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”
BigRed
Good grief ‘Guest’! Are you British? Obviously not, we are not intent on overthrowing any government by any other means but at the ballot box. As a non British poster, you must have taken Farage as being serious about parking his tanks on Labours back yard. How ridiculous are you. Really, but I can’t help but 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀 have a good laugh at your posts. British Citizens take note of who is trying to con you. Note every one, Guest is quite obviously not British so ignore all his posts and vote UKIP.
Guest – As you’re obviously not British, you do not appear to have a British sense of humour, so I cannot tell you to vote UKIP, but I can tell all the British citizens to vote UKIP.
BigRed
Guest, who is calling for civil wars. I’ve already worked out that you’re not British, see my post above. Are you a Merkel spy sent to argue against Ukippers.
Civil war sorry but I’m just about to burst out laughing, again – 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
HaHaHaHaHa civl war….
I’m sorry Guest I just cannot take you seriously.
Vote UKIP every one, as you can see quite clearly who is anti UKIP, non British citizens.
Dave Clarkson
You are too stupid to insult.
Dave Clarkson
Which races commit the most crime?
Thu, 14/03/2013 – 06:00
By Stephen Palmer-We are often told by the media and our liberal
government that the only difference between races is skin colour.
However, a look at crime statistics broken down by race suggests that
pigmentation is not the only thing that separates us.
By comparing official statistics from both the 2011 Census and 2011 crime
statistics from the Ministry of Justice, it is possible to calculate which races
in England and Wales proportionally commit the most crime.
The data shows that, out of the three races listed in the MoJ data, whites
commit proportionally the fewest crimes, Asians commit slightly more, and blacks
by far the most.
Some key stats are listed below, followed by the complete data, including
links to the source material.
Key statistics
• Proportionally, blacks in England and
Wales commit significantly more violent crimes – of all kinds – than whites
•
Blacks are 6.6 times more likely than whites to commit murder
• Blacks are
7.3 times more likely than whites to commit firearms offences
• Blacks are
3.7 times more likely than whites to commit rape
• Blacks commit over a
quarter of robberies in England and Wales, despite being only 3.3% of the
population.
They are over 12 times more likely than whites to commit robbery
•
Proportionally, Asians commit marginally more violent crime than whites.
They are more likely to commit murder, rape and robbery, and less likely to
possess firearms, blades, or steal from a person
The data:
Population
Population of England and Wales, source: 2011 ONS Census
White –
48,209,395 (85.97%)
[White British – 45,134, 686 – 80.48%]
Black –
1,864,890 (3.32%)
Asian – 3,820,390 (6.81%)
Chinese – 393,141
(0.7%)
Mixed race – 1,224,400 (2.18%)
Arab – 230,600 (0.41%)
Other –
333,096 (0.59%)
Total – 56,075,912
Crime
Offenders found guilty of selected offences by ethnicity in England and
Wales, 2011, source: MoJ
Murder
White – 223 (65.01%)
Black – 57 (16.61%)
Asian – 29 (8.45%)
Other –
4 (1.16%)
Not stated – 30 (8.74%)
Total – 343
Blacks are 6.6 times more
likely than whites to commit murder
Asians are 1.6 times more likely than whites to commit murder
Rape/attempted rape
White – 820 (71.11%)
Black – 118 (10.23%)
Asian – 85 (7.37%)
Other –
34 (2.94%)
Not stated – 96 (8.32%)
Total – 1153
Blacks are 3.7 times more likely than whites to commit rape
Asians are 1.3 times more likely than whites to commit rape
Robbery/assault with intent to rob
White – 5054 (54.54%)
Black – 2377 (25.65%)
Asian – 730
(7.87%)
Other – 279 (3.01%)
Not stated – 825 (8.90%)
Total – 9265
Blacks are 12.2 times more likely than whites to commit robbery
Asians are 1.8 times more likely than whites to commit robbery
Stealing from the person of another
White – 4514 (67.47%)
Black – 682 (10.19%)
Asian – 301 (4.49%)
Other
– 226 (3.37%)
Not stated – 967 (14.45%)
Total – 6690
Blacks are 3.9 more likely than whites to steal from the person of another
Possession of an article with a blade or point in a public place or
on school premises
White – 4518 (72.26%)
Black – 1034 (16.53%)
Asian – 224
(3.58%)
Other – 93 (1.48%)
Not stated – 383 (6.12%)
Total – 6252
Blacks are 5.9 more likely than whites to commit of knife offences
Possession of firearms, certificate related and miscellaneous
firearms offences
White – 989 (64.05%)
Black – 281 (18.19%)
Asian – 72 (4.66%)
Other –
33 (2.13%)
Not stated – 169 (10.94%)
Total – 1544
Blacks are 7.3 more likely than whites to commit firearms offences
Notes on the statistics
While the Census data features a wide range of racial categories, the MoJ
data includes just five: white, black, Asian, other, and not stated.
This makes it impossible to determine the mixed race crime rate. It is also
difficult to determine exactly what is meant by ‘Asian’ in the MoJ data.
The ‘Asian’ population in the above calculations has been arrived at by
adding together the Census categories of the following: ‘Asian/Asian British:
Indian’, ‘Asian/Asian British: Pakistani’, ‘Asian/Asian British: Bangladeshi’,
‘Asian/Asian British: Asian Other’. It excludes ‘Asian/Asian British: Chinese’
and ‘Arab’.
This is in accordance with the LFS variable ETHUKEUL
BigRed
Guest I replied to you but my reply was deleted. I know you are not British because you do not understand the British humour. We are NOT striving to remove the current government by force as you seem to think. Our ‘army’ is marching to the ballot box. Farage’s tank parked on the Labour heartland is just a mode of speech.
I’m sorry I can’t take you seriously as I can see from your posts that you are definitely a plant by Europe and are not British.
British have a sense of humour that you continental types have never been able to understand.
We do NOT hate Europeans, in fact we LOVE Europeans. What we HATE is the EU and we don’t want to be governed by the EU and we do not want to be a part of it.
WE DON’T WANT TO OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT BY FORCE, we want to vote the ConLibLab out of office at the BALLOT BOX.
Does that make it quite clear?
Vote UKIP