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Brexit poll shows voters back second referendum as Remain takes big lead over Leave

A growing majority of voters would back the UK remaining in the European Union if a fresh referendum was held, a poll suggests.

Support for the UK staying in the bloc was at 54 per cent, according to a YouGov survey carried out after Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement text was published on Wednesday night.

The poll found 46 per cent would back the Leave side – down two percentage points compared with a survey conducted in August.

Almost six in ten (59 per cent) also backed holding a fresh referendum – once “don’t knows” were discounted – the poll, commissioned by the People’s Vote and published in the Evening Standard, found.

If Ms May’s deal is voted down by MPs, that gap widened to 64 per cent to 36 per cent, excluding don’t knows.

It comes after The Independent launched the Final Say campaign for the public to have a vote on Ms May’s Brexit deal, with a petition that has garnered more than one million supporters.

The poll of 1,153 people found 46 per cent of people believed that, under the proposed Brexit deal, younger people will be worse off compared with their parents’ generation.

Just 15 per cent said they believed children today would end up better off as a result of the deal agreed with Brussels.

A majority also said they feared taxes would rise (43 per cent, against 30 per cent who said they would stay the same and 4 per cent who believed they would go down) and the NHS would get worse (40 per cent, compared with 29 per cent who said it would stay the same and 14 per cent who said it would improve).

Little more than one in 10 (12 per cent) believed the UK was going to get a good deal with the EU.

Ms May’s deal came under a hail of criticism in the House of Commons, where only a handful of Tories spoke in favour of an agreement thrashed out over 19 months of intensive negotiations.

There was laughter from opposition benches when the PM said her deal would allow the UK to leave the EU “in a smooth and orderly way” on 29 March.