Findings will bolster those in No 10 who want to negotiate on re-entry but some senior figures remain wary
Andy Burnham’s personal preference to rejoin the European Union after the next election is supported by almost half of all voters, a new megapoll has found, although cabinet ministers concerned about reopening Brexit divides are privately urging him to proceed with caution.
The poll by the Messina Group (TMG) found that renegotiating the UK’s relationship with the EU could boost Labour’s vote share by as much as seven points, if the prime minister offered a fresh referendum in which he campaigned to re-enter the bloc.
Almost 1/3 of voters said an in-out referendum would be needed first, while more than one in six felt that a general election mandate would be sufficient, and the same proportion thought parliament could make the decision.
The overall findings will bolster the case of those inside Downing Street who want to promise at the next election that Labour would at least negotiate over re-entry, which the prime minister has said he wants to see “in his lifetime”.
Don’t take this badly but judging by what Labour is doing to anti-Genocide demonstrators, the UK nowadays is even more Fascist and authoritarian than it was back when it left the EU.
The country is so Far-Right that even the Brexiter Tories aren’t Far-Right enough for a significant fraction of its population and Reform UK emerged and has significant support
Now that the Poles and the Hungarians have solved that specific problem in their countries, if Britain was to rejoin the EU it would be the most Far-Right and authoritarian country in it and, worse, it the weird American-style Fascism with its thick strain of hateful preachy moralism such as transphobia.
IMHO, Britain needs to change its politics and popular mindset before it rejoins the EU.
IMHO neither Poland nor Hungary have solved their far right problem. It looks like Poland will elect far right at their next election, and Magyar is hardly further left than Orban, just less corrupt.
That said, the UK does need to change before if it wants to rejoin, we have enough far right trouble as it is. Besides, 50% is not convincing. If a referendum is held, the psy-ops will kick in and that will become 45% again. There needs to be a minimum 60% lead for rejoining or it will backfire.
I live in an area where the main road is surrounded by dozens of British/English flags, and the average person is your typical primitive ‘stop the boats’ Reform voter (moreover, not even Reform is far right enough for some of them and they would rather vote for Restore).
There was a new store building erected around the main square, and as the beams first appeared, they started guessing what it could be in the Facebook comments. Half of them were about how it would surely become a mosque.
All the while the situation got so bad here that a certain bus stopped service in the area after 7PM because packs of vicious kids threw rocks at the windows. The same type of kids had started fires several times, shot fireworks at people during Halloween, and became a regular nuisance, often throwing various objects at cars.
Those kids are all white, full of hatred and always going around in large groups, dressing like a typical London phone snatcher, riding scooters, wearing the same balaklava (that is completely fine and comfortable to wear for them, unlike the MUCH thinner “I can’t breathe” face mask during covid), listening to the same music, and in general, trying to look like the same thug that their racist parents imagine the average immigrant youth to be.
I have never considered right wing radicals significantly smart, but the British right wingers around here are the dumbest, most primitive, most disgusting types I’ve had the displeasure to interact with.
England did not learn that shit from the US. The US are a freed colony of England’s and run by the heirs of the same gentry that financed the rebellion, for the purpose of avoiding taxes.
My pet theory is that England laid the cultural blueprint for the entirety of right wing thought in “The West”. The US just got bigger when everyone else was reeling from WW2.