Fifty-six per cent of voters would back rejoining the European Union in a referendum, according to an Ipsos poll published on Saturday, days after Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he wanted the UK back inside the bloc within his lifetime.
The figure is four points higher than in a similar Ipsos poll in May, The Independent reported. Support for staying out fell three points to 30 per cent over the same period, leaving roughly one in seven respondents undecided or unwilling to vote.
The poll lands three weeks before a UK-EU summit in Brussels on 20 November, and amid renewed argument within Labour over how far the government should go in rebuilding ties with Europe. Burnham has ruled out any attempt to rejoin during this Parliament, so the findings bear on the longer-term debate rather than on any immediate change of policy.
The May comparison poll was carried out months before Burnham's remarks, and the reports of the new survey do not give its fieldwork dates, sample size or question wording. On the figures as published, the rise in support cannot be tied to anything the prime minister has said.
Among those the pollster classed as likely voters, the margin was wider, with 63 per cent backing rejoin against 34 per cent for staying out. Support was strongest among the under-35s, at 73 per cent, and among people who voted Labour at the last election, at 77 per cent.
Older voters took the opposite view. Among those aged 55 and over, 47 per cent said they would vote to stay out and 39 per cent to rejoin. Britbrief reported that 76 per cent of Reform UK voters and 54 per cent of Conservative voters would back staying out.
The poll also asked about the consequences of membership. Some 54 per cent said rejoining would improve the economy and 53 per cent said it would improve national security, while 39 per cent said it would harm Britain's ability to act in its own best interests.
A separate question produced a far narrower result. Asked whether Labour should rejoin without a referendum if it made a manifesto commitment to do so, 39 per cent supported the idea and 35 per cent opposed it, according to an AOL-syndicated report of the same poll.
Burnham restated his position in a broadcast interview on 26 October. Asked about rejoining, he said: "I would like to see that happen in my lifetime." He added that the UK was "way, way, away from that", and ruled out both a return to the EU in this Parliament and an early general election.
The previous day he had called for what he described as an honest discussion about restoring free movement with the EU ahead of the November summit. In separate comments reported by Bloomberg, he said of Brexit: "I don't think things have worked out as people said they would".
Neil Kinnock, the former Labour leader, told The Independent the under-35 figures showed support growing among the part of the electorate that would inevitly become larger, while the stay-out vote shrank. Supporters of rejoining, he said, had to persuade voters that separation from Europe left the country weaker and less secure.
"When we are not at the table, we are on the menu," Kinnock said. He has previously predicted that Burnham will be the leader who takes the UK back into the EU.
The Eurosceptic group Briefings for Britain published an article on the same day arguing that rejoining would not fix the UK economy and that voters would reject the terms Brussels would set.
The Independent describes the poll as an exclusive, although the same figures appeared in syndicated reports on Saturday alongside additional breakdowns. The published reports do not include Ipsos's full data tables, and No 10, the Conservatives and Reform UK were not quoted commenting on the findings in the published reports.
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