Top-level view – January 2026/25
There is a big difference between believing in hindsight that the Brexit vote was a mistake and attitudes to rejoining the EU. However, polls show that attitudes have shifted significantly in favour of a closer relationship with the EU.
“Polling by YouGov in January 2026, carried out in six European countries, shows 50% of voters in the UK would vote to be an EU member if there was a referendum now, compared to 45% and 46% in France and Italy. The numbers were higher in Germany, 62%, Denmark, 75%, and Spain, 66%.
YouGov also found that in Britain, just 31% of people said they would vote to be outside the EU – far fewer than the 52% who backed Brexit nearly a decade ago. In France, that figure was 30%, Italy 28%, Germany 20%, Denmark 14% and Spain 13%.”
Source: Independent, British voters want to be part of the EU more than the French and Italians, new poll reveals, 2 January 2026
Polling by YouGov in February 2026 found 64% of the public in favour of rejoining the EU and 36% in favour of staying out. (BMG asks the same question and consistently gets lower results than YouGov, so seems to use a different polling methodology. I use YouGov as it is the source for most of the polls for Figure 17.3).
Source: National Centre for Social Research, Should the United Kingdom join the EU or stay out of the EU?
Going back to January 2025, YouGov conducted a more in-depth poll on attitudes to the UK’s relationship with the EU (Figure 17.7). YouGov found that :
- 55% of the public were in favour of rejoining the EU.
- Only 27% of Britons supported the UK’s relationship with the EU remaining where it was.
- Around half of the public (48-50%) would also support Britain rejoining the Single Market and Customs Union.
- Only one in five Britons (20-21%) opposed these options.
- The greatest support was for a closer relationship with the EU without formally rejoining any part of it.
- Nearly two-thirds of Britons (64%) would support such a policy, including 60% of Leave voters and 53% of Reform UK voters.
Figure 17.7: Views on closer relationship with EU
YouGov, How do Britons feel about Brexit five years on?, January 2025
Detailed view – June 2024
For a more detailed view, UK in a Changing Europe (UKICE) partnered with Redfield and Wilton Strategies in December 2021 to track attitudes of the British electorate to Brexit. Their latest poll in June 2024 asked how people felt about:
- re-joining the EU
- life outside the EU
- Britain’s relationships with the rest of the world
- core areas of post-Brexit policy such as trade and immigration
The answers indicated that the UK’s relationship with the EU was not settled. Although 42% thought it was settled and should not be reopened, 42% disagreed and 16% didn’t know (see Figure 17.8).
Asked about their hypothetical voting intention, 55% responded that they would vote to rejoin, 35% would vote to say out of the EU, and 10% were undecided (see Figure 17.9).
Figure 17.8: Is the EU membership question settled?
Figure 17.9: Hypothetical voting intention
Previously, the June 2022 poll had revealed:
- a growing gap between younger and older voters:
- those over 55 were still more likely to state support for staying out over rejoining.
- an educational divide:
- those educated to GCSE level retained low support for rejoin, barely rising from 37% to 38%;
- support for rejoin among those with a degree had increased from 56% to about 70%.
- geographic patterns confound conventional narratives:
- voters in the North East were among those who had turned most against Brexit;
- support for rejoin had risen from around 40% to 60% in the North East and the South West.