Previously unseen polling shows how difficult the Leave vote is to shift - even in the face of overwhelming economic evidence. We must build a vision for remaining in the EU.
The government’s leaked Brexit impact assessment – obtained by BuzzFeed this week – was music to the ears of many Remainers. It showed that under every scenario, the UK will be worse off because of Brexit.
But while a great scoop, here’s the thing: it doesn’t really change anything.
“It reached the kind of conclusions which would be expected by anyone following the detail of the debate so far. Brexit will impact the UK negatively in every sector, in every part of the country,” notes politics.co.uk‘s Ian Dunt, in a piece entitled ‘The economic case against Brexit is now unarguable’.
Of course, the report is significant in that it comes from government itself – Ministers cannot reasonably claim it to be the work of ‘Remainiacs’ or mutineers (even if they have tried to blame the civil service).
The problem is when this kind of messaging is relied on by Remainers: for too long, we have assumed economic arguments and stats will win people over.
In the referendum campaign, it was the lower GDP projections, or the notional ‘loss of income per person’. It was the higher tariffs and reduced labour power. It was the price of goods and the ‘pound in your pocket’.
It did not work.
The arguments are well-rehearsed, but there’s broad agreement that Project Fear in large part failed because it lacked values, vision, or positive cases for staying in. The Leave campaign spoke of sovereignty and British principles. The question is: have we properly learnt this lesson?
To win next time, Remainers will have to convince a large swathe of former Leave voters to switch sides.
We can now reveal just how difficult to shift the Leave vote is – even in the face of economic calamity. BMG Research polling for Best for Britain and Left Foot Forward shows:
- When asked whether ‘prices going up significantly’ would make people switch from Leave to Remain, just 7% of Leave voters said it would change their view
- We asked if ‘the national economy going into a recession’ would change their view. Just 9% of Leave voters said it would
- Even when asked if they’d change support if their ‘personal finances [got] worse’, again only 7% said they would switch to Remain
- The figure rises to 11% when asked their view if the ‘NHS [was] damaged / worse off as a result’ of Brexit: 11% of Leave voters would back halting Brexit
All of this goes to show that people – rightly or wrongly – view Brexit as an issue of values, not of rigid economic projections.
It’s positive to see Remain groups uniting to limit the worst of Brexit and to give voters a fresh say. But they also must come together with a unifying vision for Remaining in the EU – one which builds on identity, not leaked impact memos.
There does seem to be growing recognition of this fact. Best for Britain’s Eloise Todd told this site:
“This polling shows pretty starkly how we need to make the patriotic case for staying and leading in Europe – a case about values and principles, and less about the past.
“If we hark back to the past we lose. [But] if we make the positive case looking forward we can win.
“The public have the right to change their mind if they don’t like what is happening, and Best for Britain are campaigning every day to make the positive pro-European case.”
While it’s true that the economic argument is broadly settled, the challenge now is winning the much bigger argument – that of vision and values.
Source Note: BMG Research interviewed a representative sample of 1,513 UK adults online between 9th & 12th January. Data are weighted. BMG are members of the British Polling Council and abide by their rules.
The question asked was: ‘Thinking about the following scenarios in relation to the UK’s exit from the EU, which scenario(s) would make you switch your support from Leave to Remain?’ with different scenarios.
Josiah Mortimer is Editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter.
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9 Responses to “Revealed: Why Remainers can’t win the Brexit debate solely on economics”
Michael
the Vote was 52:48. 9% of Leavers would change their minds. So, we only have to get 3 of them!?
nhsgp
So Mr Stupid Racist Bigot, can I count on your support this time?
The proverbial bucket of cold sick when it comes to campaigning.
Remainers have gone round abusing people who leave. Look at CiF over on the Guardian for the bile dished out day after day to click bait headlines.
It’s too late. People have got the message.
For Labour that’s the disaster. One side abusing the other, and now a private company wants to take Labour over.
nhsgp
The public have the right to say that politicians do what they have been told to do.
Then after a period, say 20 years we can evaluate what has improved.
On the prediction front its the same people who said 500,000 immediate job losses on a leave vote, which has turned out to be one of the biggest errors in forecasting since the captain of the titanic said a iceberg couldn’t sink the ship.
nhsgp
The arguments are well-rehearsed, but there’s broad agreement that Project Fear in large part failed because it lacked values, vision, or positive cases for staying in
============
You couldn’t say what the EU would morph into so Brexiteers rightly concluded they wouldn’t vote for the unknown
Next how are you going to convince people to stay and pay that 100,000 million EU debt pile? [UK share]
You know the bit left off from your campaign
Martyn Wood-Bevan
According to the LSE most predictions are very flawed. They calculate that a very hard Brexit would only cause less than 2% damage on the economy and any effect will have gone by 2030. As the 2008 crash caused 8% damage this would be a very small price to pay to rid ourselves of the excessive control of the EU: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/how-bad-will-brexit-really-be-for-the-uk/