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Evidence: High: 0 Medium: 0 Low: 0 No Data: 31

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tonyedgecombe 2026-02-21 12:38 UTC link

No surprise, you had to be over the age of 39 before you were more likely to vote for Brexit.

By the time we got around to implementing it enough old people had died off that the vote would have gone the other way already.

mcc1ane 2026-02-21 12:40 UTC link

The cohort least likely to vote.

cedws 2026-02-21 13:03 UTC link

I was too young to vote in the referendum. I’m incredibly angry about having lost freedom of movement. If the UK by some miracle rejoins the EU I will make the jump to Europe the very same day. Still looking for a way out in the meantime.

The UK just keeps kicking young people down. The boomers voting against our interests are whipping us into working to pay for their triple locked pensions.

jimmydoe 2026-02-21 13:04 UTC link

Many may change position when they grow up

Also young people always blame last gen for whatever, so expects -8 ~ 0 years old would vote for exit again…

citrin_ru 2026-02-21 13:05 UTC link

65+ is the only age group in which >50% still believe Brexit was a good choice.

HPsquared 2026-02-21 13:15 UTC link

The UK is such a trap for professionals. It's one of the worst places in the developed world for living standards of white-collar professionals, except a tiny slice of finance workers in London. Especially bad for engineers, and has been for a long time.

preommr 2026-02-21 13:22 UTC link

Regardless of the value of Brexit, people tend to be biased against things that have happened or are around them when things are bad.

Like when people are against a president if the economy isn't doing well, regardless of if the alternative candidate would've been better.

This also isn't an issue thats being campaigned on. If there was another vote to join the EU, and people got flooded with anti-eu messaging specifically targeted at the demographic, I'd bet that number would drop.

Havoc 2026-02-21 13:32 UTC link

It was pretty stacked by age even during the vote to leave.

Unfortunately the UK has a voting cohort that is both large and willing to screw over subsequent generations.

Smalltalker-80 2026-02-21 13:32 UTC link

Yep, there's a lot of (continuing) economical damage and still a lot of new immigrants every week. I think some time still needs to pass before Brexit politicians dare to change their stance, now confronted with the results of their choice. In the mean time, Brexit rules are quietly being undone without losing face too much. See the EU-UK trade deals from May 2025.

StopDisinfo910 2026-02-21 13:35 UTC link

I think the idea I see here that young = modern = pro-EU and old = anti-EU by ignorance is a gross oversimplification which doesn't stand.

I personally was very pro-EU in my youth and deeply soured as I knew more and more to the point I'm staunchly against nowadays.

It started in 2005 with the referendum result being ignored. Then 2012 came with the shambolic management of the Greek crisis, something even the IMF points as ineffective. Then I was paid to put in place the Green Taxonomy and I saw how unready and dumb the whole thing was. Then there was the rejection of the Draghi report which made lose hope.

I find the mix of the euro being a deeply unfair currency union strongly advantaging Germany at the expense of the periphery, the fact that Germany keeps playing on it and amplifying the effect in direct violation of the treaty and yet always get a hall pass and their holier than though attitude despite being basically free loaders completely impossible to tolerate.

The 2019 CEP study showed it well. The union costs billions of GDP to France and Italy to give a minor advantage to the German. It's a dogmatic straight jacket managed by priests with zero actual economic understanding and serving the interests of a big mercantilist using development funds to shore up its tributaries in the east and still managing to gradually lose relevance as it can't even manage having a proper strategy despite the advantages, and a few fiscal parasites around it.

At 36, I deeply wish from my country to be free of the monster than the union has become and deeply ressent being a prisoner of a monetary union which intentionally didn't plan an exit path. And for what? Surrendering the ability to make law to the citizen of other countries who share neither my language, nor my culture, clearly don't have the same vision of the future than us and wants to force us into their ineffective model? No, thanks. No GDP gains or alleged diplomatic weight is worth this debasement.

I don't understand Brexiters because being out of the euros they had the best of both worlds but I respect their desire to be truly sovereign and free from the constant Germanic hegemonic push.

Edit:Lots of downvotes, very few counterarguments. I'm guessing facing the tensions at the heart of the project makes some of you frankly uncomfortable.

blfr 2026-02-21 13:42 UTC link

It is constantly shocking to me that no matter how many times and where in the west people vote against immigration (which is what most of these votes boil down to), they can never get it.

It's truly a crown in the gutter moment where you can be completely off-the-wall nuts (vide AfD) and, if you're just willing to campaign on anti-immigration, your ranks will instantly swell. Yet the establishment is somehow completely incapable or unwilling to capitalize/capture this.

crims0n 2026-02-21 14:00 UTC link

Been reading a lot of novels set during the golden years of the British Empire. It is both amazing and terrifying how far a country can fall in less than a century… which for some lucky people is a single lifetime.

alecco 2026-02-21 18:55 UTC link

In totally unrelated news, "16 to 24-year-olds" is the group with majority migrant background.

akmarinov 2026-02-22 12:41 UTC link

Well they don’t vote, so it doesn’t matter. And by the time they get around to voting usually the older you get the more conservative you get, so it’ll change.