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...)

@GorgeousSpringtime , there would be an enormous cost to rejoin both fiscally and otherwise. If the choice were put to us again it must include this. It was an error not to sort this in advance of the previous referendum, otherwise how really do we know what we’re voting for?

@MrsBennetsPoorNervesAreBack

The people were asked to make an irreversible decision that they didn't really understand. Unfortunately, they were easily manipulated and they made a very stupid decision.

Article 50 was triggered by 498 MPs on 29 March 2017 in accordance with UK law as established by the Gina Miller case. Their names are publicly available.

So 59% of people wish that we could now have what they voted to get rid of 10 years ago?

Without the opt outs, the figure YouGov records is 59% according to one of the panelist’s. However, that drops to 35% with the opt outs.

You've got your numbers the wrong way round. It is 59% with the opt-outs and 35% without them. In other words, the deal that we had before people so stupidly threw it away was way better than anything that we could hope to get now. Brexit fundamentally weakened our position as a country.

I'm not sure what the relevance is with regard to Article 50 being triggered by a parliamentary vote. We know that the MPs that voted to trigger it did not do so because they genuinely believed that it was in the best interests of the country to leave the EU - many of them believed passionately that it was the wrong thing. They voted to trigger it because David Cameron foolishly decided to hold a referendum and the electorate foolishly voted for a monumental act of national self harm. Are you seriously suggesting that the MPs should have just ignored the referendum result and done what they considered to be right?

The vote should never have been put to the public as most people clearly didn't understand the choice that they were making. But once the referendum had been held, I don't think politicians could have legitimately ignored it.

Some people changed their mind. But also the people being surveyed literally aren't the same people that voted 10 years ago. Someone who was 9 in 2016 is now an adult probably looking for a job and being polled in these surveys.

Absolutely on the article 50 triggering. It was right that there was a parliamentary vote (in line with our governing procedures) and there was no democratic alternative to the vote going through, given the referendum result.

NB the early timing of the triggering was none too helpful!

The prospect of re-join takes a lot more political time and wrangling than a survey anyway. Not everyone will want to go back to the division and politicians working on reversing Brexit over other things.

Plus ten years ago the landscape was different and if the predictions were closer I doubt we’d be keeping pace with other EU countries or advancing wrt them.

Yes. A lot of the original Brexit voters are probably dead now, so can't have an opinion either way. And many of those that make up the 59% that wish we could go back to what we had will be younger voters who are now suffering the consequences of the poor decisions of their parents/grandparents etc.

But the polling data nevertheless suggests that nearly 1 in 4 actual leave voters believe that they made the wrong choice in the referendum, while a further 11-14% are unsure. By contrast, only about 6% of remain voters think they were wrong to vote remain, with another 5% unsure.

Having just watched it, the dialogue as relayed by Cameron/Osborne was along the lines of them saying to the President “leave say that they will make a great deal with the US if we Brexit, what do you think?”
Obama replied, jocularly - “heck, no, you’d be at the back of the queue”

Is it known why Obama said this?

Rejoining would certainly involve difficult negotiations and tough political choices. And it would distract the government from other issues while costing a huge amount of money - and that is obviously on top of the vast amount of time and resource that has already been wasted on Brexit to date. So I agree that people recognising that leaving was a mistake doesn’t necessarily mean that they would want the government to prioritise rejoining immediately. Ultimately, though, if people deem that the ongoing damage being done by Brexit is too great, then we will just have to suck up the time and cost and compromises that would be involved in rejoining. It is a shame that we ever put ourselves in this awful position in the first place, but we are where we are.

I’m less clear about your second paragraph - both the wording and the logic seem a bit muddled. If you are trying to argue that keeping pace with some EU countries shows Brexit hasn’t harmed us, that doesn’t necessarily follow. The relevant comparison is how the UK has actually performed against how economists believe it would have performed had we remained - and yes, this inevitably involves some uncertainty because there can never be any way of testing an alternative reality.

But it is entirely possible that we could outperform another country and still be worse off than we otherwise would have been. The UK and other European economies aren’t interchangeable. They have different industries, different trading relationships and different exposure to global shocks. Simply comparing their respective growth rates doesn’t tell us how the UK would have performed without Brexit, and the analysis needs to be a lot more sophisticated than that.

I don't think a lot of the original Leave voters are dead, maybe a few, but not a lot, but there may be younger people who may vote Leave now to replace them? (Or people who didn't vote at all last time, who would vote Leave now.) Just playing devil's advocate.

Anyway, I do think the UK as a whole would vote to Remain in the EU now. Even so, what are the benefits that the UK had from leaving the UK? I will list them.....

..............

Sorry, I'm struggling a bit. Hang on........

Errrr,

No, I've got nothing! 😬

Yes I would. I voted to remain.

Yes!!

We need to rejoin. But I think politically it’s too early, first would need the generation who mostly voted for it to disappear and Reform also to be gone.

I think the estimates are that around 2.5-3 million leave voters are now dead. Against an estimated 1.8 million remain voters. So the net impact is not huge but still significant.

And yes, there will be younger voters to replace those that have died, but we know that older people were much more likely to vote leave than younger ones, hence the significance.

I’m unwatching this thread now, I can’t bear the thought of even going thro another referendum, let alone rejoining a whole bunch of countries that brazenly only ever think of their own.

Why doesn’t it follow? I’m not seeing this 2 to 8% drop, and to argue we’d be much more ahead had we stayed I just can’t see the economic reasons for that.

We tracked Germany post 2008 to 2016, not the US. We continue to do so roughly.

Although we are starting to gain advantage by not being part of EU AI regulation. I’d keep that and grow it. Particularly since it’s going to be more relevant to economies over the next few years and beyond not less relevant.

Presumably because it’s what he thought!

Less flippantly - would you rather spend diplomatic time on a trade deal with a large trading bloc or a near neighbour, or on one with a fairly wealthy but single country, which would be in the weeds for years of picking apart 40 years of law and trade with its near neighbours?

I suppose in a similar vein if you are going to argue people are making a decision they didn't really understand, that those 59% also didn't really understand what they voted for. Particularly as the EU of today is not the EU of 2016.

On the back of the BBC program, I’m now rereading Unleashing Demons, by Cameron’s comms director (Craig Oliver, interviewed in the programme). He wrote it about a year after the vote.

One of his takes on why remain lost is advice from their polling expert as to the sectors that never “turn out and vote” no matter how disgruntled. This didn’t come up in the program but very believable that those who don’t bother voting if they are in a “safe seat” would bother in a straight numerical majority vote.

This is not at all hard data but:

The morning after the referendum, I walked into my usually quite bouncy Year 12 media group and I can only describe the mood as depressed and grief stricken.

I was taken aback. I usually struggled to get them interested in politics but they were very interested and after a while I discerned they were cross with older people and said we’d let them down.

Obviously I couldn’t tell them I’d voted remain. I do remember feeling a bit bad, that I didn’t really get behind Remain campaign.

So based on a very unscientific piece of evidence I would say, with the small but significant swing to return plus new voters coming in, we would have a return verdict.

Yes. It all boils down to counter factuals. So while we may have done better had we remained, or alternatively may be doing better than the EU now because of Brexit no one knows.

So why people attribute our current economic situation (and thus why people want to rejoin) to Brexit implies those 59% really don't know what they are voting for.

Youre suggesting that Remain voters (he assumes they are Remain voters somehow, despite them not actually turning up to vote remain) are the types of people that don't bother to vote? Interesting. Leave voters are more politically engaged.

Don't worry. It won't happen. People won't vote for freedom of movement in this current climate where immigration and the pressures it brings is the top issue along with the economy.

And I suspect most people will want to keep the £ and be in control of our monetary policy.

I’m not suggesting anything, I’m simply mentioning the view of a key player in the remain campaign.

And you’ve misinterpreted - he’s not assuming that the usual non-voters were Remain, as it was a straight numerical majority, more Leave voters turning out than their expectation was just as bad for Remain as fewer Remain voters turning out.

I don’t think you can argue with the premise that if you live in a safe seat (Labour or conservative) then you might feel your vote (for or against the incumbent party) doesn’t make as much of a difference as one in a seat with with a majority of 300 that regularly changes hands. That’s not about political engagement, that’s about maths.

But it was a referendum not a general election. Simple majority countrywide. And Remain were supposed to win remember. Are you saying all the secret apparent remain voters stayed at home because they were winning?