Two thirds of the public are opposed to the government's sell off of Royal Mail, with over a third 'strongly opposed', according to a new YouGov poll.
Two thirds of the public are opposed to the government’s sell off of Royal Mail, with over a third ‘strongly opposed’, according to a new YouGov poll.
Interestingly, opposition to privatisation does now break down predictably across party lines.
While a majority of Tory voters oppose the sell off, far larger majorities of Labour, Lib Dem and UKIP voters believe the Royal Mail should not be privatised.
A rejoinder to the view that UKIP voters are merely disillusioned Tories (or even Thatcherites) is perhaps contained in the fact that far more UKIP than Tory supporters are opposed to the sell off .
This also highlights the schism between traditional and liberal conservatism – UKIP supporters tend to be worried about things like tradition whereas Tories of a more Thatcherite bent tend to view everything through the lens of monetary value.
According to YouGov:
Labour, Lib Dem and UKIP supporters oppose the sell-off by majorities of 78 per cent-11 per cent, 72 per cent-17 per cent and 76 per cent-18 per cent, respectively. Conservative voters are less opposed, but still tend to oppose the plans by 48 per cent-40 per cent. Additionally, while only 8 per cent of Conservative voters “strongly support” the sell-off, 20 per cent “strongly oppose” it; among Labour, those who “strongly oppose” outnumber those who “stongly support” it by a ratio of almost 25 to 1.
Yesterday Left Foot Forward gave five reasons why we believe the Royal Mail should remain in public ownership
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8 Responses to “Two thirds of public opposed to Royal Mail sell off, including majority of UKIP supporters”
riverbank
Its Funny how the EU involvement with Royal Mail is NEVER mentioned, this is worth a read from Ukip’s website.
It was EU state-aid laws which resulted
in the closing of thousands of Post Offices several years ago. These EU rules
are intended to stop the government intervening to “distort” the EU
Common Market by favouring one company over the other – but in practise what
happened was that the Government was banned, by the EU Commission, to give the
Post Office network the subsidies it needed to keep every branch open – which
led to large-scale closures up and down the country.
Labour MEP, Brian Simpson, championed
the legislation and helped to force it through the EU parliament! Yet the
Labour party now pretend it’s a bad thing to privatise the mail
There were several votes in the EU
“parliament” on this privatisation of the mail service and at every
stage it was only UKIP that voted against. Labour, Lib Dems and the Tories all
voted in favour of these EU laws.
Cole
It’s the government, not the Eu, that’s now flogging off Royal Mail. Of course, Labour tried to do it previously.
riverbank
Thats assuming you think our government are in control of making decisions, I know that they are not, they are entirely puppets of the EU and the EU are completely involved with what has happened to the Royal Mail.
“It was of course three successive EU
Postal Services Directives that created this mess, and under the same
law the Government will be banned from giving the Royal Mail any state
aid if it catastrophically fails.
blazeaway
Riverbank is exactly right – it is due to the EU.
The EU now has ‘competence’ for competition matters and, with that power, has ruled that govt subsidies are a distortion of the market.
The EU is now the sovereign power in Britain. What amuses me is how politicians of all three major parties like to pretend that they are making decisions. They are ashamed to admit how much power they have given away.
They know the citizenry would be furious if they understand how we now take orders from abroad – so they pretend to have powers they don’t and will even lie if directly challenged.
I was a Labour activist, canvasser, election organiser etc etc for 25 years. I have realised what is going on and am now happier – as a democrat -in UKIP. I am amazed at how few left-wingers realise the nature of the EU.
Redshift1
This is patently rubbish that the EU is forcing the government’s hand on this. Most EU states have state-run postal services.