Majority of voters want Theresa May to spell out Brexit plans before election

Two out of three people believe that Theresa May should reveal her Brexit strategy more clearly before polling day on 8 June, according to a poll for The Independent.

The survey by ORB suggests that many voters share the concerns of pro-Europeans who claim the Prime Minister is seeking a “blank cheque” to take Britain out of the EU on whatever terms she decides. Some 68 per cent of people agree that she should spell out more of her Brexit plans before the election, while 12 per cent disagree and 20 per cent neither agree nor disagree.

Six out of 10 people (59 per cent) who voted Conservative in 2015 want to know more about Ms May’s intentions on Brexit. So do 76 per cent of Labour voters and 75 per cent of Liberal Democrat supporters at the last election.

The 18-24 age group (74 per cent) is more likely to want to know more about Ms May’s Brexit strategy than the over-75s (52 per cent). Public sector workers (76 per cent) are more likely to agree that the Prime Minister should spell out more of her Brexit plans than those employed in the private sector (68 per cent).

The Prime Minister has asked voters for a mandate to carry out the decision of last year’s referendum and argued that a decisive election victory would strengthen Britain’s hand in difficult negotiations with the 27 EU nations, due to start 11 days after the election.

Ms May’s allies insist that her strategy was set out clearly in her Lancaster House speech in January, a White Paper that followed, in her Article 50 letter that triggered the exit process in March and in the Tory manifesto, which confirmed that Britain would leave the single market and customs union. It repeated her mantra that “no deal is better than a bad deal for the UK”.

But Open Britain, the successor to the Remain campaign in last year’s referendum, has urged voters to deny Ms May “a blank cheque to pursue a hard Brexit”. Tony Blair has called for a cross-party movement to oppose “Brexit at any cost”.

The Liberal Democrats argued that the public did not vote for hard Brexit in the referendum. They have accused Labour of handing Ms May a “blank cheque” after voting in Parliament for the talks to begin and rejecting their call for a referendum on the exit deal. Although Labour does not oppose leaving the single market and customs union, its manifesto rejects the “no deal” scenario as the worst possible option because of the damage to the UK economy and trade.

ORB interviewed online a total of 2,046 adults aged 18 and over throughout the UK on 24-25 May. The data has been weighted to be nationally representative of the UK adult population.