tl;dr:
Seven years after the Brexit referendum, the proportion of Britons who want to rejoin the EU has climbed to its highest levels since 2016, according to a new survey. Data from YouGov’s latest Brexit tracker survey found that, excluding those who said they would not vote or did not know, 58.2% of people in Britain would now vote to rejoin. The percentage is only fractionally down on the 60% recorded in February this year - the highest figure since comparable data began in February 2012 - and has risen more or less consistently since a post-referendum low of 47% in early 2021. A record proportion of respondents in Britain also think other countries are now unlikely to follow its example and leave the EU in the next decade - 42% said it was unlikely, up from 26% three years ago, while 40% said it was likely, down from 58%. EU member states showed a similar trend, with 45% of respondents in France saying they thought another EU-exit was likely, compared to 55% in February 2020. In Germany the figures were 36% and in Denmark 29%. While sentiment towards EU membership has shifted significantly in Britain since the referendum, a slim majority of respondents say they still think it is unlikely Britain will rejoin the EU at some future point in the future.
I am a bot in training. Suggestions?
Good bot.
Does this get registered?
Good human.
I remember the day after the referendum, an economist on the news said that once we leave we would spend 10 years regretting it, 10 years begging to be let back in, and another 10 years trying to meet the standards to be let in. Only 3 years in and I think about that a lot. Mostly because I consider it both depressing and optimistic.
Yeah I do kind of suspect that’s an optimistic one. I could genuinely see us doing: 10 years of bickering over whether it’s going well or not, then 10 years of regret, 10 years trying to get back in but by a very slim margin while 48% of the voting public tries to undermine it at every turn, 10 years and untold amounts of money trying to meet the criteria to be let back in, then it goes to a vote and someone puts an idiotic slogan on the side of a bus again and it doesn’t go through. Then we go back to square one.
I think thats a great idea. Please submit you application for joining. And don’t call us, we (the EU) will call you when we are done with
Albania
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Moldova
Montenegro
North Macedonia
Serbia
Türkiye
UkraineAnd the potential candidates
Georgia
KosovoAnd what is your stance on King Charles on your Euro coins. But we can always talk about someone else on the Euro currency.
As an EU-citizen I would love to skip the customsline and start working there without any interferenceThe majority of Britons who want back in understand fully that we won’t receive the special treatment we did before we left.
I also don’t believe that we’d receive none of it either.
The EU will certainly have to exact a price for the whole debacle, but it’d also be beneficial to the EU to add a large, relatively-affluent trading partner back into the bloc. The EU strike me as more pragmatic than petty, and having someone leave and then come back again would really validate the whole community.
I expect in reality we’ll rejoin the EEA and find ways to wrangle most of the benefits (for both sides) without having to fully rejoin and deal with that embarrassment.
Well that is the problem, the damage is done the institutions and businesses relocated or are relocating and everybody spend billions severing ties.
At this point the UK isn‘t a large and affluent trading partner any more. So why would you give a nobody anything special?
Also the EU is power centric and the UK embarrassed themselves worldwide. Why would you want somebody like that on your team?You can just let them bleed out and talk about them rejoining the team when their pride is broken and they are lit. begging you to rejoin.
Yeah it’s not like Britain rejoining tomorrow would make a sudden change in the UK’s economic output, but it could at least stop it from continuing to deteriorate.
And while the UK GDP is surely on a downwards trend (at least comparatively) that ignores the fact that the UK is still the 6th largest economy in the world and is, i think, still larger than France. Obviously it’d be better for the EU to add a similarly sized country which is growing instead of slowing, but those don’t exist. Turkey’s GDP Is still 4x less than the UK.
Brexit has certainly helped EU cohesion, support for Finnexit or Deportugal has dropped significantly since 2016. However if by some fluke britain turns out to be a success in the next 10 years then it might reverse that trend. The EU can nip that in the bud by coming up with a Brentrance deal that isn’t horribly punitive, because there are real policy and fiscal advantages to the EU in British membership.
I think the UK should accept consequences and deal with it.
The EU (including the UK at one time) became the powerhouse because of its Union.When some countries seems to think they can do better and leave they weaken that Union. Without consequences countries would be leaving and rejoining the EU when parlaments change. And as an Economic Union you just cannot accept those members. It makes you look weak globally
This was one of the arguments I posed to people I know that wanted to leave. That we’d never get a deal as good as we had.
No-one on that side would listen at the time.
The leavers are delusional. They were stupid then, and they are stupid now. Thankfully a lot of them were old, and in no position to make choices for the future of my country. They are now dead, not around to see the consequences of their actions.
Do they really? Would they really accept a situation worse than what they previously had in the EU? Wouldn’t that lead to an incredible resentment towards the EU?
I still thinks it’s a great idea. I love visiting friends and family there. But please wait your turn before being considered a potential candidateKnowing what people are like, I could fully see us spending decades trying to reverse Brexit and being very explicitly clear that we won’t get the same deal we had, only for the general public to completely ignore all advice until two days before the referendum to rejoin and go “wtf we don’t want the Euro” (even if that’s not even on the table) and then vote against it again.
Absolutely zero chance the UK would have to wait for Turkey to join before being allowed to join.
I am myself am a EU citizen and I still don’t understand that anger of EU people against the British people over Brexit. The Brits fucked themselves over, they didn’t do anything to the EU. Actually, about half of them are suffering from the decision of the other half, so I can only empathize with the shit show they have to endure.
The EU seems more cohesive because of Brexit - all the fears about our large countries leaving seem to have evaporated and the utter abject failure of Britain has really taken the wind out of the anti-EU movement. Not to say there aren’t still major problems and challenges for the EU to rise to, but fragmentation seems like less of a risk now.
No shit. Half of us didn’t vote for it, and we’ve spent the last 7 years suffering it.
Wow it’s already been 7 years!?
When you say half, you refer about those who actually went to the polls.
Because most eligible voters decided that PoLiTiCs iS fOR wAnKeRs and went to the pub instead, then woke up the following day in a new world that they directly helped create, as the Brexit idiots were motivated (out of ignorance and ease of manipulation), so not voting was effectively counted against Bremain.
The best joke of all was that, when sueing thebrexiteeras for false claims the court noted that the vote was none binding and therefore can’t be sued for false claims. :))))
This kind of polling is pointless.
Brittish media/government never really mentioned the concept of “ever closer union”. To the average British citizen the EU was primarily a trading block that was to blame for everything wrong.
You can see it in things the UK vetoed (e.g. EU Defence Army, Euro, etc…). There was never interest in “ever closer union”.
For Britain to rejoin it would need to accept the concept of “ever closer union”, but considering half the country was sold on “muh sovereignty” its highly unlikely people would want to give up what the EU would demand.
The ideal would be to scrap the hardest of brexit style deal, for something closer to EEA. Give the UK to figure itself out and move forward with the ability to rebuild ties.
While I think the next election can bring a change in political will from the UK side, I think many in the EU were upset and there isn’t the drive to improve relations.
