Most citizens want closer ties with Brussels but do not believe the new government will try to return to the bloc, according to a poll
More than half of UK citizens would vote to rejoin the EU if a new referendum was held, a nationwide poll has shown. The survey comes eight years after the Brexit vote led Britain to leave the bloc.
According to the YouGov poll, which surveyed more than 2,000 British citizens late last month and was published on Tuesday, as many as 59% of respondents said they would vote in favour of a return to the EU in a hypothetical new referendum. By contrast, 41% said they would be against rejoining the bloc.
More than 60% of voters said they would support closer relations with Brussels that did not involve formally rejoining the bloc or its single market or customs union. Only 17% of respondents opposed this, while another 20% were unsure.
YouGov also reported that among British voters, as many as 55% believe the UK’s decision to leave the European Union was a misstep, while 34% support the decision.
At the same time, the issue of Britain’s relations with the EU appears to have lost interest among voters. According to YouGov, the Brexit issue 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 UK-EU relations were a key area of national concern.
Following Labour’s landslide victory in last month’s general election, Prime Minister Keir Starmer stressed that the new government would not return the country to the EU, the single market or the customs union, and would not seek closer relations with Brussels during his time in office. He went so far as to say that the UK’s return to the EU would not happen in his lifetime.
Britain’s exit from the EU, which was finalized in 2020, has been widely described as disastrous and costly for London. According to a February Bloomberg report citing economists at Goldman Sachs, the exit reduced the U.K.’s real GDP by about 5% compared with the performance of its economic peers, and left it with an underperforming economy and a rising cost of living due to reduced trade and weak business investment. The economists admitted, however, that some of these issues could also be related to the coronavirus pandemic.
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Fuente: NEWS.com
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