OPPOSITION to Brexit has reached its highest point since the aftermath of the 2016 referendum, a new poll has suggested, as Gordon Brown warned that Britain risked being “permanently paralysed” by divisions over EU withdrawal.

The YouGov snapshot found 47 per cent of voters thought the decision to leave was wrong against just 40 per cent who said it was the right thing to do; the widest margin since the weekly survey began two years ago. The actual referendum result was a 52 to 48 point split for leave on a 72 per cent turnout.

The poll findings come a week ahead of a series of crunch Commons votes as Theresa May seeks to overturn changes to her flagship Brexit legislation introduced in the Lords.

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Without a current overall majority among MPs, the Prime Minister is expected to spend the coming days trying to persuade potential rebels, who could inflict defeat on some of the UK Government's key Brexit positions.

The 47 per cent who told YouGov the Brexit decision was wrong was a rise of three points on last week and equalled the highest figure since the tracker poll began in August 2016. The 40 per cent saying the decision was right was down three points since last week and the lowest yet recorded.

More details of the survey of 1,670 adults showed 73 per cent of Labour voters and 83 per cent of Liberal Democrats said the Brexit decision was wrong while 69 per cent of Conservative voters said it was right.

Some 81 per cent of those who backed Leave in 2016 said they still believed it was the right decision, with nine per cent now saying it was wrong.

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Labour’s Gareth Thomas, a leading supporter of the People’s Vote campaign, said the Government was making a “shambolic mess of Brexit and the British people know it”.

He added: “It’s becoming increasingly clear that Brexit is too big a deal for the politicians to be left to sort out on their own. The 65 million people of this country must have their voices heard as well. That’s why we need a People’s Vote on the final Brexit deal.”

Meanwhile, making a major intervention into the Brexit debate, Mr Brown in a speech in London will say: “We are now at serious risk of being permanently paralysed by seemingly irreparable divisions; a fractured country divided not just over Brexit but also with Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the English regions at odds with Westminster and at what they see as a London-centric view of the world.”

The Scot will urge all mainstream political leaderships across the UK to “rise to the challenge and deal not just with the fine print of Brexit but also lead a shared effort to address the underlying domestic drivers of dissatisfaction which produced Brexit,” including concerns about stagnant wages, left-behind communities, migration pressures, sovereignty and the state of the NHS.

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Elsewhere, Labour’s Ian Murray called on Jeremy Corbyn to “reject the agenda of the Brextremists” and urged his party leader to back Lords amendments to the Brexit bill, which supported Britain staying in the customs union and joining the EEA.

“If Labour refuses to back the UK staying in Europe’s economic area it will be responsible for putting thousands of jobs at risk, for threatening the rights of working people and backing a hard border in Ireland,” insisted the Edinburgh MP.

In other developments:

*the National Centre for Social Research said its polling suggested Eurosceptics were much less likely than Europhiles to support Scottish independence, noting how in 2015 the split was 41 per cent to 39 but now was 40 to 56.

*HMRC chief Jon Thompson told MPs quitting the EU without a deal would cost Britain £20 billion -last month, he faced criticism over his claim that the customs plan favoured by Brexiteers would hit businesses by the same amount if implemented;

*Port bosses warned they would "never be ready" for Brexit if the Government did not nail down border plans quickly;

*David Miliband, the former Foreign Secretary, again intervened in domestic politics by saying that MPs having just one day to vote on 15 Lords amendments on the Brexit Bill was “shockingly short”;

*the pro-EU Open Britain campaign in a report set out the bleak prospects Britain would face in trying to secure its own international trade deals outside the European customs union and the European Economic Area;

*Prospect, one of Britain's largest private sector unions, has backed a "people's vote" on the final terms of Brexit and

*Dominic Cummings, one of key architects of the Leave campaign, could be ordered by the Commons to give evidence to an inquiry by MPs into fake news.