The ten-year anniversary of the Brexit referendum and the musings of Labour leadership hopefuls have combined to revive the debate over Britain’s relationship with Europe. Would it help Labour to make rejoining the EU a cornerstone of their next election campaign?
How a ‘rejoin’ campaign could help Labour
A decade on from the referendum, Brexit has a poor reputation. My poll found only 11 per cent of people saying life in Britain in recent years has been better than it would have been if the UK were still a member of the EU, with a majority thinking it has been worse. Given a binary choice between the UK needing to accept that Brexit has failed and should try to rejoin some aspects of the EU, and the UK needing to accept that we have left for good and should make the best of it, the former leads by 16 points. When asked how they would vote in a referendum on rejoining the EU, 53 per cent of people said they would vote to rejoin, as against 30 per cent who said they would vote to stay out. These figures become even more favourable for Labour when broken down by party affiliation, as shown below.
