EU Referendum


EU referendum: a prelude to defeat


25/02/2015



000a BI-024 jump.jpg

Picking up on my piece from last night, we find Steven Tindale, an Associate Fellow at the Centre for European Reform, exulting in the fact that the "anti-EU side" does not have an agreed alternative plan to the EU, which he finds "encouraging".

That the opposition can so easily make this comment says a great deal about our so-called movement. After all these years, it is not only the leading eurosceptic party that has failed to come up with a coherent "plan". It is the movement as a whole – discordant, disjointed, fractious and antagonistic.

It can be no coincidence, therefore, that YouGov is now reporting that, from its routine EU referendum poll, 45 percent would vote to remain in the EU and only 35 percent would vote to leave. This is YouGov's largest "in" lead since its records began in September 2010 (see graphic below).

There is, by contrast, the recent Opinium Poll which gave us 44 percent ion favour of leaving and 41 percent who want to stay in – a slender margin at best, but one which uses different methodology and cannot give comparable results.

YouGov's data are comparable over time, and find support for EU membership at an all-time high of 45 percent, up from 42 percent last month, presenting a sombre picture for those amongst us who have ambitions of fighting and winning a referendum. 

000a YouGov-025 record.jpg

For Ukip, the polls present a similarly gloomy picture (for party supporters), at 13 percent on a downwards trend that has yet to reach bottom. And perhaps even more telling is the poll on the future of Ukip. In October last year, fresh after Douglas Carswell's victory in Clacton, the polling company measured the public mood about Ukip’s future as a force in British politics – if it would fade away, or remain an important feature for at least the next ten years.

At that time, the public fell on the side of longevity, by 49-35 percent but, in the months since, that position has reversed, and by a wider margin. Currently, the majority (53 percent) think the party will fade. Only 30 percent think it will endure. And more than twice as many Ukip voters (12 percent) express doubts about their party's future than in October (5 percent).

This is hardly surprising. As Autonomous Mind points out - and despite the denials – the "big fish" in the stagnant Ukip pond are shaping up for a battle for the heart and soul of what remains of the party after it's electoral defeat.

Given that the Conservative Party then manages to form a government, our ragged, uncoordinated, leaderless troops will then be facing a battle for the a greater prize, the end of our membership of the European Union.

Here, YouGov illustrates the odds against us. Imagine the British government under David Cameron has renegotiated our relationship with Europe, it says, and says that Britain's interests were now protected. Against his recommendation that Britain remain a member of the European Union on the new terms, respondents are asked how they would vote.

In this instance, the 45 percent who would vote to stay in the Union climbs to 57 percent and those who want to leave drop to a mere 21 percent.

Given that Mr Cameron – the man who "vetoed" an EU treaty – is quite capable of bringing back a real treaty from Brussels, with a renegotiation "package" sufficient to garner support from a gullible media, we will have been comprehensively outflanked and risk almost certain defeat.

Collectively, we have the better case, and the means to win the fight, but as time passes that looks less and less likely. Within the eurosceptic "movement" there is no will to win – that burning commitment to victory that is required for us to prevail.

The trouble is that, in order to reach rock bottom, and thence to develop that "killer" instinct that will eventually see us prevail, I think we must fight the battle – even if it means losing. But it must be a heroic failure, the lessons from which will lead us to understand what it takes to be successful.

The tragedy is, though, we do not have to lose – and even now our defeat is not certain until the final results have been declared. But for those who have led us to this pass, those who have put personal ambitions before the needs of the campaign, there will have to be a reckoning. They will have cost us dear.