16-JUL 2023 : LAB: 46% / CON: 26% / LDEM: 11% / REF: 6%

[mercian]

Jul 17, 2023 8:34:22 GMT steve said:

colin
Ashcroft polled people shortly after the vote.
Do you think some will have changed their minds after realising they were lied to?

Current polling suggests around 25% of brexitanians have , there hasn't been any significant indication that those who voted remain have thought their decision wrong, some have accepted the result, that doesn't mean they agree with it.

You appear to assign more importance to the opinions expressed seven years ago when millions have subsequently changed their minds and millions of brexit voters because of the age related propensity to vote leave have died.

There's of course a massive disparity between the Brexit position of most of the people who died and the now 18-25 age cohort who were prevented from expressing their opinion in 2016 by virtue of age.


These aren't contestable facts it's demographics.
It's a bizarre interpretation of democracy where the vote of the dead is interpreted as representing the " will of the people" while the views of the living isn't.

You keep going on about the Leave side lying.  Remain certainly did. I believe it's called politics. 

You seem to be under the delusion that opinion polls should decide government policy.   I suggest that you either campaign for another referendum or support a party that wants to rejoin. It only took us 40 years.

[James E]

Jul 17, 2023 10:28:59 GMT somerjohn said:

Colin (re likely consequences of brexit): "Don't the current polls indicate opinion on that question ?"

Yes indeed, given the large swing to 'wrong to leave'.

And re your:"I think Social Grade is interesting too-C1s having been the group to majorly vote Remain whilst all others voted majorly Leave. The Working Class by a large majority."

You appear to have got your psephological knickers twisted. Far from "all others voted majorly Leave" this is what the Ashcroft report actually said:

"The AB social group (broadly speaking, professionals and managers) were the only social group among whom a majority voted to remain (57%). C1s divided fairly evenly; nearly two thirds of C2DEs (64%) voted to leave the EU."

To adopt Sunspeak, it was the C2DEs wot dun it.

I would argue that age was the more defining demographic than social class in the 2016 referendum. Per Ipsos Mori's analysis at the time, Under 35s of all social classes showed a majority for Remain, and over 55s of all classes had majorities for Leave.


Their figures include:
ABs, aged 55+ : 48% Remain, 52% Leave
C1s, aged 55+ : 37% Remain, 63% Leave

and 
C2s, aged 18-34: 54% Remain, 46% Leave
DEs, aged 18-34: 56% Remain, 44% Leave. 

It's notable that in both the 18-34 and 35-54 age cohorts, the lowest social class (DEs) were slightly more Remain-inclined than the C2s. 


www.ipsos.com/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2016-eu-referendum

[steve]

graham
I'm not a Labour party member or supporter, that's probably a question best addressed to someone who is.

[steve]

mercian

Name one lie from the official remain campaign, there were some assumptions made about the immediate impact of the vote which didn't take account of the transition period, but the out and out industrial scale lying all came from the Brexit side.

You know that, don't try for a false equivalency that doesn't exist.

Regarding supporting a party that wants to rejoin I do!

[alec]

@everyone - apologies due. My post obviously offended some and looking back, it did come across as significantly more unpleasant in tone than I had intended. I won't edit or delete it, as I tend to believe in leaving my mistakes on view, but while I do believe the general sentiment that covid has the chance of being worse for humanity than climate change, I was wrong to express such views of other people's feelings.

I'll also let folks know that Mark has had words about covid posting in general, and taking it to the covid thread, so hopefully you'll be left in peace. I'm assuming it's still OK to signpost, and as such, I'm away to pop a post on the covid thread describing ho an NHS clinician is taking issue with the official statistics, suggesting that the changes to testing protocols means we are missing a good deal of data on the actual level of infection.

[Rafwan]

Jul 17, 2023 10:26:07 GMT steve said:

Rafwan

The Tories were very beatable in 2017, with a different leader but broadly the same policies they would probably have won.

Of course I would have preferred a Labour government even with Corbyn as leader over the current catastrophic failure.

A different leader would have had different policies. Probably much the same as the ones you now disparage. 

[mercian]

Jul 17, 2023 9:13:03 GMT somerjohn said:

Colin:"Fortunately we don't need to rely on your prejudices.

Someone actually asked twelve thousand people why they voted as they did then"

That Ashcroft post-referendum poll is very interesting.

However, one thing I don't think it does is to invalidate Pete's suggestion that the result reflected "just the disgruntled and the misinformed wanting to lash out", with the 'will of the people' element confined to "a relatively small number who'd actually thought about their choice, voting leave for myriad reasons."

The headline 'reasons to leave' ranked by Ashcroft reflect respondents' selection from a few available options, all of which were points of policy or principle, and none of which were "I'm pissed off with the way this country's run" or "the smarmy berks running this country need a good kicking"

In other words, the Ashcroft poll didn't attempt to reveal the underlying motivation of Leave voters, which is what I think Pete was talking about.

What it does do, however, is confirm the stark differences between Leave and Remain voters in terms of age, education, employment level and social class, any reminder of which seems to provoke such rage amongst the dwindling band of true brexiteers.

Also, the point often made here that those who voted Leave did so in the expectation of few if any negative consequences:

More than three quarters (77%) of those who voted to remain thought “the decision we make in the referendum could have disastrous consequences for us as a country if we get it wrong”. More than two thirds (69%) of leavers, by contrast, thought the decision “might make us a bit better or worse off as a country, but there probably isn’t much in it either way”.

Who got that judgement call right?

In my opinion Leavers did.  Certainly there are problems at the moment such as inflation, but it's not drastically different to other countries, because we've all been affected by the Russo-Ukraine war and Covid.

[mercian]

Jul 17, 2023 10:29:19 GMT steve said:

graham

"Vote Tory not as damaging as six years of global war"
They should put that on their campaign literature.

👍 A genuine chuckle!

[alec]

China has just provisionally reported it's highest ever recorded temperature. It's still to be validated, but at 52.2C, the odd tenth of a degree either way makes f@ck all difference, I'd suggest.
The whole of southern Europe is currently 40C+ and Las Vegas and Phoenix have popped 45C, with records of >47C expected later in the week.

Everything's going just fine.

[mercian]

Jul 17, 2023 10:56:43 GMT steve said:

mercian

Name one lie from the official remain campaign, there were some assumptions made about the immediate impact of the vote which didn't take account of the transition period, but the out and out industrial scale lying all came from the Brexit side.

You know that, don't try for a false equivalency that doesn't exist.

Regarding supporting a party that wants to rejoin I do!

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/matthew-ellery/leave-lies-remainers-need_b_12191462.html

[somerjohn]

mercian

Ha! That debunking of 'Remain lies' hasn't aged well since the September 2016 post you quote, has it?

To take one that's dear to my heart, here's what Ellery had to say about post-brexit prospects for the car industry:

"We were told companies would leave the UK in their droves, especially in the car industry. There is no sign of this, and UK car manufacturing achieving its 12th successive month of growth in July, with production passing one million units in seven months for the first time in 12 years."

Here's what has actually happened to car production:

www.smmt.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/Car-output_rolling-year-totals-May-2023.png

Edit: As well as car output more than halving since the 2016 high point identified by Ellery, both Honda and Vauxhall have subsequently stopped UK car production. Ford closed its Bridgend engine plant in 2020 after making more than 20m engines there. Arch-brexiteer Jim Ratcliffe then changed his mind about building his Grenadier vehicle at Bridgend and chose France instead.

[steve]

Rafwan

Would you care to name the policies I disparaged.
Other than keeping the child benefit cap which appears to be Labour party policy now I don't think I've mentioned any policies.
Can I take it you think keeping the cap is a good idea!

My primary objection to Labour isn't it's policies it's the absence of any.

[steve]

somerjohn

In common with most brexitanians Mercian likes to focus on the damage that hadn't happened yet in 2016-19 before we left the European union but after the referendum as somehow proof that remainers were wrong about what would happen when we left.
Reality rears its head we left and we were right.

[graham]

Jul 17, 2023 12:01:26 GMT steve said:

somerjohn

In common with most brexitanians Mercian likes to focus on the damage that hadn't happened yet in 2016-19 before we left the European union but after the referendum as somehow proof that remainers were wrong about what would happen when we left.
Reality rears its head we left and we were right.

It is reasonable to point out that Cameron and Osborne were saying that a Leave vote would mean the economy being tipped into recession within months of the Referendum resulting in a big increase in unemployment.  They were undoubtedly scaremongering - employing the same tactic successfully used by them at the 2015 election. They failed when trying the same trick at the May 2016 London Mayoral election , and fully deserved their comeuppance a few weeks later at the EU Referendum. Of course, the Leave campaign was full of lies and scaremongering on a massive scale , but neither side can claim moral superiority given their conduct during the campaign.

[Deleted]

Jul 17, 2023 11:32:07 GMT alec said:

China has just provisionally reported it's highest ever recorded temperature. It's still to be validated, but at 52.2C, the odd tenth of a degree either way makes f@ck all difference, I'd suggest.
The whole of southern Europe is currently 40C+ and Las Vegas and Phoenix have popped 45C, with records of >47C expected later in the week.

Everything's going just fine.

Down to covid I imagine.

[Rafwan]

steve

Having no policies is in itself a policy. On the face of it, this means governing under the constraints of an economic straitjacket (i.e. austerity). The 2017 manifesto breached that. Which other leader would have backed such policies, then or now?

And just in case there is any doubt, I back the current leadership to the hilt. It is the only alternative.

[jimjam]

James.

How much of the age remain/leave split is actually educational with more graduates in the under 35s?

[graham]

Jul 17, 2023 13:14:32 GMT Rafwan said:

steve

Having no policies is in itself a policy. On the face of it, this means governing under the constraints of an economic straitjacket (i.e. austerity). The 2017 manifesto breached that. Which other leader would have backed such policies, then or now?

And just in case there is any doubt, I back the current leadership to the hilt. It is the only alternative.

So you want to follow Cameron & Osborne - rather than Attlee?

[leftieliberal]

North of Tyne mayor Jamie Driscoll quits Labour and announces bid to run against former party as independent – UK politics live
www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2023/jul/17/two-child-benefit-cap-labour-conservatives-rishi-sunak-education-uk-politics-latest
13:55
North of Tyne mayor Jamie Driscoll quits Labour, announcing bid to run against his former party as independent
Jamie Driscoll, the North of Tyne mayor, has resigned from the Labour party. He was recently banned from standing in the contest to be the party’s candidate for mayor of the north-east (a new post, including the area covered by the North of Tyne mayoralty, with a wider chunk of the north-east also included), and at the time the decision was seen as one of the most extreme of many recent cases of candidates not wholly aligned with Keir Starmer and his politics being purged from Labour contests on dubious grounds.

In a serious of tweets, Driscoll says that if he can raise £25,000 for a campaign by the end of August, he will stand as an independent against Labour’s candidate for north-east mayor. He says:

I’ve decided to resign from @uklabour and serve as an Independent Mayor.

People are tired of being controlled by Westminster and Party HQs. They want someone to stand up for them. Let the people decide. £25k by end of Aug & I’ll stand as North East Mayorhttps://gofund.me/98547c6b

Labour's centralising tendency coming back to bite them.

[jimjam]

LL - ''Labour's centralising tendency coming back to bite them.''

Or Labour zero tolerance of anti-semitism having an impact?

[leftieliberal]

Jul 17, 2023 13:32:24 GMT jimjam said:

LL - ''Labour's centralising tendency coming back to bite them.''

Or Labour zero tolerance of anti-semitism having an impact?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-65855010

The exclusion of Mr Driscoll from the party's candidates has been linked to his onstage appearance with film director and expelled Labour member Ken Loach in Newcastle in March.

The open letter says Mr Driscoll "is not and has never been an anti-Semite".

It adds that any attempt to "smear his integrity" with "oblique references" to "alleged Jewish concerns" is inappropriate and may generate hostility against Jews.

[shevii]

Jul 17, 2023 13:32:24 GMT jimjam said:

LL - ''Labour's centralising tendency coming back to bite them.''

Or Labour zero tolerance of anti-semitism having an impact?

If that were really the case then shouldn't the zero tolerance retrospectively cover anyone who was a Catholic given what the Pope said when he met Ken Loach recently?

"YOU are like a prophet confronting false myths and schemes.”

www.thenational.scot/politics/23627265.ken-loach-pope-corbyn-starmers-lost-labour-party/

[James E]

Jul 17, 2023 13:19:13 GMT jimjam said:

James.

How much of the age remain/leave split is actually educational with more graduates in the under 35s?

That's very hard to quantify, but the consensus seems to be that there is an age-effect superimposed on the education effect. In particular, it should be noted that only half of the 18-24 cohort (who voted 75/25 for Remain per Ipsos, or 71/29 per YouGov) was old enough to hold a degree, which makes any conclusions in this group very tricky.

The best I can offer you is probably the 25-34 age group which Ipsos found voted 60/40 for Remain. If half of that group are graduates, and they followed the average graduate split of 68/32 for Remain, then that half of the cohort was 34/16 for Remain. It would follow that non-graduates aged 25-34 also voted Remain by 26/24, whereas YouGov have all non-graduates dividing 41/59 for Leave. 

Conversely, the over 55s (or over 65s) divided more strongly for Leave than that overall 'non-graduate' split of 41/59, despite containing maybe 5-10% graduates. So it must be clear that education alone cannot explain the age-patterns found by Ipsos or YouGov. 

d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/oxmidrr5wh/EUFinalCall_Reweighted.pdf

[steve]

graham
To be fair to Cameron and Osborne ( I know who wants to be)

They were correct in the assessment of what would have happened with a no deal disorderly exit from the European union in 2016/17.
And even more gut churning to be fair to May the dynamic alignment she negotiated and then her own party voted against would have been significantly better than the shit Spaffer inflicted, it was akin to Customs union and associate single market membership with some of the add ons horizon membership for example remaining in place worse than membership but significantly better than any other third nation country in the world had with the European union/EEA

The whole shit show fully fell apart when arch liar Spaffer took charge.

[Rafwan]

Jul 17, 2023 13:19:37 GMT graham said:

Jul 17, 2023 13:14:32 GMT Rafwan said:

steve

Having no policies is in itself a policy. On the face of it, this means governing under the constraints of an economic straitjacket (i.e. austerity). The 2017 manifesto breached that. Which other leader would have backed such policies, then or now?

And just in case there is any doubt, I back the current leadership to the hilt. It is the only alternative.

So you want to follow Cameron & Osborne - rather than Attlee?

Blimey, I didn’t know we could have Attlee! Yes definitely put me down for that! My quarrel here was with steve who freely brands Corbyn as ‘toxic’ but evidently fully endorses his policies - as do I. But if the choice is between Starmer and ANY Tory, there can only ever be one answer.

[Deleted]

Jul 17, 2023 14:20:04 GMT Rafwan said:

Jul 17, 2023 13:19:37 GMT graham said:

So you want to follow Cameron & Osborne - rather than Attlee?

Blimey, I didn’t know we could have Attlee! Yes definitely put me down for that! My quarrel here was with steve who freely brands Corbyn as ‘toxic’ but evidently fully endorses his policies - as do I. But if the choice is between Starmer and ANY Tory, there can only ever be one answer.

So you want to follow Attlee instead of Boudicea?!?

[graham]

Jul 17, 2023 14:20:04 GMT Rafwan said:

Jul 17, 2023 13:19:37 GMT graham said:

So you want to follow Cameron & Osborne - rather than Attlee?

Blimey, I didn’t know we could have Attlee! Yes definitely put me down for that! My quarrel here was with steve who freely brands Corbyn as ‘toxic’ but evidently fully endorses his policies - as do I. But if the choice is between Starmer and ANY Tory, there can only ever be one answer.

Even if Starmer - like Blair - shows himself to be more of a Tory than the likes of Macmillan and Ted Heath?

I would prefer Macmillan's policies to what Starmer appears to be offering.

[neilj]

More In Common changing how they conduct polls
Will almost certainly result in lower Labour leads, but seems a reasonable way forward
www.moreincommon.org.uk/blog/voting-intention-methodology-update/
From July onwards, we will use an updated methodology to try more accurately allocate ‘don’t know’ respondents in our voting intention polls.
Those who initially select ‘don’t know’ will be shown a follow-up question, prompting them again to select a party.
Although ‘don’t know’ is still available as an option, around half of respondents now choose a party when prompted.
These respondents are almost twice as likely to choose Conservative over Labour. This would have changed our June voting intention from a 19.4 point Labour lead, to 17.2 points.
Our other filters – such as only including those who give a 7-10 likelihood to vote (to ensure we only capture ‘don’t knows’ who intend to vote) – will still apply.

[Deleted]

Jul 17, 2023 14:25:25 GMT graham said:

Jul 17, 2023 14:20:04 GMT Rafwan said:

Blimey, I didn’t know we could have Attlee! Yes definitely put me down for that! My quarrel here was with steve who freely brands Corbyn as ‘toxic’ but evidently fully endorses his policies - as do I. But if the choice is between Starmer and ANY Tory, there can only ever be one answer.

Even if Starmer - like Blair - shows himself to be more of a Tory than the likes of Macmillan and Ted Heath?

I would prefer Macmillan's policies to what Starmer appears to be offering.

You really seem to be having a struggle in working out what the real world choices are don’t you?

Maybe you should organise a little “Fictional Figures Election” of your very own - hours of fun.

[Rafwan]

@fecklessmiser

(A propos Boudicca)


graham

You cannot just pretend fifty years of change has not happened. It is impossible to know what Harold M or Heath might be offering. It is just beyond rational consideration. Isn’t it?