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
Mike, Guest is just one of those who have been brain washed by the Europhiles led by the ConLibLab nancy boys. They think the world consists of Europe. The EU has virtually destroyed the economy of Greece, Italy, Spain and Ireland. If we remain in the EU they will destroy us by allowing free movement of peoples across Europe. This is undoubtably the cause of the problems in the NHS and that being experienced by our councils. The more immigrants the more our debt will rise and the NHS being unable to cope and the councils going bankrupt. We have to get out of Europe else we’ll eventually become a basket case.
Common sense says that it is time to vote UKIP.
Dave Clarkson
Yes, yes I am an extremist, and nothing, absolutely nothing, done by Islamists is their fault. In your dismissive and patronizing opinion, are they( Islamists) incapable of making any disition for themselves?
The barbaric Muslim extremist ISIS have killed 13 teenage boys for
watching a football match between Iraq and Jordan in the Asian Cup last
week.
The young lads had been found watching the game on television in Mosul, Iraq
which is run by the Islamic State, and were rounded up and their ‘crime’ –
breaking religious laws by watching football – was read out on a loudspeaker
before they were executed in public by a firing squad using machine guns.
A report by anti-ISIS
activist group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RIBSS) said on its
website:
‘The bodies remained
lying in the open and their parents were unable to withdraw them for fear of
murder by terrorist organisation.’
The news of the savage
execution of the young football fans comes just a couple of days after ISIS
published a gruesome video showing two men being thrown from the top of a tower
block in the same city.
Charges were read against the two men accused by a masked Islamic State
fighter declaring the men are guilty of participating in homosexual activities
and in line with the evil 7th Century Sharia law they should be punished by
death.
I am happy with the West. I am not happy with the continued Islamification of the West.
Dave Clarkson
We regularly
get told when we argue about welfare uptake by certain of immigrants to Britain
that Brits move abroad to Europe etc in large numbers also and can claim welfare
in their new host nations.
What they fail to tell
us that the majority of Brits moving abroad do so to retire on their pensions
and acquire private health care or to work.
In Britain we have
witnessed the hundreds of thousands of Roma and poor Eastern Europeans on
welfare take up once they are here.
We also have asylum
seekers and Third World immigrants taking out from the welfare
budget.
We have all seen the
stories of people laughing in our faces as they build sumptuous homes back in
Eastern Europe funded by, child benefit and other welfare payments boosting the
economies of Poland and other nations.
Now new research has
proved that the number of immigrants to Britain on certain welfare payments such
as Jobseeker’s Allowance take up is double that of Brits doing such abroad in
other EU nations.
The research figures
show around 65,000 EU nationals claim Jobseeker’s Allowance in Britain, compared
to just under 30,000 British nationals claiming out-of-work benefits in other EU
countries.
Of the thousands
claiming welfare handouts in Britain, almost 23 per cent are Polish
nationals.
More than 14,800 Polish
nationals live and claim Jobseeker’s Allowance in Britain today – outnumbering
their British counterparts by 7,440 to one.
Research based on
responses from 23 of the 28 EU member states – reveals only two Britons
currently claim jobless benefits in Poland!
Slovakia and Portugal
are second and third highest number of claimants – with 6,690 and 6,210
nationals from the two countries receiving out-of-work benefits in Britain
respectively.
Meanwhile, only 238
British nationals claim unemployment welfare in either country.
Yet these figures do
not include the numbers of immigrants in Britain receiving Disability Living
Allowance, Housing Benefit, Child Benefit Working or Child Tax
Credits.
We have seen whole
streets and in part neighbourhoods transformed in Britain into Eastern European
and Roma strongholds with welfare uptake extremely high as their rent is covered
by those in work paying taxes.
In England and Wales,
sorry no figures available for Scotland, around 600,000 council or social
housing is now taken up by immigrants with a further 400,000 on Housing
Benefit.
The Tories are trying
to stop the uptake by large numbers of certain immigrants to a whole range of
benefits by changing our laws. Yet whilst some new rules have stopped such
claiming some welfare payments, they are being challenged in the European Court
on the basis that we as a nation signed EU treaties allowing such
claiming.
Yes, our political
leaders signed us up to equality across the EU and will attempt to blame the EU
when the court cases come out in favour of the immigrant claimants later this
year.
Expect millions to be
paid out in compensation to immigrants who have been denied welfare payments
under recent new legislation, after we signed previously EU treaties that agreed
equality for all EU citizens to claim the same as citizens of the host
nation.
The native British working class gain nothing!
Dave Clarkson
Leon, why do I feel you would be right up there, demanding your right to a referendum to remain in the EU?
Graham Trimmer
Like the Scottish Independence matter has been left to rest for a generation…….