{"id":1167,"date":"2018-12-18T12:44:03","date_gmt":"2018-12-18T12:44:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/?p=1167"},"modified":"2018-12-18T12:44:03","modified_gmt":"2018-12-18T12:44:03","slug":"the-peoples-vote-is-not-in-the-bag-alas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/the-peoples-vote-is-not-in-the-bag-alas\/","title":{"rendered":"The People\u2019s Vote is not in the bag, alas"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
People’s Vote March, September 2018<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There\u2019s a warning in a comment from Gina Miller<\/a>: \u201cWe discovered that a vast swathe of people who would vote for no deal across the country would do so because their perception is that no deal means remaining\u201d.<\/p>\n

As a strong supporter of full EU membership, the danger is that I seize on every opinion poll that suggests Remain would win in a People\u2019s Vote. But the polls are still uncomfortably close: Remain is ahead almost everywhere, but not by nearly enough. The tracking at whatukthinks.org<\/a> shows Remain on 36%, Leave on 33% and \u201cdon\u2019t know\u201d at 31%. That\u2019s too close. Over at BrexitCentral numbers are being quoted that show Leave in a strong position. My twitter feed showed a BMG poll<\/a> putting Remain at 52% and Leave at 40%, with the gap widening, but BMG also have a more fine-grained poll<\/a> showing 51% against a second referendum, and \u201cCanada Plus\u201d as the preferred option for all age groups except those under 34.<\/p>\n


\nBack in the summer, Andrew Duff<\/a> was counselling caution on a referendum, with a view to a new political party putting the case for re-joining the EU in a future General Election. He has a point: the huge danger is that we lose a referendum and people discover what has been lost only after actually leaving.<\/p>\n

Things have moved on a lot since then, but on 12 December Carole Cadwalla<\/a> drew attention to a piece in Private Eye saying that two of Cambridge Analytica\u2019s key data scientists, Tadas Jucikas and Brent Clickard, are now in business with UKIP\u2019s ex-MP Douglas Carswell and Vote Leave\u2019s former Chief Tech Officer Thomas Borwick. It\u2019s hard not to read that also as preparation for a referendum.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not that the 2016 Leave campaign simply lied. There\u2019s was a cynical campaign, fuelling and exploiting people\u2019s anxieties. The anxieties have not gone away. There\u2019s no reason to think that a new Leave campaign would behave any differently, and this time they will be able to draw on the frustration of those who think that their bright Brexit is being \u201cstolen\u201d.<\/p>\n

The problem is highlighted by a tweet from Matthew Goodwin on 15 December, referencing a page that has since been deleted on the Opinium web site saying \u201cWhen we ran an open text question asking people to name a public figure whose views on Brexit they respect, the most popular individuals named (apart from variations of \u201cnobody\u201d) were all Leavers: Jacob Rees Mogg, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. Few mentioned any prominent Remain-backing politicians…\u201d<\/p>\n

So where do we go?<\/h2>\n

In 2016 the Remain campaign was accused of lacking emotion. We were hamstrung by responding reasonably to David Cameron\u2019s (needless) \u201crenegotiation\u201d. Right now, we are hamstrung by responding reasonably to Theresa May\u2019s \u201cdeal\u201d and parliamentary chaos.<\/p>\n

In 2015 I stood against the Tory Brexiteer Andrew Bridgen. In the closing speeches at the end of one hustings, our UKIP opponent did what came naturally. Bridgen did the same, with more coherence, beginning \u201cAs a convinced Eurosceptic\u201d. I dumped what I was going to say, began \u201cAs a convinced European\u201d. There was fire in my belly. On the morning after the referendum I was at a conference in Spain. My sunglasses hid my tears. It\u2019s time for the emotion to be front and central.<\/p>\n

But the emotion is more complex than (mythical) \u201cforeigners taking our jobs\u201d. It\u2019s about peace \u2014 so the Cenotaph means \u201cnever again\u201d not \u201cwe won last time\u201d. It\u2019s about shared values. It\u2019s about lives massively enriched by friendships across Europe. It\u2019s about freedom to travel. It\u2019s also about knowing that Europe has its shameful parts \u2014 none of the European stories of colonising and enslaving other parts of the world can stand much scrutiny \u2014 but those are stories we share. It\u2019s about a future that is not simple, but our shared European heritage offers a support that\u2019s not there in fantasies of Empire.<\/p>\n

And leadership\u2026 We need the visible faces of support for remaining in the EU. Gina Miller, Layla Moran, Caroline Lucas, Ken Clarke, Andrew Adonis \u2014 these are all people to have in the media spotlight.<\/p>\n

We can\u2019t afford to be seduced by a selective reading of the polls, but have every reason to push for a European future.<\/p>\n

\nThis post first appeared on Liberal Democrat Voice<\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A People\u2019s Vote is looking increasingly likely, but it\u2019s outcome is not in the bag, especially if there are three options. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":false,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"","_twitter_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type":"","_pinterest_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"","_medium_share_type":"","_threads_share_type":"","_google_business_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[],"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"today","timeOption":"now","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":"absolute"},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[72,207,2],"tags":[193],"class_list":["post-1167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brexit-politics","category-peoples-vote","category-politics","tag-peoples-vote"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1167"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1173,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167\/revisions\/1173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}