The referendum vote for Brexit was clear: the electorate was 46,501,241, Leave was 17,410,742 and Remain was 16,141,241. The UK public actually did not, does not and will not want a Brexit in the foreseeable future. Adrian Low makes this argument by analysing the post-referendum polls and demographic trends.
The difference between leave and remain was 3.8 percent or 1.3 million in favour of Leave. However, in a close analysis, virtually all the polls show that the UK electorate wants to remain in the EU, and has wanted to remain since referendum day. Moreover, according to predicted demographics, the UK will want to remain in the EU for the foreseeable future.
There have been at least 13 polls since June 23rd which have asked questions similar to ‘Would you vote the same again’ or ‘Was the country right to vote for Brexit’. Eleven of these polls indicate that the majority in the UK do not want Brexit. The poll predictions leading up to the referendum narrowed but a significant majority of late polls indicated that the country wanted to remain. The leader of UKIP even conceded defeat on the night of the vote, presumably because the final polls were convincing that Remain would win.
In fact, according to the first post-referendum poll (Ipsos/Newsnight, 29th June), those who did not vote were, by a ratio of 2:1, Remain supporters. It is well known that polls affect both turnout and voting, particularly when it looks as though a particular result is a foregone conclusion. It seems, according to the post-referendum polls, that this was the case. More Remain than Leave supporters who, for whatever reason, found voting too difficult, chose the easier option not to vote, probably because they believed that Remain would win.
Percentage lead of LEAVE or REMAIN according to the polls post June 23rd
Immediately after the referendum, there was a marked ‘shock’ reaction in the polls against the Leave vote. Some Leave voters had voiced the opinion that they had only voted Leave to give the government a good kicking and they wished they had the opportunity to change their vote. That was reflected in the early polls with the reversal of the Brexit referendum result into double percentage figures. A higher percentage of Leave voters changed their mind to Remain, whilst the Remain voters generally stood firm. Four months on and that has now softened to 90 percent ± 2 percent of both Leave and Remain voters sticking to the guns and the rest of the original voters balancing somewhere between changing their vote or responding that they now don’t know.
What has been largely ignored are the 12.9 million who did not vote.
What has been largely ignored are the 12.9 million who did not vote. Had the democratic process been that of Australia where voting is compulsory, the polls indicate the result would have been to Remain from day zero, and would still be Remain (see no2brexit.com and businessinsider.com). Of course, there is a criticism of the non-voter but, for various very good reasons, some were reported as simply not able to vote.
Unexpected administrative, personal or employment circumstances disabled some members of the electorate on the day from voting. One Financial Times study pointed out that most university students would generally be encouraged by their university to register to vote in their university town and they may not have realised early enough that they would have to apply for a postal vote given that term would be finished by June 23rd. The non-voters were largely younger voters and all the parties agree that the younger vote was (and still is) far more likely to vote Remain than Leave by a factor of nearly 3:1.
Since the initial shock, the gap in favour of Remain has decreased and, now, stabilised. Only two YouGov polls support a majority in favour of Leave was right, the other eleven polls have all indicated that the will of the UK is that it should remain in the EU. Such unpalatable poll results have been left unreported or occasionally inaccurately reported.
The “What would you vote now” question is being asked less frequently now. As of the middle of October, the polls indicate the continuing preference for Remain. The deciding factor is still amongst those who did not vote, with 41 percent saying that Remain was their preferred option and 26 percent preferring Leave. These figures are very similar to the News-night poll six days after referendum day when the comparative figures for the Remain and Leave non-voters were 35 percent and 19 percent respectively. When the most recent figures are applied to the 12.9 million they provide 1.9 million more Remain supporters which easily overturns the 1.3 million referendum Leave majority. Of course should there be another referendum the previous non-voters might well come out in force because they know what is at stake – but they might not.
By March 2017 when Article 50 is due to be initiated, there will be approximately 563,000 new 18-year-old voters, with approximately a similar number of deaths, the vast majority (83 percent) amongst those over 65. Assuming those who voted stick with their decision and based on the age profile of the referendum result, that, alone, year on year adds more to the Remain majority. A Financial Times model indicated that simply based on that demographic profile, by 2021 the result would be reversed and that will be the case for the foreseeable future.
by 2021 the result would be reversed and that will be the case for the foreseeable future
Finally, two groups, in particular, saw their exclusion from the electorate as undemocratic. According to NUS polls, 75 percent of the 16-18 age group felt they should have had a vote in the UK on Brexit (given its greater long-term implications than a general election vote). The 16-18 age group did have a vote in Scotland on independence and this referendum, many felt, was at least as important. Had the younger vote come out in force there is good evidence to suggest that the referendum result would have been different.
In the second group, members of the Commonwealth (and Eire) who were resident in the UK were able to vote but other members of the EU resident in the UK were not able to vote. All EU residents of Scotland were eligible to vote in the Scottish Referendum but not in the Brexit Referendum. Clearly, if democracy is regarded as allowing those most affected by a decision to have a say in that decision, then this has not happened. With 2.9 million EU residents in the UK, it is likely that the majority would have voted for Remain and that too is likely to have reversed the decision.
Conclusion
So the UK electorate, as a whole, has been consistently against Brexit and the Remain majority will increase year on year. All things being equal Remain will be the choice of the public by the end of 2021 whether the abstaining electorate is counted or not. Those who saw the vote as a protest against poverty are now experiencing the thin end of the wedge of inflation from a falling pound and slow, drip-like movement of multinational companies out of the UK. Some Remain voters have thrown in the towel, accepting what they see as inevitable. The latest YouGov poll suggests that more people in the UK believe Brexit is bad, rather than good for jobs, will result in less influence in the world, is indifferent for the NHS, and will make the UK economy worse. A falling economy is bound to bite and reverse some of the enthusiasm for Leave and the effect of that will simply be to consolidate the trend against Brexit.
Brexit is not the will of the people in the UK. It never has been.
Sadly nothing less than a second, fairer referendum could redress the unfairness felt by the exclusion from the electorate of both the 16-18s and the non-UK EU residents. This all paints a very sorry picture of the effectiveness of UK democracy. Brexit is not the will of the people in the UK. It never has been. Had all the people spoken on the day the result would almost certainly be what the pollsters had predicted, and what the UK, according to the polls, still wants, and that is to Remain.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Brexit blog, nor the LSE. Image credit:(CC BY 2.0).
Revd. Adrian Low is Emeritus Professor of Computing Education at Staffordshire University and Church of England priest for the Costa del Sol West Chaplaincy in Spain. He is the author of Introductory Computer Vision, Imaging Techniques and Solutions.
What utter patronising nonsense.
If people didn’t bother to vote when they had the opportunity, tough.
Poll after poll shows that people who voted to leave have not changed their minds.
Totally agree mostBrits want to leave the corrupt Eu
So you’re just going to ignore the statistical proof to the contrary offered and explained in detail and challenge it with what? your personal assertion and incredulity?
what statistical proof? the latest survey points to over half of the electorate saying that they see dealing with immigration is more important than staying in the EU.
Over half of leave supporters
Yes we are going to ignore ‘statistical’ proof. From what I gather from this..if they turned out…..and if this happened etc. Well it did happen, with a very well informed date of the referendum and cetain sections of the community failed to go and vote. Whatever the reason why not is irrelevant. This has been said before but of the situation was reversed I would love to see all the ‘remainers’ more than happy to have a second referendum or whatever bollox they wish think of….
I’m sure this article will annoy some people who still believe that Brexit is not an indefensibly stupid idea but I believe that many voted out as the result of being hideously shepherded by the media and the lies of politicians. I will never accept a Brexit decision as I can’t support restrictions on my children’s rights in the world or the negation of what has continued to be an extremely successful peace project in Europe. Finally, if your government has no idea what is to be gained by leaving the economic security of the EU, how can I possibly respect the points of view of the great unwashed.
It was not an advisory referendum and it was won despite the blatant lies by politicians on the remain platform. There was also plenty of support in the press for the remain position, which were only to happy to publish the dishonest fear and doom stories being peddled by remain supporting politicians and business people, the very same people who signed us up to ever closer union with the EU for which we never voted.
It is not those of us who wished to leave the EU who are destroying relations between the UK and the rest of the EU, it is those in the EU who will not respect the choice we have made to leave who are doing this. They are out to make an example of the UK as a warning to any other countries who may also harbour a desire to leave. Our politicians have made it clear that we value our relationships with our neighbours and wish to continue to trade with them, share intelligence with them and cooperate in many other ways, but also want to trade freely with the rest of the world, decide who can and cannot come into our country, be subject to our own laws and ruled by our own elected politicians, not by leaders of other countries or unelected bureaucrats. As for destroying peoples lives, the EU has been doing this for years, whole areas of this country have been affected negatively by our membership, our fishing industry for one example. Parts of the EU are bitter at our decision to leave because, as a net contributor, we subsidise huge parts of it and when we leave tat money will have to come from elsewhere, most likely by raising the contributions from other countries.
I suspect that those who didn’t vote would spilt the same -majority to leave…and of course the article overlooks the fiasco of unregistered postal voters, the extra registration and keeping the website open and as the article does mention all the Irish nationals who could vote but out of fairness really shouldn’t have been allowed…
This has actually been examined fairly conclusively and they vote the same as their age group tranches would indicate. And if everyone had voted they would have voted Remain by a small margin. See the Kings College study. http://ukandeu.ac.uk/what-if-everyone-had-voted-in-the-eu-referendum/
To those Leavers who say ‘Get over it’, just think that this is a major constitutional change that is being imposed on us by an advisory referendum against the opinion of the majority of the electorate (which is the clear conclusion of this article which has been demonstrated by now in a number of sound surveys). It is already having major economic effects that risk destroying the very industries that enable our economy to prosper (perhaps yes, not all of our citizens, but resolving that problem is a matter for our own Government, not the EU). Now does that seem constitutional or advisable or democratic?
I must declare an interest. My children are dual national and my wife is Polish. I will be dramatically affected I now feel a foreigner in my own country and my wife, and therefore myself, may be forced out of the country I love. But I still assert that the point I make above remains valid. Continue with Brexit at the peril of all of us.
But the majority of the electorate voted to leave. If they didn’t vote, then they chose to abide by the overall outcome, that’s how democracy works.
I write this as a staunch remainer.
The problem now is, regardless of how much research shows that the referendum result would change over time, or change if taken again, there is now no mechanism to put that to the test, because ALL parties have said there should be no second referendum.
We will blindly go forward now, regardless.
the majority of the electorate did NOT elect to leave. The majority of the electorate did NOT elect to remain. The electorate was 46 milllion. Leave was 17 million which is roughly 37%. Remain slightly less on about 35%. If the total electorate of 46m is 100% that leaves 28% who couldn’t be arsed. Thats where the problem is. If only we had compulsory voting or at least the interest the scots had in their own referendum democracy would emerge.
I’m sorry but I’m lost here. There was a vote. MPs, when discussing this Referendum, voted 6:1 for the referendum. There was a result. And the result should be accepted.
It is immaterial that people did not vote. It is immaterial that Australia has a compulsory voting system: the UK doesn’t. It is no good the not-voters saying that if only they’d known, they would have voted.They had the chance to vote. Nobody forced them to not vote.
Your comments about “already having major economic effects” are based on the MSM picking bad news to “prove” that BREXIT is the cause of ANY malaise. To para-phrase Jo Moore, BREXIT is a good way to get out bad news. But, if you have noticed, one of our biggest manufacturers, who deals world-wide, JCB, left the CBI because of the CBI’s biased comments during the Referendum. Also, Nissan are rapidly expanding. They don’t give a toss whether UK is in or out. Just two examples.
Why you have to feel “a foreigner in my own country” beats me. And, what does having a Polish wife to do with it? She can quite happily live in the UK. I also have to declare an interest: I’m an ex-pat now living in Lesvos. as of Dec ’15. My wife and I both voted BREXIT – for the sovereignty of our nation. My Greek friends here applauded our decision and hope to get their own country back.. Back from Brussels dictatorship. (They know that the current financial problems are thos of their own making and are willing to make up for it – but not at the expense of their country. And not to prop up German/French banks that stupidly leant to them)
The referendum was advisory. They could have made it compulsory but didn’t. Cameron’s assertions regarding one vote being enough have no validity at all in law or in principle.
Nissan have been promised a customs union which the UK won’t be able to deliver without freedom of movement – you can be sure Nissan are making contingency plans. The economic auguries are not good at all – we risk destroying are leading industries – finance, high tech – all to prevent immigration which pays for our retirement with its social security contributions.
The point I make is that by the time we should be leaving the referendum result will be out of date, both among those who would vote, and in the opinion of the electorate. We will leave against the will of the people. Is that democratic?
Individually a lot of voters had a choice, but the deck was structurally stacked in favour of Leave in the following ways:
1) Students being registered at their universities and not realising in time that they needed to do a postal vote
2) Students not realising they’d been removed from the register at their home addresses and that they had to re-register in time to do so
3) EU residents in the UK not being allowed to vote (even if they’d been in the UK for decades)
4) The Remain campaign being a bit complacent
5) Media coverage – with the likes of the BBC trying to give both sides equal coverage, whilst the Sun, the Mail, the Express, and the Telegraph were 100% partisan for Leave.
I voted out, would do so again in a heartbeat, and maintain it is the right decision. Anyone who wants to remain simply hasn’t absorbed the facts. The EU is corrupt, self-serving, and is certainly no friend of the UK. The Germans alone have systematically devastated our auto industry, in order to strengthen their own exports to the UK, whilst snapping up the jewels in the pile for themselves (Land Rover, Roll Royce, Bentley et al were all initially purchased by BMW/VAG etc etc). The only valid reason to remain is a cultural one – those who wish to become European, as part of a EU superstate. I (along with the majority of Britons) dp not consider myself European – I am British and proud of it. The referendum was the first opportunity in my lifetime to have my say. No one ever gave me the chance before, just years and years of half-baked rhetoric and EU propaganda. I do not hate Europe, I holiday there twice yearly, and love the people and culture, and I too should declare an interest: I am about to move to Spain, having bought a villa there, and Brexit will make that more problematical. Still I voted leave, in the full knowledge this wold be so. It’s not about immigration etc, at the end of the day its about SOVEREIGNTY. And one other thing – nobody in their right mind would believe we are about to start deporting people who live here – that is simply anti Brexit propaganda of which there is much, led by the liberal wooly thinkers and theorisers so well trumpeted by their mouthpiece the BBC. Think about it – the facts are incontrovertible!!
I’m so proud that we all voted for British Sovereignty. Take back control from the unelected EU elite!
Do we all understand how our parliament works? Our Government has to pass its laws through the unelected, elite House of Lords. Nothing actually comes into law until the reigning monarch accepts it. It’s a load of antiquated play-acting and removes the influence further and further from the British people. Our Prime Minister was given her title by default when all the other tories ran away from the responsibility. Nobody voted for her to be leader. And this unelected leader is now going to use an advisory referendum to enact the biggest change to our constitution in decades.
Meanwhile, having a team of experienced civil servants, some of them voted in by us, the British people, preside over EU law-making seems like a far more democratic and sensible system of law-making.
We now look like fools to the rest of the world, and our currency is plummeting just to prove it.
Deportations are not just anti-Brexit propaganda. They’re also something that the Mail, the Sun, and the Express have been clamouring for, and which the government have expressly decided not to rule out (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/mp-brexit-eu-right-to-live-and-work-uk-commons-european-union-a7372951.html). Also, even without Deportations per se, leaving the EU gives EU citizens resident here much less of a stake in the country, almost certainly gives them a pile of paperwork to sort out if they want to stay, and would likely deprive them of the right to vote in their local elections etc. We’re severely messing around both people from the EU-27 countries living in the UK and vice versa with this decision.
Also, blaming the Germans and other foreigners for the failure of our gvt to support our industries is a bit rich… given the chance, our own companies would happily have snapped up foreign ones wherever they were allowed to as well.
“…all the Irish nationals who could vote but out of fairness really shouldn’t have been allowed”
What exactly do you mean by this? There has been a long running agreement between the UK and Ireland that residents in either state can vote in each other’s elections. The same is true for any UK citizen voting in the Rep. of Ireland’s many referenda (there’s usually about 1 a year). I’ve lived and worked here for 10 years. Continually paid my taxes and never claimed benefits. I’m also a member of a (UK) political party. Can you please clarify what the ‘fairness’ of disenfranchising me would be?
On the contrary, poll after poll shows the people who voted to leave now regret their decision: they regret falling for lies; they regret isolating the country; they regret the rise in xenophobia they caused. Brexit is not the wil of the people – it is the imposition of something approaching fascism by the few on the many, and must be stopped
Isolating the country? How?
Alienating 27 of our neighbouring countries; alienating people from those countries who now want to go home / no longer want to come here; cutting trade links and deals both with them and with many other countries where those links and deals were negotiated as part of the EU; cutting freedom of movement, meaning visas etc will quite likely be required for travel either way until a new deal is negotiated; putting people off coming here or doing business with us with the surge of xenophobia and economic uncertainty after the referendum; those ways.
Karl, where did you get the evidence that “Poll after poll shows that people who voted to leave have not changed their minds”.
I’d like to know, because many who voted Brexit are now ashamed to admit it. Ashamed, because of the damage to our currency,because of the open racism it has promoted amongst the thicker classes and ashamed for falling for the downright lies of Boris and Co, who now seem to have gone very quiet.
And embarassed by the other two thickoes, Fox and Davis, who have already fucked up over premature, illegal negotiations with the Australians.
Start thinking, instead of rehashing untruths.
Adrian, the pound was lower against the Euro back in Dec 2008 than it is at present. Pound goes up. It goes down. BREXIT has nothing to do with it. Industry is carrying on and will continue to do so. And, as you will have read, the head of JCB, a company that has international trade, has left CBI because of the CBI’s deliberate lies throughout the Referendum campaign. Nissan,another large manufacturing Japanese company is expanding. They don’t give a toss that UK leaves EUSSR.
By the way, who says that Fox/Davis are having “premature, illegal” negotiations with Australia? Oh yes, that is because the UK has its hands tied by the EUSSR. But, isn’t the UK supposed to be a sovereign nation? Or, do you want to be a lackey of the EUSSR.
You clearly have no grasp on reality – there have been no negotiations with Australia, just preliminary talks, and let’s hope we can get proper talks going ASAP. ILLEGAL? that just shows how the EU works does it not? The UK will soon be free. Free to negotiate our own deals, free of the overbearing EU corruption which threatens with words like “illegal negotiations”. We are well rid of the EU, I do not know a single Brexit voter who has changed their mind. This is just a fabrication by people such as yourself who refuse to accept reality. Grow up, or shut up. The only person rehashing untruths here is you!
Please stop writing such codswallop and focus your energy on getting us through Brexit.
Lets Get on with it
I did not voted for the common market as you could see it was
going to wind up very much where we are now
Didn’t bother to read the guff. Load of cobblers.
Just want to go on record stating this person does not, will not, and could not speak for me, even though the writer would like you to believe that.
UK is better off out. Though the current crop of elite are too worried about losing all the fat they have accumulated for the last 10 years and to that end will forecast doom and gloom. Shame the media isn’t objective anymore.
We need to address whether there is a real movement for leaving the EU and all the evidence suggests otherwise. If your concerns are really to do with migration , these can be sorted by government policies and have nothing to do with the EU. If however you believe in keeping uk jobs and the economy strong it’s far safer to remain within the EU and reform from within. Outside will cause grave economic damage and that risk cannot be born by the younger working generations.
Caroline, I think you’ll find we did address whether there is a real movement for leaving the EU on 23rd June. The question I find useful to ask people is “would you have voted to join the EU”. Only one person so far as answered in the affirmative.
Sir Mug Handle, Ignoring your dubious premise (I didn’t read the article, but its ‘a load of cobblers’), i’d like to emphasise one point you seem to take issue with: the media isn’t objective? The majority of newspapers, including the popular ones (Sun, Mail, Express, Telegraph) were all harpy screeching in favour of leaving, often after years of dangerously misleading headlines. Where does this accusation of bias in the media towards ‘the establishment’ (and often to the liberal left) keep coming from??
I am an unemployed former bankrupt and committed remainer. Please explain how I am part of any elite.
What absolute nonsense, thankfully, we do not live in Australia, here people are free to choose whether they vote or not.
Those who chose not to vote, have no right to complain about the consequences of their inaction. The majority of those who engaged in the democratic process, were in favor of leaving, and consequently that is the right and proper democratic path.
Just so we’re clear; I voted remain, but I respect the democratic process, and will work to make this a success in the decades to come, as should be your goal.
Absolute nonsense!
If we apply your logic to local and general elections then the country would be in a perpetual state of a paralysis forevermore.
Rightly or wrongly a decision has been made, now we must move forward as best as we can.
A day was chosen long in advance on which people could register their vote, and the deadline was even extended. If people chose not to vote or now feel that they made the wrong choice then this says more about the results of the education system in the UK since the 1990s, and it’s even more disastrous implications than Brexit, that has left a large proportion of the country either uninterested or incapable of making an informed choice.
Is he talking about the same polls and pollsters who forcast a Remain victory in the first place? Prior to that they got the general election wrong. I’d have more faith in Mystic Meg.
All rather desperate.
If the remainers had won, then, presumably, democracy would have categorically triumphed. However they didn’t and now people are scratching round for a get-out clause from democracy itself. How authoritarian these so-called liberals become when they don’t get their own way.
You lost, get over it.
Can’t get over it. Won’t get over it. Minority vote pushed by the rabid right wing media moguls again. Only 26% of the population voted to leave, the other 74% are now allowed to harp on about it for at least 40 years until we can force another referendum in the same way that the Brexitards couldn’t get over the previous referendum 4 decades ago and eventually turned into kippers.
Brexitmongers will just have to suck it up, get used to it. Can’t stand the moaning? Now you know how we’ve felt since the 1970s.
Bearing in mind that we were deliberately lied to about loss of sovereignty when we joined the then Common Market (Heath admitted as such on Question Time when Peter Sissons chaired it) people have had every right to complain.
As to “26% of the population voted to leave.” 37.5% of the eligible voters voted to LEAVE. As to “rabid right wing media moguls,” the biggest player in the media section, BBC, was pro EUSSR. So was FT, Guardian, Independent and, to a large extent, the Times.
Big Business was pro-EUSSR and, of course, their mouthpiece CBI. NFU and a large number of Trades Unions…… You’ll also know that JCB has left CBI because of it’s biased statements during the referendum. Manufacturing is going well. Likewise the pound is doing its normal ups and downs – still well above the last low back in Dec 2008. As an expat, I’m happy that the UK will become a sovereign state again. And, if you truly believe in democracy, so should you be.
The failure to allow 16-18 year olds to vote, when they are so clearly more affected than anyone else, was and is a travesty. If it was about the future of the UK then those with the longest future in this nation should have been entitled to vote. The fact people aged 90+ could vote, who will likely see the shortest impact, is deeply unfair if the youngest are excluded.
Brexit, irrespective of how it plays out, is one of the biggest cons on the UK public, and people like Karl above, who ignore facts and refuse to acknowledged the reality of the situation, are the reason the likes of BoJo and Farage can get ahead.
Oh here we go. You another one of those on the ‘old people shouldn’t vote’ bandwagon?
16 year olds are only as affected as anybody else but suffer from the lack of knowledge and life experience that guides informed voting. This nonsense line that they have to live with it longer and therefore they deserve more of a say is an attack on the very idea of democracy. Older people did not vote to sabotage the country as you would have to believe for this drivel about 16 year olds to make sense.
The travesty would have been engineering the electorate to design the desired result.
This is rubbish. I am 16. I watch question time, I read the news, I have my own opinions and knowledge to form informed decisions. Many in my school are the same, we have a debating club, we are not sponges who merely have the opinions of our parents/friends.
Although, I don’t really mind about not voting. There has to be a cut off age somewhere.
why would we brexit voters bother with polls we won only the removers will lie about which way they would vote i know many people who push for remain and now say that they voted leave just so they can argue that they changed their mind bull crap
Absolute rubbish. Amongst all polls, the most reliable one is the one on 23/6/16 (simply because this is the poll where 33.5 million people were questioned) and this poll is the one the author chooses to ignore! Is this article for real?
Yes, a snap opinion poll on one particular day, with the result so close that on a different day it might be a different result. Hardly the overwhelming mandate and “will of the people” that ought to be necessary for such a fundamental change to the status of the nation.
Would that be a snap decision on one particular day like, say, a General Election?
Marie, how is it that you think democratic polls work normally?
Why sould anybody” get over” watching an economy go down the drain? , Any good news yet No?
All good news at the moment. Pound happy, well above its last low of Dec 08. Manufacturing exporting well. Nissan recently announced further expansion. Latest forecasts are good. But, taken with a pinch of salt because the UK was going to sink immediately after the LEAVE vote! LOL
“Finally my words ‘nothing less than a second referendum could redress the unfairness felt by…’, is fact. I am not specifically advocating a second referendum in the article, just recognising there are very strong feelings indeed from groups who felt disenfranchised despite paying UK taxes and the reality that the Brexit decision will directly, and potentially dramatically affect their own futures either in the UK or abroad.”
And just who are these groups who feel disenfranchised despite paying UK taxes?
Are you implying that the ludicrous suggestion (already mentioned on here) that people from other EU countries living and working here should have been able to vote in the referendum has merit?, or that people from the UK who have retired / gone to live in other countries decades ago should have been able to, or the 15 / 16 /17 year olds should have been able to vote? Why should they?
“The latest polls on what the UK thinks will happen as a result of Brexit are depressing reading. Frequently there is a majority expecting that immigration will reduce and the NHS will stay much the same but apart from that, more think the economy, UK influence, trade, travel, pensions and jobs will all get worse as a result. They are remarkable responses and it surely must make politicians question why, if that is the expectation, the same polls of the same people do not report an even higher Remain majority”
Maybe its because those who voted to leave aren’t the stupid, xenophobic bigots that so many Remain supporters like to portray us. I, like so many, thought long and hard before I voted to leave. I knew that we could be in for a difficult period if we decided to leave the EU but, on balance, I believed that was a price worth paying to be free of the EU and all its self inflicted problems. Therefore when I complete a survey I answer it honestly but still make it clear I support leaving the EU.
The problem with the Remain supporters is that they did not even contemplate that they may lose the referendum and, having done so, they are scratching around looking for excuses to overturn the result. That initial referendum was fair and people knew what they were voting for, so no, there should be no second referendum.
”Maybe its because those who voted to leave aren’t the stupid, xenophobic bigots that so many Remain supporters like to portray us. ” bull – that is exactly what you are! This country is now a ruinous laughing stock because of your stupidity. Life will soon get much harder; we will turn inwards, bitter and twisted upon ourselves. I used to love this country, but fools like you have taken it from me.
Please don’t forget the other group that were denied a vote, UK citizens that have lived abroad over fifteen years.
Many of these abandoned people still pay taxes in the UK on their pensions etc, and yet were excluded simply because the promise made by Cameron to remove the 15 year limit was not enacted.
I was prevented from voting by the 15 year ‘rule’, illegally, undemocratically and unilaterally, like many others – sadly, it’s impossible to know how many of us were prevented from voting and how many votes were disallowed, postal votes which were sent too late for people to get them back in time for their vote to count. That would have changed the vote. Karl and Mike Manning, would you accept being told to ‘get over it’ if you had lost?
Mr. Low, would you be interested in contacting me by email, please. Many thanks in advance. Cordially Claire
“You Lost, get over it” – hurrah, I win at Brexiteer Bingo! The only argument ever spouted from the mouths of Leavers
You know that actual referendum we had. Because it seems like you don’t.
Excellent article, full of common sense. I would go even further, by saying that the Referendum was never a sane or sensible way to decide the issue, and should be invalid by default.
The public were wilfully and systematically misled by lies, exaggerations, misinformation and promises the Leave campaign had no intention of keeping or even any power to keep.
Very few people understood what they were voting for. People voted Leave only because they saw their current situation, were dissatisfied with it, and believed they could improve it by taking the choice offered to them. The very government that put them into that sorry situation was able to dupe them into taking a self-harming decision, in the mistaken belief that it would solve their problems.
It wasn’t the EU that closed the docks, the mines, the car factories and the steelworks. It wasn’t the EU that invented the poll tax, ran down the NHS, neglected the North, slashed benefits and created a food bank culture. It wasn’t the EU that did any of this. But well done, Brexiters, for handing over unregulated power to the people who did.
you didn’t include all the British citizens who live overseas who were excluded from voting due to the 15yr rule, it is in the Tory manifesto that these citizens should have the vote for life but they did not implement this change in time for the referendum even though the result has long lasting impact on their lives and future. There was also an administrative foul up with many local authorities failing to send out the postal votes to overseas citizens in time for inclusion in the ballot.
Both Karl and Mike demonstrate contempt for real democracy. Apart from anything else, in real democracy there is an opportunity to change decisions, it is not a one off, especially if many of those most affected are disenfranchised. In real democracy one side doesn’t offer a wide range of possible future pathways (ie. Norway-like, Swiss-like etc., 350 M to be spent on NHS) if you vote their way, only to impose their own authoritarian vision after the fact. If they think that future referendums would be non-democratic, then they invalidate the result of the one we had. They also have conveniently short memories, if they don’t recall Farage pointing out that 52:48 would not represent a definitive result.
I can’t believe this bloke is a professor!
[…] Source: Brexit is not the will of the British people – it never has been […]
It is unbelievable how many people oppose democracy in the UK including those very people who are supposed to represent us in the first place
You lost. Get over it.
Do you oppose FPTP and The House Of Lords?
Our democracy is based upon the sovereignty of the House of Commons. Any attempt to block debate on this matter is undemocratic. Get over it.
Major constitutional change?
Why was the EU referendum advisory and why not a required percentage of the electorate?
“1 March 1979: Scotland – Scottish devolution referendum on whether there should be a Scottish Assembly (40 per cent of the electorate had to vote yes in the referendum, although a small majority voted yes this was short of the 40 per cent threshold required to enact devolution)” http://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/elections/referendums-held-in-the-uk/
Very interesting analysis, thanks. It confirms the idea that Brexit was won on issuing a lot of last minute promises by the Leavers (lies) and poor tactics and over-confidence from the Remain side.
It’s also very interesting that the pro-leave people on this comments threat repeat the same old lines of ‘you lost, get over it.’ It reminds me of my 6 year old who shouts “mum” angrily at me, and when I say what, is then silent…then “Mum” more loudly, but the same again. She’s got nothing (apart from wanting attention…fair enough, as we’re talking about a child).
Seriously, you pro-leave people have nothing positive to say at all. Where’s the plan? You ain’t got one. We’re all waiting.
[…] This was first published on the Brexit blog. […]
Now imagine if EU citizens in Britain and British expats in the EU could have voted as well. I suspect it would have been a landslide victory for Remain.
Brexit was correct.We had a democratic vote and the Remoaners lost,so don’t tell me the majority of Brits didn’t want to leave–They did want to leave the corrupt Eu.
NOT a democratic vote – see the other comments about those of us excluded because of living outside the UK for more than 15 years (estimated at about 2 million out of over 6 million UK citizens abroad), the young, the lost postal votes, the Irish and Commonwealth voters!
Anyway, it was an ADVISORY referendum which means, despite Mrs May’s government’s opinion, that Parliament HAS to decide after a full and thorough debate and a non-whipped vote.
Why should you have a vote in the future of a country you’ve abandoned long term?
WB – you say “Why should you have a vote in the future of a country you’ve abandoned long term?”
One over-riding reason – we are UK Citizens, with a stake in how our country is governed, which affects us expatriates in this case FAR more immeasurably than you who remain in the country.
Second, we certainly never “abandoned our country long term” – merely exercising our treaty-given and therefore UK-given rights to free movement within the EU, and those of us outside the EU should not be so shabbily treated either.
Further, many of us have been working in the interest of our country while abroad – how does that constitute abandonment?
Try and find out some facts!
It cannot be ignored that the referendum result was very, very close. It was only 52% to 48%, so major parts of the country (Greater London, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Manchester) did in fact vote Remain.
The Brexiteers’ strategy is to bury these facts in a blizzard of abuse (as we see above), hoping for a speedy invoking of Article 50 so that arguing against a “fait accompli” becomes more and more difficult.
Why wasn’t the threshold for such an important constitutional decision at least 60% of the vote. You cannot tip 40 years of constitutional history so easily into the shredder at the whim of Rupert Murdoch (” The Sun”) and Richard Desmond (“The Daily Express”).
There’s a very bizarre attitude from some commenting on this article to simply rubbish observations like this. And I’m definitely not placing all that voted in any particular way in this box. The sorts of observations in this article are relevant and while the writer certainly can’t speak for anyone, he can certainly quote opinion polls. If it is the case and there’s certainly a possibility that the majority of voters in this country would now vote Remain and it looks like what the Leave campaign promised was very much unachievable and if some people’s opinions have been altered by the changing economics and changing race relations, then it would foolhardy for any government to simply ignore that opinion. Whatever damage is done by that government, they’ll pay for at the ballot box at some point in the future…
The author has missed another crucial group who were not allowed to vote in the UK’s EU referendum: those UK citizens who had lived in the EU or the rest of the world for over 15 years. This is estimated at over 1m (Financial Times) resident for over 15 years in Europe and near 2m in the rest of the world. Considering that vast majority of our peer nations (e.g. USA, France, Australia etc) allow life-long voting in referenda by all their citizens in possession of a passport it seems that the UK is out of step in depriving such a large number a vote last June. And how could extending the right to vote in the referendum to all Gibraltar’s 30k citizens be compatible with denying the vote to the British expatriate 15+ years group? Gibraltarians are not allowed to vote in UK general elections but were allowed to vote in the EU referendum. Surely this was an unjustifiable denial of democracy to those who may be among the most impacted by any change from the status quo? It would certainly have had a marked effect on the outcome in June.
I still think constitutionally Brexit is unethical.
We vote democratically to elect a Parliament.
A referendum is supposed to be an opinion of the mood of the people at that time.
With the Prime Minister vetoing parliamentary vote on the acceptance of a tiny majority expressed to a mendacious campaign from the leave camp,and thus denying our elected representatives to have the final say,( constitutionally) it’s undemocratic.
Bent polls with Remain bias before the referendum. Same bent polling companies, same bias, after the referendum. And with the scandals breaking over the US presidential elections and rigged polls now, the polling companies will have a lot more questions to answer. There is only ONE poll that matters and that was the votes of the people on June 23rd. Some who wished to Remain couldn’t be bothered to vote you say? Then they made their choice! THAT is what democracy is about, and thank the heavens that the people of Britain were finally able to force the establishment to hold the referendum they had been wiggling out of for years! Dangerous game being played in this article, all who want to be EU citizens have two years to apply for citizenship in an EU member state. You will probably find Lithuania very welcoming!
Bent and biased polling? Any evidence to back up that assertion? Or is it just true because you think it’s true? “Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur”,
Let’s just consider all the advantages Remain had:
Got to choose electorate (moaned about in the article). Changed half-way through the campaign (to Remain’s advantage)
Chose date
Chose question
£9m mailshot to all households
Use of Civil Service until purdah
Support of international organisations
Budget
Support of US President
Special deal with the EU to promote
Support of most trade unions
BBC being less than impartial
Support of most of academia (as this article balefully proves)
Support of Big Business and its funding
Most MPs
All four major parties
An assassination
But, apparently, that wasn’t enough weight on one side of the scales. No, according to the writer, kids must also be included and those who didn’t vote must also be included for Remain. Also, those as yet unborn as for Remain and those who haven’t lived in the country for years and …..so on.
Let’s face up to it. The writer would happily change things ad infinitum until Remain won. Well, at least we have been spared the nauseating suggestion that the elderly should be disenfranchised.
Accept it: the referendum had a much greater turnout than the previous year’s General Election, reflecting its importance and one-off nature. And Leave won by getting people who had never voted before to vote; a remarkable achievement would took everybody by surprise.
Now, stop making a fool of yourself tying yourself into contortions to make Black into White.
[…] It is, indeed, even factually incorrect: the Brexit is not the will of the British people (see here). The social basis of the Brexit is evaporating faster than anyone expected. If Corbyn wants to […]
A convincing analysis!
This is only an extra reason to give the British people a vote by referendum at the end of the Brexit negotiations.
The question should be whether, after knowing what a Brexit does really look like, the people still support a Brexit.
After asking the people whether a Brexit process should be started, it is also fair the ask them how it should be ended: To accept the deal and exit the EU or not to accept it and to stay.
New negotiations in case the deal is rejected will not be accepted by the EU as it doesn’t want to become a hostage of UK domestic politics (which I consider as fair) so the final referendum will be a “take it or leave it” referendum.
The British people started this process and they should also decide how it is ended. That is just fair !
Since there is so much doubt, and since it is splitting the country so much, and since a referendum is a referral to the general public to advise Parliament before they make an act of parliament why do we not simply do it again? The cost of another referendum to check the public opinion would be insignificant compared to the economic consequences either way.
Its not simply a case of a clear result, and we are all falling apart because of it. In the interest of Unity why not simply do it again; after all everyone is better informed given the debate since the referendum has turned up more information than we were ever given before.
It is impossible to cohesively progress with any sense of ‘togetherness’ in such a finely balanced situation.
The interest should be in moving forward with a clear mandate to do something which is clearly defined. I haven’t seen anyone argue that the situation is clearly defined. If the will of the people really is to leave then there should be no fear that that is still the case. And if there is considerable doubt about it then a second referendum should provide clarity either way.
Seems a good article, and by no means scientific, 3 people I know now regret their vote to leave. Leavers are scared, as they know when there is another referendum, which there will be, they will lose soundly!
And besides, until you give the vote to 16/17 year olds, as they did In Scotlands referendum, then this wasn’t democratic at all.
Also, given that only two of the four countries within the Kingdom voted to leave, and even then by a very narrow Majority, it’s clear this isn’t the will of the people.
The only reason that the 16 and 17 year olds were given the vote in Scotland was because it was thought that they would vote for independence, the answer was still no.
Also, EU citizens who have made their life here on the basis of European citizenship had no say in a referendum which will remove their right to stay and has unleashed a wave of xenophobia. They should have been consulted. You can sign my petition if you feel strongly about it: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/159488
With an advisory referendum it is up to MPs to take it into account. They could well have said – this is not a sufficient mandate, but so far haven’t. I think once the economic impacts start being felt, they will do so. And there should certainly be a referendum on the Brexit strategy proposed – which seems not to have been decided as yet – since what we are being apparently considered, as much as one can determine from the runes, is nothing like what was discussed by the Leave campaign during the referendum.
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All the polls show is that there’s been no major shift either way and that the poll results are well within the margin of error.
The rest of the article seems to be trying to magic into existence an electorate prepared to vote Remain. There’ll be a pro-Remain majority by 2021? Well it’ll be a bit late by then won’t it?
Only 34% of 18-24 year old youngsters bothered to vote so can hardly blame those who took their civic duty seriously! If you don’t vote, don’t moan at the result!! Additionally, I believe parliament voted 6 to 1 to hold the referendum and the government leaflet sent out to all voters clearly states ‘it is your decision, we will do what you say’, (note it states ‘we will do what you say’ NOT what you advise!! The referendum bill does not say anywhere that the referendum would be advisory only and lastly, we voted as one United Kingdom, NOT as 4 separate countries so the overall result is the one that counts.
No it wasn’t – I did a study of the vote to make my own estimate of the effect of age differentials in turnout and the figure I came up with was 64%. This was the figure given by some wildly inaccurate estimates by the press after the referendum, but accurate figures from King’s College and the Ashcroft Polls come out at about the figure I used. Referendums are always advisory unless expressly otherwise – the advice to the public and Parliament clearly says it. What the Government said has nothing to do with the constitution – that is determined by the law. We have seen with Mrs. May that Government will try to ignore constitutional niceties if given the chance – but they don’t have the right to do it. You may be right constitutionally about the power of the constituent parts of the UK, but most other federal countries (and since devolution the UK has become a federal country like it or not) require all constituent parts to be in favour. You can take that line, but that means you are in favour of a kingdom, not a United Kingdom. If you want that, then say so. I would prefer the UK to stay together in the EU.
Thanks Adrian, Interesting article. I agree with you it is disappointing that 16-18 year olds weren’t given the vote, and as others have noted some of the British citizens living abroad (particularly in the EU exercising their free movement rights, and would thus be directly affected by the result). I am less convinced by your argument for EU citizens living in the EU, for the same reason that rUK residents weren’t allowed a vote in the Scottish referendum – they have a vested interested (in the status quo), but though the decision affects them it is not their decision. They take advantage of the current situation as the UK have granted (ie by exercising free movement to the UK).
Regardless, these points about the franchise should not be thought criticisms of the referendum result, but as failings of Parliament, which passed the bill with these limitations almost unanimously (save the SNP MPs).
I am also not convinced that non-voters can be relied upon. There is a distinction to be drawn between those who wished to vote, but could not (eg because of irregularities with the postal voting process), whose voice should be considered, and those who chose not to, whether out of complacency of the result or disinterested inertia. To contemplate the possible actions of non-voters at each vote brings significant uncertainty to every election and referendum.
No, I struggle to doubt the validity of the referendum result. Your arguments, and others, point instead to the defects of referendums, which make them wholly unsuited to make decisions on anything but the most simple of topics (and even then I doubt them). As you pointed out, results change from poll to poll, week to week; some voters acted based on ‘giving government a kick’ rather than the actual issue; the voting public are of a varying demographic nature and all have different, narrow concerns. Additionally, issues of voters’ competence to appreciate the implications, uncertainty as to what the result actually means (Brexit means Brexit is not in any way a meaningful answer) and the fact that we live in a representative democracy, not a direct democracy, all point to the fact that a referendum was the wrong way to decide this issue.
Hmm. OK. So, what with “low voter turnout”, “long-term poll trends”, “the general decline of the traditional working class” and the fact that we have an ageing population who tend to vote Conservative as they get older, we can safely assume that Labour won’t get more than 30% of the potential votes at any of the next ten general elections. And of course the Lib Dems don’t count because they’ve never won anything, and UKIP doesn’t count because they’re bigots who shouldn’t have been allowed to vote in the first place, and the Greens don’t count because they’re mad. So here’s an idea: let’s forget about democracy and let the Tories rule us forever. Yup. Nice one.
And..er…the country isn’t exactly falling apart. Pardon me if I’ve missed something, but the UK’s economic performance is among the best in the G8 and is in fact the best in Europe by some margin. Inflation might indeed rise, but at 1% it’s hardly anything to get worried about (I noticed, incidentally, that the bankers didn’t complain about the inflationary consequences of Sterling’s collapse in 2008, presumably because in that instance it was due to their own greed and incompetence). There is some real distress out there, of course, but it’s mainly emotional and felt by a (formerly) smug elite who seem completely unable to accept that 17 million people – the largest number ever to cast a vote for anything in the entire history of the UK – chose to ignore their alarmist claptrap and vote for democratic freedom instead.
Democratic freedom would entail allowing our sovereign parliament to decide.
You’ve forgotten to add in the UK citizens resident in the EU for a long time who were excluded from the referendum but who – quite sickeningly for them, no doubt – the government has now decided to include in future votes.
I assume the vast majority of those people would vote to stay in the EU, adding further to the revision in favour of Remain.
Let us just understand the main thing here. The decision has been made and the people have spoken. It always comes down to so much negativity. no one knows how this will turn out, as its early days. Yes it’s easy to say the economy is failing but come on it’s only been a few months!
A great example why we shouldn’t be dealing with Brussells is look at the recent collapse in talks with Canada! A great deal on the table but some twit in the EU decided not to take it on. Do we still want to deal with these buerocratic fat cats which think what is best for other countries like the UK!
Wrong on CETA. There were no “bureaucratic fat cats” involved in this vote against CETA – and try and learn something about the EU democracy instead of peddling this ridiculous propaganda.
Indeed it was the proof that some democracy exists – Wallonia was justifiably worried about the effects of CETA on them, and particularly about the ISDS (Investor-State dispute system) – otherwise relinquishing national and even EU control to “private” tribunals so that multinationals (yes, including US multinationals with subsidiaries in Canada) could sue states for billions in “lost profits” following fully democratic and legitimate national measures.
Where is the UK parliamentary debate on this? There wasn’t one. So if the UK decided to save our bees by banning the pesticides that kill them, the multinationals that make the pesticides could sur the UK for billions of £s. Millions of people have protested against this throughout the EU but NATIONAL governments paid no attention. EXCEPT in Wallonia’s regional government – Bravo to them, they have been able to swing it to reduce drastically the negative effects of CETA, allowing the positive ones (if any, but that’s another story) to persist.
AND of course the UK Government, which over-rides local and regional councils to allow fracking, for example, is strongly in favour of CETA as it was, and of TTIP. With NO parliamentary debate or approval – perhaps later, when it’s all signed and sealed?
A good analytical piece by Professor Adrian Low
“We are paying the price of our media. British journalism thinks of itself as uniquely excellent. It is more illuminating to think of it as uniquely awful. Few European countries have newspapers that are as partisan, misleading and confrontational as some of the overmighty titles in this country. The possibility of Brexit could only have happened because of the British press – if there were no other good reason for voting to remain, the hope of denying the press their long-craved triumph on Europe would suffice for me. But Brexit may also happen because of the infantilised and destructively coarse level of debate on social media too”.
As far as the EU and its workings are concerned, the British public are perhaps the most misinformed in Europe – independent of whether they are for or against membership. There have, over decades, been nothing but streams of increasingly vicious and sustained attacks against the EU that have been relentless in their intensity.
Agreed, it has been democracy of a sort, consisting of lies, manipulative propaganda and downright coercion promoted and instigated by a vicious right-wing press. And it achieved the very same democratic mandate that allowed the German Chancellor to gain power in the thirties, completely legitimately. He did it most certainly via the democratic vote, but that vote itself was fed by lies, half-truths, twisted statistics or no statistics at all, manipulation, and an appeal to the lowest common denominator. In short, it was a farce.
There has never been a level playing field in over forty years of membership. Remember the manipulative headlines of two decades ago? “EU to Ban Vintage Car Rallies.” “University Fined For Not Flying EU Flag!” And even, if you remember, “EU Says Bodies Must Be Liquidized And Put Down Drains!” All those headlines no doubt impressed the “grown up” majority. But none were true!
No country on earth could withstand this relentless avalanche of misinformation and blatant fabrication and yet remain unaffected and without eventually succumbing to its baleful influence.
The Referendum was, no doubt, all very pretty! But it was never democracy. Not by a mile! Or even responsible. Blame a rather weak PM who couldn´t control his eurosceptic backbenchers. That´s why we´re here today. Cameron no doubt excuses the thoroughly divisive catastrophe he presided over by saying he is a democrat and acted democratically. But he was fully aware that he was prime minister in Britain’s representative democracy and that his prime duty was to work through its parliamentary institutions and through those elected by us and paid to represent us. It is hardly elitism to say that you simply cannot extend the sole reins of power to those whose main interests in life have been anything BUT politics, economy and the manifest destiny of nations. Before the Referendum, 80 economists warned of the economic dangers that leaving the EU would impose on the UK. Do you equate the views of 80 economists with 80 fish-and-chip shop owners in the Midlands? The Referendum did! Had democracy been paramount, Britain would have reverted to capital punishment several decades ago, and would not have invaded Iraq or Libya.
As Shakespeare might have said quite accurately of democracy in Britain: “…..it is a thing honoured in the breach, but not in the observance.”
Eurosceptics have whined, complained and moaned for over forty years. In future it will be the turn of the Remainers.
This article is well written and well reasoned. I would love to feel more optimistic about a post-brexit future but the outlook seems predominantly negative. There are two things I find deeply frustrating:
One: The Government appears to be bent on interpreting the outcome of the referendum way beyond it’s scope to justify their agenda. If you accept the paper-thin majority who voted to leave the EU, the only thing that justifies is leaving the EU. Any attempt to justify anything else is invalid.
Two: The sum total of supporting arguments provided by the vocal proponents of Brexit, as distinct from those who voted for Brexit, is “Get over it, you lost.” There is not even the slightest attempt to present the benefits or advantages other than “taking back control” and “getting rid of the immigrants.” It seems to me, and this is a gross over-simplification I’ll admit, an inverse relationship between age and maturity in this regard. Speaking as a 50 year old, I am somewhat embarrassed by this.
If I can make a final point it is this: In almost any other referendum in any other country a decision to act in a way which redefines a country in such a deeply fundamental way would require a so-called “super-majority,” that is to say 60% of the vote. This is on the basis that the decision to overturn a stable social and economic situation requires overwhelming support to carry out effectively. To the point, of any of the people commenting on this board, I would ask was your life so terribly affected by the EU, that a completely unknown, costly and possibly disastrous future in a deeply divided country is preferable?
This blog piece is an elaborate We Wuz Robbed complaint – convincing enough to maybe tempt you to endorse the author’s conclusion: “Sadly nothing less than a second, fairer referendum could redress the unfairness felt by the exclusion from the electorate of both the 16-18s and the non-UK EU residents. This all paints a very sorry picture of the effectiveness of UK democracy. Brexit is not the will of the people in the UK. It never has been.” I disagree with his conclusion. …
There should be no second referendum for the same reason there should not have been one in the first place: there was no substantive EU treaty alteration that would have required it. The Labour Party was right not to offer one in its 2015 manifesto, and mistaken only to go along with Cameron’s project. Referenda outcomes are matters for Parliament to ratify, whatever the results. We have to recover the very language, arguments and procedures of representative democracy and not let “democratic/undemocratic” be hijacked by populist assertions that prefer the “will of the people” to be enacted by executive fiat.
If those people continuing to try and find reasons for ignoring the outcome of the EU vote do not like “you lost, get over it”, please stop trying to come up with ever more spurious reasons to overturn the outcome and just be honest by admitting you don’t like the outcome and want it overturned.
Parliament has a very long history of completely ignoring “the will of the people” so stating that referenda outcomes should be ratified by Parliament is naïve at best, unless of course you firmly believe that Parliament will overturn the said outcomes.
Oh, I freely admit that I want Parliament to oppose taking this country out of the EU, but the referendum was Cameron’s way of bypassing Parliament – the form of representative democracy through which the will of the people is expressed. If we manage to elect a majority Tory/Ukip parliament who will take us out, then so be it. I would continue to oppose it politically in the hope that being told to “get over it” didn’t entail compulsory membership of either party.
Robert Hunter, if you wish to raise manifesto promises you will have to include the promise Labour made to the British people that the European constitution – later Lisbon – would be voted on.
Tribal politics in the UK has resulted in a three-party stitch-up on the EU issue, and the people have not been able to have a say. Free of political tribalism, the people gave an honest assessment of what they thought of the European Union.
As for the article above, an LSE EU sock puppet coming out for a second vote on a result he doesn’t like, comes as no surprise to the British people; we have seen this EU form of democracy so many times.
It is about time that our would-be masters come to realise that “democracy” is about the power of the people – and he can produce as many irrelevant graphs as he likes; if the LSE was any good at its job, it would have seen the financial crashes coming.
“We’ve had enough of experts”
[…] http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2016/10/24/brexit-is-not-the-will-of-the-british-people-it-never-has-b… […]
“… nothing less than a second, fairer referendum could redress the unfairness…”
The day after the referendum, I uncharacteristically went to the bookmaker and put money on it never happening. Why? Think of the obstacles. All the reasons stated, plus the necessity (at last admitted by Government) for at least one if not more occasions for Parliamentary scrutiny and votes, the inevitable dragging out of wrangles about it domestically and with the EU, the possibility – I’d say likelihood – that the European Parliament will allow us to press the pause button, and the 2020 General Election, by which time the take-it-or-leave-it ‘deal’ will be far clearer and the deed almost certainly not done. Hence *that* will be the referendum. All we need now is for the spineless Corbyn administariat to step up to the plate and convincingly remind the ordinary folks of Britain that the people they voted for are those neo-Thatcherites who want to privatise the NHS, remove employment and environmental protections, and drive the economy in a hard capitalist direction. This is the bit I’m most worried won’t happen…
You were mugged by your bookmaker. He can’t pay out on a second referendum – or anything else, for that matter – ‘never happening’. You have to wait forever to find out what will ‘never’ happen.
British citizens living abroad were also excluded (5 million). I applied for a postal vote as soon as the referendum was announced only to get an email from Calderdale Council just a week or so before the date to say that they were processing the forms but I was unlikely to receive the papers in time. I made a frantic last-minute push for my sister to submit proxy votes. I gather this was not unusual. People had been posting the fact that voting forms would arrive only 5 days before the referendum date. Post from France takes 5 days. There are 1.2 million Brits living in other EU countries, 255,000 in France. Most of these people would have voted to remain. All those who have lived abroad for more than 15 years had no vote (this is now being changed’ alas too late).
Add to this the downright lies fed to the electorate by the Leave campaign and some of the tabloids – Farage admitted the day after the election that the EU money would NOT go to the NHS. Many poor souls believed him.
As a PS I note many of the replies here are saying that this data is ‘nonsense’. This is The London School of Economics and Political Science, not some crackpot blogger. On what grounds do the commentators base their ‘nonsense’ allegations? We are talking about the future of our country and the people in it (and those like me likely to be homeless and jobless should I be forced to come back to the UK). Yes, I know – I’m now classed as anti-British and a traitor – sigh.
Very well said, all absolutely and extremely sadly true.
I’ve never read such rubbish in my life. “Well if you just twist this and ignore that then clearly the result would be the opposite”
The author does understand that any vote is a snapshot at that point? Of course people die, youngsters become able to vote – this changes by the day but it doesn’t make the vote any less legitimate.
Accept that we are leaving with the EU and get on with your life.
Well, the above comments speak for themselves “split”. Although the actually voting results were in favour of leaving, can’t get away from that! I personally haven’t come across anyone that voted “leave” say, that they made an error in voting to leave…..and those people concerned about being in mixed marriages, well,I am too but, I am tired of being controlled by po faced business men in Europe telling me how to live, what I can and can’t do,say, eat, the list goes on…… I, like half the country on polling day, voted for what I believed in, and that was to leave,I also think that the comments from those that decided to leave the UK, and now complain that they could not vote…..well come on, get real, you actually gave up that right to have a say in what goes in this country when you decided to leave it, for “pastures greener” which government of the day were you not happy with?
Please try ti think before you plead “democracy” in support of your case. Democracy is a concept – we then use a variety of processes, electoral systems and laws to run the country. Any result that is seen as unfair by a large numb
This article and the manipulated polling it discusses are, wittingly or not, part of the globalists’ veiled attempt to turn back the Brexit vote. The elites need a docile global population and unfettered access to markets to retain their power and treasure.
The referendum was not fair, the “remain” camp used £millions of taxpayers money to issue a remain propaganda pamphlet to every household, painting a frightening picture of what would happen if we voted to leave the EU. There was little or no content highlighting the benefits of being in the EU.
Day after day in the run up to the election, remain bombarded the public with warnings of disaster if we were to leave, heads of state, so called impartial civil servants, the president of the USA etc. were all trotted out to make veiled threats of what would happen if we voted to leave. There was little or no content highlighting the benefits of being in the EU.
The remain camp even organised the registering of young voters (believing they would vote remain) and when that didn’t seem to be registering as many as possible, they put the date of the vote back.
Their campaign was a partial success as I believe that the outcome would have been an even larger majority voting to leave if the remain campaign had not been fed by lies, half-truths, twisted statistics or no statistics at all, manipulation, and an appeal to the lowest common denominator.
The only people who lied were the outists, pedalling xenophobic bullshit and crap about money for the NHS. People fell for the lies, and now the country is screwed because of it
This is well written and argued at a micro-level, but – while I wish the referendum result had been different -its over-arching argument is terrible – patronising and technocratic in exactly the way the various people below say. While it is true that Brexit doesn’t reflect the settled will of the British people and the EU/Brexit issue is likely to go on being divisive for years and years because of the narrowness of the vote 1) If polls and demographic trends can trump popular voting, then why bother ever to have elections? 2) While it might indeed have been a good idea to require that a certain majority of the overall electorate voted Leave for it to be binding or to give parents an extra vote for their children etc, no one seems to have thought of this ahead of the vote and all parties wanted a in-or-out referendum of the kind we had. While useful pointing out some home truths to Brexiteers that they are not exactly an overwhelming majority, this article does a disservice to the pro-European cause.
Ha ha, quite an amusing spoof, but the graph is a dead giveaway! Look at that curve which is drawn only through the most pro-remain polling results and magnificently ignoring the pro-leave results, and which at the end of a flat tail three months long concludes “Marginally increasing” on the basis of just two data points (Day 60: 1.2% remain lead, Day 112: 1.3% remain lead!!). No academic would in seriousness make such a claim from such a graph, so Adrian Low is clearly being satirical. Much of the “analysis” in the text struck me as probably satirical as well, but the graph is a bit too blatant for the otherwise straight-faced approach.
What an utterly embarrassing article. Total nonsense from start to finish.
I didn’t vote for the Labour government that destabilised the middle east by entering into the Iraq war, but I have had to live with it. It’s called democracy.
Interesting article.
Tiny fly in the ointment is that the polls before the referendum also showed a majorty for remain.
The article makes no mention of ‘non-responders’ in its surveys – people who don’t like to participate in surveys.
The pre-referendum polls were skewed towards Remain partly because of this, and I don’t see why that wouldn’t apply to post-referendum polls, too. I mean, who wants to take part in a poll on a past event? The most likely participants would be people with a grievance i.e. remoaners, and not the general population.
Very weak intellectually, by this guys standard the vote to take us into the EU was also invalid so his point isn’t only self defeating – it’s just plain wrong. This referendum had a very high turnout, was given unavoidable coverage and the result must be accepted. Weak arguments like remain voters “found voting too difficult” is just tosh. The fact his source for the polling is an anti-brexit website rather than a non biased polling website (that conveniently misses several pro brexit polls) just shows how far academic standards have slipped at the LSE.
On the contrary: the article is strong and rigourous. Your objections, on the other hand, speak volumes: feigning an air of intelectual superiority when someone points out that brexit was sold to us on a pack of lies, and will turn this country into an inward-looking irrelevance.
So you disagree that under these rules the vote to take us into the EU would be void? Or that you can demonstrate how it was somehow harder for remains to vote? Perhaps you think that his analysis whereby he takes abstract concepts around how people “felt” the day after the referendum into actual numerical majorities is good practice (because it’s certainly not how the pollsters are interpreting the results).
It is intellectual superiority because there are so many holes in his argument, and what’s more you’ve been unable to refute the ones I’ve raised choosing some bluster instead.
No, it is not bluster. The points you make are pretty easy to refute. The overwhelming assumption on the day was that we would vote to remain, so people tired of the process yet who wanted to stay in did not bother to vote. A foolish mistake, and one which distorted the result. First year political students are taughtt the folly of such apathy: people who feel strongly about a subject – in case the outists – are moree likelly to go to vote. Haad people realised what was at stake, I daresay more people would have turned out. Thus, far fromh being abstract, these objections are concrete. we have been mislead; our future hijacked
You lost. Get over it.
What an absolutely stupid statement. Real people’s lives are being ruined. It’s NOT a silly childish game one loses or wins – the country, OUR country, MY country, YOUR country, risks ruin – indeed it’s already started as you may havre noticed.
It’s absolutely NOT a case of “getting over it”!!!!
Thank you for all the comments.
With respect to the suggestion that I have chosen biased polls, I have not done that, nor am I aware of any evidence of bias from different pollsters. The no2brexit.com website (which contains the close analysis referred to) is my own and whilst personal some commentary elsewhere on the site demonstrates my sadness at the poor quality of both the lead up to the referendum and the referendum rules, I have tried to re-present the results as accurately as I can (see commentary on the statistics). I have simply used every poll I could find on the net, and would value notification of any quality polls you think I have missed, which have similar questions/tables.
I have not said that the vote is invalid, it is a democratic vote using the UK rules to administer that vote. However, what the polls suggest is that political comments such as ‘the UK public wants to exit the EU’, or ‘the UK electorate wants Brexit’ are very questionable indeed, and almost certainly (allowing for polling error) not true.
It also seemed reasonable to speculate why the polls suggest that within the non-voters, there is an average 13% majority in favour of remain. Turnout behaviour (Remains are less likely to bother voting ) as a result of pre-referendum polls is discussed in, for example, Mutz 1992, 1998; Boudreau and McCubbins 2010, and, with a comprehensive bibliography, Vannette and Westwood (available here: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~seanjwestwood/papers/Mobilization.pdf). Why the young vote did not come out has been speculated on by others (Financial Times model) and I have presented that argument here.
With respect to the comment that the polls are biased towards Remain, that Remainers are more likely to respond, that may be the case, but all the poll companies undertake a weighting process which attempts to ensure that although the sample may not be representative of the population (perhaps because some Leavers don’t want to contribute), once the weighting process is completed it becomes representative of the (voting) population as a whole (for example see YouGov methodology).
The comment about the graph label ‘marginally increasing’ is based on the Financial Times model, discussed in the article, that there are about 750,000 new 18 year old voters each year who are likely to be 75% Remainers together with a balancing number of deaths of those who largely voted Leave. It was not based on the graphical entries. I regret not indicating that on the graph and have consequently relabelled the graph on no2brexit.com. Incidentally, as others have pointed out, the notification by the government on October 7th that those who have been expats for 15 years or more will soon have a vote, perhaps 1-2 million of them, would also be likely to increase any Remain majority in the polls. I regret not including this group in the article, I should have done so, as some comments have indicated, and not least because I work with many of them.
Finally my words ‘nothing less than a second referendum could redress the unfairness felt by…’, is fact. I am not specifically advocating a second referendum in the article, just recognising there are very strong feelings indeed from groups who felt disenfranchised despite paying UK taxes and the reality that the Brexit decision will directly, and potentially dramatically affect their own futures either in the UK or abroad.
The latest polls on what the UK thinks will happen as a result of Brexit are depressing reading. Frequently there is a majority expecting that immigration will reduce and the NHS will stay much the same but apart from that, more think the economy, UK influence, trade, travel, pensions and jobs will all get worse as a result. They are remarkable responses and it surely must make politicians question why, if that is the expectation, the same polls of the same people do not report an even higher Remain majority.
I voted to leave and not because I was taken in by the lies or exaggerations from the leave campaign, I fully understood the real pros and cons by doing my own home work. I ignored project fear and their lies too, my thoughts were that we should not have open borders there is too much threat from terrorism. My children’s and grandchildren’s safety was paramount and far more important than my personal wealth which no doubt could be affected by Brexit. For those that say the referendum was advisory please read the official government leaflet particularly where Mr Cameron says you the people have a choice and whatever you decided I will act upon it. If you still think the result is unlawful how does this referendum differ from the one that took us into the Common Market, we didn’t even vote to be in th eu in the first instance, it was a common market not an extension of the 4th or 5th Reich. I applaud every one of the 17.2 million who voted to take a chance, ok so we don’t know what the plan is or how it will eventually affect us but remember the Britain of yesterday, the no surrender and stiff upper lip brigade. Yes those people are most likely all gone and replaced by the greedy who are more worried about cash than what’s right and what’s wrong. Every remain voter has basically stated they support corruption in favour of safety
I love this: “For those that say the referendum was advisory please read the official government leaflet particularly where Mr Cameron says you the people have a choice and whatever you decided I will act upon it.” Now can we play a game of comparing what the leaflets said before the referendum and count what have turned out to be broken promises or complete lies? Shall we start with “£350m a week for the NHS?”
I will assist you regarding your confusion, perhaps you have the wrong leaflet as the official government backed document does not contain anything to do with the NHS or the £350 million a week. I didn’t mention the NHS within my post because I was not swayed by this gros exaggeration and I did actually say both sides lied but none more so than the statement from the government stating we control our borders, hogwash we may get to look at the passports europeans entering the UK but we cannot stop anyone, not even criminals. And what happened to our so called special relationship with the EU?
Steve: The leaflets I received from the official leave campaign were full of lies that have now been discredited, and were perpetuated by politicians who have now disowned them. You may not have been swayed, but many were, and a number of national newspapers decided to run similar fiction as headlines. If you’re going to hold David Cameron to account for his broken promise, you ought to be looking at Johnson, Gove and Farage first. Good luck finding any of them though, since they all buggered off from the smouldering remains of their filthy campaign.
also: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check/2016/mar/29/eu-dangerous-criminals-allowed-free-entry-uk-vote-leave-claims
Karl: I would simply point out one benefit of being in the EU: membership of the single market. We haven’t even left it yet but our currency, you may have noticed, has plummeted since the vote. Britain simply doesn’t have the natural resources or financial muscle to stay at the top table of the World’s economy without being part of the EU.
If you’re really unhappy that “no-one voted for” it, how do you feel about the fact that we now have a Prime Minister that no-one voted for, trying to pass legislation without consulting the House of Commons, which we all voted for?
.” Now can we play a game of comparing what the leaflets said before the referendum and count what have turned out to be broken promises or complete lies? Shall we start with “£350m a week for the NHS?”
Oh please! not that old chestnut again. What was being said was that instead of paying the EU millions a week for the pleasure of being a member, the money could be put into the NHS.
Why do you people who support remaining in the EU constantly try to discredit the result of the referendum, instead of pointing out what you believe to be the benefits of remaining in the EU?
I voted out and I have not heard one thing since which would encourage me to change my mind.
I appreciate that many people are afraid of leaving the EU and going it alone, but that, to me, is no reason to stay in what increasingly looks like a very dictatorial organisation which no one voted for.
Surely this should be up to your children and grandchildren to decide their future. Your loss if wealth? What loss?
Triple lock protected pension, likely increase in inflation and interest rates boosting returns for pensions. Perhaps property values may fall, but as this is an asset that cannot be liquidated until after your death then only impact on your inheritor not you.
You are supported by the European Institute, need I say more!!
We voted OUT for a reason, the government has accepted that and so should everyone else. We are already proving that we can get trade deals and we have company’s expanding in this country. At last WE can dictate what happens to our country, rather than a biased and corrupt European Superstate.
Let us ALL work together and prove to the rest of the world that we were right and bring back the great in Great Britain!
All you remainera get over it the uk is leaving the eu it was a democratic vote it wasnt a advisory vote trying to find ways to stop the uk leaving now would all those remainers be saying the same thing if it went the other way no i dont think they would
Yes the EU is a good idea in theory. Otherwise the fraud, corruption, waste, cronyism, undemocratic set-up, etc etc is a bit of a problem. We are / were a net contributor, really not a good use of taxpayers money, propping up a supra-national body not fit for purpose, more like FIFA as was than anything sensible.
The idea that only 51.9% of the population voted for Brexit is a polite convention. Most people in the know are aware that the poll was rigged but could not be rigged enough for Brexit to lose. As a statistician, the author of this article must appreciate that the polls before the referendum showed a Brexit lead but the bookmakers odds showed a strong preference for Remain. The only explanation for this is that the bookmakers had inside knowledge that the poll was going to be rigged.
Cameron must have known this also which is why he accepted the Brexit so easily, i.e. he knew that the real vote for Brexit was much higher.
That is ridiculous to suggest the vote was rigged, in fact the polls were fairly accurate and within the margin of error; some of the last polls even got the result correct.
We might pay more in than we get back, but, that will be lost in far greater numbers by the shrinking economy, which will be a result of Hard Brexit. Nearly £600 billion a year alone will be lost to the exchequer, if we lose our passporting rights in the banking sector. Then there is the lost to scientific innovation, where the UK currently excels, it will even have a negative effect on the music industry, as bands will have to apply for Visas to tour on the continent. It’s like someone invented a time machine. Then there will be an increased benefits bill to pay unemployment money to all those who lose their job and less taxation collected. Furthermore, this money is used to help less well off nations, mainly in Eastern Europe, you know the very same countries that the West encouraged to overthrow their communist dictatorships. In the 1970s, when Britain was described as the sick man of Europe, we took out more than we put in, this helped our economy recover.
There is no evidence to suggest the age demographics used by the author of this article are incorrect. It was written by a Professor of Computing Education at Staffordshire University, you know one of those experts the Michael Gove dislikes so much, i.e., someone who knows what they are talking about.
Re Comment from Nicholas Ennos, prior to the referendum the polls did not show a Brexit lead. From 1st September 2015 to June 22nd 2016 there were 272 polls, 58% were for Remain, 35% were for Leave and 7% were a tie. On June 22nd itself there were six polls, four for Remain and two for Leave. There was a period of 18 days from May 29th to June 15th when the polls seemed to be favouring Leave, but that reversed in the last seven days before the referendum with 9 out of 14 polls (64%) for Remain and 5 our of 14 (36%) for Leave . See https://ig.ft.com/sites/brexit-polling/
The governments mandate is to enact the will of the people. We all agree to that. The will of the people is different to the will of the electorate however. May see’s this as a chance to achieve a personal goal of exit, and I believe that she was a remainer for political expediency, as the majority wanted remain. This is giving her the perfect”will of the people” excuse.
She must be hoping to enact article 50 quickly to avoid an election where conservatives would lose every metropolitan area, and reinvigorating the opposition if they backed leave, or lose out further to ukip if they back remain.
Every survey still indicates a majority remain, even when not including the under 18s which cannot vote but are still citizens and are therefore govt should be obligated to consider. That is the will of the people and should be respected.
Statistically speaking, 52 to 48 is insignificant, especially given only 50% of the population is eligible to vote, and of those not eligible, the very large if not vast majority are remain.
HAHAHAHAHA. Is this the way now for all future elections/referenda? We’ll keep recasting the result/repolling the electorate until we change the outcome? I’m no expert but am sure I could find a myriad ways to present the actual statistics to show a different result. I’m sure many of us regret voting decisions we may have made over time but never thought for a second that we’d be able to either go back in time or keep voting until we got a different outcome. Entirely fatuous to imply that people (and only Remainers?) somehow prevented from voting – on any given voting day, some will be unable to exercise their right to vote. But let’s be clear, the process is that eligible parties have the right to vote. If said parties do not exercise their right, their view doesn’t count. IF only 100 people had voted, and 52 voted to Leave, that is the democratic outcome of the referendum/vote. Them’s the rules. Fatuous in the extreme to try and include non-eligible demographies in the ‘count’ to attempt to present a different outcome. I look forward to future General Elections if this trend ensues..(No, don’t like that outcome, let’s have another go). What’s most offensive is that if Leavers had lost, and were seeking to undermine the result with this same vigour, we would be citing the rigour of our ‘democratic process’ and calling them poor losers.
[…] is that if you factor in those who didn’t vote, you end up with results that are not actually representative of the majority of those very people—it’s no wonder president Obama said that […]
[…] of the people” is that if you factor in those who didn’t vote, you end up with results that are not actually representative of the majority of those very people—it’s no wonder president Obama said that compulsory voting […]
There was a third group of disenfranchised voters: UK citizens living in Europe more than 15 years. We didn’t get to vote and I’m sure the vast majority of us were for remaining.
We are probably the group most affected by the decision, especially if ‘hard’ Brexit goes ahead.
I know some are of the opinion that living outside the country negates our right to vote, but we are still deeply affected by UK foreign policy. Also most of us have investments and pensions in the UK and many have property there and want to travel freely to visit friends and family. All this is up in the air along with our right to live and work in Europe.
Most countries in the world have no restriction on how long one can stay out of the country and still vote. The UK is moving to this as well, but rushed through the referendum before it will be in place.
I have read the report of the European Court of Auditors for the budget for 2015. It says,
“(a) Revenue was free from material error (see paragraph 4.22). (b) In expenditure, we continue to find a material level of error. The estimated level of error in expenditure was 3,8 %, a lower level than in 2014 (4,4 %) (see Figure 1.2)…. For reimbursement expenditure the estimated level of error is 5,2 %”… For entitlement
expenditure, the estimated level of error is 1,9 %… Out of 1200 transactions, 12 instances of suspected fraud were forwarded to OLAF.”
It continues, “The accounts were not affected by material mis-statement.” The target error is 2% so the Court of Auditors finds the error level while low is above the desired level and there is room for further improvement.
Just to point out, the insistence that the vote was the exercise of the democratic will of the British public is severely called into question by the nature of the campaign. A democratic vote is not just the exercise of the will of the public, but an exercise of the will of a well informed public. The integrity of this particular exercise is compromised by the fact that many voted (on either side may I add) on the basis of arguments that were simply not true in the case of historical circumstances, or unsupportable in the case of future forecasts.
Even if we accept that what you say is fact, how does that differ from local council elections or a general election? We don’t dream up ever more spurious reasons to demand a rerun of those elections because we don’t like the outcome.
An advisory referendum to fundamentally change the conditions of life and livelihood of 66 million people, at least 6 million of whom are UK citizens resident abroad, 2 million or so disfranchised, carried by a very narrow majority of votes cast, without any of the safeguards of a mandatory referendum, won on the basis of outright blatant and criminal lies by politicians and a rabid tabloid press run largely by overseas interests, without any prospect of a change back for something like 40 years or more, furthermore destroying relations between the UK and the rest of the EU, being pushed by a stubborn, incompetent and dishonest government bent on the destruction of the country, is VERY different from local council or general elections. The effects cannot be reversible, they cannot be changed in practice for at least a generation, not just a few years, and they are destroying people’s lives.
This article would get laughed out of. sixth form debating society meeting!
Trying to give a poll the same level of importance as an actual vote would be laughable if it wasn’t so pathetic…