Almost half of Britons think that the government of British Prime Minister Theresa May is doing a “bad job” in withdrawing the UK from the European Union (EU), a new poll has found.
The Ipsos MORI survey released Wednesday showed that 48 percent of Britons did not approve of London’s steps on Brexit, months after UK voters decided to leave the EU in a June referendum.
This is while 37 percent of the respondents thought May and her ministers had done a good job and were on track to end the decades-old membership in a proper way.
Fifteen percent of the voters said they did not know how the government was performing, according to the poll.
The poll’s results came a day after a leaked document revealed that the government was deeply divided over Brexit and needed 30,000 extra civil workers to process over 500 related projects.
Titled “Brexit Update” and dated November 7, the note says May was showing tendencies to “draw in decisions and settle matters herself” because of a divide that had put Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, trade minister Liam Fox and Brexit minister David Davis on one side and finance minister Philip Hammond and Business Secretary of State Greg Clark on the other.
Although the government denied the report’s allegations, Labour Party’s John McDonnell slammed the government’s “shambolic” approach to Brexit.
Last month, the UK High Court ruled that the matter should be approved in the Parliament, further delaying May’s plans to trigger the Lisbon Treaty’s Article 50 and begin the process by March 2017 and finish it in two years.
According to the Ipsos Mori poll, 44 percent of British public thought that the Parliament should only vote on triggering Article 50, while 37 percent said the lawmakers should be allowed to go further and set the terms for leaving the EU.
Voter priorities
A separate poll by NatCen revealed on Wednesday that 90 percent of the public wanted the UK to retain its access to the EU single market after leaving the bloc.
To stay in the single market, the UK needs to loosen up its borders to meet EU requirements. This is while, according to the survey, 70 percent of Britons wanted tighter border control to reduce migration from the EU.