Remainers face huge rejoin EU problem despite drop in support for Brexit, polling guru claims

Speaking at a Demos fringe event at the Conservative Party Conference on Sunday, the polling guru said: "The problem is, of course, that the EU has moved on.

"And any of the people who say that perhaps Brexit was a bit of a mistake and we should go back, would like to go back, but don't want to go into the single currency, and want the budget rebate back. Of course, none of that would now be available.

"The EU is now starting to become fiscally integrated, the EU is now becoming a significant defence power. The world has moved on, the EU is now a more powerful institution than it was."

Sir John added: "We would be attempting to join an organisation where the compromise on sovereignty would be greater than what we were debating back in 2016."

The British people voted by 52 per cent to 48 per cent to leave the European Union in 2016.

Following years of parliamentary paralysis, Boris Johnson managed to deliver on the will of the people after concentrating the pro-Brexit vote in the 2019 General Election.

However, Sir John pointed out that the total number of votes cast for pro-Brexit parties narrowly trailed the ballots that piled up for pro-EU parties.

He also explained that polls now consistently suggest the UK would rejoin the EU, with 57 per cent favouring a return to the bloc and just 43 per cent wanting to keep Britain out.

"There are two crucial events that shifted the dial," Sir John revealed. "One was the first stories that emerged of the difficulty of getting lorry drivers to come into the UK, and the problems with petrol and food supplies in supermarkets.

"That was blamed on our Brexit relationship. That moved the dial. The second was Liz Truss's fiscal decisions. That impacted the credibility of the Conservative Party."

A growing number of Labour figures have decided to put more pressure on Sir Keir Starmer to rejoin the EU in recent weeks, with Lord Kinnock and Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham speaking out against Brexit during this conference season.

Despite a growing sense of Brexit regret, opinion polls do suggest that large swathes of the British public oppose adopting the Euro and express concerns both about losing Margaret Thatcher's rebate and joining Schengen.

Sir John also explained that Brexit voters have felt let down by the ongoing migrant crisis, with many directly associating the surge in legal and illegal migration with the decision to leave the EU.

The official Vote Leave campaign promised to "take back control" of Britain's borders in 2016.

Mr Johnson later made a fall in migration a manifesto commitment ahead of his victory in 2019.

However, net migration surged from around 250,000 in 2016 to 906,000 in 2023.

Illegal migration has also proved a problem since the UK left the EU.

Remainers have started blaming the surge in small boat arrivals on the UK leaving the EU-wide Dublin Convention, which includes a provision to return asylum seekers to the first member state they arrived in.

Speaking to GB News after his keynote conference speech in Liverpool last week, Sir Keir Starmer said: “I would gently point out to Nigel Farage and others that before we left the EU, we had a returns agreement with every country in the EU and he told the country it would make no difference if we left.

"He was wrong about that. These are ‘Farage boats’ coming across the Channel.”

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey made a similar argument last month, describing the small boats as "Brexit boats".

However, the UK's final few years of participation in the Dublin Convention would indicate that Britain was a net recipient of asylum seekers.

Home Office data revealed that 676 asylum seekers were transferred from Britain in 2016 and 2017, while 1,019 illegal migrants were transferred to the UK over the same period.

The problem worsened in 2018, when only 209 out of 5,500 requests for asylum seekers to be returned were completed, while the UK accepted 1,215 migrants.

The figure comes in stark contrast to the 131 who were transferred into the UK in 2015, when 510 asylum seekers had been transferred out.