A new poll by YouGov for The People's Vote campaign shows that remain would win a new referendum by 53% to 47%. Details haven't been released yet but newspapers have picked it up (HERE). The poll was of 10,000 people so very significant and probably quite accurate. This isn't a surprise, it simply confirms the last YouGov poll on 11th June asking the same question. What is amazing is that 27% either still think the promises made by the leave campaign will be fulfilled or don't know. Where have they been? Clearly there is still work to do.
The other significant results are that if the other option is to leave without a deal the result increases to 56 - 44% and a majority now back a second referendum.
The government and the Brexiteers will not find these numbers comforting. It's obvious that resistance to Brexit is growing but more than that, a sizeable majority are against a no deal outcome which means the EU need offer us nothing in the negotiations and simply wait for reality to kick-in.
I think perhaps the limitations of campaigning on an emotional level alone are starting to become clear. It's okay to appeal to emotion if you have something solid to underpin it but if not, and particularly if the emotional campaign actively and deliberately disguised the truth, sooner or later voters will realise they were looking at the emperor's new clothes.
An article HERE on the LSE website by a professor of Sociology focuses on the mess that the Brexit negotiations have reached and even suggests the country is becoming ungovernable because of what he calls, "This self-generated demand overload [which] is precisely the plight arising from current Brexit negotiations."
The author proposes a five year moratorium to allow both sides to reset things, take stock and work out a better way forward. I certainly think there will need to be a delay of some sort. However, despite calling the 2016 referendum "ill-fated", he totally rules out a second referendum on the grounds that it wouldn't solve anything. This just doesn't seem a rational approach.
Think about it. You ask a group of friends for advice on some important or even crucial matter. A small majority opt for a particularly wild and aggressive solution which quickly proves far more difficult and costly. One or two of the friends, on reflection, decide they gave bad advice, and change their mind which means there is now a majority who think you should do nothing. What do you do?
1. Change your mind and do nothing?
2. Press on anyway even though most of your friends think you're doing the wrong thing?
3. Pause and spend five years thinking up a better way to do the wrong thing?
If you answered 2, I would suggest you book yourself in for a rational thinking course. If you answered 3, I would seek professional help - but not from the LSE professor who wrote the article.
