Nearly 2.3 million people in the UK regret voting for Britain's exit (popularly called Brexit) from the European Union or EU in last week's historic referendum, a trend which has come to be
referred to as "Bregret", a new survey said on Friday.
According to the "Opinium survey", seven per cent of the people who voted to leave the EU now regretted their choice and may vote for remain instead if they had a choice.
When the survey's findings are projected on to the statistics of the June 23 referendum, it cuts the Leave vote-share by 2.3 million, wiping out its majority and reversing the shock result in favour of
Brexit, the survey said .
"The UK is just as divided post-referendum as it was pre-referendum with voters split on what the UK's relationship with the EU should be after we leave and what the priority should be in the ensuing negotiations," Adam Drummond from Opinium Research told 'The Independent'.
"Remain voters want the government to prioritise staying part of the
EU's single market while Leave voters are keen to end free movement between the UK and the EU and both priorities are likely to be mutually exclusive," he said.
The survey also found that 3 per cent of those who voted Remain also regretted their choice.
More than half of those surveyed felt both the UK's position and economy in the world had worsened following the referendum, but almost one in 10 said they did not believe the Brexit would be implemented.
More than 4 million people have now signed a petition calling for a second EU referendum but the government has ruled out another vote on the issue to avoid what outgoing British Prime Minister David Cameron had termed as "neverendum".
The majority of those questioned also wanted a general election to be held before official negotiations on the Brexit begins, with Theresa May the favoured candidate to take Caomeron's place as Prime Minister among Conservatives and Jeremy Corbyn among Labour.
Opinion polls in the months leading up to last week's historic vote had dominantly shown a lead for Remain, although surveys in recent days showed the result on a knife-edge and around 10 per cent of the electorate still undecided - generating a huge swing.
The final result was 17,410,742 votes for Leave (51.9 per cent) compared to 16,141,241 for Remain (48.1 per cent), on a turnout of 72 per cent.
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Britain, France mark
100 years since the
Battle of the Somme
* Britain and France recalled the horrors of the Battle of the Somme on Friday, 100 years after their troops fought and died together in one of the defining offensives of World War I
* Britain's royal family, Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Francois Hollande took part in a commemoration at the Thiepval Memorial in northern France
* Guards of honour, bagpipes and military bands accompanied the moving ceremony in the shadow of the imposing memorial inscribed with the names of 72,000 servicemen who went missing. AFP
