EU elections: a blue square brick in blue square hole situation; only idiots would vote
Such is the Government’s control of the means by which perception is managed, it is very hard to gauge the success of its attempt to have people want to take part in next month’s once redundant, now “necessary” EU elections. ConservativeHome, which is rather like the internet headquarters of the Tory party, commissioned a poll of membership which confirms something that was previously guessed at in the FBEL article, Newport West and the EU elections; Part One: Government gets the message, renews efforts to have “tax revenue”. It is the role of the Brexit Party to funnel Leave-voting Tories, who wouldn’t have participated because of their party’s handling of Brexit, back to the European Parliament ballot booths.
The ConservativeHome poll reports that only 23% would continue to vote for their own party, while 62% would vote for Nigel Farage’s judas goat operation. A crucial figure that comes out of the poll is perhaps nevertheless little noticed, and it is the number that won’t vote, at 4% (with 5% saying that they don’t know how they will vote). This quite possibly indicates that the Brexit Party being available as an option has somewhat taken the sting out of Tory membership unhappiness in terms of the risk of non-participation in the EU elections.
However, it is interesting to see ConservativeHome editor, Paul Goodman question if the poll could be incorrect in a piece that accompanies the data. “It is extraordinary”, he says “that three out of five Party members could say that they will vote for different party altogether”. Here is a comment on the usual inability of the Conservatroid – a word for a slavishly Tory-supporting automaton – to not cast a vote for a Tory candidate regardless of very good reasons to refuse. And it serves to remind us that what we are actually seeing in this poll is instruction to Tory party membership. The Government is keen to have as many as possible participate in the European elections, and its Tory executive part would rather have 62% of the Tory membership switch to vote for the Brexit Party than to not vote at all. In fact, the author can well believe that this is the sort of thing that wounded Conservatroids, with hurt feelings totally extinguishing any sparks of lateral thought that might otherwise ignite the dim cloud that sits between their ears, would fall for hook line and sinker.
We should also notice that at about the same time as this poll appeared Farage indicated that the Brexit Party will be targeting Leave-voting Labour supporters in the north of England. Assuming, as we have, that the priority for the Brexit Party would have been the disgruntled Tory support, upset that it had been made to feel conned and therefore stupid, we might further assume that the planners for Brexit Party ambitions have decided that all that can be done in terms of mining discontented Tories has been done. Look again at that 4% for “would not vote”. There is a chance, of course – and the author has a gut feeling that this might be the case – that other polling (and not the sort that the public ever gets to see evidence of) has indicated that there needs to be a change of tact – and tactics – and that numbers need to be consolidated by attracting another sort of voter, as well as changing conditions on the ground.
As it happens, evidence is available to us in the form of two YouGov polls that recently created spectacular headlines predicting a stunning Brexit Party victory at the EU elections. However, as is often the case, the raw data told a very different story. If the reader is not aware, there are certain responses to a question that a polling company just ignores in its final presentation of data. Having done this, the percentages for responses that the polling company does present in its results are inflated. In the cases of both polls, the disregarding of two considerably large results for the responses “don’t know” and “would not vote” are responsible for nudging the score for the Brexit Party as high as verging on 30%, and Labour, apparently in second place, over 20%.
In the raw data for a YouGov opinion poll, with respondents being canvassed between the 16th and17th April, the Brexit Party scored 16%, Labour scored 13%, and the Tories scored 10%. The percentage of respondents who indicated that they would not vote was 18%. The percentage of those who didn’t know how to respond was 21%.
In the raw data for a YouGov poll, with fieldwork done 15th to 16th April, saw the Brexit Party score 16%, Labour 13%, and the Tories 9%. Those who would not vote were 18% (with “don’t know” on 19%).
This raw data says that the “faction” that would in fact “win” the EU elections are the people who are not going to vote in them. Moreover, these polls confirm that it is the Tory party that is suffering the most from refusal to participate, given that they are neck and neck with Labour (at 18-20%) when the same respondents are asked about general election voting intent. Maybe these results indicate to Government planners that all of those in the demographic, beyond the membership itself, that usually votes Tory, and who could be persuaded to vote in the EU elections are actually not enough to stop a significantly low turnout. And maybe this is why efforts are freshly afoot to unseat Theresa May.
If the real story line here is that the Government is heading towards an EU elections turnout headache, then with all things being equal, this is what we should expect to happen. Whether or not to vote in an election for a European parliament should be a test for Leave-voters on a par with the intelligence quotient tests that feature in the film Idiocracy; i.e. can the candidate add one and one together to make two, and can the candidate understand that the blue square block does not go through the yellow circle hole in the toy for babies? Let’s understand why.
The question put to the people in the EU referendum was one of leaving or remaining in the EU. Of the two options, only the latter should have led to the country participating in the elections for European parliament, because to have a representative there is a defining feature of being in the EU. For Leave-voters to then vote for representation – and everyone who votes does this even if their party’s candidate doesn’t win – is to actively claim a representative counter to all, and in lieu of previous intent. It has already been pointed out in other FBEL articles that this behaviour is so dangerous in terms of being contract forming activity, and so there will be no need to go into it again in full here – instead please see the links scattered throughout this piece and listed at the foot of the page to read this material.
To keep things as abstract as possible, the point being made is that Leave-voters are being asked to participate in something that should not be happening according to their own demands and instruction to Government. Britain should have left the EU on 29th March. Instead, the UK Government issued itself a political credit, which actually didn’t have the necessary support in the body politic, so that the country could remain in the EU (explained in the FBEL article Government crosses line in sand; sheep must learn new mantra, men must dispense retribution – link).
Now, it might be true to say that Leave-voters, subsequent to voting in the referendum (and overlooking the Day of the Dumb, or the General Election 2017), could not help that the Government has created a situation whereby they are being asked to vote as if there had never been a referendum. But this is immaterial, because they do have a choice about claiming a representative – and this is where they get to express their objection and to maintain their previously demonstrated intent. If Leave-voters participate in the EU elections, they will be, 1) risking the negation of their vote in the referendum by allowing it to be interpreted as having been superseded by new engagement with the EU of a particular sort by which membership is in fact defined, and 2) validating the UK Government’s fiat EU membership that was created on 29th March when the European Communities Act 1972 was not repealed.
As stated above, this is too simple even for rampant idiots. It should be quite clear to any Leave-voter as to why he should not take part in the EU elections.
But let us try something else. From Bagehot , we understand that the fundamental meaning of claiming a representative in the UK parliament is to state to the body to which your delegate has been dispatched that you have consented to having people from territories other than your own have jurisdiction over your home territory. The following extract conveys the pertinent material:
The first pre-requisite of elective government is the mutual confidence of the electors…
To fancy that Northumberland in the thirteenth century would have consented to ally with Somersetshire for the choice of a chief magistrate is absurd… Even now, if it were palpably explained, neither district would like it. But no one says at a county election, ‘The object of this present meeting is to choose our delegate to… [an] “Electoral College,” to the assembly that names our first magistrate… Representatives from this county will meet representatives from other counties, from cities and boroughs, and proceed to choose our rulers.’ Happily, the process of election is so indirect and hidden… that we scarcely perceive the immense political trust we repose in each other. [p27; Chapter 2; The English Constitution, Oxford World’s Classics paperback 2001]
Applying this to the EU, sending a representative to the European parliament means consenting to foreign powers having jurisdiction over that part of Britain from whence the electorate is commissioning representation. However, things are not easily comparable between the British parliament and the EU one. Unlike the parliament at Westminster, at least in the Bagehotian theory, a representative in Europe cannot affect a change to the executive branch of European government. Indeed, it can barely hold it to account, and the reader should notice the insinuation that the EU parliament never did perform any supposed checks and balances on the European commission and presidency in the following extract from a Politico article predicting the nature of the body in the near future:
The European Parliament election in May is expected to be transformative, ushering a new class of MEPs who as a group will be younger and more likely to be Euroskeptic than their predecessors. The new chamber will also almost certainly be the most politically fragmented in the institution’s history.
Will this wave of disruption produce a Parliament that is more confrontational and even more ready to exercise its powers…?
The solid idea that can be found at the bottom of this presentation is that, irrespective of what the most eurosceptic people in the EU, the British, did at European elections, the weight of pro-Europeanism coming from European countries has always heavily outweighed not only that opposition on its own, but whatever it could combine with coming from the little that European nations could muster. Although the extract suggests that Europe (and the term naturally excludes Britain) is, in 2019, about to suddenly create a European parliament that will stop acting as a rubber stamp factory for the policy of the unelected technocracy that rules the EU, this is not going to happen. It is a fact that euroscepticism never translated into stopping the EU agenda. It wasn’t eurosceptics who forced the referendum on the EU in Britain, it was withdrawalists – and there aren’t many withdrawalists in Europe.
To summarise this point, then: the EU parliament is the ultimate in the illusion of representative government where to have representation is to merely signal consent to be governed by an overtly unresponsive and unaccountable foreign power. Even if the Brexit referendum had not taken place, in the normal course of events, no Briton who wanted his country’s independence should consent to be governed by the EU by voting in the European elections.
Of course, there may well be those who would say that it is ok to vote in the European elections, because the representation at the EU parliament would only be retained while Britain remains in the EU. But are they sure about that? We can turn this around. Would Britain have to remain in the EU because it has representatives in the European Parliament? The term of the parliament is for five years. After all the history, why should a Leave-voter trust that he isn’t voting for an extension of British membership in the EU if he claims a representative in the parliament?
The only way to be sure in what are extremely treacherous waters is to create a low turnout, so that if the EU and the British Government start to use European legislation to bind Britain to the EU because of the EU elections, it can be demonstrated that most people did not consent to be governed by the EU by their non-participation in the European elections. At the same time, non-participation would be a reiteration of the intent declared by voting Leave in the referendum, and a demonstration of refusal to acquiesce to the Government’s fiat EU membership.
It really is a blue square brick in blue square hole situation. Only window licking idiots would vote Leave and then vote in the EU elections.
Attorney General Funbags says: Brawndo’s got what plants crave; Voting changes politics for good – link.
Newport West and the EU elections; Part Three: another charlatan claims to represent the people – link.
Newport West and the EU elections; Part Two: shrugging off the message, denying the further likelihood of low turnout – link.
Boycotting the European elections: there can be no business as usual after Fake Brexit – link.
