“If you look so far at what has happened to attitudes and if you look at the age profile of attitudes towards Brexit, you can see why...”
Polling expert Sir John Curtice has suggested that Britain could have another referendum on joining the EU before 2040, given the scale of dissatisfaction with the decision to leave the EU.
Curtice, who is currently Professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde, made the comments when speaking to a UK in a Changing Europe event on Wednesday evening and said: “I think the 2016 referendum is going to be as unsuccessful as the 1975 one.”
He went on to add that the timescale “depends very much on uncertain politics”.
He said: “I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens before 2040.”
“If you look so far at what has happened to attitudes and if you look at the age profile of attitudes towards Brexit, you can see why…”
Opinion polls have shown that a majority of the British public want to re-join the EU, with one opinion poll for YouGov putting support for re-joining the EU at 63%. An Omnisis poll last year found that 62% of people wanted the country to re-join the European Union.
When it comes to age demographics, polls generally show that around 70-75% of voters under 25s voted Remain. Meanwhile, over-65s were more than twice as likely as under-25s to have voted to Leave the European Union.
Professor Curtice said: “A lot will also happen in terms of how does our relationship with the EU evolve, to what extent does the next Labour government soften it, or not.
“One of the things to realise is that the Labour Party is going to get elected by an electorate which is three-quarters anti-Brexit.”
He went on to say: “One of the great ironies of the whole situation of where we are at, is that the party that has tried the hardest to change the Brexit profile of its support has succeeded the least.
“Labour’s vote is almost as anti-Brexit as it was back in 2019.
“I think it’s not unlikely that the next Labour government is going to hit political trouble fairly early on because I think it’s a terrible, terrible legacy that they’re going to inherit.
“Then they have to think about ways to keep their voters on board – a lot of voters would be hoping that a Labour government would do something about the EU, which is perhaps rather more than what the Labour party is currently saying it wants to do with the EU.”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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