Two industry polls favour Brexit

As the in/out referendum approaches, two polls have indicated an inclination by road transport industry representatives to favour a UK exit from Europe.

At the Microlise Transport Conference in May, attended by more than a 1,000 senior industry figures, the figures were close: just under 44 per cent reported that they would vote for Britain to leave the EU, while just under 41 per cent said they would vote to stay.

Almost 16 per cent of delegates remained undecided, however – and 43 per cent felt that leaving the EU would negatively impact the haulage industry.

Nadeem Raza, chief executive officer of Microlise, called the findings “surprising”.

“With the majority feeling leaving the EU would be damaging, one would expect the remain vote to be the most prevalent within our industry,” he said.

“However, the results clearly show that Vote Leave had a slim lead for our audience of 1,000 professionals.”

Meanwhile, freight exchange platform Returnloads.net conducted an independent survey of over 500 UK HGV drivers – with far more decisive results.

84 per cent of drivers asked said they intend to vote ‘leave’, the company reported, with just 10 per cent stating that they would vote to remain.

“The main comments we received for [the Brexit supporters’] reasoning was that, whilst in the EU, foreign drivers working in the UK are keeping wages low and keeping some UK drivers out of work,” said Returnloads.net.

The results did vary with age, however, with the ‘remainers’ rising to 22 per cent among the 35-and-unders.