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
So you claim I’m not British because I don’t have your hateful sense of spite which you term “humour”.
No, armies march against their enemies. As you’ve made plain, as you deny I’m British because I don’t share your calls for armed insurrection against the British state. I’m sure you love killing Europeans, which of course includes British people, as you talk down to the people you see as inferior, and want to block the borders and smash trade.
You don’t want to, I get it, you’re actively doing so – guns are not ballot boxes, and armies are not political parties. Your wording has given you away.
Thanks for pointing out the danger your fifth column poses to Britain.
Guest
Keep blaming everyone else for your racist views. You are trying to impose your far right political views onto the majority who don’t share their views, as you oppose Britain and it’s democracy.
You are actively preaching your cause, as you desperately try and get away from the discussion which can only happen if people are honest about their views. Your love for your political views, as you oppose Britain, is evidently driving you to try and lie about where you stand.
You see a black face as a threat to you, I understand, perfectly, as you chant the lies and hate and try and inspire bigotry and violence against the Other. As you blame the Other for entire domestic economic issues, as you go on the offensive and attack people for not believing as you do.
No surprise you’re out to get Muslims, I understand you need to prove you’re worse than any “mere Islamist” – and no doubt you have a line next to that for the Jews like any good far right thug – as you talk crap about demographics and how you hate the Other.
No surprise you see democracy as treason, that not having your purges and pogroms of everything and everyone different to you means that there’s something terribly wrong. Your calls for murdering people in cold blood for not being anti-trade and allowing the 99% to sometimes cross borders really does define you.
You are attacking, with your your far right views, Britain. You are a hell-raiser, an enemy of everything Britain has stood for. You evidently detest Britain, it’s culture and it’s people and are trying to replace those with your twisted society which would strongly resemble North Korea.
You’re a mere criminal thug.
Guest
So at this late date, you’re trying to back down from your calls for violence.
Nope, don’t believe you, as you scream that 85%+ of the population are not British, as you spin conspiracy theories to deny British people that status, as you throw your foreign values of hate onto the fire.
The conspiracy theories of evvvil foreigners sending their dirty mind control agends into discussion are yours.
Thanks for reminding people you’ll murder them if they dare vote anything else, too. Because it’s entirely logical based on what you said.
BigRed
Guest, have you looked up what metaphor means? Lets put it this way, you are either a European plant and are not British or you are just a mental case.
BigRed
Guest you are mental.