This week’s UK-EU summit has seen a flurry of announcements, setting the scene for a gradual warming of ties between Westminster and Brussels. The deal, reached early Monday morning, includes plans for cooperation and alignment on issues from food and fishing to security and passports. While opportunities to bolster defence and growth were the key areas of focus, the summit also saw new commitments to work closer together on international border control, and mooted the launch of a new UK-EU youth mobility scheme. Commentators and political parties have clashed over what this new agenda means for Britain’s positioning in Europe, in a post-Brexit landscape, with Nigel Farage dubbing the reset an ‘abject surrender’. Yet attitudes research for British Future suggests that this misplaces the mood of the public, who – far from perceiving a‘Brexit betrayal’ – express broad support for more pragmatic cooperation with Europe.
It finds that around half the public wants closer cooperation with Europe across issues including defence (57%), trade (55%), asylum policy (50%) and immigration to work and study (46%). While one in four opt to continue existing levels of cooperation, it is a smaller and shrinking minority that favour further divergence in our relationship with the EU. Support is also broad across the mainstream parties.
More 2024 Conservative voters would opt for closer cooperation, than would keep the status quo or distance UK ties further. Whilst Reform voters are more averse to cooperation on asylum and immigration, they are split in preferences for collaborating on defence (40% back closer ties; 20% divergence) and defence (33% support cooperation; 20% back divergence).
This is not to suggest that public frustrations with Brexit have crystallised into an appetite to rejoin the bloc, and the Government may also do well to be wary of calls by Lib Dem leader Ed Davey for a full throttle return to a customs union. Polling certainly highlights that a growing share of voters view Brexit as a mistake. Yet British Future’s earlier research on how people think about the future of the post-Brexit relationship found a public aversion to reopening the fractious Leave vs. Remain debates that split Parliament and family dinner tables throughout the referendum. As two participants in a Stockport focus group noted:
Person 1: “It became a North v South almost, people in the South seemed to think everybody in the North voted Brexit and that we’re massively uneducated because of that. It really caused massive division.”
Person 2: “And by age as well: the older you were, it was assumed you were more likely to have voted Leave.”
Rather, the public mood appears to be one of pragmatic self-interest, where there is seen to be mutual gain for growth, security and stability from working closely with our nearest neighbours.
Even on the issue of youth mobility, a new proposed scheme to enable under 30s in the UK and EU better opportunities to travel, work and study, our polling finds popular support, despite heated contestation over the proposal within the media. Six in ten (63%) support the scheme while one in seven (14%) are opposed. Details of the programme continue to be negotiated by the government and EU delegates, and public awareness of the scheme may grow as media coverage gains profile. Yet polling finds broad consent for the programme, spanning most 2024 Conservative voters (65%), and even a plurality of Reform voters (42% support to 31% oppose).
These new May 2025 poll findings reflect British Future focus groups for our 2023 ‘Beyond Brexit’ report, which highlighted how adults of different ages and perspectives on Brexit saw youth mobility as a separate concern from migration and free movement. We heard appetite for experiences to allow young people formative opportunities to travel, understand other cultures and build friendships. Students, and relatives of young people voiced a range of frustrations at the barriers imposed since Brexit, including through the UK’s withdrawals from Erasmus.
Both Starmer and Von der Leyen nodded to this inaugural summit as the first of many, mooting their announcements as a ‘kick off’ for ongoing efforts to broker further cooperation in the future. Our research indicates there is public consent for the Government to go broader. The Beyond Brexit report found that more of the public wanted to see increased cooperation on science and research (61%), international health (57%), customs (57%), sustainability and climate change (56%) sustainability and climate change (56%) and human rights (50%). With the exception of mobility and human rights, Leave voters are more likely to support closer cooperation than either the status quo or less collaboration with the EU.
As negotiators recover from late-night discussions to push these initial announcements over the line, the media will continue to discuss whether the outcomes equate to a ‘win-win’ or a watering down of the referendum result. Yet across the political spectrum, commentators and decision makers would do well to ground their analysis in the now much-changed and less heated views of the public, meeting them where they are today.
Collective memory of the bitter polarisation sparked by the rival referendum camps continues to drive a hesitance towards reopening larger changes: of rejoining or drawing up major alignment with the continent. However, nine years on, there is now significant constructive space in UK public attitudes for an approach to future collaboration that seeks to steer clear of 2016 battle-lines, while taking a more nuanced approach to doing deals that yield shared gains.
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