HOUSEHOLDS MORE PESSIMISTIC

A survey by Markit shows that people are becoming more gloomy about our future prospects (HERE). The survey found that the proportion of people expecting the economy to fare better over the next ten years as a result of Brexit has fallen to 29% from 39% last July.

Meanwhile, the proportion who think the UK's economic prospects have got worse has risen from 42% to 53%, resulting in a net balance of -24% — down sharply from the -3.5% last July.

Prosper like never before!

POLL SAYS ONLY 11% THINK GOVT IS DOING A GOOD JOB ON BREXIT

It will come as no surprise to anyone that just 11% of the population think the government is doing a good job on brexit according to a poll for Sky News(HERE).

I don't know what it looks like from the inside but from the outside it looks like a shambles.

The brexiteers suggested the government should have prepared for the outcome before the vote. Given that it as so far taken six months to get precisely nowhere I wonder what resources they would have wanted to be spent on brexit before June 23rd? 

CHRISTMAS SUMMARY

There was a bit of good news (apparently) just before Christmas with newspaper polls in the West Midlands and Sunderland (HERE) showing a huge swing to remain. They were dismissed as unscientific but at least they don't show a swing to leave!

The Independent claimed, after an interview with the head of the Irish agency trying to attract businesses to Ireland, that more than 100 companies are enquiring into a move and "dozens" of them are actually planning to relocate (HERE).

Roger Bootle of Capital Economics says pundits need to eat some humble pie over Christmas (HERE) but I hope that one day we will be able to ask him to eat all of it.  Mrs May in her Xmas message has urged everybody to unite behind brexit (HERE) but I think she seriously underestimates the depth of pro-European feeling.  We are not going to become believers in brexit - ever.

And finally Mervyn King, former BoE governor has once again shown he is not an economist and has no idea how the British economy works, says we should be optimistic about brexit and we should leave both the single market and the customs union (HERE). Some people are born fools.

BREXIT 6 MONTHS ON

The BBC's Mark Easton has written an article about what he thinks prompted the leave vote. You can read it HERE.  He says brexit is rewriting the political map with conservative and labour areas voting the same way and is particularly struck with Port Talbot an area that has benefited a lot from EU funding bu has very low levels of immigration.

He thinks they vote against a global elite who make decisions about their lives from faraway places. Mr Easton may well be right but his conclusion is wrong.  Tata would not interfere if Port Talbot made a profit - in the way that Nissan don't interfere in their highly successful Sunderland plant. And note Sunderland also voted to leave.

I believe much of Port Talbot's problems are the age old British problem of low productivity and a belief that the world (i.e. The Global Elite) owes us a living.  Tata make decisions because they are having to send a lot money every month to keep the plant going and who can blame them?

Also, there is an interesting report from The UK in a Changing Europe (HERE) about the progress or lack of it since June 23rd.  Sky News (HERE) quotes from it saying the EU thinks we are still living on fantasy island - and Mark Easton shows we are. 

John Curtice says in the report there is little evidence of people changing their mind - but let us see where we are this time next year.

COMRES POLL STILL SHOWS MAJORITY FOR LEAVE

ComRes have carried out a poll (HERE) which seems to show there is still a majority to leave the EU and Brexit Central takes a lot of comfort from it. But are the figures all they seem?

The poll says 47% would vote to leave and 45% to remain with 8% not knowing how they would vote. On the surface this looks good for the brexiteers.  In June the vote was 52%-48% a four point advantage - but today there is only a 2% difference.  If we assume the 8% don't knows break evenly either side then today's result would be 51% - 49%.  Given another 6 months there should be balance.

It is hard to understand the result. Apparently 44% think they will be worse off and only 24% think they will be better off while 47% thought our long term prospects outside the EU will be better and only 36% thought we would be worse off . We wait to see what voters think next year.

Incidentally, this is not quite how a YouGov poll saw it earlier (HERE)

LEAVE VOTERS SOCIALLY ISOLATED

New analysis (HERE) and (HERE) shows that leave voters were likely to be more socially isolated then remainers. A report from the think tank Demos claims people who have little contact with those from outside their own neighbourhoods are overwhelmingly more likely to have voted for Brexit, according to the first in-depth study of the social attitudes that drove the vote to leave the EU.

I must say this doesn't come as a surprise.

THE LUDDITES

A poll (HERE) by ComRes seems to show we blame globalisation and what the report calls a backward-looking dislike of modern technology for many of our economic ills. And yet Liam Fox thinks we should be signing trade deals with the rest of the world in a huge increase in globalisation.

Trade is our Achilles heel and is surely connected with our appalling productivity which globalisation can only improve (witness the car industry as a great example).

At the same time a piece in The Sunday Times Business section this week says British industry expects to install about 1800 robots in 2016. This compares with more than twice this number for Spain and Italy and 20,000 for Germany. How do we expect to earn our living?

POLLS BEGIN TO TURN

Polling from YouGov and Which (HERE) appears to show that the majority of people won't accept a brexit that leaves them worse off including half of those who voted leave in June. Only 10% of the population would accept losing up to £100 per month and these presumably are people who are so viscerally opposed to the EU they are effectively beyond persuasion.

But more importantly the poll, conducted for Open Britain also suggests that the prolonged period of uncertainty since the 23 June referendum has chipped away at the pro-Brexit majority. If a rerun of the vote were held tomorrow, remain and leave would be tied at 44% each, with 5% not voting at all and 7% undecided. Also there is an increased number of people who think they will be worse off next year because of  price rises (HERE).

So we are already at balance with all the negotiations and the economic impact to come. Things are looking up?  The Huffington Post (HERE) has an item claiming that 120,000 leave voters have already died and 126,000 young remain voters have been added since June 23rd and if you combine this with leave regretters netted off against remain regretters (amazing) there is a 52-48% majority to remain. This might be fantasy but it shows we are headed in the right direction.

MOST VOTERS WANT TO STAY IN THE SINGLE MARKET

A social research organisation called NatCen has published the result of some detailed polling about voters attitude to the EU after the brexit vote.  It makes fascinating reading (HERE).

The headline is that most voters want to remain in the single market, including 90% of those who voted to leave compared to 94% of remainers. However, at the same time as many as seven in ten (70%) think the UK should be able to limit the number of people from the EU who come here to live and work. Indeed, almost three-quarters (74%) believe that potential EU migrants should have to apply to come here in the same way non-EU migrants have to do.

Professor John Curtice, Senior Research Fellow at NatCen, said, “Irrespective of how they voted, voters in Britain do not feel that the UK’s exit from the EU should necessarily be a choice between a ‘hard’ or a ‘soft’ withdrawal. Rather, many back options on both menus. Consequently, the kind of deal that is most likely to prove electorally popular is one that maintains free trade but permits at least some limits on EU migration.

“That, of course, is the deal that many in the EU insist will not be possible. In those circumstances, the UK government will be faced with a tough choice. But given that most Leave voters – and, indeed, a majority of Conservative voters – prioritise limits on immigration over keeping free trade, perhaps we should not be surprised if that would be the choice that, if necessary, it will be inclined to make.”

I think this is all down to politicians like BoJo who have allowed people to believe they can have their cake and eat it. What will happen when reality intrudes?

NEW EUROPEAN ON THE ELECTORATE

The New European printed a report (I can't put a link to it because I buy the paper copy only) about the electorate last week. A professor at a university has looked at the voting figures and he said 75% of the 18-34 age group voted to remain, while the figure for the 65+ was just 35%.

He claims, and I think this is right, that 750,000 people join the 18-34 group each year while a similar number leaves the 65+ group, by dying.  On this mathematical basis and assuming no one changes their mind, each year the remain side will add 300,000 to their total while the leave total will reduce the the same amount.

Thus, by 2020-1 the result will be in balance and there will then be an ever growing majority to remain in the EU.  Also, in October the government announce plans to allow ex pats who have lived overseas for 15 years or more to vote. This could add between 1 and 5 million to the electorate, the majority of whom would be expected to vote remain.

And if we assume the economy is going to take a big hit soon, it would not be a surprise if some of the leavers, confronted with all the complex legal and constitutional issues, changed their mind.  

It is not that hard to foresee Mrs May going to Brussels to sign the withdrawal treaty with pro Europe newspaper publishing regular polls showing a clear majority to remain. What would the PM do in these circumstances?

ANALYSING THE VOTE

Professor John Curtice, the polling pundit has produced a report (HERE) about why Scotland voted to remain but for me the most interesting thing is the level of support for EU membership from the 18-34 age group who voted 67% in favour of remaining.  This compares with 47% for the 35-54 age group and only 41% for the over 55s.

So, the people least affected by the referendum voted overwhelmingly to leave while those most affected, the young, voted even more overwhelmingly to remain.

In the next 10-15 years as the older voters pass on and assuming people's opinions remain the same (a heroic assumption I know) the majority may want to stay.  What an irony this will be when a future prime minister's pen hovers over the signing page of a new trade deal with the EU, knowing that polling evidence is showing most people want to restore our membership.

MIXED MESSAGES

Two opinion polls in the last month seem to be giving diametrically opposed messages. The first by ComRes (HERE) says a majority of people put trade before controlling immigration.  A second one (HERE) by Survation for ITV says we are happy to sacrifice trade if that means we can control immigration.

How do you make sense of that?

OPINION IS BEGINNING TO TURN

The Economist has a chart (HERE) from a serious survey of 10,000 people showing that 6% of leavers now regret their vote compared to 1% or remainers.  This means if a new vote was held tomorrow, remain would win (HERE)

Meanwhile, inflation figures out yesterday show a sharp increase to 1.0% (from 0.6%) in the last quarter.  Much of this is being blamed on Brexit (HERE) with people admitting there is more to come with 3% being the likely figure for the middle of 2017.  It is those at the bottom who will be most affected, as food and clothing prices increase. In other words those who were more likely to have voted leave. People are more pessimistic about the future (HERE).

I wonder how opinion will change when the impact of the decision becomes ever clearer?  If Article 50 is not triggered before March it may never be triggered. It is a race to see if reality prevails in the cabinet before or after Article 50 is set in motion. As remainers warnings are shown to be true, while leave arguments are obviously wrong opinion will change quickly.

THE PROBLEM WITH REFERENDUMS

The Electoral Reform Society has released a report about the EU referendum (HERE) setting out what it calls the "glaring democratic deficiencies" with voters turned off by big name politicians and negative campaigning, a report says. The ERS attacked both sides of the referendum campaign, saying people felt "ill-informed" by the "dire" debate.

I agree with this but personally I think the remain arguments are mostly unproven but the leave campaign admitted most of their claims were misleading the day after the vote!

Coincidentally, and on a separate topic (Trump in the USA) the Washington Post has an article (HERE) about the part played in a democracy by emotion over reason when it comes to voting. The author talks about the "indifference to truth and consistency is what happens when the honest efforts of political scientists to grapple with the balance between the rational and irrational in politics become an excuse for absolute cynicism — about voters, their attention spans and democracy itself".

He also mentions the attention span of today's electorate and I have often talked myself about people's need for simple answers to complex questions.  

Yesterday the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published a report on why voters made the choice they did and it's quite revealing (HERE).  A graph shows 27% support for Brexit from people with a post graduate degree against 75% from those with no qualifications.  As I said to someone in the week after the vote at least we know pretty accurately how many stupid people there are in the UK - the JRF seems to confirm this view.

IS IT A CASE OF WELSH BREGRET?

The Independent (HERE) has published a report about a poll carried out by ITV Wales and Cardiff University since the referendum which appears to show that if another vote was held now, the result would be different.  It seems while 97% of remainers would vote the same way, only 86% of leavers would do the same and this would be enough to change the result from a narrow leave win to a narrow remain win.

All of this is of course depends on how accurate the polling is but I think the trend will grow as the months go by and the effects of Brexit show up in people's day to day lives.

POLL SUGGESTS EU MARKET ACCESS MORE IMPORTANT THAN IMMIGRATION

A poll carried out for The Independent suggests voters think retaining access to the single market is more important than controlling immigration (HERE).

However, as usual the headline masks the reality.  Remain voters think so by 76% to 12% but 67% of leavers believe controlling immigration is worth it whatever the consequences.  Amazing!

Apparently some people are prepared to sacrifice their own livelihoods in order to keep a few EU immigrants out.

SUPPORT FOR THE EU RISES IN MAINLAND EUROPE

According to Nigel Farage and Michael Gove, the EU referendum result was supposed to spark some kind of popular revolution in the EU with moves to demand referendums leading to an exodus of countries from the EU.

Polling carried out in Germany, Austria, Finland and Denmark and Italy all show increased levels of support for staying in the EU (HERE).

EU support in Europe surges

Nigel Farage resigned today as leader of UKIP. He has often suggested the EU is failing and Gove has said he thinks the UK's vote will lead to a domino effect.

They will therefore be disappointed to read this (HERE).  Bloomberg are carrying a report of polling in Denmark, Finland and Sweden that support for the EU has increased following the Brexit vote defying their predictions.