The poll was conducted by and among Tories in a small area of the UK known to be sympathetic to quitting the EU
Today’s Daily Express claims that 80 per cent of British people want to quit the EU.
In what it calls the ‘biggest vote on this country’s ties to Brussels for 40 years’, the paper cites a poll which says that 11,706 out of 14,581 people voted to leave. The Express goes on to claim that the ‘overwhelming’ result boosts its own crusade to get Britain out of Europe.
Yet even the most cursory examination of the polling method used by the paper reveals the results to be skewed to the point of discredit.
The poll was organised by Conservative MPs Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone and Conservative candidate Tom Purslove, and was conducted across their three constituencies in North Northamptonshire – Wellingborough, Kettering and Corby and East Northamptonshire.
In other words, this was a poll of Tories in one section of the country: the three in question are right-wing Tories who organised a poll among their own voters. This isn’t representative, as the Express claims.
In the East Midlands, where the constituencies are situated, UKIP received 32.9 percent of the votes in May’s European elections. Furthermore, UKIP and the Tories are closely aligned in this area.
UKIP have made several attempts to poach Mr Hollobone; in September they delayed selecting a candidate for Kettering because they were sure they could convince him to defect.
Outgoing local party chairman Jonathan Bullock said that ‘his views are exactly those of UKIP, they are not those of David Cameron’. Hollobone refuses to meet with constituents who wear a burqa or niqab, and has attempted to pass a Face Coverings (Prohibition) bill.
Peter Bone, meanwhile, wrote in an editorial for The Guardian in which he claimed that the sole reason he hadn’t defected to UKIP was because only Cameron could deliver a referendum on the EU.
And Tom Pursglove wrote last April for Conservative Home that:
“The British people have been denied their say on our membership of the European Union since 1975. When I am out knocking on doors in Corby and East Northamptonshire as part of my Listening Campaign, people regularly tell me that it is about time they had the chance to have their say.
“It is for that reason that Peter Bone MP, Philip Hollobone MP and I, as the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Corby and East Northamptonshire, are today launching a North Northamptonshire wide In-Out EU Referendum”.
So this ‘historic’ poll was conducted among people that the three MPs already knew were sympathetic to their aims and likely to give them the answer they wanted. Even today Bone admitted that, across the country, votes for an exit would ‘not [be] on the scale we have seen in North Northamptonshire’.
This is not to say that there is not a significant number of voters who want to quit the EU. The figures shift constantly, but tend to be roughly split down the middle. A Populus poll last April showed that 35 per cent of those surveyed would vote to stay and 32 per cent to leave.
An Ipsos Mori poll conducted in October indicated the highest level of British support for EU membership since 1991, with 56 per cent voting to stay in.
Ruby Stockham is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow her on Twitter
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118 Responses to “80 per cent of Britons want to leave the EU, says the Express. Except they don’t”
Dave Clarkson
Leon, please stop the never ending and meaningless buzz words.
The truth is not hate.
Dave Clarkson
WTF are you on?
Dave Clarkson
Our history as part of Europe, what history as part of Europe?
Dave Clarkson
You, not I, wish to go the usual –Oh yes, that evil guy with the black face route. So be it.
Statistics
U.K.
Victims of racist attacks in Oldham: 62% White
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1316725/Police-fear-Asian-gangs-may-set-up-no-go-areas.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1160552.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1296007.stm
Victims wounded in racist attacks: 83.3% White
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6128466.stm
Victims murdered in racist attacks: 41.4% White.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/oct/22/ukcrime.race
Racist assault victims: 62.5% White
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/most-race-attack-victims-are-white-1069502.html
1 in 5 murder/rape suspects are immigrants:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4437163/1-in-5-rape-and-murder-suspects-in-England-and-Wales-are-migrant.html
More hate crimes against Christians than against Muslims:
http://www.britainfirst.org/news/why-do-we-never-hear-about-hate-crimes-targeting-christians/
Blacks are 5 times more likely to commit violence against the person.
Blacks are 4 times ‘more likely’ to commit sexual offences.
Blacks are 15 times ‘more likely’ to commit robbery.
Blacks are over 6 times ‘more likely’ to commit fraud and forgery.
Blacks are over twice as likely to commit criminal damage.
Black are 5 times ‘more likely’ to commit drugs offences.
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/s95racetables0001.xls%20Sheet
Violence against the person is 5 times more prevalent in the black community, than in the white community.
Drugs offences are 16 times more prevalent in the black community, and 3 time more prevalent in the Asian community, than in the white community.
Robbery is over 9 times more prevalent in the black community, than in the white community.
Committing homicide is 6 times more prevalent in the black community, and twice as prevalent in the Asian community, than it is in the white community.
The homicidal killing of white people is 90 times more prevalent in the black community, than the homicidal killing of black people in the white community.
The homicidal killing of white people is 30 times more prevalent in the Asian community, than the homicidal killing of Asian people in the white community.
The number of white victims of interracial homicide is approximately 40 times greater than expected, when compared to the number of such victims in the minority (BME)community.
The white community suffers more victims of interracial and racially motivated homicide than all of the minority (BME)communities put together – despite the BME communities being less than 10 per cent of the total population.
The number of white victims of racially motivated homicide is approximately 50 times greater than expected, when compared to the number of such victims in the minority (BME)community.
http://www.cjsonline.gov.uk/downloads/application/pdf/Statistics%20on%20Race%20and%20the%20CJS%202006.pdf
Offenders:
“Street crimes”: 54% black
Robbery: 59% black
Gun crimes: 67% black
Victims:
Gun Crime: 29% black
Knife crime: 24% black
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/7856787/Violent-inner-city-crime-the-figures-and-a-question-of-race.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1290047/Metropolitan-Police-crime-statistics-reveal-violent-criminals-black–victims.html
41% of black African, 36% of Bangladeshi and 35% of Indian people feel they have a say in decisions affecting Britain, compared to 19% of white people.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1043717/One-whites-claim-victims-racism.html
72% of murder suspects in London are non-white.
http://www.bnp.org.uk/news/national/vibrant-enriched-london-where-three-quarters-murder-suspects-are-non-white
1. Black people are heavily overrepresented in all riots but one (Salford, 1.7% of arrests)
2. Over 50% arrested are black in all London riots (up to 82% black, 10% white in Lambeth)
3. All but two London areas (both central) with above average black population rioted
4. Poor and uneducated non-black areas did not riot or had small riots
5. Older black people are more likely to riot than whites of any age, incl. youths
6. Whites aged 10-17 are not overrepresented, blacks aged 10-17 are – heavily
7. Black Londoners are 2.87 times as unemployed as whites, but 9.65 times more likely to riot
http://humstats.blogspot.com/2011/11/england-riots-2011-new-police.html
All the above are facts, not hate speech, facts. Though to mention those facts is no doubt an act of nasty white hate.
Leon Wolfeson
I’m not writing your posts for you, and no it’s not so why do you choose hate?