Justine Greening’s recent call for a multi-option referendum on Brexit brings to the fore the central dishonesty of the Referendum. Brexit cannot just mean Brexit: if it is to happen it will have to be a specific Brexit. And it is becoming increasingly clear that there is no feasible specific Brexit that can command the support of all those who voted for Brexit in general in the referendum.
Following Greening’s call, Yougov carried out an opinion poll asking about preferences between three options, which we can call Remain, Soft and Hard. The Soft option was described as `along the lines that Theresa May has set out’ (i.e. the Chequers proposal), while the Hard option was described as `leave the EU without a deal’.
What was unusual about this poll was that it asked for voters’ second preferences as well as their first. This is essential if we are to understand the real popularity of the options, and what the poll reveals is very interesting.
First preferences show an exact 50-50 balance between Remain and Brexit in this poll. However, when we compare Remain with either specific form of Brexit it has a clear majority: 55-45 against Hard Brexit, 60-40 against Soft. While Soft is narrowly preferred to Hard (53-47), a large proportion of Hard supporters (nearly half of them) would abstain rather than choose between Remain and Soft.
The poor showing of the Soft option is in interesting contrast to a similar poll Yougov carried out on Scottish Independence in 2012, where the compromise option (in that case `More Powers’) had a large majority over each of the extremes (No change, Independence). It is possible that there is a Soft option that could command majority public support, and be acceptable to the EU, but it seems that political pressures have pushed the government into an option – the Chequers proposal – that is widely viewed as unsatisfactory or unfeasible.
Is a 3-way referendum as suggested by Greening a plausible route forward? Almost certainly not, because there is unlikely to be agreement on how to count it. The most thorough method, comparing each pair of options as above, is likely to be thought too complicated. Professor Vernon Bogdanor has suggested a 2-stage vote, starting with the `gateway’ question of Brexit or not, followed if Brexit is preferred by a choice between the different Brexit options. But this would just repeat the error of the referendum, in assuming that those whose first preference is Soft Brexit all have second preference Hard Brexit, and vice versa; whereas the poll shows that neither is true.
For a referendum to be fair and acceptable, it needs to compare one specific Brexit option – `the Final Deal’ – with the equally specific alternative of Remain.
* Denis Mollison is Chair of Liberal Democrats for Electoral Reform, and has been a member of the party since joining the SDP in 1981. Here, he writes in a personal capacity.
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19 Comments
Let’s not forget that Mrs May started out the election with 65 percent and events whittled that right down, so today’s poll may have little bearing on the final results.
Possibly a quarter of the population are hardcore brexiteers and another quarter want to remain in the EU regardless, leaving half the population open to persuasion… so whoever is going to lead the remain campaign will need some very good arguments and solutions to the problems of being in the EU, not the somewhat vague promises of future reform…
There is no point in another referendum on various fantasy Brexits. The possibilities are: 1. The UK as a third country (like Canada), but with no Irish border, so Northern Ireland within the EU Single Market and Customs Union (or effectively so).
2. The UK in the Single Market and at least mostly in the Customs Union (I think there could be some exemptions here).
3. The UK rejects Brexit altogether and asks to stay as an EU member.
4. Not an option at all really, but this would be no agreement at all; this could not be a referendum option. No Deal is NOT hard Brexit, if taken literally it would be unimaginable chaos.
Unfortunately the YouGov poll deals with unfeasible, unrealistic Brexits, so hard to interpret on these grounds alone.
Any option presented has to be at least more or less feasible. All three feasible options have problems, which is where the negotiators should have been over a year ago, At least the words of some leading heads of state to the effect that the UK would be accepted back are encouraging, because without this option 3 would not be available.
Unless a special arrangement for Northern Ireland is accepted by the UK government that means no restriction on movement of people, goods, money and services across the land border, option 1 can be ruled out too.
Effectively. this would mean a choice between 2 and 3. I am not happy with referendums, however where we find ourselves, a referendum looks like the only way out. It should take place sooner rather than later.
I suspect, the only remotely likely referendum would be a simple binary reject deal/accept deal soft v hard Brexit affair. Less likely is a rerun of the in/out question just to make sure. Highly unlikely is a multi choice option loaded in favour of a Lib Dem party with about 8% of the electorate. Obviously, I could be wrong.
I think there needs to be a reality check included in the options:
Stay in EU with increased spending from improved tax receipts compared with leaving despite still paying into the EU.
Leave the EU with no deal, interest rates at 5-6 per cent to protect the pound and a cut in spending of circa 100 billion to reflect decreased govn revenues despite savings from not paying into the EU.
If it’s too short a time to properly organise a second referendum, I suppose putting Article 49, to re-join the EU into the next Liberal Democrat manifesto, would in a roundabout way count the next GE as a proxy second referendum?
I think that there is a later version of this poll (http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/kgfdyeogty/SundayTimesResults_180720_for_web.pdf) based upon fieldwork 3-4 days later.
It seems to show significant changes in some of the numbers but I wouldn’t read any sort of trend into that. It might be worth repeating the analysis discussed in this article on that second data set or even on the two data sets combined.
If it’s too short a time to properly organise a second referendum, I suppose putting Article 49, to re-join the EU into the next Liberal Democrat manifesto, would in a roundabout way count the next GE as a proxy second referendum?
@Peter Watson
Thanks for drawing my attention to the later poll. I can’t do the full analysis on it because it doesn’t give the detailed preference data (tho’ I expect Yougov will provide if I ask them nicely). It looks as though the main difference is that the Soft Brexit option has lost support (from 17% down to 11% in 1st preferences) to both Remain and Hard Brexit.
There is still time to pass an act of Parliament to have a referendum on 21st March 2019. Time runs out in the autumn. It should be possible to use AV to decide between the three choices – the deal negotiated, no deal and staying in. The votes for the option coming third would be re-allocated to their second choice if they have one. It seems likely that if such a referendum was held in March 2019 staying in would win an AV election.
In Spring Vince said there could be a referendum called in October for the first week in December – that’s still feasible.
There’s some interesting data in the second poll. One is that the unweighted sample has a higher level of Remainers than Leavers which may point to it being difficult for the pollsters to find Leavers. The most telling figure though is the voting intention – the LibDem voting intention has gone up compared to 2017 but both Tory and Labour is down substantially.
Perhaps the calm voice of reason is having an effect. We just need to capture those 232 people who voted Tory or Labour who are looking for a home. I suspect some of them are Remainers.
Multi stage and three option referendums were used in the Newfoundland confederation referendum in 1948, instigated by the Atlee Labour government.
Although in their case, the right result came through and ordinary Newfoundlanders benefitted from a far more healthy economy.
The arguments thrown around then bear a fair similarity to our recent EU referendum, the anti-confederation campaign arguments certainly sounded rather similar to the leave campaigners in many ways.
It’s odd no one has spotted the similarities, to my knowledge at least!
I too think a three way choice is probably unworkable and unnecessary.
But it might reduce the betrayal narrative.
One way of holding it would be for stage 1 to choose the best available Brexit and stage 2 some weeks later to choose between best available Brexit and Remain.
More in this blog:
http://www.london4europe.co.uk/two_choices_two_dates
If and I hope we do have another referendum, let’s get the process right. There must be strict rules about what is allowable and what is not with stiff sanctions for those who exceed the boundaries. The people have the right to receive the right information to make a reasoned choice from a number of options.
My thanks to all who have commented, even Glenn who seems to suspect me of advocating a multi-choice referendum loaded in favour of the Liberal Democrats. On the contrary, while the multi-choice opinion poll is very interesting and informative, a multi-choice referendum is almost certainly not on. Apart from straight opposition to another referendum, there’s unlikely to be agreement on how to structure it: I cited the Bogdanor `gateway’ suggestion, which is biased against Remain; Michael BG suggests AV (as did Peter Keller in the Economist) which is biased against the compromise option (Soft); the fairest would be Condorcet, whose downside is the (remote) possibility of being indecisive (R>S>H>R).
The key implication of the poll is that, not surprisingly, support for Brexit depends on what sort of Brexit it is. Therefore, before a final decision is taken Brexit needs to be defined. There must come a point where we know more or less what Brexit means – the best `final deal’ that the government and the EU can actually agree on. As I understand it, there then has to be a period of time during which the other 27 EU countries decide whether to endorse it. During that period there needs to be a democratic test of whether the UK also backs the deal. If opinion polls at that stage show a majority in favour of the deal, then the government can get away with just a vote in parliament. But if polls show a majority against the deal, only a referendum or general election will be democratically acceptable.
I don’t buy the argument that a three-way referendum is impossible.
Sure, it would be difficult. But the country is facing the increasing prospect of a no deal. Two years after the Referendum, there is no consensus in the Tory party as to what type of Brexit we should have, let alone in Parliament.
In such a situation, the alternative to a referendum may be this crop of MPs going down in history as a total laughing stock. These politicians know they who may end up responsible for a crisis where there is a shortage of medicine, food and ,for a period, the planes not flying.
They know that they will have to answer their grandchildren’s question: why did you let this happen?
If MPs cannot come up with a compromise solution in a couple of months, then a Referendum may be their only way out.
The main problem with a three-way Referendum is May and Corbyn don’t want one. She wants whatever deal she comes up with to be passed. She knows it’ll be incredibly unpopular, but she thinks it will pass if the alternative is armageddon.
I suspect Corbyn doesn’t want one, because a no deal exit, which he can blame on the Tories, would be an ideal setting for him winning a General Election. Everything that went wrong after that he could blame on the Tories, which he continued to dig the country deeper into the hole of his ideological socialist protectionist state.
As to whether our parliamentary procedures can handle this, if the alternative is sufficiently awful, surely they could find a way. The question is, will they have the courage to stand to the extremists, and their awful leadership, in order to save the UK from this disaster.
According to Liam Fox (of where is Werritty fame) a No Deal is looking increasingly likely. The Governor of the Bank of England is expressing increasing fears that this is the case.
Should there be a ‘No Deal’, constitutionally where does that leave Mrs May ? Surely she should resign as PM ? Then what ? A general election ?
@George Kendall
Don’t get me wrong, I’d be very happy with a 3-way referendum; if it has to be in 2 stages, it should be as Michael Roberg suggests – first clarify which sort of Brexit, then compare that with Remain.
Denis,
I think a two stage referendum is unlikely,
One of the barriers to a Referendum is that people hated the experience of the last one. It divided families, broke friendships, etc.
A two stage Referendum would extend the process, as it does in the Presidential election in France. A Referendum with three choices, with a transfer if your option isn’t in the top two, would get the pain over faster.
That’s effectively AV, which generally discriminates against the compromise option, so it’s high risk. The fair way is Condorcet, where you use the preferences expressed to tell which is preferred of each pair: on the opinion poll figures, Remain is preferred to both Soft and Hard (and Soft is preferred to Hard) so Remain is the clear winner.