Three charts that sum up the UK’s craziness right now
There are many reasons to think Britain’s current situation is nuts.
But here are three particular charts I keep thinking about because they make what’s unfolding seem even stupider.
1. The vast majority don’t want a “No deal” Brexit
The latest YouGov polling is clear that most adults in the UK think “No Deal” is a bad idea.
Indeed the most popular view is that it would be “Very bad”.
The same poll also indicates that if the Prime Minister comes back with a last minute deal that maintains single market access, more of the public would grudgingly regard that as an acceptable compromise. But those thinking that was a bad outcome would still outweigh those who’d find it good.
2. Brexit voters were the least likely to believe we’d get “No deal”
Forget the revisionist history that Brexiteers knew what they voted for and have always been raring for a hard, No Deal departure.
A poll in the month of the referendum found Brexit voters were actually the group most confident we’d keep access to the single market. Probably because Leave politicians suggested we would.
3. Britain’s attitude to immigration has flipped since the referendum
To be clear, not all those who voted for Brexit were xenophobic. But the Leave campaign’s fear-mongering about migrants was absolutely critical to its narrow victory.
To quote the campaign’s own mastermind Dominic Cummings: “Would we have won without immigration? No.”
It’s hard to quantify how many of those who said they voted principally to “take back control” meant “…of our borders” (even if certain politicians completed the slogan with those words). But even if we generously accept that group was just excited about the concept of sovereignty, Lord Ashcroft’s polling shows the second biggest reason given for supporting Brexit, by 33% of Leave voters, was it “offered the best chance for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders”.
The polling around social attitudes also suggested that, of those who said they opposed immigration and those who opposed multiculturalism, the vast bulk were Leave voters (by 80% and 81%).
This has led some on the left to act like they’d misunderstood the direction in which British attitudes were shifting, and that they should be doing more to appease People Who Dislike Migrants.
Yet while Britons were more negative about immigration than positive before the referendum, the opposite is now true. And that is not because Brexit itself has somehow made Britain more tolerant, but because societal attitudes were steadily shifting in that direction anyway.
Had the referendum been held just a few months later, the result might have been different as a direct consequence.
The one positive is that, hopefully, the next time the UK faces a similar choice, organisations like Leave.EU will be properly vilified if they try plastering social media with campaigns like the nasty, Islamophobic and hate-mongering ones they used before.
We can expect younger generations to be less forgiving of such xenophobia, and wonder what the hell happened — and how the hell we let it happen.
In the meantime, if you hear anyone suggesting that a No Deal Brexit is the inviolable “will of the people”, show them the charts.
