Letter: EU Election Does Not Show Majority Support for Anti-Brexit Parties

Published on: 30 May, 2019
Updated on: 30 May, 2019

From John Perkins

In response to comments made on: I Hope The Remain Parties Form a Coalition

According to the BBC article, European elections 2019: Brexit Party dominates as Tories and Labour suffer, nationally, anti-Brexit parties (Liberal Democrat, Green, SNP, Change UK and Plaid Cymru) got 40.4% of the vote while pro-Brexit parties (Brexit Party and UKIP) got 34.9%.

But, whilst it’s reasonable to assume very few Remainers voted for the pro-Brexit parties, the opposite cannot be said of those supporting anti-Brexit parties. To aggregate them is misleading. SNP and Plaid Cymru supporters are not definitively Leave or Remain, they are primarily Nationalist.

Nor should it be taken for granted that all Green supporters want Remain as they are primarily concerned with environmental issues. In fact, it’s not possible to say more than that the Brexit Party and UKIP represent largely Leave supporters and the Liberal Democrats and Change UK represent largely Remain supporters – which is to say, nothing useful. Except that positively committed anti-Brexit support slips to 23.7%.

As Northern Ireland uses a different voting system, the BBC excludes it from aggregation. Otherwise its list of anti-Brexit parties would have to be extended to include Sinn Fein.

Jonathan Viera says he is staggered “that the councillor for Burpham should or could come up with such a contrived position, claiming that it’s clear what the people wanted”. It’s not obvious to whom he is referring as neither councillor is quoted in the associated article, Lib Dems Top EU Election Poll in Guildford Borough. Former Burpham councillor Christian Holliday is quoted as saying: “Those parties that performed well in the European Elections have a clear position on Brexit, one way or the other.” But that’s surely not even controversial, let alone staggering.

Not everyone in the Labour Party, or even its MPs, is likely to agree to an anti-Brexit coalition. Those who do will need to explain to their constituents why they promised to implement the referendum result and now choose to reject it.

George Potter (the Lib Dem councillor for Burpham) mocks the 31.6% for not being overwhelming. His own party locally, despite its alleged support for proportional representation, considers its 28% of the vote worthy of an overwhelming 80% of positions on the Executive.

Responses to Letter: EU Election Does Not Show Majority Support for Anti-Brexit Parties

C Nicholls Reply

May 30, 2019 at 11:32 am

I totally agree with this clear and more logical explanation.

People seem to be manipulating the figures to make them say only what they want them to say rather than accepting that the result of the referendum was for Leave. Had the result been for Remain, I don’t think we would be arguing about the possible computations of adding up the results of all the other parties they either could or could not indicate a different outcome.

Neither do we consider adding up the votes from all the losing parties in a UK general elections and then claiming that the lead part didn’t actually win after all, so we need to have another election. This is a dangerous game to play. It would mean mean any other result could also be turned over because it was on this occasion. This non-logic could be applied to all sorts of situations in daily life outside of politics and would cause total uncertainty and chaos.
Stuart Barnes Reply

May 31, 2019 at 9:12 am

The losers (supported by the usual far left media – BBC, Channel 4, etc) are getting desperate. Now that the Remainers have been comprehensively thrashed in the EU elections and, almost certainly, a pro-Brexit leader to emerge from the coming Conservative leadership contest, they are right to be frightened.

Roll on 31/10 and a clean exit on WTO terms.
- Andrew Calladine Reply
  
  May 31, 2019 at 12:47 pm
  
  Stuart Barnes, claims the BBC are a far left news organisation, would he care to present the evidence for this? Those claiming that the EU elections showed support for a no deal Brexit are mistaken. There is no evidence to support that.
  
  Also worth asking history revisionists like Stuart where on the 2016 referendum ballot paper did it say the UK would leave the EU with no deal or on WTO terms? Would he also like to confirm which countries currently are trading on WTO terms alone? I’ll answer that for him, the answer is none. I wonder why that is.