Tag Archives: John Curtice

Parliament and Brexit: what do the public think?

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IMG_20181213_223144Almost four years have passed since the 2016 EU referendum delivered a mandate for Brexit. However, as John Curtice explains in the latest extract from our joint report on Parliament and Brexit, the views of the public on the role of referendums in the Brexit process is heavily influenced by their views on whether Britain should leave the European Union or remain a member.

Though they have been used various times on constitutional matters in the UK, referendums are often thought to challenge traditional notions of representative parliamentary democracy. In the UK’s version of such a democracy, MPs are sent to Westminster to deliberate and exercise their judgement on their constituents’ behalf. Referendums seemingly usurp this traditional role, in an attempt to ascertain ‘the will of the people’.

Nonetheless, survey research has long suggested that referendums are popular with voters – as indeed was the June 2016 EU referendum. A fortnight beforehand, 52% told YouGov that David Cameron was right to hold a referendum on Britain’s EU membership, and only 32% said he was wrong. On the very eve of polling, Ipsos MORI reported that 66% of voters felt the Prime Minister was right to hold a ballot, while only 24% reckoned he was wrong.

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Yet, underneath the surface there were already important differences of opinion. As the first chart shows, Leave and Remain backers had rather different views. According to YouGov, 83% of Leave supporters supported Cameron’s decision, and only 9% thought it wrong. In contrast, 60% of likely Remain voters disliked the decision and only 26% approved. Of course, in calling the referendum Cameron had opened up the possibility that the UK might indeed leave the EU, a prospect that Leave voters were more likely to
embrace. Continue reading →

Politics, courts and the UK’s single market

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image_preview.jpgBrexit is likely to pose numerous legal questions about how the various parts of the UK relate to each other once the UK leaves the EU. Deborah Mabbett argues that the recent Supreme Court decision on prorogation is therefore unlikely to be the last time the judiciary is called upon to decide a matter related to Brexit.

Even among those who welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision on the prorogation of parliament, there has been concern that it has entered into dangerous new territory. It might have been forced there by a Prime Minister who failed to observe convention, or by a parliament that resiled from its duty to remove a government which has no majority, but forced it was, and this is a source of concern and regret. Several commentators have argued that the decision paves the way for a nasty and unpredictable election structured around a populist opposition of courts and parliament versus ‘The People’, and indeed those who see Dominic Cummings as an evil genius fear that this was the intention of the prorogation in the first place.

For those seeking a calmer view, the Court is clear in its self-assessment that, far from entering new territory, it is firmly placed on ground it has held all along. It has upheld the rule of law, in the specific sense of imposing limitations on arbitrary authority. This is the daily bread and butter of administrative law, of which there is a great deal more than excitable commentators seem to realise. Below the public gaze, the courts have dug in their heels over countless daily exercises of executive power, including the mistreatment of immigrants, the removal of welfare rights and the denial of access to justice. True, the arbitrary power challenged in these cases is not exercised by the contemporary king—the Prime Minister—but by the agents and minions of the state. Escalating the level of scrutiny to the actions of high political figures makes the prorogation decision a matter of constitutional rather than administrative law, but law it is.

On what grounds can it be claimed that the Supreme Court’s decision is ‘political’? The domains of law and politics cannot be defined by their subject matter, which clearly overlap across great swathes of social issues. We must look instead for differences in method and modes of reasoning. The characteristic method of politics is the structured antagonism of government and opposition, organised around the general political orientations of left and right. The belief that the Court had made this kind of decision seems to be behind the claim of Toby Young and Douglas Carswell, among others, that the prorogation judgment calls for action to ferret out and expose the partisan leanings of the justices. Yet left and right partisanship was obviously beside the point in the decision. Continue reading →

The myth of a growing sense of English identity

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IMG_20181213_223144England remains the only country in the UK to lack its own national parliament, and there is no indication that this is likely to change in the near future. Here, Sir John Curtice discusses the extent to which those who identify as having a distinctive English identity have grown in number, and if this translates into greater support for separate English institutions.

One of the key features of the devolution settlement in the UK is that it has become increasingly asymmetric, as both the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly have gradually gained more powers. In contrast, only relatively minor changes have been introduced in England – (i) changing the procedures of the House of Commons so that laws that only affect England have to have the backing of English MPs as well as the House as a whole and, (ii) introducing in some of England’s major metropolitan areas city regions run by a directly elected mayor and a combined authority but with limited powers. This contrast means that a debate continues to bubble away about the fairness and effectiveness of the way in which England is governed, prompting the recent publication of a book, Governing England, that reports the fruits of a major investigation undertaken by the British Academy into how England might best be governed in future.

One of the seemingly important issues in the debate about the governance of England is the country’s sense of identity. An England that predominantly feels British might be thought to be happy to be governed by UK-wide institutions. But one that feels mostly English might be expected to take a very different view. It has been argued that the sight of devolved institutions elsewhere in the UK has made people in England more aware of their English rather than their British identity and that they now seek to have that identity acknowledged politically. That English identity is becoming politically more important appeared to be confirmed by the well-documented evidence that those who think of themselves as English were more likely than those who regard themselves as British to vote to Leave the EU.

But how many people south of the border claim these days to be English rather than British? Is there any evidence that there has been an increase in English identity? And is there any reason to believe that those who do feel English have become more likely to want their sense of identity reflected in how England is governed?  These are some of the questions addressed by me in Governing England. Continue reading →

How did people’s expectations of the consequences of Brexit affect their vote?

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profile.steve.fisher.320x320 (1)alan_renwickAs the Brexit negotiations grind towards a conclusion, there is much talk of what it means to honour the 2016 referendum result, and of whether another referendum should be held once the Brexit terms are known. A new paper by Stephen Fisher and the Unit’s Alan Renwick sheds fresh light on these issues, examining what people thought they were voting for in 2016 and how that affected their vote choice. In this post, the authors summarise the findings and draw out lessons for today’s debates.

With increasing discussion of the possibility of the UK holding another referendum on its relationship with the EU, it is important to better understand what happened at the last one. Understanding how voters made up their minds in 2016 could provide insights into how another referendum might play out. Also, one of the key arguments against another referendum is to maintain respect for the outcome of the previous one. What it means to respect that outcome depends on understanding why the UK voted to leave the EU.

In our recently published paper in Acta Politica (available free-to-view here), we focus on the role of voter expectations of the consequences of leaving the EU. Following previous research by Sara Hobolt and John Curtice showing that attitudes to the EU, including expectations regarding Brexit, were the most powerful and proximate predictors of vote choice at the referendum, we wanted to investigate further how Brexit expectations mattered, and whether it made a difference if voters did not have clear expectations. In particular, we wondered whether, perhaps because of risk aversion, uncertainty about the implications of leaving the EU was associated with Remain voting.

In April 2016, before the referendum campaign, the British Election Study (BES) internet panel asked people what they thought would happen with respect to various different economic and political outcomes in the event of the UK leaving the EU. For most of the outcomes the modal response was to say that things would stay ‘about the same.’ These outcomes included the economy, unemployment, international trade, risk of terrorism, rights for British workers, personal finances, British influence abroad, and the risk of big business leaving the UK. There were just two exceptions. There was a slight tendency for people to think that Scottish independence would be more likely and a strong expectation that immigration would be lower after a Brexit. Continue reading →