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Majority of UK Citizens Doubt Prime Minister Can Strike Good Brexit Deal – Poll

Over 60 percent of UK citizens do not believe that country’s Prime Minister Theresa May will get a good deal for London’s withdrawal from the European Union, a survey of the Ipsos MORI market research organization showed on Thursday.
Sputnik

"Most Britons are not very confident that Theresa May will get a good deal for Britain from the Brexit negotiations, according to the latest Ipsos MORI Political Monitor. A third (34%) say they are confident when asked if Prime Minister will get a good deal for Britain in negotiations with other European Union leaders while nearly two-thirds (63%) are not," Ipsos MORI said, adding that the number of respondents not confident of May’s success in the Brexit negotiations raised by four percent, comparing to March of this year, and by 12 percent, comparing to March 2017.

According to the poll results, almost a half of respondents (48 percent) believe that the UK withdrawal from the bloc was meeting their expectations, while 39 percent of the surveyed citizens said the process was going worse than expected.

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The survey was conducted by phone from May 18 to May 22. As much as 1,015 adult UK citizens took part in the poll.

On June 23, 2016, the United Kingdom voted in a referendum to leave the European Union. In March 2017, UK Prime Minister Theresa May officially invoked Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, launching the process of the country's withdrawal from the 28-nation bloc. Brussels and London have been in talks on the UK withdrawal conditions since June 2017.

The United Kingdom is expected to start the pullout from the bloc in March 2019 followed by a transition period to avoid a cliffhanger. It will run until the end of 2020.

According to The Times newspaper, May wants to ask the EU for the second transition period, which may delay country’s complete withdrawal from the bloc by another three years. The second transition period is expected to allow the implementation of customs and regulatory alignment to avoid a hard border with Ireland, the newspaper added.

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