‘Britain may hold another EU referendum’

BRITAIN may hold another referendum over EU membership before 2040, the polling expert Professor John Curtice has suggested.

Speaking at a UK in a Changing Europe event, Professor Curtice said: “I think the 2016 referendum is going to be as unsuccessful as the 1975 one."

When asked about the timescale he said that it “depends very much on uncertain politics, I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens before 2040.

“If you look so far at what has happened to attitudes, and you look at the age profile of attitudes towards Brexit, you can see why.

“A lot will also happen about how does our relationship with the EU evolve, to what extent does the next Labour government soften it or not.

“One of the things to realise is the Labour Party is going to get elected by an electorate which is three-quarters anti-Brexit.

“Labour’s vote is almost as antiBrexit as it was in 2019.”

It comes as the Foreign Secretary David Cameron suggested that nobody knows about the UK’s post-Brexit study-abroad scheme because the Government does not promote it well enough.

Britain turned down an offer to continue participating in the European Union’s Erasmus student exchange scheme after Brexit and has instead replaced it with the Turing scheme.

Lord David Cameron insisted the Turing programme is “more generous” than Erasmus in many ways but that fewer people are aware of it.

He revealed that one of his own children, who is currently deciding where to go to university, had “never heard” of the scheme.

At a question and answer session with students at Astana University in Kazakhstan during his five-day diplomatic blitz in Central Asia, the Foreign Secretary said: “I think (we) do not promote Turing well enough.”