Buyer’s Remorse: Has Britain Changed Its Mind on Brexit?
| Date | 01 March 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2041905818764700 |
| Published date | 01 March 2018 |
12 POLITICAL INSIGHT • APRIL 2018
The Brexit negotiations are about
to enter their most important
phase. By October, the UK and
the EU are meant to reach
agreement on an outline at least of what
the long-term relationship between them
should be once the UK has left. Hard
choices that perhaps have so far been
avoided or obfuscated will finally have to
be made, and the reality of what Brexit will
mean in practice finally begin to emerge.
Inevitably, this prospect has resulted
in much speculation about what kind of
agreement will transpire, and what the
implications and consequences of that
agreement will be. One strand of this
speculation, particularly popular amongst
those opposed to Brexit, has focused
on whether the outcome of the Brexit
negotiations will persuade some of those
Buyer’s Remorse:
Has Britain Changed
Its Mind on Brexit?
The UK voted to leave the European Union by a narrow margin. Has
the public changed its mind since June 2016? John Curtice assess es the
evidence and finds that the debate over the merits of holding another
referendum has yet to be won or lost.
who voted Leave that they have made a
mistake. Indeed, it has been suggested that
the rst phase of the Brexit negotiations
was suciently slow and dicult for some
Leave voters to have changed their minds
already, and that, consequently, the narrow
vote in June 2016 to Leave would now be
reversed. And that thought, in turn, has given
succour to those who believe that once the
negotiations are concluded, there should
be another referendum in order to establish
whether the terms of the deal that the UK
government has brought back are indeed
acceptable to voters in Britain.
But have many voters changed their minds
about Brexit? And is there much clamour for a
Political Insight April 2018.indd 12 19/02/2018 11:19
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