Leave voters turn gloomy on outlook for UK economy

Britons who voted to leave the EU are becoming increasingly doubtful about Brexit, with a large majority saying the government has handled the process badly and the number predicting it will be bad for the UK economy rising significantly, a survey by veteran pollster John Curtice showed.

Even so, there has not been a significant increase in support for remaining in the EU if there were to be a second referendum, Sir John’s latest analysis for the independent agency National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) concluded.

The survey found that 80 per cent of Leave voters said the government had handled the Brexit negotiations badly, up from 27 per cent in 2017. The figure for all voters was 80 per cent, nearly double the figure two years ago.

A total of 63 per cent of respondents said Prime Minister Theresa May had secured a bad deal from Brussels.

The survey said 25 per cent of people who voted Leave in the 2016 referendum said the economy would be worse off after Britain left the EU, up from 15 per cent who held this view in 2017. Forty-one per cent of Leave voters said the economy would be better off after Brexit, down from 54 per cent who said the same in 2017.

Sir John’s survey was based on interviews with 2,654 people between January 24 and February 17. It will do little to help Mrs May as she struggles to get MPs to support her Brexit deal in the event that she tables it a third time after it was comprehensively defeated twice.

There was also growing doubt among Leave voters about whether Brexit will have any real impact on freedom of movement of EU citizens to Britain. Although 48 per cent of Leavers predicted immigration would fall after Britain exits the EU, 51 per cent said it would either be higher or did not expect much difference.

Sir John, senior research fellow at NatCen, said: “The very voters who were responsible for giving the politicians their instructions are for the most part unhappy with the way in which those instructions have been implemented.”

Despite this shift in the attitude of Leave voters, Sir John did not report a significant shift in favour of remaining in the EU if there were to be a second Brexit referendum.

In his own extrapolation from the data, he predicted the outcome of a second referendum, had it been held last month, would have been 55 per cent in favour of Remain and 45 per cent in favour of Leave.

Sir John said the shift in numbers “is enough to raise doubts about whether, two and half years after the original ballot, leaving the EU necessarily continues to represent the view of a majority of the British public”.

But he added: “The Remain lead in our data is not sufficiently large for anyone to be sure what the outcome of any second ballot would be.”