20 December 2022 Comment What should Brexit mean?
A month ago, The Sunday Times ran a front-page story in which it claimed that ‘senior government figures are planning to put Britain on the path towards a Swiss-style relationship with the European Union’. Although outside the EU, a series of bilateral deals mean Switzerland has access to the single market and implements freedom of […]
20 December 2022 Comment Migration and freedom of movement
Immigration was one of the central issues in the 2016 EU referendum campaign. One of the benefits it was argued would flow from Brexit was that the UK would be able to ‘take back control of its borders’. The apparent contrast between that claim and the substantial and increasing flow of people crossing the English […]
27 October 2022 Comment The economic debate
The reaction of the financial markets to Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget has had a dramatic impact on the political landscape. It has both brought down a Prime Minister and seen support for the Conservatives plummet in the polls. But what difference, if any, has it made to attitudes towards Brexit? Is there any evidence that has […]
7 October 2022 Comment Sources of persuasion
The dramatic collapse in support for the Conservatives in the wake of the ‘fiscal event’ a fortnight ago raises an intriguing question – what has happened to the Brexit divide in Britain’s electoral politics? The key foundation underpinning Boris Johnson’s electoral success in 2019 was to persuade three-quarters of those who had voted Leave in […]
22 September 2022 Comment Nationality, identity and culture
It is often asserted that Brexit has fallen off voters’ agenda. Remain voters, it is said, have accommodated themselves to the fact that we have left the EU, while the issue has lost its importance for Leave voters. The validity of the first of those statements is doubtful – as our post-Brexit poll of polls […]
7 September 2022 Comment Perceived consequences of leaving the EU The Brexit Vote: Right or Wrong? The economic debate
The latest poll by Redfield & Wilton Strategies for UK in a Changing Europe suggests that, among those expressing a preference, 54% would now vote to join the EU while only 46% would back staying out. That is quite a turnaround from the position just six months ago. Then, 55% were saying they would vote […]
1 July 2022 Comment The Brexit Vote: Right or Wrong?
The latest in the series of Brexit tracker surveys undertaken by Redfield & Wilton for UK in a Changing Europe finds that in a referendum on whether the UK should re-join or stay out of the EU, 53% would now vote to re-join, while 47% would back staying out. This represents a turnaround from previous […]
19 May 2022 Comment The Brexit process
Brexit played a central role in the outcome of the 2019 general election. Those who had voted Leave in 2016 swung strongly towards the Conservatives. In winning an overall majority of 80, the party captured from Labour some Leave-inclined parliamentary constituencies that the Conservatives had not previously won since at least the 1930s. Unsurprisingly, Labour […]
3 May 2022 Comment What should Brexit mean?
Brexit is widely regarded as done and dusted – though the latest Redfield & Wilton/UK in a Changing Europe poll today suggests voters in Great Britain are still more or less evenly divided between those who would (49%) and those who would not (51%) reverse Brexit. However, one issue that is certainly still to be […]
9 March 2022 Comment Sources of persuasion
Ever since the 2016 referendum, it has been commonplace for polls of vote intention to report separately the figures for those who voted Remain and those who backed Leave. And as we have previously shown, these analyses suggest that since 2019 there has been a narrowing of the difference between 2016 Remain and Leave voters […]
