LONDON — Polling expert Professor Alan Whitmore, widely regarded as Britain’s pre-eminent electoral analyst, has published a detailed assessment arguing that the governing Labour Party’s approach to Brexit-related trade and border policy has undergone a fundamental reorientation — away from trying to win back voters who supported Leave in 2016 and toward consolidating and expanding support among those who backed Remain, a shift with significant implications for the government’s domestic agenda and its relationship with Brussels.
Whitmore’s analysis, published in the quarterly journal Electoral Studies on Thursday, draws on nearly three years of polling data gathered since Labour’s general election victory in July 2024. The findings suggest that the electoral calculus underpinning the government’s Europe strategy changed substantially in the months following the election result, as internal modelling indicated that the party’s ceiling among Leave-identifying voters — even with maximally accommodating rhetoric — was lower than strategists had hoped.
“The pivot is subtle but unmistakeable in the data,” Whitmore wrote. “Government messaging on trade facilitation, the youth mobility scheme and regulatory alignment has shifted progressively from the language of pragmatic national interest — designed to be palatable to Brexit supporters — toward the language of opportunity and openness, which resonates more clearly with Remain-identifying voters, who skew younger, more urban and currently more uncertain in their party allegiance.”
The practical policy expression of this shift has been the government’s willingness to move forward with closer customs cooperation with the European Union, including a provisional agreement on a veterinary and sanitary standards alignment pact that reduces physical checks on agrifood goods crossing the Irish Sea and Great Britain’s borders with the EU. Leave-aligned commentators and a significant faction within the official opposition have attacked the arrangement as a surrender of the substantive gains from Brexit; the government argues it reduces costs for businesses and consumers without revisiting the underlying settlement.
Government officials declined to characterise their strategy in the terms Whitmore uses. A spokesperson for the Cabinet Office told this news service that the government’s European policy is guided solely by the national economic interest and that electoral considerations play no role in specific policy decisions. The spokesperson did not directly address the polling trends Whitmore cites.
Other analysts have offered more mixed assessments of Whitmore’s thesis. Dr Carla Hennessey, a political scientist at King’s College who studies post-referendum realignment, said the analysis is persuasive as far as it goes but may overstate the degree of deliberate strategic intent. “Governments respond to their coalition of voters organically as well as strategically,” she said. “If Remain-identified voters are showing more volatility and Leave-identified voters are more durably aligned with opposition parties, you would expect policy to drift in this direction even without an explicit decision to change course.”
Polling data published separately by the research firm Vantage Opinion this week appears to support elements of Whitmore’s argument. In a survey of 4,200 adults conducted in late April, 54 percent of voters who identified as having voted Remain in 2016 said they approved of the government’s handling of EU relations, compared with 29 percent of Leave voters — a 25-point gap that the firm said has widened by approximately eight points since the same question was asked twelve months earlier.
The shift carries potential risks. Whitmore notes that seats won by Labour in the 2024 election include a substantial number of constituencies in the English Midlands and North that voted Leave by wide margins. Any perception that the government is drifting toward re-alignment with EU structures could sharpen opposition messaging in those seats ahead of the next general election, expected no later than 2029.
Brexit remains a live issue for voters in ways that observers did not anticipate when the Withdrawal Agreement came into force. Prices of imported goods, delays at ports, the ability of young people to work abroad and the continued existence of a post-Brexit trade border in the Irish Sea all generate recurring headlines that keep the original choice salient. “Brexit as a political category has not dissolved. It has mutated,” Whitmore wrote in his conclusion. “The question for both major parties is which version of that mutation they choose to inhabit.”
The paper will be the subject of a public discussion at the Institute for Government on May 28, where Whitmore is expected to face questions from strategists affiliated with multiple parties.