Prepare for Landing: Majority of Britons Support Brexit 'By Any Means Necessary'

A majority of Britons believe Prime Minister Boris Johnson must take Britain out of the European Union “by any means”, even if that necessitates suspending parliament, a ComRes opinion poll conducted for The Daily Telegraph has found. 

Johnson has promised to get Britain out of the EU by 31st October regardless of whether he manages to renegotiate his predecessor’s exit deal with Brussels, and the survey suggests 54 percent of voters agree with the notion the premier "needs to deliver Brexit by any means, including suspending parliament, in order to prevent MPs from stopping it".

​Conversely, 46 percent disagreed with the prospect – although figures for both sides are effectively exaggerated, as they were calculated based on the removal of ‘don’t knows’ from the totals. When included, both ‘agree’ and ‘disagree’ fall by 10 percentage points.

Furthermore, the survey found support for the Conservative Party had risen by six percentage points to 31 percent, compared with 27 percent who back the opposition Labour Party.

ComRes chief Andrew Hawkins noted the poll produced the largest Tory lead over Labour recorded by the firm in 2019, and claimed the figures were “confirmation” the “Boris Bounce” was real and showed no sign of abating despite the Parliamentary break.

“Boris’s support has been boosted by him outperforming expectations, including among a third of Labour and Lib Dem voters. It will not be lost on Jeremy Corbyn as he contemplates attempting to call a vote of no confidence that Boris could win an election with barely a third of the vote because support is so fragmented across all the parties. If Boris can deliver Brexit without too much collateral damage to the economy, he stands to win big. He is within touching distance of an overall majority,” he said.

​The findings are in stark contrast to a June YouGov poll that found British voters oppose proroguing parliament in order to force through a no-deal by 47 percent to 24 percent – and somewhat contradictorily, ComRes also found 51 percent of respondents agreed with Brexit should be halted “if problems over the Northern Ireland border threaten to split the Union”. 

The poll has been criticised by Remain supporters on social media, who suggest the headline figures are misleading and the findings are based on leading questions – for instance, the survey refered to the prime minister as ‘Boris’, and asked the public if it supports any means rather than explicitly just proroguing parliament. For instance, Labour MP Wes Streeting took to Twitter to state the poll was “dodgy” and specifically structured to reflect the paper’s “line”.

​"Nobody should be surprised that it's a ComRes poll, for the Telegraph accompanied by a press release (from ComRes) that could have been written by Dom Cummings for Boris Johnson,” Laurence Janta-Lipinski, a pollster who has worked with YouGov, also tweeted.