On 17/09/2019 16:07, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
I don't want a second referendum anymore than I wanted the first one. But
it does seem those who who did secretly believe it was a fluke.

The Brexit supporters are against a second referendum quite simply because the Remain side would almost certainly win. Look at public opinion polls: all those published in the last 18 months show Remain ahead by several percentage points. Of course polls have errors but this consistent lead in all of them is above any likely error, and means Remain would almost certainly win in any re-run.

The reason is simple: in 3 years about 2 million electors have died, most of them elderly, and we know that about 75% of the elderly (those over 70_ voted to Leave. They have been replaced by about 2 million people in the 18-21 age group, who we know are in favour of Remain by 80 to 90%.

You may think that as people get older their views get more conservative and perhaps incline more towards Leave. But the limited evidence available suggests this is not true. One reason is that Leave voting is much more correlated with lack of education than with age: of course the 70+ group were young when only about 8% could go to college so it's hardly their fault that they never got a decent education. This means that many of them have the world-view of a little-Englander. Education does not seem to vanish with age and neither, as far as pollsters can tell, does being in favour of remaining in the EU.

Conclusion: the Leave side may have left it too late. Indeed if we left now it would be profoundly anti-democratic, as the majority of the population already don't want it and it will be hard to reverse. Even if nobody has changed their mind, the electorate as a whole has. Hence Boris's fanatical determination to leave as soon as possible. He knows it will be too late to do it any later.

If we do leave, I think there will be an inexorable rise in demand to rejoin within a few years. That will have left us all worse off.

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Clive Page