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”
Guest
Ah yes, trade matters not to your far right. As you claim that attacking the UK makes you “industrious” and that your far right is a “country”, as you say that trade “takes all our money”, and that allowing trade takes away your indetity.
Then you deny that 85% of British people are British, as you demand that democracy be replaced with your rule. As ever.
Vote against trade, your dogma.
BigRed
Guest try looking up the word ‘Metaphor’.
Because you do not understand the metaphor behind ‘Farage parking his tanks on Labours back yard’ and the ‘peoples army marching to the ballot box’
There is no way that you are British. Have you been engaged by the EU to post all your numerous posts? If they want to sound genuine it is best they (your bosses) engage Brits to do their dirty work.
Vote UKIP
Dave Clarkson
I know I’m a racist because I’m told I’m a racist by a great deal of people. The hard Left think I’m a racist, the Labour Party thinks I’m a racist, Conservatives think I’m a racist, Liberal Democrats think I’m a racist, the BBC thinks I’m a racist. So I must therefore be a racist.
Why am I a racist? It’s very simple: I wish to preserve the culture of my country, I wish to preserve the people of my country, and in doing so that makes me a designated racist in today’s society.
Now this is something that’s been moved by the Left – the goalposts have been moved by the Left a considerable distance on this. In order to be termed a racist thirty or forty years ago, you had to actively dislike foreign people. I don’t dislike foreign people. What I do like, what I love, is my country, my culture and my people, and I see them under a terrible threat at the moment.
Britain is a very small country that’s opened its doors to the mass immigrants of the Third World, and we are simply being overwhelmed. Our schools can’t cope, our hospitals can’t cope, very little can cope any more. Our welfare system is on the verge of buckling as well. So if I want to defend what I grew up in, what I was born into – my country, my British culture, my heritage and my history – I am apparently, according to absolutely everybody today, a racist.
But I don’t think that’s the case. Not the case that I’m not actually a racist – I’m going to admit that full out, right now, because clearly I am. I’ve been told by so many people I am, it simply must be true. I’m probably also an Islamophobe.
A phobia is an irrational fear of something. Now I don’t have an irrational fear of Islam. I look around the world today, – at Syria at the moment, where almost a hundred thousand people have been killed in the last two years, where Shia Muslims are slaughtering Sunni Muslims and vice versa – I look at places like Indonesia, and Egypt, and China and the Philippines – everywhere you look you see problems with Islam. And they’re violent. They are – dare I say it, to really reinforce my racist credentials – a thoroughly savage political and religious ideology.
Now many people will disagree with that. The far Left of course will say, you cannot criticise Islam because Islam is a religion, and rules have now been put into place in this country that say if you criticise it, you are guilty of inciting religious hatred. But Islam is not just a religion, Islam is a political ideology as well and we need to call it out on the fact that it is also political. It is a culture that is both political and religious.
I would like to know if I’m able to say certain things about it. Do I think for example that stoning adulteresses to death is something we should welcome in this country? Well I don’t think it is. Therefore, I’m guilty of religious hatred by saying it. Do I think homosexuals should be hanged from cranes? No I don’t, I think it’s backward, I think it’s savage, and I think the people that do it are beyond the pale, quite frankly.
I’m not allowed to say these things because of course I’m again inciting religious hatred. So not only am I a racist, I’m also a religionist, apparently.
But I’m not. We have a huge problem in this country, that is not going to go away, it is going to get worse and worse and worse. We as a people are declining, as a demographic, and the Islamic population is growing nine times faster than any other; and when I look to the future I see a full-blown religious civil war occurring in this country. The unthinkable things that are going on in somewhere like Syria today will happen in this country before 2040, certainly before 2050. I don’t want Britain to turn into a country like that. So I’m going to denounce Islam as a backward, savage political and religious ideology, and to hell with what anybody thinks about that – because if we don’t do something about it, we are going to be involved in something that most people can barely even begin to imagine in Britain.
Babies are beheaded in towns in Syria. The idea this could happen in somewhere like Surbiton, or even Eaton Square, is simply impossible to think for most people but it is going to happen, it really is going to happen. So we need to denounce it for what it is. And we need to start mounting some sort of defence against it.
But the trouble with mounting a defence against it is that you get hit with the ‘racist’ accusation: “I’m not a racist, but …”. So here’s the thing: I am a racist. If I want to avoid a civil war happening in my country, I am prepared to accept being called a racist; and you should be prepared to accept being called a racist as well. Let’s all just say, “Yes, we’re dreadful, dreadful racists”, and let’s start denouncing an ideology that is the most primitive, backward, savage ideology that we’ve wilfully imported into this country – by the Left, by people like Tony Blair, who did it deliberately in order to undermine our culture, our people, our country, my country. They did it deliberately – and then they said you’re not allowed to actually argue with us about this.
Well I’m arguing with you about this Mr Blair. And I’ll tell you something: you … repealed the treason laws shortly after you came into power. I think you committed treason, Mr Blair. I think you committed treason when you said, we are going to import the Third World in order to “rub the noses of the right in diversity”. To me, that’s treason.
Your principal duty was to uphold the best interests of the people of this country. The idea that you deliberately set out to undermine us and to subvert us is an act that’s criminal. It doesn’t matter that you repealed the laws, those laws can be brought back. And one day Mr Blair, you will be tried for treason, along with the rest of your Cabinet and every single high-ranking Labour politician that allowed this criminal act to happen.
I’m going to tell you this. It doesn’t matter that you can perhaps prosecute me for ‘racism’ or inciting religious hatred. I don’t believe in that. I believe only in one thing: the defence of my country, the defence of my people, the defence of my culture. And everything else can just go to hell.
I am a racist.
Dave Clarkson
What history as part of Europe?
Guest
No surprise you deny British history, and claim we’re…ooh..Asian? What?