51% meanwhile do agree that Brexit has made the country more divided. 

Chris Hopkins, Political Research Director at Savanta ComRes said of the findings: “On the five year anniversary of the Brexit vote this poll shows a country just as divided as it was during the campaign, with a re-run of the referendum on a knife-edge according to this voting intention, and the opportunity to rejoin being favoured by a majority of those who voted Remain in 2016, rather than ‘accepting’ the 2016 vote and moving on.

“However, if either of these questions were to be put to the British people again, those who did not vote in 2016 look to be a key source of Remain/Rejoin support, and there are always likely to be sceptics regarding whether such potential voters would even turn out in any future vote, and therefore those still in favour of Remaining or Rejoining would need to do much more to convince Leavers that they’d made the wrong decision in 2016, rather than relying on those who did not vote last time to turn out.””

Ipsos Mori also published polling this week in partnership with UK in a Changing Europe which found that for all of Boris Johnson’s hopes that the county can move on from the decision to leave the EU,  44% of those questioned believe that “there are still many important issues to finalise with the EU with Remain voters most likely to feel this way about negotiations (62%).”  It goes on to note that: “in contrast, 30% of leave voters say there are still many important issues to discuss.”

56% said that Brexit has not made any difference to their daily lives, although of those who voted to remain, 51% said it has had a negative impact on their lives compared to 71% of those who voted to leave saying it hasn’t had any impact on their lives at all.

The poll goes on to show that 47% of people “report that Brexit is working out as expected, but unsurprisingly those that voted to remain in the EU are the least positive – 48% of remainers say is working out worse, compared to 10% of leave voters.”

Responding to the poll, Paula Surridge, Deputy Director at UK in a Changing Europe said: “The full implications of the decision to leave the European Union are not yet being felt widely among the British public. The wider crisis of the last 18 months - tens of thousands of deaths, an ever-growing health crisis, chaos in the school system, cancelled holidays and lockdowns – may have both masked some impacts and changed what people think is possible. But the Conservative majority is built on high expectations for positive change as a result of Brexit, and it remains to be seen, once other concerns have waned, whether the government is able to convince them that Brexit has delivered.”