The British would cancel Brexit

A poll in the United Kingdom shows that a new Brexit referendum would reverse the outcome of the vote that led to Britain's exit from the European Union a decade ago.

Fifty-two percent of Britons believe the United Kingdom should rejoin the EU, according to an Ipsos poll of 1.137 British adults conducted between May 14 and 20, Bloomberg reported. That's a reversal of sentiment from June 2016, when a comparable share of the electorate supported Brexit.

Almost half of Britons support a repeat of the referendum, with opinions evenly divided on whether it should be held before or after the next general election. Asked how they would vote in a hypothetical repeat referendum, only 33 percent of respondents said the UK should remain outside the EU. Almost one in ten respondents remained undecided.

Kieran Pedley, director of politics at Ipsos, said the figures showed “a clear shift in public sentiment.” He added that “the debate about our relationship with Europe is far from over in the minds of voters.”

Despite growing support for rejoining the EU, opinions remain divided along generational and party lines. Younger voters overwhelmingly support reversing Brexit, while half of those over 55 oppose returning to the bloc.

Potential “return” voters are concentrated among supporters of the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens. In contrast, seven out of 10 supporters of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, which is leading in the polls and has its roots in the pro-Brexit UKIP party, would vote against rejoining the EU.

Ten years after the referendum, immigration remains one of the most contentious issues in British politics and a significant source of division among voters.

A separate Ipsos poll in April found that Britons believe the UK and Europe have common interests on issues such as defence, trade and climate change, and increasingly expect the two sides to work closely together. However, views are more divided when it comes to immigration. Almost 40 per cent of Britons believe the UK and the EU have conflicting interests on illegal immigration, while only around a quarter believe their interests are aligned.

“We should be aware that a future referendum could in practice play out differently,” Pedley said. “When the public is presented with the various trade-offs that the UK-EU relationship entails, a more complex picture emerges.”