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
Keep pretending there’s a difference, as you spout off your EU hate again while moaning about perfectly good English.
Keep making nonsense as to what I believe, as you ask why I don’t hate the UK and frantically want to cause, as you do, an even worse depression by causing billions to flow to other countries and not the UK because of the business uncertaincy you’d embrace.
You evidently have your cash on a UK economic crash.
And I don’t pretend to speak for the “ordinary people”, unlike you.
Guest
Ah yes, the “trash” idea of investments crossing borders. No City of London in your world, nope, as you make up nonsense about the Euro and criticise the Eurozone, which is doing better than we do.
Your claims “it’ll be fine”, with no evidence, ignoring what our trade parnters have said, as you ignore the fact you’re calling for trade barriers for everyone, and trying to make out that you’ll magically be able to get replacement trade from a commonwealth which has little use for us, in general.
5+ years for new trade treaties. Not with America or China, of course, per statements. But hey, only facts, as you try and make Britain poorer.
So – common sense, right, you’ll stop attacking the UK you hate so much and go back to Monaco. Good, seeya!
Guest
Ah yes, your 15% of “true Brits”. The other 85% of voters are not real to you, as you show your hate for the Other.
Stop throwing hot drinks in people’s faces and demanding that, as you’re burning them, they must adopt your minority views.
Guest
Plenty of people want to leave the trading agreements. Every last UKIP supporter, for instance.
There’s going to be a few pro-Russians who want us to join the Eurasian Union, your absolutes are silly.
The comprimise is that your minority get to vote for your party at the general election, and lose. It’s not giving up a massive chunk of sovereignty, and to have to apply more EU law in things like employment than we do today…and still lose a bunch of trade.
The EU has a massive web of trade treaties, which we’d not be able to access…but oh no, you’ll magically start trading with “Africa”, never mind that we do. As you say that negotiating as an isolated voice, taking 5+ years to get any trade treaties done etc. is “helpful”, etc.
You won’t even accept democracy – it gives a very good picture of why YOU would not accept a referendum, and why it’d divide and cause even more issues on top of the massive loss of investment.
Guest
Your mistake is thinking the EU has your goals, as you spit hate at the Germans.
Your “common sense” is that we must run, fearfully, into poverty and isolation. As you demand that the only way to really hurt the British you hate so much is to vote for a minority party with views well outside the norm.