Seems like a silly article given the original voting: The UK voted to leave the EU by 52% to 48%. Hardly surprising there isn't much support now when it started without much support.
> The Leave side led with 17.4 million votes, or 52 percent, versus the Remain side’s 16.1 million, or 48 percent, with a turnout of around 72 percent.
The way that people speak about Brexit reminds me of a couple that have a bad divorce and end up giving everything to the lawyers.
There exists a universe in which we did it properly, probably one in which Covid wasn't essentially simultaneous with it, one in which we had a more competent government at the helm, one in which we didn't end up with 600k/1% net annual immigration and maybe one in which we actually built houses and infrastructure rather than just sort of moving money about in spreadsheets.
We just aren't in that universe. It was never in and of itself some sort of horrendously negative idea and I think it's grasping at straws to pretend that it was.
A slightly more interesting (though dated to a couple of years ago) take on the dwindling support is that
a) people died and got replaced by voters with a different opinion, two years ago this was accounting for about a third of the overall rate of change.
b) there's a hefty partisan split, with labour voters ever more sure that it was a bad idea, but Tory voters initially becoming more convinced, and then later becoming more disillusioned.
Most Brits I know were under the impression that it would stop or stem the flow of immigrants. They pulled the only lever they were given and it didn't work.
What's especially stupid is doing that in the era which we are now entering where countries will be competing for how many immigrants - almost without regard for quality - they can attract - in a world of rapidly shrinking birthrates.
I don't see why this is being downvoted, it's an accurate description of what happened.
The funny thing is, even at the time it was clear that immigration would not decrease as a result of Brexit. Farage repeatedly stressed that it would open the door to greater immigration from the Commonwealth. People projected their own desire for lowered immigration onto the vote because, as you said, it's the only lever they were given.
https://archive.ph/0EWrR