United Kingdom Referendum on European Union Membership

[Vega]

I hadn't realized that Murdoch was in favour of Brexit. Rather surprising to be honest.

Are you being sarcastic?

His newspapers are almost wholly Eurosceptic and have been for decades. Now it could be that the editors of these newspapers are following their reader's feelings on all things EU rather than leading them.

I generally believe that to be the case.

Giving their readers articles that reinforce attitudes and feelings they already have is probably judged to be good for those paper's circulations.

That's particularly true (in my opinion) of the Daily Mail.

Yes, I was, though you would think someone like Murdoch would be more in favour of the EU.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Basically both main UK parties are steaming piles of garbage rn.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

47% is just on the cusp of 'doable' for a change option. But then its TNS. Even if it does fit the pattern of the past... day.

[Phony Moderate]

Surely it's possible that a lot of the don't knows won't bother voting.

[Blair]

Corbyn was suppose to be couped 24 hours after winning IIRC

[ChrisDR68]

Corbyn was suppose to be couped 24 hours after winning IIRC

Corbyn is currently supposed to be even more popular with the party membership than when he was first elected so how is that meant to work?

[Classic Conservative]

What do our British Posters think will happen

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

My prediction from the beginning was for Remain to be winning until some SHOCK POLLS showed Leave ahead causing Remain to flip out and throw the kitchen sink, causing a fair but still close win for Remain. I'm right up till now

Of course, about the only thing I can say for certainty is panic and chaos either way - it's a self-fulfilling policy at this stage.
The political ramifications will be mad - I don't think a modern cabinet has ever had so much public feuds and name-calling in such a manner, and I highly doubt it will go away. I would not be surprised to see party defections, rebellions and further ramifications, no matter the result. Corbyn is a little safer, but who knows, maybe his relatively muted support for the EU will cause the soft left to get cold feet (or will it endear him to Gaitskell throwbacks?) Scotland will probably use it as an excuse to go if we Brexit (which begs the question - what if the UK would have brexited without Scotland's votes?) What a mess.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Surely it's possible that a lot of the don't knows won't bother voting.

Well, yes, but it is equally possible that a lot of people who claim to be sure of their decision won't either. Again, the thing about mostly watching the change % isn't because of a rule (there are no rules!) but because of a tendency. And we have nothing else to go off.

[Gary J]

Corbyn was suppose to be couped 24 hours after winning IIRC

Corbyn is currently supposed to be even more popular with the party membership than when he was first elected so how is that meant to work?

Presumably if the coup succeeds the Labour right hope that neither Corbyn nor any other left winger will secure support from enough MPs (currently 35 being required) to be nominated in the next leadership election. No doubt a predominantly left wing membership will be happy to choose between unreconstructed Blairite candidates. What could possibly go wrong?

[Velasco]

   How has the leave side addressed the issue of British citizens losing EU rights to retire in southern Europe without having to get a special non-EU citizen residence permit? I would think this would be an appealing argument for the remain side to appeal to older-middle aged voters.

They have not. I guess, they will be surpised when grandma shows on their doorstep asking for an attic to stay in.

Only the poorer English "expats" ergo the ones having a pension under 25 000€ annual will have to leave Spain. Of course many British people will likely say of course Spain will make a exception for them. Personally I doubt it, a interesting aspects you discover if you know any in non-British "expat" community in Spain, is how badly the Spanish talk about the British expats, you usual don't hear the same about the other groups, but for some reason the British is really unpopular. I don't know why, and neither did any of the Danish expats I know who have lived in retirement in Spain.

So people shouldn't be surprised if UK fail to reach a agreement with Spain about their expats.

I don't think the perception of local population towards British expats will play a big role in the eventuality of Brexit, even if they get a bad image -that is debatable; I have a Brit neighbour of elderly age and my other neighbours have a good opinion of him; it would depend on individuals or group behaviour, who knows-. It's more an economic question. On the Spanish side, one of the main issues would be the costs of using Public Healthcare by British expats. The counterpart is how much they contribute to national economy. On the British side, they will likely pursue free trade agreements with the EU or with its different countries. The City would be interested in the continuity of the free movement of workers -although they could say they don't need free movement for unskilled workers-. There are currently 200 thousand of Spaniard expats living in the UK. Some of them work in the NHS because the UK has a deficit in health professionals and Spain a surplus. I think Corbyn made recently a brief mention to 52 thousand of foreigners working in the NHS... In any case, the whole Brexit affair is a terrible mess. If it wins, we'll have another episode of the European Disorder saga.

[parochial boy]

There remains a line of thought that there well be a last minute swing towasrds the status quo where undecided voters plump for the safer option. That is what seemed to happen in Scotland where the "no" vote ended up 6-7% higher than the polling in the latter stages. TNS also reported something like 32% of voters were undecided or wouldn't vote. So remain could still pull it out of the bag.

That said, I would put my money on a 5-10% leave win at this point in time, seeing as what we have seen in the last week or so is the exact opposite of a late swing to the status quo.

[IceAgeComing]

The problem that you also have is no one really knows who's going to turn out and that makes polling harder - Leave is big among older people, who are more likely to turn out, but also among the working class who are less likely to turn out.  Most people assume that change voters are more likely to turn out in a referendum but the last national referendum with this level of coverage was forty years ago, and the vast majority of referenda since then have shown a late swing back to the status quo; the only one which didn't was the Scottish devolution referendum in 1979 and I'd argue that's a special thing: it was an issue that had been discussed in Scotland for a long time, they'd had a specific all-party plan on how the thing would work for literally years and Scottish voters had voted for the principal in at least the previous two general elections when all of the non-Tory parties had made it a big part of their election manifestos (don't know as much about 87, I'm sure it wasn't as big then).

I still think that we'll see a narrow remain win; although if we don't get any polls next week with a Remain lead I'll start to get worried.  There are some interesting scenarios which might lead to some interesting political developments: someone's already asked the Scotland one but Northern Ireland are also equally pro-EU according to the opinion polls and I think that might shock some people who aren't following this particularly closely - hell, what happens if its really close and its the votes of Gibraltar that keep us in?  I think that would lead to some tears from some of the more... interesting Leavers.  I'm also pretty sure that a very close Leave result wouldn't be taken as a strong mandate to leave and you'd have some hasty negotiations that they could use as an excuse to ask the question again a la Ireland and the Lisbon treaty.  The latter might just be misplaced hope than anything else though!

When I was in the gym this evening I noticed that Leave decided to repeat that awful NHS referendum broadcast; was it really effective enough to warrant that?  Its honestly the worst election broadcast I've ever seen, other than probably the one that Britain First were allowed a few years ago.

[Phony Moderate]

ComRes has Remain ahead at 46-45, down from 52-41 in its previous poll, though it has tended to be one of the more favourable pollsters to Remain.

[ChrisDR68]

ComRes has Remain ahead at 46-45, down from 52-41 in its previous poll, though it has tended to be one of the more favourable pollsters to Remain.

That's a 5% swing towards Leave compared to their previous poll and confirms the trend the other pollsters are showing.

It does bring an end to 6 straight polls showing Leave ahead though.

At this juncture it looks like Leave just have to keep banging on about immigration and they're home and dry.

The issue is killing the Remain campaign who have no answer to it.

[jaichind]

My prediction from the beginning was for Remain to be winning until some SHOCK POLLS showed Leave ahead causing Remain to flip out and throw the kitchen sink, causing a fair but still close win for Remain. I'm right up till now

In other words you were and are predicting a rerun of the Scotland Independence referendum.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

My prediction from the beginning was for Remain to be winning until some SHOCK POLLS showed Leave ahead causing Remain to flip out and throw the kitchen sink, causing a fair but still close win for Remain. I'm right up till now

In other words you were and are predicting a rerun of the Scotland Independence referendum.

Correct! The campaigns are pretty similar as well.

[parochial boy]

57 Tory MPs have said today they will vote against a George Osborne post-referendum budget.

As a budget is effectively a confidence vote, that pretty much guarantees the government will fall in the event of a no vote.

So a palace coup, or another general election? I'm not sure the general public would be able to cope with yet another election; but it would be completely unpredictable at this point.

[Cassius]

I think that, rather than being some kind of 'kingmaker', the Sun simply swings into line behind whichever option is most popular (with the caveat of said option being palatable to Murdoch), which allows it to maintain an undeserved reputation for being a 'kingmaker'. I doubt it'll have much impact one way or the other.

[jaichind]

https://twitter.com/STVNews/status/743032053462106112/photo/1

Poll Scottish voters: Remain 53% (-13) Leave 32% (+4)

[Gary J]

57 Tory MPs have said today they will vote against a George Osborne post-referendum budget.

As a budget is effectively a confidence vote, that pretty much guarantees the government will fall in the event of a no vote.

So a palace coup, or another general election? I'm not sure the general public would be able to cope with yet another election; but it would be completely unpredictable at this point.

I am not sure that the old conventions still apply.

In the pre-fixed term Parliament era the convention was that a government defeated on a major financial measure should either resign or advise a dissolution of Parliament. If it resigned then the conventional response was for the monarch to invite the Leader of the Opposition to form a government. In practice the new Prime Minister, being supported by a minority of the House of Commons, would then ask for a dissolution.

The convention was weakened in the UK in the 1970s, when the Callaghan minority government continued after losing votes on amendments to financial legislation.

Under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 the conventions appear to have been largely replaced by statutory provisions. The House of Commons briefing note about the Act summarises the early election provisions.

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It seems to me that the Prime Minister, after defeat on a budget, could secure passage of a confidence motion and continue in office (if he thought it was worth being in office with mutinous backbenchers limiting what he could do).

[Serenity Now]

The following document should be helpful for people interested in how the count will be carried out, and result declared:

http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7588

Basically, the count will start once polls close at 10pm, and results will be declared (for counting areas) throughout the night.

The list of counting areas expected to complete the count before 1.30am is interesting:

Sunderland (North East): 12.30am
Wandsworth (London): 12.30am
City of London (London): 12.45am
Foyle (Northern Ireland): 12:30am
Hartlepool (North East): 1.00-1.30am
Newcastle upon Tyne (North East): 1.00am
Oldham (North West): 1.00am
Swindon (South West): 1.00am
West Tyrone (Northern Ireland): 1:00am
Belfast East (Northern Ireland):   1:15am
Belfast South (Northern Ireland): 1:15am
Belfast West (Northern Ireland): 1:15am

We'll have a good indication of how Northern Ireland has voted, and as for English local authorities, we've got a major northern city (Newcastle), a socially mixed London Borough (Wandsworth), three (ex-)industrial northern towns (Oldham, Hartlepool and Sunderland) and a 'swing' area in the south of England (Swindon).

[DKrol]

I'm predicting the slightest margin of a victory for Leave.

[Angel of Death]

I'm predicting the slightest margin of a victory for Leave.

Which would be the worst-case scenario in terms of staving off political chaos.

[IceAgeComing]

I'm surprised that Clackmannanshire aren't higher on that list; I'm sure that they declared before half midnight for the independence referendum.

We also need to add Gibraltar to that list; they're apparently predicting a 2am local time declaration; that would be 1am BST I think