Is there really an appetite for a People's Vote?
Photo by Ollie Millington/Getty Images
Tens of thousands of people will take to the streets this Saturday to “demand a vote on the final Brexit deal”. Numbers are expected to reach up to 100,000. Of course, large turnout is no guarantee of majority support, after all, one of the best-attended marches in British history was the 2002 ‘Liberty and Livelihood’ march, based on electorally ‘fringe’ interests (including the right to hunt foxes). But how seriously should we take the oft-made claim that a majority of people now favour a second referendum?
As ever, the devil is in the detail. Recent polling evidence suggests that widespread public pessimism about the direction of Brexit isn’t necessarily translating into hunger for a second referendum; certainly not enough to prove electorally decisive.
Last month, Alastair Campbell endured a brutal, ‘on air’, fact-check of his proposition that there has been a significant shift in support for a referendum re-run. During the show, the BBC Politics number-crunchers earmarked Professor John Curtice, the ‘gold-standard’ pollster and practically the only member of his profession to have emerged from recent electoral history without a generous splattering of egg on his face.
Prof Curtice confirmed: “There is no consistent evidence of a shift in support for a second referendum”, since different polls have yielded contradictory results. Of the four pollsters conducting long-running surveys of attitude towards a second referendum, two say support for the idea is growing, while the other two believe it is falling. So far, so inconclusive…
It is also worth noting that results hinge on the wording of the question asked. As Full Fact has outlined, polls calling for “the public” to have a vote on a “final deal” are generally more likely to show a majority in support. Those deploying the phrase “second referendum”, meanwhile, are more likely to show a majority against the vote, suggesting we should distinguish between support for a vote on any deal and support for overturning Brexit altogether.
The ‘People’s Vote’ campaign, then, appears savvily named, and their campaigning language well-chosen – though they are, perhaps, guilty of the same kind of linguistic deception often attributed to Vote Leave. (The group’s other catchphrase – ‘Bollocks to Brexit’ – offers a truer depiction of their motives).
It is unclear whether an option to remain in the EU would feature in a referendum re-run. Based on the evidence about wording, this model would gain less traction than a vote which simply involved choosing between different modes of departure, e.g. ‘deal or no deal’.
One of the major arguments in favour of a second referendum is that public opinion appears split between various modes of departure, but given the central importance of language, it’s not clear that advocates have considered the complexity of determining and agreeing the wording of a second referendum. You’d almost need to hold a first referendum just to determine the phrasing of the second.
Another shortcoming of Brexit-related opinion polling is that it usually considers different models of departure from the EU, e.g. ‘No Deal’, EEA, Chequers, while at the same time offering a sole ‘Remain’ option. Second referendum arguments rest on the idea that remaining in the EU would represent a return to the status quo. But this arguably ignores the extent to which the EU has changed since the referendum.
Already, the bloc has withdrawn the concessions offered to David Cameron. Just last week, the EU’s Budget Commissioner confirmed that Britain would lose its budget rebate should we remain in the EU, and, as a new joiner, we could be forced to accept the Euro or accede to Schengen. As Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker highlighted last year, the EU is unambiguously moving towards ever closer union in more integrated military structures, and there is support for a common immigration policy. In this context, what would ‘remaining’ actually mean? Such nuances are of course difficult to capture in opinion polls, but there are limitations to any view of ‘Remain’ as a static, continuity outcome, vs. Leave as the great unknown.
There are more fundamental problems with conducting politics based on the vicissitudes of opinion polls, as we are invited to do by advocates of a second referendum when they cite polling evidence in their favour.
Such a precedent would go against all established rules of democratic engagement. It would mean retroactively changing the terms on which we voted in 2016, and would pave the way for erratic forms of governance. According to YouGov, more people currently believe that “Don’t know” would make a better Prime Minister than Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn. This is a tremendous ‘no confidence’ vote in UK politics generally, but it also doesn’t follow that overthrowing the government and instituting pure anarchy would prove popular or wise in the long-term.
Whereas the referendum vote came after months of public debate, polls offer only an imperfect snapshot of opinion in time. Since then, we’ve had a local and a general election in which parties pledging to uphold the referendum result overwhelmingly won.
Fans of a ‘People’s Vote’ have every right to take to the streets this weekend. But let’s not confuse high footfall with the democratic will.
