Getting Brexit Undone

I’ve been surprised at how quickly public opinion has turned against Brexit. After all the reason “Get Brexit Done” was such a successful slogan during the 2019 election was that most people – including a large chunk of Remain voters – were heartily sick of the topic. It was never going to go away as an issue, our relationship with continental powers has been a key factor in British politics for centuries, but I thought it would stay in the background for the time being, and it would be a while before serious conversations about a different relationship with the EU began.

Up to mid-2021 this looked about right. Covid was dominating the news and while enthusiasm for Brexit had gently declined since 2016 there had been no dramatic shifts. But over the past year support has fallen much faster and, along with Britain’s economic malaise, that has led to a resurgence of the Brexit debate. In August 2021 46% of people told YouGov we were wrong to Leave the EU and 42% said right. Those figures are now 54% and 34%. Just 18% think the Government has handled Brexit well.

At the moment both Government and opposition are studiously, and understandably, ignoring this shift in opinion. Within the Tory membership and parliamentary party support for Brexit remains strong and, with Sunak in such a weak position at the moment, there is little the Government can do beyond trying to quietly improve relations with European partners.

Labour’s base are strongly opposed to Brexit but, given Remainers have nowhere else to go, the focus is on winning over socially conversative but economically left-wing voters in marginal seats, and attacking Brexit would be actively unhelpful with this group. Starmer and his team are also clearly terrified about being attacked as soft on immigration thus his repeated emphasis that free movement would be off the table under a Labour government.

But for both parties, if opinion continues to shift, this can only be a temporary strategy that will eventually become unsustainable. The first part of this piece digs into the polling data in more detail to understand what’s driving the shift of opinion, whether it’s likely to be permanent, and what voters want from our relationship with the EU. Thanks to the very kind people at focaldata I’ve also been able to ask some of my own polling questions to supplement the analysis. Despite a lifelong obsession with polling I’ve never done one myself and their platform meant I could launch a proper representative poll within minutes supervised by people who really know what they are doing. I’ll be doing more polling with them for future posts.

The final part of the post looks at what this means for future policy and in particular how a Labour government and Tory opposition might shift position over the next Parliament.