Who’s Afraid Of A Second Referendum?

As the politicians’ holidays come to an end, and those at Westminster have to face the prospect of more EU negotiations over a Brexit deal, momentum is building for a further vote, if only on the terms of the deal that Theresa May and her pals finally agree. News has now come in that the Peoples’ Vote campaign has had another £1 million pledged to it. So those who don’t fancy asking the electorate again have decided to act.

And that means the Murdoch goons at the Super Soaraway Current Bun have decided to put behind them minor considerations, such as circulation being in freefall and now below the 1.5 million mark, and come out fighting. With this in mind, the paper has commissioned a poll from pollster new boys Deltapoll, which by the most fortunate of coincidences has yielded exactly the kind of results required.

“Half of Brits want to leave EU on March 29, with or without a Brexit deal … The mood of the nation is hardening after two years of bitter rows and fruitless negotiations since the historic referendum result” screams the resulting headline. There is more.

“Nearly half of Brits think we should leave the EU on March 29 with or without a deal … They are sick of Brussels bullying and resistant MPs stalling - and simply want ministers to deliver … The mood of the nation is hardening after two years of bitter rows and fruitless negotiations since the historic referendum result”. And, unfortunately, more.

“An overwhelming 62 per cent say they have not changed their minds. Those who have are mostly Remainers who would now vote Leave … Many people are deeply sceptical about the tedious stumbling blocks that have bogged down the process”. And, right on cue, there is the usual fantasy rubbish from disgraced ex-minister Priti Patel, who also claims “most people are sick to the back teeth of being ­bullied by the EU”.

But what we do not know, as Deltapoll has not, as far as is known, released the underlying datasets from which they derived their results, is what exactly was asked, and what kind of poll this was (previous Deltapoll Sun on Sunday polls have used online polling). This matters - for the all too obvious reason that previous recent polls showed an increasing lead for Remain. The welter of falsehood and misinformation has not helped, either.

For instance, the EU is not bullying anyone. This is the invention of an increasingly shrill press and its allies on the right. Worse, the poll has another miraculous coincidence to report: “BRITAIN’S sizzling summer was not the result of climate change, according to most Brits … Barely a third of voters believe the human race is responsible and that we will have more extreme temperatures unless we act soon”.

All of which makes it yet more urgent that we see what questions were asked, how they were structured, and how those sampled were selected. This poll has come at exactly the right time in the news cycle, with just the kind of results the organisation commissioning it would want, including a suspiciously large proportion of climate change deniers.

The only thing we can conclude from the Sun’s ranting is that someone, somewhere is afraid of a second referendum. Who might that be? I’ll just leave that one there.

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