Brits accept Brexit – polls
– After almost half the voters in Britain’s referendum opted to stay in the European Union (EU), the only party with an unashamedly anti-Brexit stance believed its support would soar.
Instead the Liberal Democrats are languishing in the polls, more likely to lose than gain seats in next week’s election. Surveys suggest many of the 16 million pro-EU Britons, far from wanting to fight last year’s lost battle again, are resigned to Brexit.
Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservatives and the main opposition Labour Party have promised to take Britain out of the European Union. The Liberal Democrats, who were in the coalition government from 2010-2015, say they will give the country a second referendum on any final divorce deal.
“If you don’t like the deal you should be able to reject it and choose to remain in Europe,” Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said when he launched the party’s policy proposals for the June 8 election. Many “remainers” disagree. “I voted to stay in. Immigration won’t just stop like that which is what a lot of people voted for,” administrative assistant Tracy Cox, 45, told Reuters in the town of Yeovil, once a Lib Dem bastion in southwest England. “We’ve voted and most people wanted out so a second referendum is not going to make a lot of difference.”
Riding a wave of support in 2010, the centrist Liberal Democrats won 23% of the national vote and took 57 of parliament’s 650 seats, enough to propel them into coalition with the Conservatives under former prime minister David Cameron.
Five years later, the Lib Dems suffered the brunt of a public backlash against the coalition’s austerity measures and anger that they had reneged on a pre-election promise not to raise university tuition fees. They won just eight seats and their share of the vote collapsed to 8%.
An opinion poll on Thursday showed left-wing Labour gaining on May’s Conservatives, raising the possibility of a hung parliament in which Liberal Democrat MPs, however few, might have some clout.
Only 12% of voters that voted ‘Remain’ in the EU referendum currently plan to vote for the Lib Dems, compared with 35% for the Conservatives and 41% for Labour, pollster Kantar showed. – Reuters
Yeovil