TRIGGERnometry - Sir John Curtice on What the Polls Tell Us About Brexit

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissinger. And this is

00:00:09.820 a show for you if you're bored of watching people having arguments on the internet over

00:00:14.180 subjects they know nothing about. At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts, we ask the

00:00:20.120 experts. Our fantastic guest this week is a polling expert and one of this country's

00:00:24.700 leading political scientists. Sir John Curtis, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:00:28.480 Thanks for having me. Nice to be here.

00:00:30.220 It's so good to have you here.

00:00:31.440 For anyone who doesn't know who you are, which is not many people, given that you're on TV all the time,

00:00:36.720 tell us a little bit about how are you, where you are, what's been your journey through life and what do you do now?

00:00:41.080 Well, I guess I am best known for these days for being the public face for the BBC on election night programs.

00:00:49.280 Probably somewhat less known is actually I've been doing election night programs since 1979.

00:00:54.600 But I spent a lot of time working on the production side of television, helping to crunch the numbers, etc., without necessarily being in front of camera.

00:01:01.080 So the front of camera stuff, at least on election night, has been rather more recent.

00:01:07.500 How did I end up there?

00:01:09.140 Well, that's a long story.

00:01:10.160 But basically, the person who was my graduate supervisor when I was doing a PhD was David Butler now.

00:01:17.060 So David Butler, who was the doyen of election television in the 1950s and 1960s.

00:01:21.560 he needed somebody in the 1979 election to sit behind him with a programmable calculator.

00:01:28.360 This is kind of the early days of computing, because he didn't quite want to rely on the BBC

00:01:32.840 computer. And he needed somebody behind him who could calculate the swing very quickly for him

00:01:38.420 when a result came in, if indeed the BBC computer were to fail. Well, the BBC computer actually

00:01:43.540 didn't fail on the night, but I still got to sit in behind it. And then after that, actually,

00:01:47.600 somebody else who was also involved in the BBC operation called Clive Payne, persuaded the BBC,

00:01:53.180 this is now 1981, very, very early days of PC computing. And he said, look, if we turn up with

00:02:00.700 what in those days was called a Research Machines 380Z, which you had to program yourself in basic,

00:02:05.680 I mean, you know, none of this kind of software stuff all sitting on your Apple or your PC or

00:02:10.080 whatever. So this is pre-PC days, but very early small computers. And we turned up and persuaded

00:02:15.720 the BBC that if they gave us the results for the then Greater London Council election

00:02:20.500 in 1981, we could put them through our sausage machine and we could tell them about the swings,

00:02:24.580 et cetera, et cetera.

00:02:25.680 And then out of that grew up and we persuaded the BBC that actually we could start doing

00:02:31.780 an instant on the night analysis, which then their commentators could use.

00:02:35.660 So that's how it all started.

00:02:37.420 But then beyond that, there's obviously another backstory.

00:02:40.380 That's not my day job.

00:02:41.880 It's not my professional job.

00:02:44.040 My professional job is an academic political scientist, but I'm primarily interested in

00:02:50.000 voting, paying for electoral systems, but also more generally social and political attitudes.

00:02:55.780 I ended up at Strathclyde basically because that was one of the two institutions in the UK,

00:03:02.700 which in the early days of what in political science we call the behavioral revolution,

00:03:06.880 which is the idea, if you're going to study politics, it isn't just about what politicians

00:03:10.660 do or what constitutions say. But actually, it's about trying to understand how people behave

00:03:16.660 politically. And that also means the focus moves away from just what happens in Parliament or in

00:03:22.140 governments or whatever, but also to looking at the general public. And Strathclyde, and that

00:03:28.460 involves, by the way, therefore doing surveys and numbers, etc. Strathclyde, together with Essex,

00:03:33.480 one of the two places that really embraced this early on. So when I was approached by Strathclyde

00:03:37.580 to come and do it.

00:03:40.240 I went, yeah, so that's great.

00:03:41.300 Previously, I was at Liverpool before that.

00:03:43.520 I mean, backstory before that,

00:03:45.280 the question that people asked me was,

00:03:46.640 how is it you got involved

00:03:47.760 in trusted and voting behaviour?

00:03:49.960 Answer, don't know.

00:03:52.900 All I can tell you is

00:03:55.020 that my first political memory

00:03:57.840 is of the death of Hugh Gates

00:03:59.980 in what, 1962, 1963,

00:04:03.000 and the Labour leadership election

00:04:04.600 that Howard Wilson then won

00:04:06.680 and remember being allowed to say that this is what the age of 10 by my or 11 by my parents

00:04:14.040 to watch the beginning at least of the 1964 election night resorts program so by this point

00:04:21.840 somehow or another at least I got interested in the horse race and the fact there were different

00:04:26.680 political parties there was a degree of political involvement in my family and later my mother

00:04:31.940 indeed did become a local councillor um but certainly not active party politics yes they

00:04:37.280 used to i mean they used to argue i mean my mother and at least one of her brothers and her father

00:04:42.080 would argue about politics they were all different views what was the split within the well well i

00:04:46.580 my my my father my grandfather was one of the early activists inside the labor party

00:04:51.660 uh in cornwall and and his and i think my mother's brother was there my mother was much more

00:04:56.780 uh liberal party um inclined um but you know but you know they would they but anyway but to be

00:05:04.420 honest there isn't enough there to explain so somehow or another i was always interested in

00:05:08.740 this and you know then went to university and then went on to do a graduate studies in this area so

00:05:15.820 that's that's the kind of that's the ultimate well fantastic and talking about polling and numbers

00:05:19.840 in the last two or three years they've been i can think of one or two incidents where pollsters

00:05:25.080 haven't exactly covered themselves in glory.

00:05:27.180 I think Trump and Brexit might be good examples of that.

00:05:30.680 Well, I will question you about both of those.

00:05:32.580 Fantastic.

00:05:33.160 Well, that makes trigonometry what it is,

00:05:36.420 is when we get destroyed by, I guess.

00:05:38.320 That's the best thing.

00:05:39.060 Normally, it's me getting destroyed,

00:05:40.820 so I'm quite enjoying this.

00:05:42.600 Let's take it.

00:05:43.520 I mean, the 2015 general election

00:05:45.800 is an unalloyed disappointment for the polling industry

00:05:50.760 because not only did on average all the polls essentially point towards Conservative and Labour

00:05:57.380 being neck and neck with each other, but actually they all did so. And there was very little

00:06:02.400 difference between them. And in the end, the Conservatives were five, six, seven, eight points

00:06:07.920 ahead. So that was clearly a wrong call. I'll come back to the reasons why in a moment.

00:06:18.320 The other examples that people cite are less obvious.

00:06:21.340 So let's take you quoted Trump.

00:06:24.040 Well, actually, bear in mind that on average, the polls of how people were going to vote

00:06:32.840 in the US presidential election had Hillary Clinton three points ahead. 1.00

00:06:37.560 She won by two points in the popular vote.

00:06:40.120 So don't blame the polls for the errors of, if that's the correct word,

00:06:45.280 how the Electoral College operates.

00:06:46.720 Okay. Trump won despite not winning the popular vote. Yes, we can then argue about the performance

00:06:52.880 of the polls in certain individual Midwestern states. But I can actually point you to a piece

00:06:57.440 I wrote on polling day itself. I tried to keep out of American politics, but eventually somebody

00:07:01.540 persuaded to write something and said, look, actually, if you look at the polls carefully

00:07:04.920 enough, yeah, it looks as though Hillary Clinton's got about 250 electoral college votes in the back, 1.00

00:07:09.320 but she hasn't got 270. She could lose. Come back to Brexit. Another one you cited.

00:07:16.720 The truth is, if you actually look at all of the opinion polls that were conducted during

00:07:22.300 the official four weeks of the campaign, there were slightly more that had Leave ahead than

00:07:28.780 had Remain ahead.

00:07:30.460 What is true is that in the last few polls, there was something of a movement back towards

00:07:37.860 Remain, although even amongst the final polls, there were two out of the six or seven or

00:07:42.600 so that had Leave ahead.

00:07:44.660 But on average, remain more ahead.

00:07:46.820 But what was going on there, remember, is that there was a widespread expectation that

00:07:51.300 the polls would get it wrong.

00:07:53.780 They would get it wrong because we all know, don't we, that what happens in big constitutional

00:07:59.680 referendums is that the public drawback at the last minute from voting from what seems

00:08:04.520 a rather risky option for change.

00:08:06.860 So when the polls, virtually all the polls the week before the Brexit referendum had

00:08:12.140 leave ahead, some of them then swung back.

00:08:14.280 people say, all right, we know what's happening. It's obvious that people are swinging back to

00:08:18.700 Remain and Remain are okay. Well, they didn't swing back any further. And actually the polls

00:08:22.660 were a little bit out. But particularly if you had tracked what the polls that had been done

00:08:30.420 online were saying ever since September 2015, from the moment when we knew what was going to

00:08:38.120 be the question on the ballot paper, the polls that had been done online called it 50-50 from

00:08:42.460 the beginning. It remained 50-50 all the way through. And anybody who thought that it was

00:08:47.320 clear that Remain was going to win were betting against the polls. They were not reflecting what

00:08:51.880 the polls were saying. 2017, a bit more complicated. 2017, again, here, having underestimated the

00:09:01.060 Conservative performance in 2015, the polls on average overestimate the Conservative performance

00:09:06.360 in 2017, but not all of them do. YouGov had more than one excise, but one of their excises

00:09:12.740 actually slightly underestimated how well the Conservatives are going to do. Servation had a

00:09:16.960 poll which, again, slightly underestimated the Conservative lead, but they weren't all the same

00:09:24.160 count. Now, 2015 and 2017 are related. Now, one of the things is, the simplest story about 2015 is

00:09:32.740 this, is that the headline figures you get out of opinion polls aren't just simply the number of

00:09:41.180 Conservative Labour voters, et cetera, that the polls have interviewed. Pollsters appreciate

00:09:46.080 that trying to interview a relatively adequate number of people in a short period of time

00:09:53.300 is an exercise where at the end of the day, you are going to struggle to get a wholly representative

00:09:58.620 sample population. So what do they do? Well, there are two things they're doing. One is they're

00:10:03.800 going and saying, well, look, you know, we think, you know, we can see that as compared with what we

00:10:07.460 know about the population in general, this poll is too light on X. And one obvious thing you can

00:10:12.320 do is say, look, hang on, for the purpose of argument, only 30% of our people say they voted

00:10:18.260 Labour in the last election. I know the real figure was 34. I need to upweight the number of

00:10:22.860 Labour voters in our poll, perhaps. So one of the things that they're going on is that they're

00:10:28.000 weighting their data demographically to try and make sure that it's right. The other thing they're

00:10:32.100 doing is say, well, hang on. Some of my people I've interviewed are going to vote. Some of them

00:10:36.520 are not. I've got to try to work out who is and who isn't. So they also try to take into account

00:10:41.000 the possibility of differential turnout. So in other words, the headline figures you get aren't

00:10:45.500 just simply the unalloyed numbers. They're also then the numbers you get after the data have been

00:10:50.740 processed? Well, the polls did a lot of processing in 2015. But not only was it the case that the

00:10:59.760 headline number in the polls was Conservative Labour, even Stevens, if you went back to the

00:11:05.260 original raw data, i.e. before they'd done any weighting and filtering or whatever, it was also

00:11:10.920 a dead heat. So the truth is, at the end of the day, all the terms they had for weighting and

00:11:15.180 didn't do anything. What was clear was therefore that the samples were too pro-Labour. Now why

00:11:22.620 might this be the case? I think this is where life has got more difficult for polls to. This at least

00:11:27.060 is part of the explanation. One of the things that's long been true is that younger people 1.00

00:11:33.300 are less likely to turn out and vote. This is almost an iron law of politics. But one of the

00:11:38.580 things that's changed is that whereas even 10 years ago, certainly 15, 20 years ago, how old

00:11:47.020 you were was, for the most part, only weakly related to your probability of voting Conservative

00:11:53.160 or Labour. In 2015, this was no longer the case. It was already the case, this is pre-Corbyn,

00:12:00.400 that the Labour Party was gaining ground amongst younger voters and losing ground,

00:12:06.460 roughly speaking amongst older voters. So in other words, the relationship between age and

00:12:11.220 how people were voting was becoming more important. This therefore meant that estimating

00:12:18.580 correctly, the age difference in turnout had become more important. But what you can see

00:12:26.940 from looking at the 2015 polls is that actually they were all underestimating the age difference

00:12:31.120 in turnout. Because one of the problems the polls have, if you're trying to do a poll in two or

00:12:34.740 three days is, you know, and you ring somebody up or you send somebody an email saying, can you

00:12:38.680 please do my poll? If you're interested in politics, you go, oh, gee whiz, fantastic, I'll fill in that

00:12:42.780 poll. If on the other hand, you're an ordinary sane person and not terribly interested in politics,

00:12:48.420 you go, you know what, that's an offer I could refuse. So therefore, they tend to get more of

00:12:55.000 the people who are politically interested. Now, that's fine in the sense that what you want to

00:12:59.800 going to get people to go to the polls. But if along the way, the young people in particular

00:13:05.460 that you interview are markedly more interested in politics than other young people, and there's

00:13:10.940 then a relationship between how people vote and age, you're going to have trouble. So essentially,

00:13:15.480 one of the reasons, at least why the samples were too pro-Labour, is that yes, the young people

00:13:20.180 whom they interviewed in 2015 turned out to vote, and they voted Labour. The trouble is they weren't

00:13:28.000 typical of all young people. There were lots of other young people who didn't turn out to vote,

00:13:33.480 although perhaps they were labor inclined. And so therefore, they're overestimating

00:13:38.020 labor success. So that's part of the story. Now, 2017 is this classic case of be careful of trying

00:13:45.620 to fight the last battle. Because ironically, if we now redo the same exercise, I said to remember

00:13:51.840 in 2015, look at the raw unweighted data, the polls are wrong. After waiting, the polls are

00:13:58.080 just as wrong. The same is not true in 2017. If in 2017, you look at the raw unweighted data,

00:14:06.640 in most cases, it has the Conservatives, you know, moderately ahead, but only moderately ahead.

00:14:14.680 The problem, but no more than that, the problem is that in 2017, the pollsters were doing all

00:14:20.600 sorts of things to their data to say, look, actually, I now know that those young voters

00:14:26.500 are not going to turn out and vote. I now know I'm at risk of getting too many Labour voters.

00:14:30.500 So they engage in various strategies, which ends up, you know, increasing that, coming up with a

00:14:36.600 bigger estimate of the age gap in turnout, of downweighting their Labour voters, and over-aging

00:14:42.520 the pudding. So they end up, as a result, underestimating Labour performance, not because

00:14:47.620 that's what their rule data was telling them, but because in trying to correct for that

00:14:51.640 overestimate of Labour support in 2015, they basically overcompensated for the problems

00:14:59.800 of 2015 and what they report in 2017.

00:15:01.920 And ironically, you know, the company that in terms of using an ordinary poll that got

00:15:06.080 closest to the result reservation is the one company that decided not to fiddle from what

00:15:10.320 it did in 2015.

00:15:11.220 So that's an example of, you know, I mean, polling has got more difficult for a whole variety of reasons.

00:15:17.760 And there is no doubt that this relationship between age and how people vote and the fact that that then interacts with turnout has made it more difficult.

00:15:27.400 But certainly it's a case of demonstrating how it is difficult to get the polling numbers right.

00:15:34.900 Because, again, the only thing you have to remember is this, and I'll stop.

00:15:36.780 But if you were commissioning me as a pollster and you said, look, I've got this, you're a comedian, you said, I've got this new comedy show.

00:15:48.120 And you were to do a two minute example of what you're going to do.

00:15:54.320 And you say, you know, go out amongst the public and tell me, you know, what proportion of the comedy market I would get if I were to run a comedy show like this.

00:16:03.260 Can you get a negative proportion of the comedy market?

00:16:05.140 Well, you might be able to.

00:16:08.140 But anyway, so let's say for the purpose of I would say, look, you know what?

00:16:12.380 If you were to run comedy shows like that, maybe it's a new genre.

00:16:16.640 Let's say you've created a new genre of comedy show.

00:16:19.260 And you were to say, if I were to create this genre and I were to trademark it and market it,

00:16:25.820 what proportion of the comedy industry would I have?

00:16:28.720 And I said to you, 30% on the basis of my market research.

00:16:32.760 and two years later you come back and you say apart from counting all the money you've got

00:16:39.080 i've got 25 percent in the market you probably say that was a pretty good job right you say actually

00:16:45.840 you told me i had a marketable product here you told me how to sell it gee whiz it worked but

00:16:51.780 if i told you that you were going to get 30 percent of the vote and you only got 25 you'd

00:16:57.420 be deeply deeply disappointed because we have an electoral system in the uk that means that

00:17:01.680 relatively small errors get magnified when it comes to the outcome outside the House of Commons.

00:17:09.700 And breathe. But no, but that was genuinely illuminating when you're explaining all the

00:17:15.780 data. And I feel deeply, deeply sorry for pollsters because isn't this the most difficult time ever to

00:17:23.500 be a pollster where you have two parties, Conservative and Labour at the moment, and

00:17:28.200 they're hemorrhaging MPs, therefore hemorrhaging support, you could argue they're not really

00:17:33.480 representing whole swathes of the population. Well, there are two things to say that. One,

00:17:38.540 of course, is to say we've been here before. For those of us who are old enough to remember the

00:17:42.940 1980s, the fact that a new party has been created raises exactly the same polling issues that were

00:17:51.140 raised when the Social Democratic Party was first formed in 91. There was a raging debate inside the

00:17:55.960 powering industry. So how do we best measure support for this new party? Should we just

00:18:02.940 include it in the list of parties that people can choose among? Or do we say to people,

00:18:10.540 oh, look, by the way, you know, there's been this new party formed, blah, blah, blah, right? Now,

00:18:14.720 how do you think you might vote in the next election? So in other words, do you or do you

00:18:18.000 not prompt? The danger with not prompting is that people forget that this new party has been formed

00:18:22.900 because it's not yet really in their consciousness

00:18:24.240 and you end up underestimating their support.

00:18:27.700 But the risk with prompting is you basically say,

00:18:31.880 well, look, there's a risk of saying,

00:18:33.600 oh, by the way, you know, there's this new party,

00:18:35.100 you know, I mean, I'm sure you're not going to vote for it, right?

00:18:37.200 It begins potentially to leave people.

00:18:39.060 And certainly we've already seen very dramatic differences

00:18:42.780 in the estimated level of support

00:18:45.260 for the so-called independent group.

00:18:47.120 We've had polls putting them at five or six, not prompted.

00:18:50.180 others putting them at 14 or 18 prompted truth might be somewhere in between so this is a to

00:18:57.600 that extent at least that you know this is an old problem which is when new parties get formed

00:19:02.160 and particularly very early on and frankly you know most voters are not following the

00:19:07.000 soap opera of westminster that closely may not even be following your program that

00:19:10.940 We're getting dissed at right centre here

00:19:14.600 That was the nicest burn I've ever received

00:19:16.820 in my life

00:19:17.520 Sir John

00:19:20.680 destroys trigonometry

00:19:22.320 But I'm sure you have a

00:19:24.780 brilliant and very attentive audience

00:19:26.980 That's even worse

00:19:28.900 Is that

00:19:31.180 the

00:19:32.100 therefore

00:19:34.420 it's going to take a while before actually frankly

00:19:36.660 the thing is percolating to the puck

00:19:38.340 and they've made some sense of it one way or the other.

00:19:42.120 The second point you make is definitely about our political parties.

00:19:44.800 Well, I mean, again, I could give you another long lecture here,

00:19:47.200 but let me give you the short version.

00:19:48.480 I mean, what is undoubtedly true is that Brexit has proven deeply disruptive

00:19:53.140 because the division between Conservative and Labour in our country

00:19:59.180 and the division that these two parties are basically orientated towards discussing

00:20:04.860 and are relatively comfortable discussing is the division between left and right.

00:20:09.820 So those on the left are those essentially are people who think that society is too unequal

00:20:15.020 and that the government should be doing something about it.

00:20:18.540 Those on the right are those who say, look, at the end of the day,

00:20:21.540 if we're all going to be better off, we need to create the incentives for people to take risks.

00:20:26.880 And that therefore means that at the end of the day,

00:20:28.840 some people who successfully take risks have to be well paid.

00:20:32.000 So, you know, that's a continuing argument in our society about what's the best way to advance.

00:20:36.580 That's essentially the difference between left and right.

00:20:38.540 And that is the division that, for the most part, at election time, you know, if you are right wing, you're more likely to vote Conservative.

00:20:46.880 If you're left wing, you're more likely to vote Labour.

00:20:49.020 However, Brexit is not about left versus right.

00:20:54.380 Is it about good versus evil?

00:20:56.220 that that is for you to decide john before you go on this is what happens every time

00:21:05.460 both francis and i voted remain but we're both quite concerned about you know democracy being

00:21:11.300 thwarted and all the rest of it but just to annoy a lot of our audience every time we mention the

00:21:16.940 fact that i mentioned the fact that we voted remain francis says because we're good people

00:21:21.800 and then we get a massive wall of youtube comments having a go at us for saying that

00:21:27.160 and it's not become a joke we're not trying to pin you down but you're inflicted on yourself

00:21:32.820 we now have people saying when are you going to start selling t-shirts which say which say i

00:21:37.820 voted remain because i'm a good person so we'll get there anyway well well goodness goodness is

00:21:43.340 in the eye i'm really glad i'm really glad you started talking about it because i was going to

00:21:46.640 asking about left and right. It's not a crucial thing, and it's widely misunderstood. Brexit was

00:21:53.480 not about left versus right. We weren't arguing in the EU referendum about the role of the state

00:21:59.280 in the economy and how do we best in equality. We were talking about immigration, about sovereignty,

00:22:04.500 and what our relations should be towards an institutional phenomenon that can be regarded

00:22:09.940 as an example of the wider process of globalization, right? And whether or not,

00:22:17.260 if I ask you a series of questions about your attitudes towards inequality and incentives on

00:22:22.520 the rest of it, and I do that, it does not enable me at all to predict whether you voted remain or

00:22:29.440 leave. Left-wingers were as likely to vote leave as were right-wingers, okay? The division in the

00:22:36.940 EU referendum was between social liberals and social conservatives. And this is an argument

00:22:44.260 about what kind of society you are comfortable living in and what kind of society you think

00:22:52.380 Britain should be. So a social liberal is somebody who says, look, I don't care what your religion

00:22:59.500 is. Your sexual practices are up to you. What moral code you follow is ultimately up to you.

00:23:08.640 What language you speak is up to you. Whether or not you salute the Union Jack or what symbols

00:23:14.720 you decide to adhere to or respect is up to you. And by the way, I love living in London. It's a

00:23:21.420 fantastic, diverse city. So these are people who are comfortable, indeed embrace the idea of social

00:23:29.940 diversity. They're essentially people, at the end of the day, say, look, it's up to individuals to

00:23:34.180 decide social and moral code and the religious code, et cetera, they live in. But at the other

00:23:39.820 end of the spectrum, there's an argument we might call a social conservative that says, no, look,

00:23:43.960 at the end of the day, if a society is going to have at least an adequate degree of social cohesion,

00:23:51.420 then actually society does need, to some degree at least, need to be able to enforce

00:23:57.520 a common moral code. It's a good idea that actually if we do all have some sense of common

00:24:04.000 adherence to a set of national symbols, it is a good idea certainly that we all speak the same

00:24:09.300 language. And of course also what tends to be true that people with this disposition therefore tend

00:24:14.660 to be rather uncomfortable with a diverse environment. These are the people who would 1.00

00:24:20.280 echo Nigel Farage's comment that they are uncomfortable when they cannot hear English

00:24:25.420 being spoken on a bus. These are people, of course, who tend to live outside of London,

00:24:30.480 because if you live in London and you hear English being spoken on a bus, it comes as

00:24:34.700 something of a surprise. But this is an important argument about what is the best way of organizing

00:24:44.180 society. Now, social liberals voted Remain, overwhelmingly. Social conservatives voted

00:24:52.100 for Leave. Now, this has always been an element of our politics. It won't surprise you to hear

00:24:59.260 because the secret is in the name. Liberal Democrats have always done relatively well

00:25:04.400 amongst social liberals. They by no means get all the social liberals, but those who vote

00:25:09.580 Liberal Democrat are disproportionately social liberal. And Liberal Democrats are more clearly

00:25:15.220 demarcated by their social liberalism than being on the left or the right. Indeed, the Liberal

00:25:19.820 Democrat Party tends to swither a bit on the left-right spectrum, you know, sometimes swings

00:25:23.860 to the left and then swings back to the right and then swings back to left again and tends to call

00:25:27.500 itself centrist. UKIP. UKIP voters, by the way, are not right-wing or those when the UKIP was

00:25:34.720 were not right-wing. UKIP voters don't like inequality, right? The bit where they will

00:25:45.400 sometimes depart from others is they're not quite sure they trust the state to do anything about it.

00:25:50.800 But remember, UKIPers are people who don't like the way that Britain is going in a whole variety

00:25:56.640 of ways. And it isn't just about immigration. It's also about economic inequality. So UKIPers 0.97

00:26:02.940 tend to be on the left, but they're social

00:26:04.780 conservators.

00:26:06.740 What you would normally have expected

00:26:10.640 in an election in 2017 about Brexit,

00:26:12.580 where you expect the Remainers to go to the Liberal Democrats

00:26:14.380 and you'd expect the social

00:26:16.600 conservators and the Leavers to go to UKIP.

00:26:18.720 Well, the Leavers

00:26:20.700 decided their best

00:26:22.120 chance was going with the Conservatives

00:26:24.860 and UKIP was beginning

00:26:26.500 to look like a busted flush. And the

00:26:28.320 Liberal Democrats still struggling to recover

00:26:30.360 from the sins, as many people see it,

00:26:32.480 the coalition okay so the two parties whom you would expect and indeed during um uh you know

00:26:40.080 much previous period have been articulating that social liberal social conservative divide were

00:26:45.400 relatively weak so what happened the conservatives lost ground amongst remainers and gained ground

00:26:50.780 amongst um leavers their vote therefore because it was always a bit socially conservative but

00:26:57.740 their vote becomes more clearly socially conservative. On the Labour side, yes, the Labour

00:27:03.060 party does gain a ground amongst leaders, but he gains more ground amongst remainers. One of the

00:27:07.040 things, by the way, that I suspect might now upset many of your audience, in my view, in many ways,

00:27:13.460 Jeremy Corbyn in 2017 achieved what Tony Blair had been trying to deliver for years, which was to

00:27:20.740 deliver a middle-class, social-liberal, university graduate vote.

00:27:25.960 Corbyn's electorate is much more obviously Blairite

00:27:29.060 than either the Blairites or the Corbynistas would like to believe,

00:27:33.020 because Corbyn was not particularly successful,

00:27:35.760 or no more successful than Ed Milibar had been in getting left-wing voters in.

00:27:38.640 His success was getting in social-liberals.

00:27:41.280 Now, but then the crucial, so therefore, what we're then getting,

00:27:43.560 we're getting Conservative and Labour not only now having to articulate

00:27:48.160 the left-right divide with which they are comfortable,

00:27:49.960 But they're now finding themselves articulating this social-liberal, social-conservative divide.

00:27:55.140 Around 70% of the conservative vote is socially conservative and is Remainer.

00:27:59.220 Around 70% of the Labour vote is social-liberal and the conservative vote is Leaver.

00:28:04.460 The Labour vote is Remainer.

00:28:07.660 And given that, there is virtually no statistical link.

00:28:13.520 So the probability that you are on the left in the way that I have defined it is more or less

00:28:19.980 unrelated to whether you're a social liberal or social conservative, right? So we've now got these

00:28:24.340 two dimensions. Now, if you think about it, you've got two dimensions, all right, and you're going to

00:28:27.800 articulate those two dimensions and they're orthogonal to each other at right angles to each

00:28:32.100 other. You really need four parties. Yes. Yeah. But it's being articulated by two. So Conservative

00:28:37.300 and Labour are both being deeply disrupted because they are now finding themselves tackling an issue

00:28:42.640 which is not a left-right issue.

00:28:44.980 It's an issue that taps a different set of values,

00:28:47.880 a set of values that they are not at heart

00:28:50.900 of what they are about,

00:28:52.540 but which is deeply disruptive

00:28:54.720 of their normal electoral coalitions.

00:28:58.240 And therefore, they are struggling to deal with the issue,

00:29:02.300 as well as the fact they're also deeply polarized about Brexit.

00:29:05.180 So that's the sense in which the party...

00:29:07.280 So the irony is that the success of the party...

00:29:09.820 Now, 2017 was this election in which, ironically,

00:29:12.640 The level of support for Conservative and Labour combined was higher than there had been in elections since 1970.

00:29:17.400 But underneath that edifice was the fact that the base of their vote created both parties really serious problems.

00:29:27.560 And, you know, the most obvious way it comes out is this.

00:29:30.700 At the end, we tend to think of the Conservative Party as being a party that promotes the interests of big business.

00:29:38.220 but the electorate that the conservative party has gained is a protectionist electorate it's

00:29:46.340 an electorate that is looking for some shelter from the winds of globalization the very globalization

00:29:53.360 process that big business thinks is helping it to uh to to you know achieve better things and

00:30:00.440 so there's now so the problem for this other conservative party is this tension

00:30:05.320 between its traditional backers and the nature of his lecture.

00:30:10.820 And you see, you know, you now get concerned about how is it that my party is doing these

00:30:15.060 things that's so bad for big business?

00:30:16.560 But that's the tension it's facing.

00:30:18.140 The tension on the Labour side is, although the Labour Party these days is pretty much

00:30:25.160 is almost as popular amongst university graduates as it is amongst those in working class occupations,

00:30:31.680 the Labour Party still thinks of itself as a party that represents the working class and of course

00:30:38.420 it's more working class and it's more of its vote that tended to vote leave so you've therefore got

00:30:45.200 this attachment to the more working class end of its vote because that's part of its historical

00:30:52.680 mission it's the people who they think that they represent and therefore there perhaps is a greater

00:30:59.240 concern about the consequences of upsetting that section of his vote, even though it's very clearly

00:31:04.600 a minority of his vote, than would otherwise be the case. So you can see how the Brexit divide

00:31:10.720 cuts across the party's traditional conceptions of themselves and who they think of as being

00:31:17.720 their traditional allies. And Corbyn and the Labour Party have sort of turned their back almost

00:31:23.060 on the leavers who voted for them by saying that they're going to embrace, I think,

00:31:26.420 Is it a second referendum that they were talking about?

00:31:28.520 Oh, that's a much, that's far too simple an articulation of whether they were talking about it.

00:31:32.460 Your turn to get destroyed, mate. Fantastic. Let's go.

00:31:35.860 The Labour Party position is essentially that if, and only if, Theresa May can get her deal 0.88

00:31:44.560 through the House of Commons and the House of Lords, she then has to pass a second hurdle,

00:31:50.860 which is it needs to win a referendum where Remain would be the option.

00:31:54.620 The Labour Party has not committed itself to being in favour of a referendum should we get precipitated into an early general election. It's still reserved its position on that. And it also isn't saying that we are therefore willing to allow Theresa May's deal to go through the House of Commons.

00:32:15.400 So it's a limited move.

00:32:19.760 It's a move that certainly, indeed, the party has felt it had to make because, you know,

00:32:24.060 about 60% of Labour voters are in favour of a second EU referendum.

00:32:27.420 And that, at the end of the day, is the bigger end of its constituency.

00:32:31.900 But it's not gone so far as to come out in an unlawed fashion.

00:32:37.160 And there's particularly a crucial difference between what the Labour Party is proposing

00:32:40.780 and what Peter Karl and his colleague Wilson were proposing.

00:32:46.920 So there, I think, was a very adroit attempt to move the debate on.

00:32:51.900 So the Karl-Wilson amendment, at least as originally drafted,

00:32:55.420 we'll wait and see what comes out next week, was, you know what?

00:32:58.920 We'll let Theresa May's deal go through the House of Commons

00:33:01.500 so that she can have the chance to put her vote, her deal, to the public.

00:33:08.880 And I think that's my better point.

00:33:10.120 I mean, I'm pretty critical of the people's vote campaign because the people's vote campaign has

00:33:15.660 been so much framed in terms of the people were lied to, all these false claims. They now know

00:33:23.720 much more about what it's about. Oh, and by the way, the opinion polls tell us that the

00:33:28.520 remain are now ahead. Ergo, therefore, we should have a referendum. It's not an argument that is

00:33:34.040 ever going to persuade Leave voters that perhaps we should have another referendum. Whereas once

00:33:39.420 the Carl Wilson referendum, I think, proposal is much more politically adjoined. It's saying to

00:33:46.000 Leave voters, yeah, she's struggling to get it through the House of Commons. Yeah, you don't 0.99

00:33:51.340 trust the House of Commons, do you? But this is the establishment ganging up on the Leave programme.

00:33:57.640 We are willing to put it back to you. You decide. And I think weeks ago, the moment that it was

00:34:05.160 clear that Theresa May's deal was in trouble. The People's Vote campaign should have moved on

00:34:10.280 and they should have tried to reach out to those on the Leave side. But the trouble is,

00:34:15.440 those involved in the People's Vote campaign, I think, are so much the committed remainers that I

00:34:20.920 think their ideological vision has blinkered to them to what would have been the politically

00:34:25.700 astute move. I mean, not least because at the end of the day, if you're going to get a second

00:34:30.600 referendum, persuading Labour was one of the steps, but almost undoubtedly not a sufficient

00:34:36.460 step. Above all, you need to persuade sections of the Conservative Party. You need particularly

00:34:40.200 to persuade that middle rump of the Conservative Party, which will vote for Theresa May's deal,

00:34:46.260 but certainly won't vote for no deal. And I'm desperate for us to get out of all of this.

00:34:50.980 And this is the way out, but you're not going to persuade them by a set of proposals that just

00:35:00.000 looked like an attempt to reverse brexit so um that's you know you use words like reach out and

00:35:08.220 persuade yeah we don't seem to be doing much of that these days it seems to me like it's more

00:35:13.220 that we've split into extremes and what worries me and we talked about it before we started the

00:35:19.100 show was what happens in several eventualities that are possible we have the no deal which is

00:35:26.120 we leave on WTO terms, we have Theresa's May deal, let's say that goes through, or we have

00:35:32.160 essentially Brexit thwarted and doesn't happen. Or an extension. Or potential extension. And then

00:35:39.040 we go back to the original, doesn't happen, happens, happens under some kind of deal.

00:35:45.060 Now, as I look at all three of those scenarios, and then I look at what I perceive to be the mood

00:35:50.020 in the country, which is going to be a lot less accurate than what you perceive. But nonetheless,

00:35:53.820 if we look at all of that, I can see in all three of those scenarios, a very significant group of

00:35:59.360 people who are going to be deeply, deeply unhappy about what's happened. What do you think is the

00:36:06.160 future of this country in those three scenarios and how the different groups? I mean, I think

00:36:11.160 the first thing to say is that I think whatever we do, we are going to upset people. There is no

00:36:18.120 easy way out of where we find ourselves. Because we are essentially polarised. We are polarised

00:36:28.680 between at least somewhere between a half and two thirds of Leave voters would at the end of the day,

00:36:37.380 they either say, leaving without a deal is what I would most like to happen. Or they say, in some

00:36:44.600 cases, that's what I'm willing to do. Around two-thirds of Remainers go, I want another

00:36:54.740 referendum. And around three-quarters of Remainers, whether they want a referendum or not, at least

00:36:59.600 still say, despite all the other choices around, I'm definitely a Remainer. And most of them say

00:37:05.820 that they would vote the same way. So we are deeply polarised. And one of the difficulties

00:37:11.980 about Brexit is that, you know, we often talk about how supposedly what politicians should do

00:37:18.660 is to search for the center ground. The problem with, but that's based on the assumption. It's

00:37:24.680 based on the assumption that basically, to use the jargon, the distribution of attitudes in our

00:37:30.600 society is unimodal, i.e. there are lots of people in the middle, lots of people who are...

00:37:34.300 You just lost 90% of our...

00:37:35.600 Yeah, yeah. And me and Francis.

00:37:37.680 I'm just about to explain. So there are lots of people. So if we think of it being, you know,

00:37:41.400 just a left-right debate for the moment, that most people are in the middle. They're neither

00:37:46.000 very left-wing nor very right-wing. They're centrist, okay? And there aren't very many

00:37:50.700 people on the extreme left and the extreme right. And the point is that if you are therefore trying

00:37:54.840 to win an election, the argument is you therefore need to go towards the centre because that's where

00:37:59.200 most voters are. You might be at centre-right, centre-left, but you need to be in the centre.

00:38:04.560 The trouble with Brexit is, in my view, is the distribution is completely different. It's

00:38:10.200 U-shaped, right? So there are lots of people on what we might want to call the extreme leave end

00:38:16.460 of the spectrum. There are lots of people on what we might want to call the extreme remain end of

00:38:20.480 the spectrum. And there aren't that many people in the middle. Me and Francis, that's it. And well,

00:38:25.420 wherever you find yourselves, if you're in the middle, you're rather lonely, I'm afraid.

00:38:28.580 And you see this, I mean, so the irony of what's been going on, I think, is that both Theresa May

00:38:35.400 and Jeremy Corbyn, in their ways, have been trying to find a Brexit compromise, not least because of

00:38:40.740 the reasons I've been thinking about how Brexit divides their parties and calls them such tension.

00:38:44.840 You know, Theresa May's compromise, which is what her deal tries to encapsulate, is, well, 0.95

00:38:49.600 look, I've got certain fixed lines. I think we have to get out of freedom movement because of

00:38:53.600 the concerns about immigration. We've got to get out of the European Court of Justice because of

00:38:58.200 the concerns about sovereignty. And we should be able to make our own train deals, which is partly

00:39:02.380 about sovereignty and a part of an argument about whether or not the EU is or isn't a

00:39:06.000 protectionist organisation, which is a very, very long running debate. But then within those red

00:39:11.080 lines, which is the kind of the kernel of the Leave case, however, we then need, I think what

00:39:16.100 was the phrase, as frictionless a relationship with the EU as possible. So then she's buying

00:39:20.800 into the Remain argument that we do still need to have a close trading relationship with the EU

00:39:25.160 because it's still 55% of our external trade. So that's her compromise. Jamie Corbyn's compromise

00:39:30.980 is a softer Brexit than hers. It's, you know, Norway plus mine. Well, it's single market

00:39:38.560 minus, but with customs union added. So it's a kind of variant of Norway. But it's, you know,

00:39:47.220 Corbyn's rhetoric is we need to bring together the 52% who voted Remain and the 42% who voted Leave.

00:39:54.380 And we think this is the way to do it. So we're acknowledging the concerns about freedom,

00:39:57.520 freedom of movement. We certainly have concerns about the limitations on the state aid rules of

00:40:03.320 the European Union. But we need to have a close relationship. So they're both compromises.

00:40:10.900 The trouble is what you discover is that when you ask people to choose either between Mrs. May's

00:40:17.500 deal and remain and no deal, you find that Mrs. May's deal is the least popular of the three

00:40:25.160 options. But it's also the case if you ask people to choose between Remain, what we for the purposes

00:40:30.500 of shorthand call Norway, which is roughly where Labour are at, and no deal, Norway is third.

00:40:41.580 And although it's true that you can argue that around a half of the public would be willing to

00:40:47.700 accept a kind of Labour Party type soft Brexit, and we suspect that there's a majority for that

00:40:53.420 in the House of Commons. The trouble is it's a Remainer project. A soft Brexit of the kind

00:40:58.640 the Labour Party is talking about, although it was designed to try to bridge the divide between

00:41:03.320 Remainer and Leave at the end of the day, is something that Remainers might be willing to

00:41:06.880 buy into because it's a soft Brexit. Leavers are reluctant to buy into it. So it's very,

00:41:13.420 very difficult to find the compromise that will satisfy people. So yes, you're right.

00:41:19.280 The problem we then face is this.

00:41:20.620 If we leave without a deal, a lot of people will be deeply upset, all right?

00:41:26.220 There's already said a substantial body of leave voters will go yippee, but the clear

00:41:30.860 majority of the public, around two, and maybe as much as two-thirds of the public, will

00:41:34.820 be at least unhappy and in some cases will be deeply, deeply upset.

00:41:38.760 Avocado sales are really going to fall in.

00:41:40.720 Well, you know, whatever.

00:41:41.840 I mean, sure.

00:41:43.220 Anybody who knew anything about the food industry would have known the 29th of March was the

00:41:48.860 worst time for this country to potentially be cut off from its food supplies. It's the lowest level

00:41:52.980 of food availability from domestic sources. But anyway, but equally, if we go for a second

00:42:00.940 referendum, given at least the nature of the support for, as I have described, that also is

00:42:06.060 going to upset a lot of people. So can one say, can one criticize the idea of a second referendum

00:42:11.080 on the grounds will be deeply divisive? Yes. But can one also criticise the idea of leaving

00:42:19.400 without a deal as being deeply divisive? Also, yes. So both the things which are the two most

00:42:25.360 popular options are potentially deeply divisive. But the difference there is that people voted to

00:42:31.780 leave, right? People didn't vote to have a second referendum. That's the difference between those

00:42:36.240 two things. That's true, but the problem

00:42:38.200 you have is that

00:42:40.060 although a substantial body of Leave voters

00:42:42.060 voted for no deal, there is a

00:42:44.220 substantial minority of Leave voters who are opposed

00:42:46.360 to the idea, and you put them with remain

00:42:48.220 voters, and it's clearly not obviously

00:42:49.740 the

00:42:51.300 public preference. You can see why Theresa May is in trouble. 1.00

00:42:53.960 Yeah, absolutely. Now, why

00:42:56.320 have UKIP therefore

00:42:58.320 collapsed? Shouldn't this

00:43:00.220 be the most fertile, rich

00:43:02.300 point in UKIP's history, where they come

00:43:04.300 in, they go to Tories,

00:43:05.880 Lib... Well, not Lib Dems. They're irrelevant anyway. And then bring them all into the fold.

00:43:11.120 No, it's toys. I mean, a part of the history... Again, one of the reasons why Theresa May's

00:43:17.020 deal is unpopular is that particularly starting with the Chequers Agreement of last summer,

00:43:23.300 support for her and her deal fell particularly heavily amongst Leave voters. So her problem now

00:43:29.200 is that Leave voters were almost as likely to oppose their deal as Remain voters. But she lost 0.99

00:43:33.740 the confidence of Leave voters during the course of the Brexit negotiations, Chequers was a crucial

00:43:38.520 moment. And then the unveiling of the deal itself in mid-November saw support for her position fall

00:43:44.580 even further amongst Leave voters. So, you know, that's the problem that she finds herself in,

00:43:51.800 which is it isn't obvious that those who voted Leave actually back the idea that she's in favour

00:44:01.120 off. But I mean, the only thing to bear in mind is this, you know, let's say how deal goes. So

00:44:06.100 we could therefore say, we can say, well, no deal divisive, EU referendum divisive. Well,

00:44:12.940 let's take the least worst option of the thing that's on the table. And let's just let the deal

00:44:17.080 through. Bear in mind, that's not going to stop the argument. We have barely started the argument,

00:44:26.400 because all we will do if we were to let the deal go through is to mean that the withdrawal

00:44:35.360 treaty becomes legal force. What does the withdrawal treaty do? It protects the rights

00:44:40.280 of EU citizens. It commits the UK to paying roughly 39 billion quid for the next two or

00:44:44.700 three years into EU coffers. And it's got the provisions about the so-called Northern Ireland

00:44:49.620 backstop to try to avoid any risk of there having to be a border between the North and the South

00:44:54.580 of Ireland. Nothing else. We've not talked about whether, I mean, the political declaration

00:44:59.680 says the UK doesn't want to be in freedom of movement, and we recognise that. But the political

00:45:05.160 declaration essentially says, look, how close a relationship the UK has will depend on what

00:45:13.360 rules the UK is willing to follow. Now, if it's not willing to do freedom of movement, it won't

00:45:18.060 be able to be in the single market. And if it's not willing to follow ECJ rules, it'll be in the

00:45:21.780 Cubs and Union. And certainly, sorry, that will also limit its options. But beyond that,

00:45:27.480 it doesn't say anything. It doesn't settle those basic things like European health cards,

00:45:32.640 mobile phone calls, what actually would be what relationship with the single market we have,

00:45:38.620 what regulations we're going to follow, etc, etc. And we're going to carry on arguing for at least

00:45:44.320 another two years until the end of the transition period may well be longer. And for example,

00:45:49.740 I fast forward for you

00:45:51.700 it is October 2020

00:45:53.740 somehow or you know

00:45:55.480 the government

00:45:56.120 we've still got the current government

00:45:57.360 somehow or another

00:45:57.980 Theresa May's deal has gone through

00:45:59.980 we now have a new deal

00:46:02.020 maybe not negotiated by Theresa May

00:46:04.420 maybe she resigned

00:46:05.520 shortly after the end

00:46:07.620 we left the European Union

00:46:09.440 and the Prime Minister

00:46:12.940 is struggling to get his or her deal

00:46:15.200 through the House of Commons

00:46:16.640 because they don't like

00:46:18.300 the new proposed treaty on our relationship with the European Union. We could go through the whole

00:46:23.560 of this cycle again, because at that point, we will be defining many of the things about our

00:46:30.720 future relationship that at the moment people are worried about. So why are people concerned

00:46:34.920 about the Northern Ireland backstop? Well, the essential reason, I think, is because it

00:46:38.700 potentially constrains the free trade deal that we can have. It pushes us towards having a closer

00:46:44.540 relationship than some Brexiteers would like. But we've not had this argument. So look forward

00:46:51.500 to more and more. So frankly, even if Mrs. May's deal goes through, well, A, it's going to go

00:46:57.440 through grudgingly, but it'll still be divisive because we're still going to be arguing about

00:47:02.400 whether or not we should be coming out of freedom movement, what are the consequences, etc, etc.

00:47:07.740 This is going to be a very long running story. There is no avoidance of division on Brexit

00:47:13.300 because resolving Brexit is a very, very difficult issue.

00:47:18.260 Do you think it was a mistake, the referendum?

00:47:21.760 Well, I understand why it happened.

00:47:27.580 Put it like this, it was, I mean, I will say two things.

00:47:30.640 I mean, at the end of the day,

00:47:32.220 it's very difficult to sustain a set of political arrangements,

00:47:38.240 which basically by which I mean giving people authority to make the law of the land all right

00:47:48.140 it's very difficult so this is a question about whether it's very difficult to continue to

00:47:53.420 maintain a set of arrangements that says institution x has the authority to determine

00:48:00.180 the law for this bit of territory it's very difficult to do that and continue those arrangements

00:48:05.820 if the people to whom the law applies do not regard that institution as being a legitimate

00:48:14.980 source of authority. You know, we had this debate in Scotland in 2014 about whether or not it was

00:48:21.460 legitimate for the United Kingdom to be able to make the law for Scotland or not. And again,

00:48:27.140 the argument here at the end of the day is, you know, is it legitimate for the European Union

00:48:32.800 to be able to make some of the law for the United Kingdom, because we are sharing our sovereignty.

00:48:40.360 And the fundamental failure of the European project in this country, in my view,

00:48:45.420 is that it failed to instill in the UK population the sense that we are European. And at the end of

00:48:53.020 the day, what tends to underpin a willingness to share a set of political institutions is a common

00:49:00.160 sense of identity. So why, you know, albeit with some considerable fraying at the edges in Scotland

00:49:06.580 and Northern Ireland, for the most part, the majority of the population in the UK accept the

00:49:12.220 authority of parliament and government, etc. Well, because in part, we feel British. So we're all us.

00:49:19.160 Okay. The problem for the European project in this country is that only around one in eight of us or

00:49:25.280 so feel European. Europe is other. And therefore, it was always been possible for basically to use

00:49:33.560 the simple colloquial lingua, why are Brussels bossing us about? Because Brussels is not us.

00:49:41.220 It's that funny place on the other side of the English Channel of which we do not feel part.

00:49:47.560 They are the Europeans. We are the Brits. So that's the fundamental issue of identity.

00:49:52.340 Now, you can look at the European Union's own Eurobarometer data, and we are the only

00:49:56.900 country together with Greece where a majority of the population at the moment deny, deny

00:50:01.600 that they are European.

00:50:02.980 So the truth is, we've never been more than so many tax members of the European Union.

00:50:07.760 We've been in it for what we could get out of it.

00:50:11.580 When during the last 10 or 20 years, we have experienced by our own historical standards,

00:50:16.740 very high levels of net inward migration.

00:50:18.600 And the brutal truth is that with freedom of movement, you cannot control immigration. 0.82

00:50:22.880 This presented a potential problem of legitimacy.

00:50:26.380 So that's the big answer to you.

00:50:27.960 Now, there's the small answer to you, which is whether David Cameron got his tactics wrong.

00:50:32.960 Almost undoubtedly wrong.

00:50:34.900 I mean, insofar as what David Cameron was trying to do was to kill the issue in two senses.

00:50:43.160 His first aim, with the so-called Bloomberg speech in January 2013, which is what set

00:50:47.980 this whole process in track, his immediate aim was, my gosh, Nigel Farage and UKIP's

00:50:53.160 support has gone up.

00:50:54.540 Our support has gone down.

00:50:55.900 It was the first time that the conservative end of the coalition had been in political

00:50:59.360 trouble.

00:50:59.760 This is the time of omni-shambles, et cetera, et cetera.

00:51:03.980 And he wanted to kill the UKIP challenge.

00:51:07.900 So what does he do?

00:51:08.840 He takes UKIP policy.

00:51:10.800 We have a referendum.

00:51:12.260 But he does so in the expectation that he's never going to have to deliver, because he's in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, who certainly aren't willing to have a referendum on our membership at the moment, and who are always blocking any attempts to pass one after Cameron's promise, etc., etc.

00:51:36.380 And Cameron probably did not expect to get an overall majority in 2015.

00:51:42.740 So in the end, it failed to scupper UKIP, in the short run at least, only after the referendum, ironically.

00:51:53.640 He then found himself with a promise he hadn't expected to deliver.

00:52:00.020 I think he then made a third mistake. And the third mistake from his point of view was that he rushed at it too quickly. He was clearly wanting to move on. He had a substantial domestic agenda he wanted to pursue because he's already time limited his premiership as being back 2019, 2020. He told us he wasn't going to go for another term.

00:52:20.620 And he was expecting to be able to do a hard work.

00:52:26.060 I mean, he's doing exactly the same thing Howard Wilson did in 74, 75.

00:52:30.040 Howard Wilson became prime minister on a promise to hold a referendum on a membership of the

00:52:35.260 then common market after he had renegotiated the terms of our membership.

00:52:39.100 Now, Wilson pulled it off, came back from the country in March 1975 and said, I've renegotiated

00:52:44.720 our terms of membership.

00:52:45.400 It's all fine and dandy.

00:52:46.360 public opinion swung around, and we voted two to one to stay inside the common market.

00:52:51.660 Cameron didn't succeed in pulling off the same trick. He wasn't given enough by the European Union.

00:52:56.620 But what he should have been willing to do is, and he'd done this before to great theatrical effect,

00:53:03.600 he should have been willing to play it much longer. He should have been willing to walk out

00:53:07.700 of a European council and go, they're not giving me what I want. This is not good enough.

00:53:12.160 the negotiations have broken down, and to play long. And the point would have been that if he

00:53:19.960 had made it, if he'd apparently been more determined, apparently more robust with the

00:53:26.800 European Union, he might have been in a better position to turn it around. But then, and then,

00:53:32.880 of course, you know, I mean, then the other, I guess, final mistake he made was, you know,

00:53:38.140 he was the last person to go around saying, if we leave the European Union, the world will

00:53:44.360 collapse tomorrow, because this was somebody whose political record was as a Eurosceptic.

00:53:49.000 He had said that if negotiations didn't go well, he'd be willing to argue in favour of leaving.

00:53:54.120 And he failed to appreciate that once the European Council had not turned public opinion around,

00:53:59.320 and above all, had not turned his party around, that he was no longer Prime Minister. He was

00:54:04.620 leader of the opposition and that he was dependent on the opposition, i.e. the Labour Party,

00:54:08.780 to get himself out of the jam. But did he talk to Lord Mandelson or many another ardent

00:54:15.140 Remainer about how the campaign should be fought? No. They mistakenly misunderstood

00:54:21.180 what they had done in Scotland as being a success of fighting essentially a negative campaign about

00:54:26.300 the economic consequences. It was not a success in Scotland. It was a failure and it did not work

00:54:31.600 this time so there's lots and lots of tactical mistakes and including you know it didn't achieve

00:54:36.100 its original objective it was a promise that you know be careful what you promise

00:54:40.920 because sometimes your promises you have to deliver even though you don't expect to do so

00:54:46.820 and then having found himself hoist on his own petard i think that he did not pay enough attention

00:54:52.440 uh to actually from his perspective playing it in such a way that might have increased his chances

00:54:58.300 of actually getting Remain vote. Those tactical issues aside, though, and we've got time for

00:55:03.520 maybe one or two more questions, those tactical issues aside from what you're saying about our

00:55:07.760 cultural attitudes towards Europe and how we feel about ourselves in this country, it seems almost

00:55:12.840 inevitable that we would come to a point where the issue of our membership of the EU would come

00:55:18.200 to the fore, given that we don't really feel European. And as you say, the levels of immigration

00:55:23.440 than we've seen in this country over the last 20 years.

00:55:25.940 Sure.

00:55:26.780 Yeah, no, sure.

00:55:27.580 I mean, absolutely.

00:55:29.920 I mean, the issue of our membership of the European Union

00:55:33.580 has kept on being an issue ever since 1975, right?

00:55:37.760 You know, not long after the referendum in 1975,

00:55:40.180 the Labour Party, particularly after 1979,

00:55:42.740 came out in favor of us leaving the European Union.

00:55:45.660 There was then a narrow period in the late 80s and early 90s

00:55:48.960 when both political parties were strongly in favor

00:55:51.200 after the Labour Party changed its mind.

00:55:53.440 But then once, you know, post-Maastricht and the fall of Margaret Thatcher, the Euros gets increased inside the Conservative Party.

00:56:02.740 And again, you know, we're sure we've long been uncertain.

00:56:08.580 And yes, I mean, at the end, I mean, the difficulty for the Remains side was, yeah, it's partly about immigration.

00:56:15.300 and the fact that, you know,

00:56:17.220 indeed immigration had been high,

00:56:19.520 that, you know, ironically in 2004,

00:56:23.400 we were the most pro-Europhile country 0.99

00:56:28.700 along with Sweden and Ireland.

00:56:31.000 We gave the citizens of then so-called A8 countries,

00:56:34.420 Poland, Czech Republic, et cetera,

00:56:36.640 the immediate freedom of movement rights

00:56:38.460 and we were told they won't want to come.

00:56:39.780 I mean, who wants to come to this wet,

00:56:41.720 miserable, dark, cloudy country. You know, it's us who want to go to live by the Mediterranean.

00:56:49.300 Now, of course, they came and the Polish plumber came and et cetera, et cetera.

00:56:54.060 And then, of course, in 2010, Cameron said he was going to get net migration down to

00:56:59.560 less than 100,000. We've never got anywhere near. So there's that sense of failure. So that's one

00:57:04.200 of the problems. The other problem, however, is, of course, is also the fallout from the financial

00:57:08.700 crash and the Eurozone crisis. Back in 1975, it was very, very easy to argue why the UK should

00:57:17.640 remain as it only just recently joined the then Common Market. It was the six original members of

00:57:23.100 the Common Market have enjoyed much higher and much more sustained levels of economic growth

00:57:28.580 than we have. We have been the sick man of Europe. You know, as soon as we turn on the taps

00:57:33.960 of public spending, inflation goes up. As soon as we turn them off again,

00:57:38.500 unemployment goes up. We have this stop-go economy. Well, by 2016, rather than being portrayed as an

00:57:47.700 unalloyed economic success, the European Union's economic credentials were, at least shall we say,

00:57:54.680 more debatable. And the Eurozone and how the crisis had been dealt with raised questions about

00:58:00.820 its effectiveness as an economic

00:58:03.080 organisation. And although this country

00:58:05.300 did take a pretty big hit in

00:58:06.980 2008, it was certainly coming

00:58:09.040 out of the financial crash much

00:58:11.200 more quickly than particularly many

00:58:12.860 a Southern European Union member.

00:58:17.080 Okay. The economic

00:58:19.000 case was more difficult.

00:58:20.720 So yeah, so given that our relationship

00:58:22.960 was always a transactional one,

00:58:25.040 economic argument, more

00:58:26.980 problematic, immigration

00:58:29.080 argument, well, it was never there in 1975. And then you've still then got the continued,

00:58:34.560 those who never ever accepted the idea that she would be in the European in the first place put

00:58:39.320 all that together. And yes, it becomes problematic. And how much do you think that that vote was a

00:58:47.160 rebellion, which is what people have classed it as, as a working class people giving two fingers

00:58:52.140 up to Cameron and the ruling elite, as it were? I think, I mean, it's fair to say that

00:58:59.460 certainly a populist narrative is also part of the mix. You know, the idea, certainly that,

00:59:07.920 you know, that there's an elite out there, which is running things against our interest.

00:59:12.980 I wouldn't use the language of class, I would use the language of educational background.

00:59:16.360 But certainly, again, if you listen to Leave Discourse, it's about how the interests of ordinary people are being commandeered, being distorted by the liberal establishment who tend to be university graduates who've had this wonderful liberal education the rest of us have paid for, et cetera, et cetera.

00:59:45.220 So there's the sense of being just being distorted, not only by the state, but also distorted by those in in big business.

00:59:52.540 You know, that's certainly part of the sentiment. But it's then but I would then say, you know, it's that sentiment together with a socially conservative discourse and a concern about sovereignty.

01:00:04.580 It's all those things together.

01:00:07.140 But yes, given that we are talking about a situation in which we are having, I think,

01:00:14.480 behind all of this, we are having a debate about the process of globalization.

01:00:20.720 At the end of the day, one of the ways of thinking about it is this.

01:00:26.360 Earlier, I described the argument as being about immigration and about social liberals

01:00:31.500 and social conservatives partly as being a cultural one.

01:00:34.020 But it's also an economic one. At the end of the day, if you are a university graduate where

01:00:40.780 particularly you've got a linguistic qualification or you've got a professional qualification,

01:00:44.980 freedom of movement is an opportunity. If, on the other hand, you are an older person,

01:00:51.720 you have little in the way of labour market skills, immigration is something that happens 1.00

01:00:56.340 to you. People from elsewhere come to your neighbourhood, a neighbourhood which perhaps

01:01:01.120 has not previously had much experience of net inward migration. And what's the advantage to

01:01:08.260 you? So there's that. And then, of course, there's the broader argument about globalization. Well,

01:01:12.340 hang on. Living standards for most people have not been increasing. Indeed, in some cases,

01:01:17.980 they've been declining. Although overall levels of inequality have not necessarily increased,

01:01:22.840 we've certainly not managed to reverse the sharp increase in inequality that occurred in the 1970s

01:01:27.580 and 1980s, and at the very top of the income spectrum, at least, you know, there are arguments

01:01:32.360 to be had. So against the back of all of that, yes, you can see how a focus on this institution

01:01:42.140 whose legitimacy was always questionable, which seems to be promoting the forces of

01:01:49.380 globalisation that don't seem to be doing some of us much good, and from which, frankly,

01:01:54.220 we'd like a bit of protection, both economically and culturally, how that mix does help to bring 0.90

01:01:59.720 about the mood that we have. Well, we have time for one final question, which is the question we

01:02:04.520 always ask, which is what is the one thing that we're not talking about as a society that we

01:02:08.960 ought to be talking about? Well, this is still going to be about Brexit, but we've spent the

01:02:12.840 last hour or so talking about Remainers and about Leavers. But if we were to have another referendum,

01:02:21.320 At the moment, it looks as though the crucial group could be those who did not vote in June 2016.

01:02:28.240 So we do lots of polling data. Remainers think this, Leavers think this.

01:02:30.860 Well, 30% of the population didn't vote in 2016.

01:02:34.940 Some of them, and there are now people who were 16 and 17 in 2016 who now could vote.

01:02:41.160 And insofar as the polling data does suggest that maybe we would get a small majority in favour of Remain

01:02:48.360 a second time around, if there were a second time around. The reason for that is not essentially

01:02:53.420 because those who voted two years ago have changed their minds, but rather that those who didn't vote

01:02:58.740 two years ago now seem to have made up their minds rather late in the day, but they are at least two

01:03:05.200 to one in favour of remains. So the story of those who did not vote two years ago might be perhaps

01:03:13.840 the most important story about the Brexit process. And insofar as we can perhaps critically

01:03:20.020 evaluate the rhetoric about the people who have spoken, therefore they will have to be implemented

01:03:25.500 well, almost in, although the turnout was high by standards of recent general elections, at the end

01:03:32.600 of the day, there was still a substantial body of people who did not vote. And the outcome was close.

01:03:38.600 and inevitably in those circumstances you can always go around and ask well

01:03:43.300 is it still the will of the people now well maybe we will they won't find out

01:03:47.640 certainly the one thing it's easier to say that the will of the people is definitely to leave

01:03:53.320 much clearer thing is the people are divided glad we've solved it then

01:03:58.860 so john cutters thank you very much for coming on the show you mentioned twitter are you on

01:04:04.400 Twitter? Do you use it yourself? I have two institutional accounts. So I have At What UK

01:04:08.500 Thinks, in which I promote and occasionally comment on attitudes towards Brexit. And I also

01:04:16.620 have an account called What Scots Think, which is about public attitudes towards the constitutional

01:04:22.360 debate in Scotland. And they're associated with two websites that follow these two stories.

01:04:26.880 I also saw there's a Twitter account, which is called something like Sir John on TV.

01:04:31.280 Indeed. There is a spoof account. The story behind that is that on the 18th of April 2017,

01:04:40.660 which is the day that Theresa May announced the 2017 general election, I was sitting quietly in

01:04:45.540 an office in Edinburgh where I work one day a week. It was the Tuesday after Easter, thinking,

01:04:49.860 oh yeah, nice quiet day and get on with things. And I get rung up by the news channel, BBC, and

01:04:56.260 they say, the Prime Minister's about to make an announcement. We're not quite sure what

01:05:03.160 it is. We're not sure whether she's ill and she's resigning, but maybe there's going to

01:05:09.300 be an election. So I said, I tell you what, get me a cab. I'll go down to the BBC studio

01:05:16.520 in Edinburgh. And if it's about something else, I'll just quietly go away. And if it

01:05:22.580 is a general election, I'll be there. Well, of course, it's about a general election.

01:05:24.660 you know three hours broadcasting later i managed just about to escape in order to pick up my

01:05:29.760 belongings from where i'd left them come back again do about another or two hours of broadcasting

01:05:33.700 i think there probably was a non-insubstantial body of people or at least somebody on twitter

01:05:37.160 who went why the hell is this guy on a tv all the time well i just happened to be in the wrong place

01:05:43.860 at the wrong time but i think that's when it started and then it's kind of you know it's kind

01:05:47.520 of mushroomed after that but to give you some idea of how researche this group of people can

01:05:55.820 sometimes be i'm certainly aware that on one occasion i think it was just after the 27th

01:06:01.220 i did something for flemish television you know really big audience in this country

01:06:06.320 somebody watched it oh fantastic and we are as always at trigger for the normal social media

01:06:13.060 subscribe to the youtube channel click the bell button next to subscribe button and give

01:06:17.500 us a review on itunes we will see you in a week from now with another brilliant episode thanks

01:06:21.300 guys see you next week

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TRIGGERnometry - March 24, 2019

Sir John Curtice on What the Polls Tell Us About Brexit

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