«He described “the horror on people’s faces – and you can literally see it on people’s faces in focus groups – when you talk about going back to Brexit debates”, adding: “The big reason they don’t want to touch the ‘rejoin’ thing is that they think it would be four more years when that’s all we would talk about.”

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“EU leaders are not stupid. They haven’t forgotten who they were dealing with for the last three years. They’re never going to let us in the door until both Labour and the Conservatives are committed to doing it,” he said.

He believes support for rejoining would have to settle at perhaps 70-75%, and have the backing of both main parties’ leaderships, before the EU would risk investing precious political capital in negotiations that could be unpicked by a change of government.

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Yet among those who voted Conservative in 2019 – the potential swing voters on whom Starmer’s team are focused – only 16% said they would be more likely to back a Labour party promising to rejoin, while 48% said less likely.

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“The main thing for Labour is that there is no need to shout about it at the moment,” she said. “There’s a a sense of, well, the voters will come to their own conclusions on this, and then there might be some space later.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/13/meanwhile-brexit-second-thoughts-take-voters-where-parties-wont-follow