In fact, we reached balance well before 2020, probably in 2018, and yesterday, Professor Sir John Curtice confirmed the polling evidence over the past year shows that the 2016 referendum has failed to deliver a “permanent settlement” to the Brexit debate. Sir John also said the Tories are unlikely to win the next election no matter what they do.
The UK's leading pollster isn't much given to making sensational statements so for him to say that Brexit is essentially still an open question is a big thing. The Independent says:
"His comments raise the prospect of continuing division in the UK over Europe, with the possibility that the issue will come to dominate future elections or even spark another referendum."
I have never wavered in thinking that was true. I was wrong of course, in assuming there would be no changing of minds. By my calculation, we should not have reached a 14-point gap, as it currently is, with 57 - 43 thinking we should rejoin, until about 2028. We are well ahead of schedule.
But the consequences of Brexit have if anything been seen quicker and clearer than we remainers imagined, even accounting for the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The government of Brexteers under Johnson, Truss, and now Sunak has made such a mess of negotiating our exit, left us clearly worse off and with the NI protocol still unresolved and probably unresolvable. Minds are changing and will continue to change.
The immigration issue has reached the point now of black farce. The treatment of the boat people at Manston in Kent is frankly disgraceful. It’s both pathetic and tragic and a measure of the utter incompetence of Patel, Braverman, and all the rest of the cabinet.
It has become a symbol of all that’s wrong with Brexit.
You can be sure the gap will only grow wider. I fully expect we shall soon see 62-63% regularly and it will continue that way until it exceeds the 1975 result when 67% thought we should stay in. At that point, all the main political parties will need to adopt a position on Brexit. All except the Tories are opposed to it, regardless of what their public position is.
So, Conservative strategists will need to decide whether to go with the grain or against it. My guess is, that they are so in hock to the ERG on the right, they will go against the grain for the first attempted comeback later in the decade, but sooner or late will have to accept the inevitable.
The Reform Party of Richard Tice will be the Farage/UKIP problem repeated for the Tories, constantly threatening from the right and diluting support. If they are to win another election some hard decisions will need to be made. Tice and his rag-bag candidates must be marginalised, if not the right will spend decades in opposition. Another merger, as happened in 2018 will prove fatal.
The bizarre irony in all of this is that Brexit will finally resolve the European question once and for all but not in the way Farage, Gove, Cash, Redwood, and all the others thought. The next referendum, when it comes will see a majority for re-joining the EU, that is a given.
All of the lies told in the first half of 2016 will have been defused and rendered useless. Forget Dominic Cummings, a lie can only work if enough people believe it, when it is revealed as a lie, it can't. But worse than that it reveals the liar as a liar, someone not to be trusted. Every future utterance will be treated with suspicion and questioned.
As a Brexiteer, I would not want to be in front of an audience in say 2028, when Brexit has become a national sick joke, arguing that we only need to give it another chance or try another untried alternative. They will be torn to pieces. Will joining the euro or Schengen be an issue? Yes, but they will both look like a price worth paying and negotiating.
The EU will probably demand we adopt the euro at some future time but since that looks like a stronger currency right now, I am not convinced younger voters will see it as an obstacle.
Once we are back in the EU our future will have been permanently settled. Can anyone imagine the British public wanting to go through the last six years again? No, me neither.
Brexiteers will have achieved exactly the opposite of what they set out to do.
I think we will all be vindicated and so, oddly enough, will be the EU's often criticised policy of allowing two referendums just to make sure.
