If a referendum on returning to the EU was organised now, 55% said they would vote in favour, while only 31% of Britons would vote against it…reports Asian Lite News
According to a recent poll, over 60 percent of Britons view Brexit as a failure rather than a success, leading to a majority who would vote in favor of rejoining the European Union.
As per the YouGov poll, which surveyed 2,151 people last week, about 57 per cent said leaving the European Union in 2016 was wrong, while only 32 per cent were in favour of Brexit.
Most of the respondents agreed leaving the EU resulted in few economic benefits for the UK.
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If a referendum on returning to the EU was organised now, 55 per cent said they would vote in favour, while only 31 per cent of Britons would vote against it.
YouGov said the results showed a “moderate shift” from January 2021, when 49 per cent said they would vote to rejoin and 37 per cent would stay out.
Moreover, the poll revealed that nearly two-thirds (63 per cent) of those surveyed said they considered Brexit more of a failure than a success. Only 12 per cent said they saw the move to leave the bloc a success. Eighteen per cent were neutral.
Also, 70 per cent of the respondents said the government was handling Brexit badly, YouGov said.
In May, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had said Brexit was delivering benefits. He justified his claims by talking about his flagship policy of freeports and VAT cuts that he said would make beer and sanitary products cheaper.
However, some economists say freeports, which are special zones giving tax and customs reliefs and simplified trade regulations, are not likely to help in growth of Britain’s economy. They have said it might have limited value as a regional development tool.
Notably, British business investment has not shown significant growth since mid-2016 in comparison to other developed economies. However, economists supporting Brexit believe the capital grew strongly in the years leading up to 2016 and was bound to slow down.
Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has repeatedly said he believes in Brexit and the opportunities it presents, but his government is nevertheless seeking to renegotiate parts of the UK’s exit deal that it fears will cause disruption and added costs to businesses and consumers.
UK officials are currently in talks with their EU counterparts to delay upcoming tariffs on electric vehicles shipped between the UK and the EU and the government is also weighing options to limit the cost of post-Brexit border checks on European food imports due to start in the next six months.
In April, it was reported that Sunak also hopes to reach an agreement to let Britons use EU e-gates for passport checks, another friction point for tourists and business travelers since Brexit.
According to the International Monetary Fund, Britain is expected to have the lowest growth among the world’s major economies in 2023, projected at 0.4 percent. In the previous year, 2022, the UK economy experienced a growth of 4.1 percent.
“Prior to the 2008 global financial crisis, the UK had been a strong performer among the Group of Seven countries,” the IMF said last week. “But this momentum was lost in the middle of the last decade. By 2022, real business investment was still slightly lower than in 2016 – in contrast to the 14 percent increase among other G7 economies.”
The Conservative Party’s choice to exit the EU’s single market and customs union by the end of 2020, followed by the economic unrest under the leadership of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, caused great frustration among numerous business leaders.
Like all companies around the world, the British business community has had to deal with higher energy prices and disrupted supply chains, but they have had further challenges – adapting to new trade rules from Brexit and shortages of workers because EU citizens can no longer travel without visas to work in the United Kingdom as they could previously.
On Monday, Britain added a number of construction jobs to its “shortage occupation list”, which allows the building industry to bring in staff from abroad more easily to help employers struggling to fill positions.
Bricklayers, masons, roofers, roof tilers, slaters, carpenters, joiners and plasterers will benefit from cheaper visas and more relaxed employment criteria under the changes.
The shortage occupation list already includes care workers, civil engineers, laboratory technicians and healthcare workers.
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