A new You Gov poll by Queen Mary University of London has discovered what should be an unsurprising fact — that British voters like to live in a sovereign democracy and, unlike their political masters, prefer to decide on their own laws rather than outsource their governance to the EU.
When asked on a range of 20 topics who they believe should make our laws, “the UK alone” was the most popular option for every topic and held an outright majority in 17 areas. All of the 20 topics, from fishing to AI to food, would to some degree be handed over to the EU if we rejoined.
This goes to show that while Brexit and the EU are topics that divide opinion, British voters plump for Blighty when asked neutral questions about who they want to make their laws in areas where the EU has power. What is more, this is not even a fringe view of Reform or Conservative voters — Greens, Lib Dems and, in fact, majorities of every group believe British laws are best made in Britain.
This may not sound like a surprising result. There have been numerous polls commissioned by Pro EU groups that purport to show the opposite. Well, they tend to ask the questions that gives the answer they want. They are often backwards looking — “would you leave in 2016” rather than “would you apply to join today’s EU” and are devoid of the context of what terms we would rejoin under.
The E.E.C and then the EU have been misrepresented by UK elites for decades
But this poll points to a larger issue. The E.E.C and then the EU have been misrepresented by UK elites for decades. The EU is not a free trade area, it is a nascent state with law making and enforcement powers over a wide range of policy areas — sovereignty, in other words. Whereas our elites picture the EU as a vibe or purely as a matter of (often fake) economic statistics, ignoring questions of sovereignty and democracy. The level of knowledge about the EU was low and falling. The process of Brexit exposed a whole class of Pro-EU MPs who could not tell a free trade area from a Customs Union, harmonised laws from mutual recognition.
This is unsurprising, as the whole case for joining the EEC, and re-joining and/or “resetting” British relations with the EU, has always been built around this central lie — the lie that the EU was just a trading club and that it involved no loss of British sovereignty.
In the original referendum, in 1975, the free leaflet sent to every voter explicitly said that E.E.C membership did not involve any loss of sovereignty, as every decision had to be agreed by a UK Minister. That was already a lie in 1975, as ten years earlier De Gaulle had stormed out of the EEC in the “Empty Chair Crisis” at the extension of Qualified Majority voting. This ended in the “Luxemburg compromise” but the national veto had already started to erode.
Roll onto the 2016 referendum and the Government could no longer claim that Britain had a veto. It had given up most of those under the Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties. In its leaflet it relied on fake economics. The reason the pro-European campaign has to lie about sovereignty is that they know that surrendering the UK’s ability to make its own laws is very unpopular — a fact they discovered in 2016 and rediscovered in this poll.
Instead of asking voters who should make their laws, advocates of EU rule couch their policies in neutral terms, pitching “closer relations” with the EU — whatever on Earth that means — or, more strangely, focusing not on the powers given up but on the few areas the UK retained to proclaim the benefits of a “special status”.
Yet for all the spin and subterfuge the EU is not a trading bloc or a free trade area, it is a Customs Union with its own laws under its own Court — a state in the making. Laws are decided by Qualified Majority Voting where member states can be and often are out-voted. Decades of arguments and spin about the European Union have made it hard to disentangle voters’ real views from the tribal politics of Brexit.
The lessons of this poll are timely, for unlike in 1975 or 2016 today’s pro EUers have a new proposition — not “pooling sovereignty” as a member of the EU, with all its disadvantages, but an infinitely worse deal. They are quietly and stealthily signing us up to EU control and lawmaking while not a member — handing over sovereignty, which is something the clear majority of British voters do not want.
