New Poll suggests majority of UK MPs believe there’s been no benefit for Britain from Brexit

A new snapshot poll of Westminster MPs shows more than half believe Brexit has brought no tangible benefits so far

By Brian Johnson

Brian Johnson is Managing Editor of The Parliament Magazine

30 Jan 2022

The snapshot survey of 45 UK MPs revealed that 52 percent believe that up till now, neither the UK nor the EU has benefitted from Brexit.

This compares to 32 percent who think the UK has benefitted the most from the country’s departure from the 27 nation bloc.

A lowly nine percent of Westminster MPs said they believed the European Union had so-far benefitted the most from Brexit.

Looking further into the future, 40 percent of responding MPs admitted they thought neither the UK nor the EU would benefit from Brexit in the long term.

An equal proportion (40 percent) thought that over time the UK would end up gaining the most from Britain’s EU exit, while around half that figure, (19 percent) said they though the EU stood to benefit overall in the future.

The polling, produced by UK and EU political intelligence specialists Dods, also revealed that only 36 percent of MPs believe that their country was prepared for any potential new COVID variants.

It comes as the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces calls to resign following reports several gatherings were held at Downing Street in 2020 despite tough coronavirus restrictions then being in place.

Almost 70 percent of MPs rated Johnson’s performance as Prime Minister as “very bad or bad”, against only 29 percent who rated his performance as ‘good’.

Last week, a senior backbencher from Johnson’s Conservative party, David Davis, argued for the embattled leader to resign, saying, “in the name of God, go”.

The survey and accompanying ‘State of Play’ report marked the launch of Dods’ new and upgraded EU and UK Political Intelligence platform.

The indicative research, which drew 45 percent of its responses from Conservative MPs, found that many members had doubts over Johnson and his government’s performance on other policy areas including Brexit and climate change.

Only 36 percent of MPs said they believed COP26 was a success, while 11 percent responded that they were “confident” the world was on track to meet its flagship target of keeping global temperature rises under 1.5C.

In comparison, over half (56 percent) said they were not confident that the world was on track to hit this target.

Fieldwork for the poll took place between December 2021 and January 2022.

Read the most recent articles written by Brian Johnson - David Sassoli: A champion of European ideals