Spanish media poll reveals 75 per cent of Brit expats favour cancelling Brexit

A poll by a popular English language online newspaper in Spain has revealed just under 75 per cent of British expats want to cancel Brexit and remain as EU citizens.

Given that a high number of Brits living, retiring or working on Spain were denied the referendum vote for one reason or another, one result of the poll is clear. Should they have been able to use their constitutional rights to vote, the UK wouldn’t have been in the extraordinary mess it is today. It’s no surprise that Britons who’d chosen to leave the UK would have voted against leaving the EU, but the shock revelation by the poll is that 27 per cent of respondents are happy that the home country seems set on leaving.

Hundreds of thousands of Britons living all over Spain are growing even more concerned as 31st October creeps ever closer. The same is true for the millions more living elsewhere in EU member states, with the British Foreign Office now launching a campaign to quell their fears at a cost of an astonishing £3.2 million. Bargaining chips, it would seem, become expensive when all other chips are down. Even although a number of EU countries including Spain have reassured British expats their rights will be respected, nothing is yet set in tablets of stone and much depends on the manner in which EU expats in the UK will be treated in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

Since the so-called ‘election’ of Boris Johnson as the UK’s Prime Minister, uncertainty about UK-based EU expats’ rights has grown, especially as regards the settled status scheme and the right for expats to return to the UK without hassle after they’ve visited their families in the EU. Spokesperson for the Germany-based British in Europe campaign group Rose Newell told Spanish media many expats in the EU are being forced to choose between partners and children and their parents and siblings back in the home country, with a no deal Brexit breaking up or keeping apart families all across Europe.

Britain’s long-standing refusal to reciprocally ringfence citizens’ rights has now resulted in Britons in Europe again being used as nothing more than bargaining chips for one man’s ambitions. The worst no-deal scenario includes livelihoods lost along with freedom of movement, with cross-border workers in Gibraltar the worst hit, Britons travelling to Europe being restricted to tighter passport controls and limited to 90 day stays, the loss of associated rights to services such as social security and healthcare and huge delays as regards expats' legal status due to differing rules in all of the 27 remaining EU member states.