Apart from the series of polls asking if the vote to leave the EU was a mistake (HERE), YouGov have also been running polls regularly since February 2012 asking the simple question: If there was a referendum on Britain's membership of the EU, how would you vote? If we go back to the beginning there was a huge majority in favour of leaving the EU. See the figures HERE.
There have been 69 such polls. The high point was in October 2012 when a huge majority (64%) said they would vote to leave compared to 36% who said they would vote to remain. Even as late as the end of 2013 there was still a healthy majority against the EU (55% to 45%).
But the odd thing is, the positions partly reversed in 2015 with 59% being in favour or remaining in April of that year. However, this looks a bit of a blip now. During the referendum campaign the picture was more balanced and as we know in June, remainers finally lost the argument.
However, as the likely impact has sunk in we can see the seven polls since May 2017 have not seen leave with a majority once. Remain has led in six polls and they were level once.
I think the evidence is mounting that Brexit is going to be bad for the economy and in the coming year the reality that Brexiteers have refused to confront will increasingly add to the pile. Perhaps this piece in today's Sunday Times (HERE) might start to cause even more leavers to have second thoughts. The British Ports Association, which represents 100 ports nationwide, "are preparing for delays [at the border] after concluding that government plans for a free-trade agreement with the European Union after Brexit will have the “same impact as ‘no deal’ in terms of border operations”.
This has been on the BPA website (HERE) since the 20th March but nobody picked it up until now. It will impact 95% of our imports and exports since they are all moved by sea.
Richard Ballantyne, Chief Executive of the British Ports Association, said:
“A potential Brexit free trade deal will be welcomed by many in the sector but this is unlikely to cover border processes. In terms of border operations the impact of leaving the Customs Union and Single Market is now fast becoming a ‘no deal’ scenario for ports. Indeed this means that new border controls on UK-EUtrade are likely to be unavoidable and that delays at certain ports and important trade gateways are a distinct possibility.
To a certain extent the UK Government will be able to decide its own border policies but for EU ports with UK links, full frontier checks, including customs and environmental health standard checks could have a severe impact upon the UK.”
FTAs might cut tariffs and quotas and speed things up a bit but they will never be frictionless and all our exports will be affected and probably our imports too. I do hope Andrew Percy MP for Goole, idiot and Brexiteer will read this and start to think how he's going to present it to his constituents.
Incidentally, the BPA have only just realised this but it has been obvious for a very long time. Vernon Bogdanor wrote about it in a Guardian article in February (HERE) entitled; A customs union won't help - there's no such thing as a 'soft' Brexit. He's right. You cannot leave the single market and customs union and have frictionless trade. They are what make frictionless trade possible.
In November last year (HERE) Steve Baker, a minister at DEXEU, answering a question from Ken Clarke in the House suggested one of the reasons (it was actually the ONLY reason he could come up with) for leaving the EU was to protect our ports from the EU's coming Ports Regulations (something that will barely affect us since most UK ports are already privatised). This is a microcosm of Brexit isn't it? You go through massive disruption to avoid some trivial rule and find you have made things infinitely worse for yourself.
Brexit is like those people who commit fraud or perjure themselves to avoid a small speeding fine only to wind up in prison and jobless.
