Four out of five UK residents want closer ties with the EU, according to the Tony Blair Institute
A growing number of Brits think the UK was wrong to leave the EU, according to a new poll from the Tony Blair Institute that was timed to coincide with the seventh anniversary of the Brexit referendum.
Based on a survey of 1,525 adults, the poll found that more than 50% of respondents regret Brexit, and only 34% still believe that exiting the bloc was a good decision.
Moreover, 78% of the respondents believe that the UK should have a closer relationship with the EU in the future. The sentiment is strong even among ‘leave’ voters, 71% of whom also favor closer ties with the bloc.
Some 43% of those surveyed would like the country to rejoin the EU, while 13% prefer a return to the single market only. Around 20% want closer ties with the countries of the bloc, but not as a member or as part of the single market.
“Our polling shows that there is a large majority of the British public who recognize that Brexit in its current form isn’t working and would like to see the UK moving closer to the EU. This creates a substantial political space to move the debate forward from refighting the old battles about whether Brexit was right or wrong, to discussing what an improved future relationship with the EU should look like,” Anton Spisak, the head of political leadership at the institute, said, commenting on the findings.
According to Spisak, the EU will always remain “a key strategic ally” for the UK.
“It is absurd that the bloc has deeper trading arrangements with Israel and Georgia, better regulatory recognition on food-safety standards with Canada and New Zealand, and deeper mechanisms for political cooperation with nations including Australia and Japan,” he stated.
The poll was published as part of a report, ‘Moving Forward: The Path to a Better Post-Brexit Relationship Between the UK and the EU’, which analyzes how Britain and the EU could form a closer economic relationship. While not explicitly proposing a return to the bloc, the report highlights a number of technical recommendations that would help the UK cooperate with the EU.
These include a voluntary alignment with EU regulations on goods, including product rules and food safety standards, linking the UK’s and EU’s emissions trading systems, improving mobility for business people, etc.
The UK voted to exit the EU on June 23, 2016. In early 2021, the country also left the bloc’s single market. Amid the redrawing of trading rules that followed these decisions, the British economy has stagnated. According to the UK’s Office for Budget Responsibility, Brexit was directly responsible for a 15% downturn in Britain’s “trade intensity” – a term used to describe a country’s access to the global economy.
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