Tag Archives: leave

Election spending limits: we’re going to spend, spend, spend (or are we)?

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Increasing the amount of money that political parties can spend during election campaigns might not sound sensible, but as Justin Fisher explains, the government’s proposal to do so seems reasonable in principle, but must be implemented with care to avoid disproportionately benefiting the two most popular parties.

On 20 July, Michael Gove, the Secretary of State responsible for overseeing party finance regulation, announced that party (and candidate) campaign spending limits for Westminster elections were to be increased in line with the value of money. This received little fanfare and was only touched upon briefly in the press the following month. This proposed change is both welcome and significant. So why is the change being proposed? To understand this, it is worth explaining how party spending limits are calculated.

Party Spending limits

Party (rather than candidate) spending limits were introduced by the Political Parties, Elections & Referendums Act 2000 (PPERA). Setting the period of regulation as 365 days before a general election, the act devised a formula for parties based on the number of constituencies in which a party fielded a candidate. The overall party spending limit was set at the number of seats contested multiplied by £30,000. Thus, at the 2019 general election, if a party fielded candidates in the 631 constituencies in Great Britain (assuming they did not contest the seat of the Speaker), the national party spending limit would be £18,930,000.

However, the sum per constituency (£30,000) set by PPERA in 2000 has never been adjusted for inflation. As a result, the national party limit is approximately 50% lower in real terms than when it was introduced. When accounting for whole-year inflation, the £18,930,00 spending limit equates to approximately £9,473,344 at 2022 prices. This erosion of the level in real terms has occurred over a period of relatively low inflation. So, given the relatively high rates of inflation experienced in 2023, this real-term figure will be even lower come the end of this year.

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A second Brexit referendum looks increasingly likely: what key questions need to be addressed?

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Widespread negative reactions to Theresa May’s Brexit deal have focused increasing attention on a possible further EU referendum. With MPs appearing poised to vote down the Withdrawal Agreement, a referendum could provide a way out of the apparent deadlock. But how would it work in practice? Ahead of the parliamentary debate, Meg Russell and Alan Renwick summarise the conclusions of their recent report on this topic.

When the Constitution Unit published The Mechanics of a Further Referendum on Brexit in October, it was still unclear if the government would successfully reach a deal with the EU, what that deal would contain, or how parliament and the public would react. Now that those facts are known, increasing numbers of MPs are demanding that the Brexit issue be returned to the public in a fresh referendum. But many unanswered questions about the practicalities remain. Here, we offer short responses to the most pressing of those questions, drawn from our report, to inform the parliamentary and growing public debate.

1. Is a referendum possible in the time available?

To hold a referendum, the UK parliament must first pass legislation. Before the bill leaves parliament, the Electoral Commission must assess the ‘intelligibility’ of the wording of the proposed referendum question – which usually takes ten weeks. This limits the ability to pass a bill very rapidly. Once the bill has received royal assent, sufficient time must be set aside to allow the Electoral Commission to designate lead campaigners, and for the campaign to take place.

In total, we estimate that the whole process – from introducing legislation to polling day – could be compressed to around 22 weeks. This is significantly less time than for previous referendums: for example the equivalent gap for the 2016 EU referendum was 13 months. But similar levels of urgency did not apply in these earlier cases.

The timetable could potentially be compressed even further, but doing so would risk delegitimising the result of the referendum – it is important given the sensitivity of the topic that the legislation is seen to be fully scrutinised, the question fair, and the campaigns adequately regulated. 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 →

Divided but influential? The Exiting the European Union select committee

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9caa65f1.ccfa.41f1.b3a9.c215903163f256529dfd.b7ad.416a.959b.ac44a05e40ceThe Select Committee on Exiting the European Union was formed in 2016 following the outcome of the EU referendum. Chaired by former International Development Secretary Hilary Benn, it is in many ways an outlier in the world of Commons committees. Philip Lynch and Richard Whitaker discuss what makes it so unusual and analyse how it has operated since its inception.

The Select Committee on Exiting the European Union (the DExEU committee, or Brexit committee) is one of the most divided since the creation of departmental select committees. Select Committees usually operate on a consensual basis, and unanimous reports are regarded as carrying more weight. Most reports are agreed without divisions. But the DExEU committee has seen divisions – formal votes on reports or amendments – on each of its reports, and eurosceptic members produced an alternative draft report in March 2018.

Of the committee’s 21 members, 14 campaigned for Remain in the 2016 EU referendum: six Labour, four Conservative, two SNP, one Liberal Democrat and one Plaid Cymru (see Table 1 below). Seven voted Leave: six Conservatives and one DUP.

Voting on DExEU committee reports

The DExEU and the Northern Ireland select committees are the only ones in which the Conservatives and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) together have a majority. However, they have rarely been able to take advantage of this, because the DExEU committee is not divided primarily along party lines. Continue reading →