Even the most ardent Leave areas now want closer ties with the EU, poll reveals

Overall, 53% of voters believe the UK should pursue closer ties with the EU compared to 14 per cent who want a more distant relationship.

Brexit and EU

Yet more evidence of just how much voters regret Brexit has come to light, after a poll found that not only do the majority of voters now want Britain to forge closer ties to the EU but that areas with the highest leave vote also want to forge closer ties.

With the damaging effects of Brexit now increasingly clear, a poll of more than 10,000 voters carried out by Focaldata for campaign group Best for Britain, found that three times as many adults (63%) now believe Brexit has created more problems than it has solved, compared with just 21% who believe it has solved more than it has created.

Overall, 53% of voters believe the UK should pursue closer ties with the EU compared to 14 per cent who want a more distant relationship. The polling was based on new constituency boundaries.

In the 5 constituencies which recorded the highest proportion of Leave voters in 2016, those who want a closer relationship with the EU now outnumber those who want the opposite more than 2 to 1.

In Boston and Skegness in Lincolnshire, where the vote to leave the EU was 74.9% in 2016, more than twice as many people (40%) now want closer links with the EU against just 19% who want relations to become even more distant.

It comes after the publication of a YouGov tracker on public attitudes towards Brexit last week, which shows that nearly two-thirds (62 per cent) of British voters now think that the decision to leave the EU has on balance been a failure, while just 9% consider it “more of a success”.

Even former UKIP leader Nigel Farage had to concede that the decision to leave the EU had been a failure after being presented with the evidence on just how much damage it had done to the economy.

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward

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