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Should he win the next general election, one of the key decisions that will face Keir Starmer will be whether and how far to seek a softening of the terms of the Brexit deal negotiated by Boris Johnson. Although Labour have ruled out any attempt to rejoin the EU, the party has left the door ajar to moving towards a somewhat closer relationship with the single market. Among the possibilities that have been voiced are the mutual recognition of professional qualifications, the introduction of a mobility scheme, and minimising regulatory divergence.
It might be thought that there is considerable support for taking such steps within Labour’s ranks. After all, for the last eighteen months or so polls have consistently been suggesting that around three-quarters of those who currently say they would vote Labour also say that they would now vote to re-join the EU, a picture that is also reflected in the latest Redfield & Wilton poll for UK in a Changing Europe. While a softening of Brexit might be a smaller step than pro-re-join voters would like, presumably they would welcome anything that might be a step towards a closer relationship.
Yet this is a subject where previous polling has suggested that voters’ views are not necessarily as consistent as might be anticipated. For example, Redfield & Wilton have found that while a plurality support the UK adopting EU laws and regulations for goods sold at home in exchange for the EU not checking goods being transported from the UK to the EU, at the same time a majority back the UK having its own laws and regulations for goods sold at home at the cost of the EU imposing checks on goods being exported into the EU.
Further examples of such apparently contradictory findings can be found here. It seems that the well-known tendency for survey respondents to agree rather than disagree with a proposition that is put to them has a particularly strong impact on responses to questions to this subject, an indication perhaps that many voters do not have firm views either way....
more at UKandEU