The reasonable conclusion from that data is that at least half the UK still has considerable doubt about the wisdom of leaving the EU. I am amongst their number.
And what Labour is doing, in a first past the post electoral system in which the government is determinedly pro-Brexit, is to refuse to represent those people. The result is that, with the best will in the world towards the smaller parties in England and Wales, there is no real prospect of political representation for around half the population in those countries at present.
So, peeps must be represented, right? If that’s the way they feel then a political party that represents them is necessary?
Hmm. Some substantial number of Britons are racist. Somewhere between a few percent for the BNP types and given that all whites are guilty of racism some 86% of the country.
Where is P³’s insistence that there must be a racist party in British politics?
Call it the Anti-Colonialist Party? Motto ‘Stop Racist Imperialist Invasion Now’?
You can’t have a party that represents every issue. They will be interested in the most important ones. They will leave some wriggle room for the minor issues.
If you want to bring back flogging, Grammar Schools and rationing you are unlikely to find a party that will give you all three.
Most people used to support capital punishment. They have no party.
SMFS,
‘used to’?
Criminalisation of homosexuality, fox hunting …
There was an EU referendum only because a single-issue party was enough of a threat to the major parties that a referendum was promised, with the unstated aim of putting the issue to bed until the EU assimilation was irreversible. The major parties do not like such issues. So you are not able to discuss them. The biggest currently is immigration. There is no doubt in my mind that a referendum on the subject would result in a vote to restrict immigration substantially. That’s why we’ll never get one, they surely won’t make that mistake again. (Except that the mistake of the Scottish referendum is ongoing, because they can’t put the issue to bed.)
Oh, and to return to the headline subject, what do these people, half of the electorate, actually want to DO about Brexit? Pretend it never happened and we were still in? Rejoin? Under the old terms, or the new reformed ones they often promised but never defined or delivered? Would the EU have us back without a punishment beating? Labour would be well advised to accept the fait accompli.
As Rhoda says, the nonsense of Spud’s point is that, for decades, no major parliamentary party did represent the majority who voted to leave.
Brexit is done and we won. Starmer is already an irrelevance to most voters. Banging on about Brexit would achieve nothing but a bit of virtue signalling to the Islington set. Obviously Spud can’t see this, political genius that he is,
Didn’t the Lib Dems contest the last election on a promise of cancelling Brexit? How did they do?
Same old remainiac bullshit– “more than half the country support EU membership etc”.
What were they doing 23/6/16 and subsequent election days? Washing their hair?
in a galaxy a long long time ago i remember Tim describing Norway – all political parties want in but everytime they put it to the electorate the answer is no…so all the political parties sign up to anything and everything EU proposes instead…including being subject to EU rules. That is the future UKremainers want. And given only a thin red,white,blue line of politicos wanted the Boris Brexit in the first place, it could very well be our future too. The last hope being Brexit gets a few vaccine like wins in the public and ruling elite consciousness to avert the EUists striking back.
@ Mr Ecks
Even Murphy does not claim that – he said that a majority have doubts about the wisdom of leaving the EU.
A lot of us have doubts about the wisdom of appointing Joe Root as Test Captain – his batting was noticeably better when he wasn’t worrying about captaincy and for the first two years he didn’t bowl often enough (Eoin Morgan as Captainused his bowling more frequently and effectively than he did).
Having doubts is not the same as opposing.
There is only one simple argument. The rules of the game. Most recently demonstrated after the ’16 referendum. Those with the power call the shots. Well, the power changed hands at the ’19 election & is now nominally in the hands of the Brexit faction. So Spud can waffle all he likes about “democratic deficits”. Democracy is irrelevant. Power counts. As it counts on all the other issues. And on those, it may shift. If he doesn’t like it, he should have been accepting democracy in ’16.
One suspects that the EU vaccine debacle means that the number having ‘doubts’ about leaving the EU is significantly smaller today than it was a year ago, and nowhere near a majority in favour of rejoining.
You have to love all this bile against FPTP from the Nats. They don’t understand the mess that results from myriads of single issue parties, because they are a single issue party themselves. They have nothing to offer in the economic or social sphere. Prop Rep allows these parties to have power without responsibility. A cold hard look at the Nats’ performance in Scotland and Wales suggests that they need the union more than the union needs them
John77, doesn’t Joe Root’s recent run of form (2 doubles plus a big one) make you want to change your mind on that?
@ Diogenes
Last time I looked he had just got 6 and 33. Yes, I was cheered by his performance in Sri Lanka and the first test but remember that he was rated in the top three batsmen in the world before he was Captain and a couple of years later he briefly dropped out of the top ten. So I retain doubts: the big problem is “who else have we got?” – conventional wisdom is that it is hard for a bowler to know when to take himself off (maybe Garfield Sobers didn’t have that problem, maybe he did but Windies still won anyway because he was the the best all-rounder in the world) and no other batsman, and neither wicketkeeper, is guaranteed a place.
My point, possibly not well made, is that almost all of us have doubts but only the imitators of Goebbels would equate having doubts with being active opponents.
@Diogenes, zJoe Tpot’s performance with the bat is not in question. His decision making in making declarations less so.
If only there were some way the general populace could change representatives in the government so that they were better represented. Like, possibly every few years or so…
The problem in our system lies with politicians who pay lip service to the idea of ‘representing the wishes of their electorate’ but then do what they themselves or the party machine wants (I know the difference between representative and delegate. And they do this knowing full well that as they represent ‘the party’, baring catastrophe they will get re-elected at the next election.
Roy Hattersley ” For most of my 33 years in Westminster, I was able to resist Sparkbrook’s demands about the great issues of national policy – otherwise my first decade would have been spent opposing all commonwealth immigration and my last calling for withdrawal from the EU. Should I, in 1964, called for what a clear majority of my constituents, and most of the country, undoubtedly wanted – the repatriation of all Commonwealth immigrants”?
That representative/delegate dichotomy needs more consideration. It was coined at a time when the franchise was much smaller than now – some constituencies didn’t have voters as such – and the bulk of the population was poorly educated and had probably never left the area in which they were born, so people in parliament had a duty to think in the interests of the whole country. They were definitely not delegates. Nowadays the situation is different. I would argue that they are now delegates. They are not necessarily better educated or more experienced than their constituents. They should take more notice of their voters.
With the benefit of 60-odd years of hindsight: yes Woy you should have.
Oops, Splattersly not Jenkins. Still, the answer remains the same.
BiW, thing is, as with other things (Climate change, Diesel vehicles, renewable energy, joining the EEC, free movement of peoples within the EU, immigration), hindsight wasn’t needed as there were many people explaining the logical consequences of the policies. The problem then and now is that they were / are shouted down by the ‘progressives’ of the day.
Yes, totally agree. The hindsight just turns a prediction into fact.