Most Britons back staying in EU, but opposition growing

LONDON: More Britons support the country’s membership of the European Union than want to leave the bloc, the latest opinion poll on the issue showed on Saturday, even as opposition to membership grew slightly compared with last month’s survey.

Other recent opinion polls in Britain have suggested that out of the Britons who have already made up their minds about EU membership, more people favour leaving the EU than remaining in the bloc.

Fifty-four percent of respondents in the ComRes poll carried out for the Daily Mail newspaper said they would vote to remain in the EU if a referendum was held tomorrow, a drop of two percentage points from December’s survey.

Thirty-six percent said they would vote to leave, up one percentage point from last month, while ten percent were undecided, up two percentage points.

The survey result comes as Prime Minister David Cameron is pushing for a deal from other EU leaders before holding a referendum on Britain’s membership of the bloc which he could call as early as June this year.

Cameron was in Brussels on Friday, where he said that a proposal to curb European immigration to Britain was "not good enough" but he saw progress on a deal to persuade British voters to back continued European Union membership.  The latest poll surveyed 1,006 British adults by telephone between Jan 22 and Jan. 24.