The political ground beneath Britain’s post-Brexit settlement is shifting. New polling commissioned by the Liberal Democrats reveals that 40 per cent of those who voted Leave in 2016 now believe the UK should prioritise stronger defence cooperation with European allies. Across the electorate as a whole, that figure rises to one in two. By contrast, barely one in ten voters want to see deeper security collaboration with the United States.
The findings, released on the opening day of the Lib Dem conference in Brighton, expose a widening gap between public sentiment and the government’s self-imposed red lines. Prime Minister Andy Burnham has pledged to be “bolder” than his predecessor in resetting relations with Brussels, yet he remains bound by Sir Keir Starmer’s refusal to countenance a return to the single market, the customs union, or free movement of people. His critics argue that caution is no longer a virtue — it is a liability.
The numbers that should worry Number 10
Savanta surveyed 2,376 UK adults between 4 and 7 September. The results are striking. Half of all respondents said strengthening security links with European partners should be a priority. Among Reform UK voters — a cohort often assumed to be the most hostile to European integration — a quarter agreed. Even within the Conservative base, support for closer defence ties with the continent outperformed enthusiasm for deeper US cooperation by a margin of five to one.
Al Pinkerton, the Liberal Democrats’ Europe spokesperson, did not mince his words. “Ambitiously rebuilding our defence and trade ties with Europe is the biggest step this government could take to turbocharge economic growth and bolster Britain’s defences,” he said. “The public sees this clearly – yet Starmer stuck his head in the sand, and Burnham now risks becoming continuity-Keir.”
Pinkerton called for a formal “Growth and Defence Partnership” encompassing a new UK-EU defence pact and single market membership. Such a framework, the party argues, would secure high-skilled jobs in shipbuilding and aerospace while hardening the continent’s eastern flank against Russian aggression.
Red lines meet geopolitical reality
The polling lands at a moment of acute strategic anxiety. Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine grinds into its third year. Donald Trump’s return to the White House has injected volatility into the transatlantic alliance, with the US president openly questioning Article 5 commitments and threatening tariffs on European allies. In that context, the argument that Britain can secure its interests through NATO alone looks increasingly threadbare.
Neil Kinnock, the former Labour leader, put it bluntly in an interview with this publication earlier this month. A prime minister who “loves their country” should not be “constrained” by red lines drawn in a different political era, he said. The implication was clear: the case for EU membership — or something indistinguishable from it — is no longer the preserve of Remain diehards. It is a strategic necessity.
George Osborne, the former Conservative chancellor, went further. Britain’s economy, he warned, had “fallen off a cliff” since the 2016 referendum. Rejoining the customs union, he argued, would be the swiftest route to recovery. His intervention, from the right of the political spectrum, underscores how the coalition for closer European integration is reassembling in unexpected ways.
The Curtice factor
Professor Sir John Curtice, the doyen of British psephology, confirmed this week that support for rejoining the EU has reached its highest level since the referendum. But he issued a caution. Public opinion, he noted, is a necessary condition for political change — not a sufficient one. “Political leaders needed to seize the opportunity or it will all come to nothing,” he told The Independent.
That warning hangs over the Liberal Democrat conference. The party has long positioned itself as the standard-bearer for European re-engagement. Now, with the polling wind at its back, it is demanding that Labour stop managing the Brexit settlement and start dismantling it. Whether Burnham has the political capital — or the inclination — to move remains the defining question of his early premiership.
A government spokesperson struck a conciliatory but non-committal tone. “Europe faces the most dangerous security environment since the Cold War, and we are stepping up alongside our allies to build a stronger Europe in a stronger NATO,” the statement read. “That is why we are building an ambitious, close relationship with the EU that will improve our security and unlock good growth in every postcode.”
Ambitious. Close. But not, it seems, close enough to cross the red lines.
Why it Matters
The polling does more than measure opinion; it maps the fault lines of a coming political earthquake. When Leave voters, Reform supporters, a former Labour leader and a former Tory chancellor all converge on the need for deeper European defence and economic integration, the old Brexit coalitions are fracturing. Burnham’s refusal to move beyond Starmer’s red lines risks leaving him stranded between a public that has moved on and a party apparatus that has not. In an era of aggressive revisionism on Europe’s borders and transactionalism in Washington, strategic ambiguity is not a posture — it is a vulnerability. The question is no longer whether Britain will move closer to Europe, but whether it does so by design or by default.
