An Ipsos survey puts support for rejoining at 56%, as the prime minister says he is open to an “honest discussion” about free movement and critics warn against reopening Brexit.
Support for Britain rejoining the European Union has risen since Andy Burnham opened the door to closer ties with Brussels, according to a new Ipsos poll.
The survey found that 56% of people would vote to rejoin the EU, up four percentage points on a similar poll in May. The share who would vote to stay out fell three points to 30%.
Among those likely to vote in a future referendum, the result was 63% to 34%, with 3% undecided.
The poll found that 73% of under-35s want to rejoin, along with 77% of people who voted Labour at the last general election, 31% of Conservative voters and 16% of Reform UK voters.
A majority think joining would improve the UK’s economy (54%) and national security (53%), although 39% think it would harm Britain’s ability to act in its own best interests.
Keiran Pedley, director of politics at Ipsos UK, said the findings were “encouraging for those who support the UK joining the EU, with a clear majority saying they are in favour and just three in ten explicitly opposed”.
“Yet in other areas the public are less sure, which suggests there are still arguments which could be contested in any future campaign,” he said.
Ipsos surveyed 1,109 adults between 15 and 22 October.
The poll comes as Burnham signals he is willing to debate a return to free movement, which full EU membership or joining the single market would require.
“I think you have to have a very factual, quite evidence-based debate about this,” he said in a weekend newspaper interview. “The balance of migration has changed, hasn’t it, since then? I think we’ve just got to have an honest discussion about those things.”
He ruled out joining the euro or the Schengen passport-free travel area. “I can’t see myself ever recommending anything that would involve joining the euro or Schengen,” he said.
Burnham has previously committed to Labour’s 2024 manifesto, which ruled out a return to free movement, single market membership or a customs union. He has said any change would need a mandate at a general election, which is due by 2029.
In a breakfast television interview on Monday, Burnham said the “revolving door” movement of young Europeans who came and went home had been replaced by longer-term migration. “We have a situation now where longer term, permanent migration has replaced what was freedom of movement,” he said.
He pointed to what he called the “Boris wave” of people who arrived on long-term visas seeking permanent settlement in the early 2020s.
Burnham backed home secretary Shabana Mahmood’s plan to extend the wait for indefinite leave to remain from five years to up to 15, saying “settlement is a right to be earned, not just granted automatically”.
He also argued that Brexit had weakened Britain’s control of its borders. “I think we’ve got weaker control now. The reason the small boats crisis has arisen is because we can’t return people,” he said.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said Burnham “hasn’t thought this through”, calling his comments “yet another example of Burnham’s foot in mouth syndrome”.
“Most people who voted for Brexit did so because they didn’t want free movement,” she wrote on X.
Reform UK’s economy spokesman, Robert Jenrick, dismissed the idea. “I think it’s completely mad, the idea that this country needs more immigration,” he said.
Former chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who backed Remain in 2016, warned that the Brexit debate had been “incredibly divisive”. “Having made the decision, we should stick with it and make the most of it,” he said.
Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper said free movement would be “a really good thing for growth”. She called for the UK to rejoin the single market and customs union and to take part in the EU’s defence pact.
Labour’s Angela Rayner said she wanted “an honest conversation about the facts of what the trade-offs are to get the best deal for Britain”, and for the outcome to be put “to the people at a general election”.
Burnham is expected to set out options for resetting relations with the bloc at an EU summit in Brussels on 20 November, including renewed cooperation on immigration.
Britain voted by 52% to 48% to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum, in a campaign dominated by debate over migration, and formally left in January 2020.