57% of Britons believe the UK was wrong to vote to leave the EU, and 55% want to rejoin... unless the UK can’t keep it’s previous opt-outs

Key takeaways

  • 57% of Britons think the UK was wrong to vote to leave the EU, including 23% of Leave voters
  • Six in ten Britons think Brexit has been a failure, with the Conservatives and Boris Johnson seen as most responsible for it not being a success
  • While 55% of Britons say they support the UK rejoining the EU, this falls to just 35% if the UK had to rejoin without its prior opt-outs, with 43% opposed
  • 59% of Britons support a closer relationship with the EU but without joining the EU, single market or customs union, the only relationship backed by a majority of Remainers and Leavers
  • Britons expect that rejoining the EU would have benefits to the UK economy, but just 31% feel it would improve their household finances

As we approach the tenth anniversary of Britain’s historic vote to leave the EU, a new YouGov study examines how Britons think Brexit has gone and their preferences for Britain’s future relationship with the EU.

How do Britons feel Brexit has gone?

A decade on, just 30% of Britons believe that the UK was right to vote to leave the EU, while a clear majority (57%) now think that Britain made the wrong decision in June 2016.

Of course, it hasn’t always been this way. Reflecting the close referendum vote, Britons were initially divided on the result, though with the public tending to believe they’d made the wrong choice by the start of 2019. Support for the referendum outcome saw revivals after the UK officially left the EU in January 2020 and again at the start of 2021, but since July 2022, our tracker has consistently shown at least half of Britons believing ‘leave’ was the wrong decision.

Today, 64% of Leave voters still stand by their vote, but nearly a quarter (23%) now believe the UK was wrong to leave the EU. By contrast, fully 89% of 2016 Remain voters think the referendum decision was wrong, with a mere 6% feeling the UK made the right choice, in spite of their vote.

The overwhelming majority of Reform UK voters believing the UK was right to leave the EU (80%), with a much smaller majority of Tories agreeing (56%), while 79-85% of those who backed Labour, the Lib Dems or the Greens in 2024 think Brexit was the wrong decision.

Brexit is widely perceived to have been more of a failure than a success, with the number thinking the former outnumbering the latter five times over (61% vs 12%), with a further 19% believing it’s neither been a success nor a failure.

Only a quarter of those who voted to leave the EU (25%) the project they endorsed has been a success, with this still only rising to 36% among those who continue to believe that Britain was right to vote to leave the EU (although only 15% actively believe Brexit has been something of a failure).

Even among those who voted for Reform UK at the last general election, roughly as many see Brexit as having been more of a failure (24%) than see it as having been a success (29%), though with the most common view among them being that Brexit has been neither a success nor a failure (44%).

Conservative voters tend to feel Brexit has been a failure, by 36% to 25%, while 82% of Labour and Lib Dem voters think it has ultimately been a failure, alongside 87% of Green voters.

Among the 61% of Britons who think Brexit has been a failure, the Conservatives and Boris Johnson are the most likely to be held responsible for this, with 82-85% saying they are at least somewhat responsible for Britain’s exit from the EU being unsuccessful.

Seven in ten (69%) believe Nigel Farage holds this level of responsibility for Brexit being, in their eyes, a failure, with 64% saying the same of Theresa May and 59% of Rishi Sunak.

Labour are seen as having contributed at least a fair amount to Brexit’s perceived failure by 38% of those who feel it’s been a failure, with 33% viewing the UK civil service and the EU as similarly responsible for Brexit not succeeding.

Of course, some of these figures are shaped, in part, by the fact that most of those who believe Brexit has been a failure are Remainers and/or Labour voters, who are disproportionately likely to dislike people like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage in the first place.

Among Leavers who now think Brexit has been a failure, nearly six in ten (57%) see the EU as responsible for Brexit being a disappointment, with 50% also ascribing a fair amount of blame to Labour and 45% to UK civil servants. Nearly half of such Leavers (48%) also see Nigel Farage as responsible for the end result of Brexit, even if this compares to 80% of Remainers who see Brexit as a failure feeling the same.

Regardless, Boris Johnson and the Conservatives are still the most likely to be seen as responsible for Brexit turning out wrong, with 75-79% of Leavers who believe Brexit has been a failure seeing them as at least fairly responsible.

What relationship do Britons want with the EU?

With Britons seeing Brexit as a failure, does this mean they wish to reverse it completely?

In principle, a majority of Britons say they support rejoining the EU (55%), with only a third of the public (34%) being opposed to undoing Brexit. This includes nearly a quarter of 2016 Leave voters (23%) approving of a return to the EU, a proportion roughly twice as large as the 12% of Remainers who would oppose a return to full membership.

However, some EU officials have said it’s unlikely the UK would be able to simply rejoin on its previous terms, which included significant opt-outs from EU policy. Instead, the UK could be required to join the Euro and participate in the Schengen passport-free travel zone.

Were this the price for re-entry, Britons are instead much more divided on whether or not to rejoin, with support for becoming a full EU member falling twenty points to 35% and opposition rising ten points to 43%.

This includes support levels falling by 27 points among Remainers, to 56%, with 28% instead opposed to re-entry on these terms. Labour voters divide up similarly, with 55% supporting EU membership on these terms and 27% being opposed.

Furthermore, just 39% of the public believe that rejoining the EU would be the right priority for the government at the moment, including only 69% of those who want to rejoin in the abstract.

Beyond full membership, Britons tend to support rejoining the single market and customs union, by margins of 50% to 24-26%, though it is a closer relationship without formally rejoining any of the EU’s key aspects that truly commands the most popularity.

Six in ten Britons (59%) say they support the UK having a closer relationship with the EU, without rejoining either it, the single market or the customs union, while just 20% oppose such a path.

Nonetheless, a closer relationship on such terms has cross-partisan support; by 70% of Remainers and 54% of Leave voters, as well as by 61-73% of those who voted Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem or Green in 2024. Reform UK voters are the sole exception, being divided 39% to 43%.

Ultimately, just 29% of Britons support Britain’s relationship with the EU remaining as it is, while only 21% would like to see a further loosening ties with the European Union.

What impact do Britons believe rejoining the EU would have on the UK?

A small majority of Britons (51-55%) believe that rejoining the EU would have a positive impact on the UK’s economy, businesses and level of international trade, while nearly half (46-47%) expect such a move would prove beneficial to the UK’s diplomatic influence in Europe and our national security. In these cases, no more than 19% of Britons believe rejoining would hold a negative impact, while 16-23% think it would make no real difference.

The public, though, are less convinced that they themselves would benefit. Just 31% of Britons believe their household finances would be improved by the UK rejoining the EU, relative to 32% who expect it would make no difference and 17% who feel they would be worse off if the UK returned to the EU fold.

Likewise, just 30% of Britons expect that the NHS would be better off if the UK were inside the EU, while just 28% feel that Britain’s politics would be more stable if we held EU membership.

Four in ten Britons (41%) believe that rejoining the EU would lead to a higher level of immigration into the UK, though this is roughly matched by 37% who expect that rejoining would make no real difference to the number of immigrants coming into the UK.

While 65% of Leavers expect that rejoining the EU would lead to higher levels of immigration, just 25% of Remainers believe this would happen, with 50% instead expecting levels of immigration to remain roughly where they are.

See the full results here

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Photo: Getty

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