Just 9% of British voters think Brexit has gone well, poll finds

Fewer than one in 10 British voters think Brexit has gone well, a new study has found.

Research by the think-tank UK in a Changing Europe (UKICE) found that just 9 per cent now say leaving the EU had been a success.

Voters are also increasingly pessimistic that the policy will ever turn out well, with fewer than one-third (30 per cent) agreeing.

Even among people who voted Leave in 2016, just 61 per cent still think the policy will eventually turn out well.

In a hypothetical referendum on rejoining the EU, 48 per cent would vote to rejoin while 32 per cent would vote against it, with the rest unsure.

Though the gap in favour of rejoining is now bigger than the original vote to leave, the authors of the report however urge caution when interpreting the results.

The almost unanimous dissatisfaction with the policy does not necessarily translate into a matching vote to rejoin the bloc, they say.

Anand Menon, director of UKICE, said the results illustrated the “constraints” on both Labour and Conservative party leaders when it came to their Brexit policies.

“Rishi Sunak may struggle to weaponise the issue, given that many Leavers now think Brexit has not worked because of government incompetence,” he said.

“Keir Starmer is yet to explain how the limited revisions he proposes to the UK-EU relationship will address the economic problems many voters think have resulted from the decision to leave the EU.”

Sophie Stowers, researcher at UKICE added: “This report shows that many of the assumptions about Leavers who are unhappy with the course of Brexit are false.

“To assume that unhappiness with the implementation of Brexit directly translates to support for Remain or Rejoin is presumptuous.

“Rather, many Leavers would still vote as they did in 2016, and think that Brexit can be salvaged with the right political leadership”.

The research was conducted for the think-tank agency Public First. Rachel Wolf, founding partner of Public First said: “There’s a great sense of frustration amongst the electorate, regardless of whether people voted Leave or Remain.

“This is making it difficult for any of the main parties to use Brexit to their own electoral advantages.

“While the party leaders’ natural inclination will be to shut up about the whole thing, there’s a lot in it for the leader who can show that there’s a route to a bright future outside the EU, no matter how we got here.”

UK political parties have moved to shut down Brexit as an issue since 2020, despite the groundswell of support for rejoining since the referendum.

Labour has ruled out rejoining either the EU or even its single market, while under Rishi Sunak the Conservatives have stepped back from picking fights with Brussels – once a favoured approach under Boris Johnson.