Three in five gen Z Britons would like new vote to rejoin EU, poll finds | Brexit

A generation of young Britons who were left out of the 2016 EU referendum because of their age now believe Brexit has failed, with a majority demanding a new vote to rejoin the EU, private polls show.

Gen Z Britons are deeply dissatisfied with the UK leaving the EU, according to a new survey conducted by think tank More in Common and shared with the Guardian.

The data suggests that 60% of this group would vote to rejoin the bloc if given the opportunity, while 9% would vote to stay out.

When the results are filtered to focus only on those most likely to vote in a hypothetical second referendum, the gap becomes a very large one, with the pro-EU Remain/Rejoin camp receiving 81% of the vote, while the margin for stay out received only 19%.

The More in Common survey of 440 young people across Britain shows that 50% of Gen Z Britons classify Brexit as a failure. On the other hand, only 16% see the project as successful, while 34% remain undecided.

Luke Tryl, chief executive of More In Common, said: “For many Gen Z Britons, the Brexit referendum was formative in terms of their political ‘coming of age’. In focus groups, many people in this age group say Brexit is the first political event they are vividly aware of – they are too young to vote but have distinct memories of that campaign and the debates in the years that followed.

“Ten years on, our survey of Britons aged 18 to 28 reveals how they feel about Brexit: they believe it has failed, and three-fifths want a new referendum on re-joining. But interestingly, few people think the Brexit principle was doomed from the start – like the rest of the public, they say it could have worked, but politicians have ruined it.”

“And while young Britons mostly support rejoining in principle, focus groups with Gen Z voters show they are hesitant about returning to the endless Brexit debates they remember from their youth, which risks distracting from the issues they care about most: the cost of living, affordable housing, jobs and climate change.”

Hostility towards Britain leaving the EU is strongest among young adults. In 2016, 53% of 18 to 21 year olds – children aged six to nine – described Brexit as a failure, while only 12% saw it as a success. While this sentiment has softened somewhat among older Gen Zers, ages 25 to 28, the outlook remains negative at 48% failure and 20% success.

While there is consensus that the status quo is not working, young Britons are divided on whether the project is conceptually flawed or has been murdered by the political class. Around 37 per cent believe Brexit could work well but was “ruined by politicians” who handled it poorly, while 29 per cent argue the project “will never work” from the start.

Only 11 percent said Brexit has worked well so far, while 23 percent had no opinion.

The poll comes amid a wider national debate about the demographic transformation of the UK electorate. The narrow referendum result in 2016, in which Leave won by 51.9 per cent to Remain by 48.1 per cent, was largely embraced by older generations.

But time has changed the voter lists significantly. Pollster Peter Kellner argued in 2016 that the pro-Brexit majority had disappeared. Writing on SubstackHe noted that more than 6 million Britons had died since the 2016 referendum and argued that the death toll had disproportionately affected the leave coalition, as older demographic groups voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU (64% of over-65s voted to leave).

According to calculations based on data from the National Statistics Office and Published by Financial TimesRoughly 15% of Leave voters died initially, compared to 10% of Remain voters.

Meanwhile, nearly 6 million ineligible young voters aged out as voters in 2016. This generational shift has led analysts to argue that the pro-Brexit majority has actually disappeared through natural population turnover, creating an active “anti-Brexit” majority of several million living voters.

Three in five young Britons (62 per cent) said there should be a referendum on rejoining the EU within the next five years, according to a More in Common poll. Only 11% of those under 29 oppose a new vote, while 27% are undecided.

The desire for a second referendum is highest among those who want to return to Europe; 88% of Rejoin voters support a new vote.