LONDON: Public support for Britain to leave the EU is growing again after falling to a multi-year low, according to the first survey published since EU leaders nominated Jean-Claude Juncker to become the next president of the European Commission.
British Prime Minister David Cameron openly campaigned to stop Juncker getting the top EU job, but last Friday lost the final vote by 26-2. He warned at the time that choosing Juncker, an old-style EU federalist, would make it harder to keep Britain in the European Union.
Under pressure from Eurosceptic lawmakers in his own Conservative party and from the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP) which won European parliamentary elections last month, Cameron has pledged to try to reshape Britain’s EU ties before giving people a referendum in 2017 on whether the UK should remain a member of the EU.
He can only deliver a referendum if re-elected next year.
Many though not all opinion polls conducted this year have shown public support to leave the EU falling back. But Sunday’s poll published by the Mail on Sunday newspaper, the first since Juncker’s nomination, showed 47 percent would vote for Britain to leave the bloc if there was a referendum, with 39 percent saying they would back staying in.
The polling for the Mail on Sunday by Survation, which was conducted among 1,000 adults on Friday, the same day as Cameron lost the Juncker vote, also showed that 30 percent of people felt Juncker’s nomination made it more likely they would vote to leave the bloc if given the chance, while only 13 percent of Britons said they backed Juncker for the job.
Reuters
