Brexit now not good idea – poll

The proportion of voters who favour a referendum on the final terms of any Brexit deal has overtaken those who do not for the first time, according to a YouGov poll for The Times.

When they were asked whether there should be a referendum on the final terms of any Brexit deal, 42% said there should be a fresh vote while 40% said there should not. The rest did not know.

The poll of 1 653 adults in the United Kingdom was conducted on Wednesday and Thursday this week, The Times said.

Fifty-eight percent of Labour voters, 67% of Liberal Democrat voters and 21% of Conservative voters supported a second referendum.

In the June 23, 2016 referendum, 17.4 million votes, or 51.9% of votes cast, backed leaving the EU while 16.1 million votes, or 48.1% of votes cast, backed staying. Many opinion polls were wrong about the result.

Two years on from the referendum, the YouGov poll showed that the views of most voters on whether to leave had not changed.

In the event of a referendum on Britain’s EU membership tomorrow, 45% said that they would vote to remain, while 42% would vote to leave, with 4% saying that they would not vote and 9% saying they did not know, The Times said.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Theresa May will holiday in Switzerland and Italy this summer after narrowly surviving a bitter row within her government over Brexit as the country’s departure from the European Union looms. May, a keen hill-walker, also visited northern Italy and Switzerland with her husband last year.

The holidays come after a bruising few weeks in which her Cabinet agreed a plan for Brexit negotiations with Brussels, before spectacularly falling out over it – culminating in two senior ministers resigning and a rebellion in parliament that threatened to bring down her government.

Having made it to the end of the parliamentary term this week, May has sought to sell her Brexit vision across the country, addressing the concerns of a nation which remains bitterly divided over whether leaving the EU is a good idea.

That charm offensive must resume when she gets back from her holiday if she is to win support for a deal at home and across the EU. –