MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Support for second Brexit referendum increases; PM May's approval ratings plunge
A referendum on the final terms of any Brexit deal, was supported by 42%, while 40% said there should not. The rest did not know. The proportion of voters who favor a referendum on the final terms of any Brexit deal has overtaken those who do not for the first time, while UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s approval ratings have plunged, according to opinion polls.
With just over eight months left until Britain is due to leave the European Union, there is little clarity about how trade will flow as Mrs. May, who is grappling with a rebellion in her party, struggles to strike a deal with the bloc.
Mrs May has stepped up planning for a so called “no-deal” Brexit that would see the world’s fifth largest economy crash out of the EU on March 29, 2019, a step that could spook financial markets and dislocate trade flows across Europe and beyond.
When voters were asked in a YouGov poll whether there should be a referendum on the final terms of any Brexit deal, 42% said there should be a fresh vote while 40% said there should not. The rest did not know.
The poll of 1,653 adults in the United Kingdom was conducted on Wednesday and Thursday last week, The Times said.
Fifty-eight per cent of Labour voters, 67 per cent of Liberal Democrat voters and 21 per cent of Conservative voters supported a second referendum.
Britain and the EU are working towards sealing an agreement on their future ties by October, but the process is mired in disagreement. EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier rejected key elements of Britain’s new trade proposals on Thursday.
Even if Mrs May can strike a deal with the EU, it is unclear whether she could get it approved by the British parliament.
A separate poll showed Mrs May’s approval ratings had plunged: less than one in three voters were satisfied with the job she is doing as prime minister, with an even sharper fall in satisfaction with her among Conservatives.
The July poll showed 30% were satisfied with her leadership, down from 35% in June. The same measure among Conservative voters showed a fall to 55% from 68%. The survey of 1,023 adults was conducted for the Evening Standard newspaper by Ipsos MORI between July 20 and 24.
In the June 23, 2016 referendum, 17.4 million votes, or 51.9% of the votes cast, backed leaving the EU while 16.1 million votes, or 48.1% votes cast, backed staying. Many opinion polls were wrong about the result.
Mrs May has repeatedly said Brexit will happen and has ruled out a rerun of the 2016 referendum, although French President Emmanuel Macron and billionaire investor George Soros have suggested that Britain could still change its mind.
Two years on from the referendum, the YouGov poll showed that the views of most voters on whether to leave had not changed.
In the event of a referendum on Britain’s EU membership tomorrow, 45% said that they would vote to remain, while 42% would vote to leave, with four per cent saying that they would not vote and nine per cent saying they did not know, The Times said.
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Read all commentsThe EU always does this — grinding down people’s aspirations for freedom.
Jul 30th, 2018 - 01:48 pm 0Denmark rejected Maastricht Treaty in 1992 but was made to vote again. Ireland rejected the Nice Treaty in 2001, but, like Denmark, was forced to vote again. Both France and Holland rejected the EU Constitution in 2005. That was replaced by the almost identical Lisbon Treaty in 2008.
Neither French nor Dutch voters were allowed to vote on Lisbon. Ireland did reject Lisbon but, of course, the Irish people were made to vote again.
@BB
Jul 30th, 2018 - 10:02 pm 0I don't know how the Brexit referendum was conducted, but presume there was ONE question put to voters, “do you want IN or OUT of the EU ?”, (presumably after the many issues were publicly debated by those 'for and against' it ?)..
If that was the case, wouldn't it have made more sense to break down the referendum into various questions, like for ex., if people were in favour of free or controlled movement of European citizens, of uncontrolled immigration, or of imposing certain restrictions on newly arrived refugees/ immigrants on the continent, their thoughts on the status of foreign nationals already living and working in the UK, if they agreed with having purely domestic matters being dictated by laws from Brussels etc, instead of under one broad question where a variety of different issues had to be answered with an overall YES or NO ? Many people probably ended up with a feeling that they hadn't been given the chance to vote differently on specific issues that were relevant to them, some of which they supported, and others not.....Just asking.
Brit Bob can answer for himself, but I think asking such detailed questions would be totally impractical. The real problem was that the OUT alternative was a big blank unknown, and the various leave campaigners all claimed different things, with varying levels of (im)plausibility. The government should have had a plan on what would happen if people voted leave, specifying whether we'd stay in the single market, customs union etc, or aim for a simple trade deal, and told people what the implications would be. That way, everyone would have known what the options were and could have made an informed decision.
Jul 30th, 2018 - 10:52 pm 0As for the EU, it's perfectly true they have held repeat referendums, usually after making some small changes. No one held a gun to people's heads and forced them to change their votes the second time, though.
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