Brexit: Austerity-struck Leave voters now realise how European Union membership benefits them, new academic study finds

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Brexit: Austerity-struck Leave voters now realise how European Union membership benefits them, new academic study finds​

Many austerity-struck Leave voters are switching their support to Remain since they now recognise how European Union membership benefits them, according to a new academic study.

The findings are important because they suggest that the shock referendum result two years ago can be understood primarily as an economically-driven protest vote from many of these communities, rather than stemming from a deep-rooted antipathy to European Union membership itself.

The results also suggest that ending free movement for EU workers is not the dominant desire of the UK public, despite Theresa May’s focus on that goal in the contentious Withdrawal Agreement she has brokered.

Eleonora Alabrese and Thiemo Fetzer from the University of Warwick reached their conclusions by analysing evidence from 20,000 people provided by Survation, which was gleaned between 20 October and 2 November.

They found that many areas that supported leave in 2016 now show a significant swing to remain

The authors also note that Leave areas which had relatively high levels of EU immigration in the 2000s have also shifted markedly.

“The evidence is consistent with the idea that, in the course of the more than two and a half years since the referendum, the UK public has become more informed about how integration with the EU benefits their local communities,” they argue.
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Late, late. It’s very late. We didn’t try hard enough. And now? It’s very late.
 
It was an utterly irresponsible move for the government to put the UK to a referendum over something so important. And now those in power have run away, and will cope with Brexit just fine. Those who voted to leave and regret it are the ones who will suffer.
 
The article written for The Independent is what I am talking about.
 
Lou2U said:
It was an utterly irresponsible move for the government to put the UK to a referendum over something so important.
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I know. Giving people a role in determining how they’ll be governed? That’s crazy talk…
 
Giving people a vote on something most of them are ill equipped to make a decision on is irresponsible.
 
Actually I think leaving the EU is something of such a fundamental constitutional nature that asking the people to vote on it was justifiable. It was not a binding referendum, and on such a complicated topic, with no clear view of what circumstances leaving would be under, it was quite right that it should not be binding. The trouble is the Government have taken it as binding, whereas they should have noted the result, gone on to negotiations, arrived at the appalling position they are in now, and put the result to the public. The public did not vote for the particular proposals now before Parliament, or indeed for any other set of proposals. Time for the people to decide.
 
niceatheist said:
Giving people a vote on something most of them are ill equipped to make a decision on is irresponsible.
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Yes, that was really dumb (and ill-advised) on Cameron’s part. I’m not a big fan of referendums in general.
 
PickyPicky said:
Actually I think leaving the EU is something of such a fundamental constitutional nature that asking the people to vote on it was justifiable. It was not a binding referendum, and on such a complicated topic, with no clear view of what circumstances leaving would be under, it was quite right that it should not be binding. The trouble is the Government have taken it as binding, whereas they should have noted the result, gone on to negotiations, arrived at the appalling position they are in now, and put the result to the public. The public did not vote for the particular proposals now before Parliament, or indeed for any other set of proposals. Time for the people to decide.
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Isn’t the Parliament supposed to be responsible for negotiating treaties anyway? Shouldn’t they have a much stronger role in working this out, rather than leaving it to an easily manipulated electorate?
 
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ucfengr said:
I know. Giving people a role in determining how they’ll be governed? That’s crazy talk…
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‘Crazy talk’ is putting your country to a referendum to stop the split within the Conservative Party and running away when the result isn’t what you expected.
 
PickyPicky said:
Actually I think leaving the EU is something of such a fundamental constitutional nature that asking the people to vote on it was justifiable.
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That’s fair enough and I do agree with you. It’s just in this case, there was no plan for what ‘leave’ meant other than “we can have unicorns! And rainbows! And rainbow-coloured unicorns!” which is what’s got us into this mess. There was no information, hard data based on analysis from the government about what leaving meant. It wasn’t an informed choice people made, IMO. Especially when the Leave campaign has now been fined and Banks is under investigation.
 
while referendum is not one of the ways to amend the US constitution, my State has had ballot questions concerning amending the State constitution.
 
The EU’s problems have never gone away; only the cans have been kicked down the road. The people had decided they did not want to be tied to the EU’s problems. But the politicians and the bureaucrats have mostly wanted to remain so they made sure to put a Remain backer in charge and let her negotiate a settlement that was designed to make the UK look bad for wanting to leave and warn the other nations “this is what’s going to happen to you if you leave too”.

Regarding the article, the UK mainstream media supports EU membership and will say whatever it has to along those lines. For example, The Independent isn’t really for independence from the EU; rather, they have been one of the most vociferous backers of remaining from the beginning of the debate. Also don’t forget we are in an era where having politically incorrect opinions can get ordinary people into a lot of trouble. Hence if a stranger calls to take a poll, many people just hang up, myself included. Polling organizations in the US are only in the last few years starting to wake up to this.

All I’m saying is that it is not as cut and dried as the Remainers think.
 
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Lou2U said:
It’s just in this case, there was no plan for what ‘leave’ meant other than “we can have unicorns! And rainbows! And rainbow-coloured unicorns!” which is what’s got us into this mess. There was no information, hard data based on analysis from the government about what leaving meant. It wasn’t an informed choice people made, IMO. Especially when the Leave campaign has now been fined and Banks is under investigation
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Exactly right. And that’s why the result of the referendum, if referendum was needed, should have been taken to be the start of a period of investigation and report, with Parliament or People able to make a definite decision once the information was in hand.

Of course if one chooses to endanger the prosperity and international influence of the nation, and the peace of the island of Ireland, and the best interests of the continent, in order to avoid being bullied by the likes of Rees-Mogg junior, this is the morass one is just begging to sink into.
 
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