Nearly 2.3 mn Britons regret voting for Brexit: Survey
BY Agencies2 July 2016 10:20 PM GMT
Agencies2 July 2016 10:20 PM GMT
According to the “Opinium survey”, seven per cent of the people who voted to leave the European Union (EU) now regretted their choice and may vote for remain instead if they had a choice. When the survey’s findings are projected on to the statistics of the June 23 referendum, it cuts the Leave vote-share by 2.3 million, wiping out its majority and reversing the shock result in favour of Brexit, the survey said.
“The UK is just as divided post-referendum as it was pre-referendum with voters split on what the UK’s relationship with the EU should be after we leave and what the priority should be in the ensuing negotiations,” Adam Drummond from Opinium Research told ‘The Independent’.
“Remain voters want the government to prioritise staying part of the EU’s single market while Leave voters are keen to end free movement between the UK and the EU and both priorities are likely to be mutually exclusive,” he said.
The survey also found that 3 per cent of those who voted Remain also regretted their choice. More than half of those surveyed felt both the UK’s economy and position in the world had worsened following the referendum, but almost one in 10 said they did not believe the Brexit would be implemented.
More than 4 million people have now signed a petition calling for a second EU referendum but the government has ruled out another vote on the issue to avoid what outgoing British Prime Minister David Cameron had termed as “neverendum”.
The majority of those questioned also wanted a general election to be held before official negotiations on the Brexit begins, with Theresa May the favoured candidate to take Caomeron’s place as Prime Minister among Conservatives and Jeremy Corbyn among Labour.
Spike in hate crime cases in UK after Brexit
Britain’s police forces have recorded 331 hate crime incidents since Brexit, a five-fold increase in such cases after the EU referendum last week. The UK’s National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) said on Friday that 331 hate crime incidents were reported to its online hatecrime reporting site True Vision since last Thursday, compared with a weekly average of 63. “The national community tensions team has also analysed reports from forces, which on Friday show an increase in community tension directed at the migrant community since the referendum,” said Sara Thornton, head of the NPCC.
“In a number of forces, migrants are reporting verbal abuse, negative social media commentary including xenophobic language, anti-migrant leafleting and, in very limited numbers, physical assaults. All of these incidents are under active investigation,” she said.
There have been widespread reports of xenophobic incidents across the UK since the referendum, including alleged racist abuse of a man on a tram in Manchester and the daubing of a Polish community centre in west London with racist graffiti.
Other organisations that collate reports have also noted an increase in incidents of Islamophobia and other hate crimes. The NPCC has directed all police forces to provide weekly hate crime figures to assess the extent of the problem. A senior Indian-origin Church of England official, Arun Arora, warned that the rise in hate crimes since the EU referendum could lead to fascism. “The rise in hate crimes over recent days has echoes. They remind of how the seeds of fascism, once sown and left to flourish, can grow into a poison fruit, leading to a society which scapegoats, persecutes and dehumanises,” Arora, the church’s director of communications and himself an ordained priest, said.
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