Would you vote to re-join the EU in another referendum?

[GorgeousSpringtime]

Simple question. If there is another referendum to re-join the EU, will you be voting to re-join?

This isn't to have a go at anyone who supported Brexit, or who supported Remain, it's just a quick straw poll. Thank you.

If anyone is wondering, (or cares!) I think I will vote to re-join. (I won't say at this point what I voted for last time...)

It's just in the case of the Brexit vote it's complicated by age being such a stark divider. For all people talk of Scotland wanting to stay, of the "ignored red wall towns" wanting to leave the biggest divider was age. Which meant a lot of people who voted Leave are dead now and a lot of young people who weren't old enough to vote are now among the most affected as they don't have the same opportunities someone their age had 10 years ago. It does feel a little unfair.

In principle, yes.

And I have no doubt that Reform would propose that, if they were elected (and if the electorate was such that they were elected, then there would have been a massive shift in the period in between).

FWIW, if there was a rejoin referendum next year (unlikely, timing wise, as it takes time to set up processes) then actually rejoining would probably take the best part of a decade. Wouldn’t surprise me if a confirmatory referendum was then held on the final rejoining terms.

So holding another five-ten years after we actually rejoined would probably be a closer equivalent.

Thank you @Persephonia1966 and @SheilaFentiman for answering my question.

That you consider a later democratic vote to be “riding roughshod” over an earlier democratic vote. Rather than, say, ongoing democracy.

But I suspect you understand that perfectly well, so I’ll leave you to your disingenuousness.

Great to hear. I’ll leave you to your style of posting.

I suggest you watch the BBC documentary titled Brexit - A very British Civil War.

Pretty sure I watched it but I’ll double check iplayer when i get home. I have also read several tomes on the subject of Brexit, watched the drama with BC as Cummings etc.

I would say remain lost because they focussed on theoretical negatives of leaving as opposed to the benefits that UK had gained by being an EU member.

I would say citing any one reason as “why remain lost” is incomplete. However, this certainly contributed and chimes with the “mood music” part of my longer list of reasons. Remain messaging was too rarely from the positive angle and Take Back Control for Leave was a strong and positive slogan/campaign hinge.

@SheilaFentiman

What makes you think the EU will accept an application from the UK to rejoin?

Remember that any application has to be approved by all EU members. Jean Claude Juncker is on record as saying the UK will rejoin in his lifetime.

Other things to remember are:

The EU would be forced to offer a deal that is massively crap to the previous deal. Logic is that if they offered a better deal it might encourage other members to leave and then apply to rejoin.

If the deals UK has made with other countries since Brexit don’t align with EU rules, what will happen to them? I don’t think it would be helpful to the UK tear up deals they have made with the US and India.

I think you've overlooked the influence Marina Wheeler (Boris Johnson's ex-wife) had on his decision to back leave. Marina Wheeler, a lawyer and QC who has a master's degree in EU law from Brussels University also featured in the BBC documentary. Articles here 2026 and 2016:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-boris-johnson-wife-marina-wheeler-vote-leave-b2979444.html
https://www.spectator.com.au/2016/02/the-crucial-missing-part-of-camerons-eu-deal/
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/feb/10/boris-johnson-eu-marina-wheeler-david-cameron-deal-renegotiation

@EEexpat no idea if the EU would vote to progress an application from the UK - and I don’t think I said that they would, did I? The whole premise of the thread is how one would vote in an as yet hypothetical Rejoin referendum.

Agree that Britain wouldn’t get much special treatment in any Rejoin process. I’m ok with that; I appreciate that for others more on the borderline, it might be a deal breaker between Brexited and Rejoin.

As with any joining member - the trade deals signed by the EU would supersede any trade deals signed prior to accession to the EU. (or tear them up, to use your more emotive language)

Again, I’m ok with that as I consider being part of a large negotiating block and trading more freely within that block is the best option for the UK. We would trade under the EU terms with the US, India, whoever else.

The US is quite happy to tear up it's deals with us TBF. In normal times it would matter a lot more but Trump is so on/of with tarrifs I don't think they mean that much.
The EU also made a similar deal with India just after us although, due to it's stronger bargaining hand, it was much more favourable to the EU in the amounts of tariff free imports they were allowed.

In fairness to the people who wanted leave I don't think they could have foreseen (and neither did the remainers) the current situation with trade etc. but partly driven by Trump,.trade walls are popping up all over the place. It was inevitable that when Trump started a tarrif war with China the EU would end up imposing it's own tarrifs because otherwise China (for rational reasons) would have replaced it's US sales with EU ones even at a loss. You get into overproduction issues. And it's really bad for the UK then to be caught in the crossfire- tariffs from the US, locked out of the EU market by new Tarrifs there as well. The world is very different to 2016 in that respect.

Yes although I have an EU passport as well as British anyway.

France is strongly opposed to the EU's Mercosur (South American) trade deal, however it was provisionally applied earlier this year - essentially bypassing the European Parliament and Macron (much to Macron's annoyance);

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20260227-eu-move-to-provisionally-apply-mercosur-deal-a-bad-surprise-macron-says

An obvious predicament on Chinese vehicle tariffs reported today;

Jonathan Reynolds warned that the government would not bow to calls from other countries for the UK to hit Chinese vehicles with import taxes, despite political pressure to align with the EU in exchange for deeper future economic ties...
His comments highlight the divisions that remain between the UK and EU on trade and industrial policy, which could derail the prime minister’s attempts to move closer to Brussels.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/oct/14/uk-will-not-put-tariffs-on-chinese-vehicles-says-jonathan-reynolds

@Persephonia1966

If being in the EU guarantees more bargaining power than not being in the EU, how do you explain the fact that the EU received a less favourable deal with the US than the UK?

The US economy is about 8 times larger than India. $32 trillion vs $4 trillion. Is it not better to have the best deal with a $32 trillion economy than a $4 trillion economy?

As for the US tearing up the deal with the UK, I would say that is remain wishful thinking. It was a massive kick in the head for the EU.

Watch the BBC documentary titled Brexit - A very British civil war. Cameron and Osborne confirmed they promoted the US president, Obama, to say UK would be at the back of the queue for a trade deal if they voted to leave the EU. They hoped it would counter the leave campaign argument they would get a deal with the US.

When it failed to swing the polls, Osborne confirmed that he issued his speech 8 days before the referendum to say if the vote was to leave there would be an immediate recession and a budget that raised taxes and cut spending in the hope people would vote remain. So, by his own admission, he lied as did Cameron.

When it failed to swing the polls, Osborne confirmed that he issued his speech 8 days before the referendum to say if the vote was to leave there would be an immediate recession and a budget that raised taxes and cut spending in the hope people would vote remain. So, by his own admission, he lied as did Cameron

Had Cameron stayed on, and Osborne stayed on, who knows what the post vote budget would have been.

I would say that both sides had some campaigning propaganda that was economical with the actualité, to borrow a phrase.

a lot of people who voted Leave are dead

Considerably more people died between the referendum vote in 1975 and 2016 though. Why were British voters denied an EU referendum for so long, despite all the main political parties promising one a decade or more before 2016?

@SheilaFentiman

being part of a large negotiating block and trading more freely within that block is the best option for the UK

UK trades with the EU under the terms of the TCA. It’s highly favourable for the services sector as it does not impose the same regulations on services as it does for goods. That combined with fact that UK is free to trade with whoever they wish, has allowed the UK services sector to boom.

Also, remember the following measured data:

UK has grown more than, France, Germany and Italy since Brexit.

UK is the fastest growing economy in the G7 in the first half of 2026.

UK has lower immigration than, Germany, France, Spain and Italy.

UK has lower tariffs with the US than the EU.

And I wasn't alive then at all. It's more because the vote was so split by age. I am not aware that it was in the 1975 referendum vote though correct me if Im wrong. Of course voting is often split by age that's the way it works but usually you get a rerun after just 4/5 years. The Brexit vote was quite unique in that it produced an entire generation of young people who don't have the opportunity to travel/work within thw EU and were hit the hardest by the economic costs BUT also never got the chance to vote for that because they were under 18 at the time the vote happened. That's not me by the way, Im older and got the chance to travel and work in the EU etc. it just sucks younger people can't. Meanwhile the people most in favour of leaving (sadly) demographically thinned out since the vote and will be even more reduced over the next 10 years. It just means the balance of for/against the EU can tip dramatically in a very short space of time.

@Persephonia1966

Meanwhile the people most in favour of leaving (sadly) demographically thinned out since the vote and will be even more reduced over the next 10 years. It just means the balance of for/against the EU can tip dramatically in a very short space of time

Flawed logic completely. The birth rate in the UK is declining. Likewise, the population is aging. So, the percentage of the UK population made up of older people is increasing.

Yes, but everyone gets older. As people get older it's not been the case that they become more in favour of Brexit. It's that at the time the Brexit vote was taken as a single snapshot in time the vote was split by age. So the pro-Brexit voters who sadly pass on are not being replaced by people who get a year older and assume a new opinion. It's not like a bus pass.

To put it another way the people that were too young to vote ten years ago but are now looking for jobs/working/leaving university will get older every year. That doesnt mean that every year they will be slightly more in favour of Brexit having been the right decision. In fact the opposite appears to be the case from survey data. This means increasingly the people that never even got the chance to vote (not just were outvoted) will form an ever larger number of the people most affected by Brexit.

Listening to Dominic O’Connell on the resilience of the U.K. v G7 he cites AI advances pretty much.

We could probably keep diverging and moving ahead on that. Even the single market brings in EU AI regulation.

Ten years ago the landscape was different, looking forward to what’s changing in tech is relevant.

Bar the US of course. But v EU growth.

Voters didn’t, in 2016, know how DT was going to turn the trade world upside down, so very true. Perhaps the learning point there is that you can never assume the world is going to be static and Trumps, pandemics, war in Ukraine situations will, sadly, happen. We had improved and good relations with common market then EU members even before the concept of either, for 80 years but we chucked that away when we left. Swapped it for volatility and uncertainty. I’m surprised the EU are still as nice to us as the are to be honest. We are the prodigal son!

The EU have their own issues. Particularly the politicians fighting to stay in power atm.

Another referendum doesn’t sit well with me either. I’d hate a rerun of the vitriol that marked the last one.

But so many lies and misinformation was spread by leave and so much ineffective arguments by remain.

The question was posed wrongly and no forecast, project or consequences was explained.

Heaven help us if our theatre of war scenarios are done so weakly. I don’t know how the road back will look but I am certain it will happen.

Is happening.

@SevenYellowHammers ,

‘I’m surprised the EU are still as nice to us as the are to be honest. We are the prodigal son!’

Luckily, most leaders aren’t as vindictive as a lot of keyboard warriors.

And the reason for that is that the UK is still a big and serious country, and London remains a ‘world city’. The EU would be a lot worse off without the UK to trade with.

The EU does over 5% of its trade with fhe UK and has roughly 4 million of its citizens living within it. Out military and intelligence are still vitally important to the EU and we, along with France, maintain nuclear deterrence. In addition we sometimes export electricity to France when they need it. Finally, despite it being more expensive now, we have universities like Imperial, Oxford and Cambridge. I could go on!

The BJ and Cummings era of stupid vindictiveness is gone, thankfully, and we do need closer relations with Europe. We would also, in my opinion, be better off without free trade and movement. We don’t have to fully embrace the EU, however. There are genuine issues with it and it is a trade off between the benefits and the issues.