4 September 2019
The arrival of Boris Johnson in Downing St has resulted in a marked change of tone in the debate about Brexit. The new administration has signalled that, if it is unable to secure a new Brexit deal by the scheduled date for the UK’s departure of 31 October, it will leave the EU without a […]
3 September 2019
As we noted shortly after the event, not only did the European election produce a dramatic result, but also it had an impact on voters’ preferences for Westminster. Both the Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats enjoyed a substantial boost in their standing for a general election, the former gathering its support from those who […]
23 June 2019
Today marks the third anniversary of the EU referendum in which the country voted narrowly (by 52% to 48%) in favour of leaving the EU. Since then, the country has spent much of the last three years debating how the process of leaving has and should be handled, the terms on which we should aim […]
6 June 2019
Today’s Westminster by-election in Peterborough is taking place in the immediate wake of a Euro-election in which voters left both the Conservatives and Labour in droves, switching instead to parties that were backing clearer if more polarising options on Brexit. The timing of the by-election thus switches our attention rather rapidly towards what might be the […]
1 June 2019
The outcome of the European election in Britain was truly remarkable. Record after record was broken. The Conservatives secured their worst result ever. Labour suffered its biggest reverse since it first started fighting elections as a wholly independent party in 1918. The Liberal Democrats and the SNP enjoyed their highest share of the vote in […]
23 May 2019
A plethora of polls published in the last hours of the campaign have affirmed the likely outcome of one of the key political battles in the Euro-election – but have left us rather uncertain about the outcome of another. That said, it is clear that Sunday is set to be an uncomfortable night for both […]
22 May 2019
Together with colleagues at Stanford University and the University of Manchester, we are undertaking a project on public attitudes towards post-Brexit policy on immigration, food policy and consumer regulation, using deliberative polling. Much more information to follow, but here, as a first step, is a description of what happened during our first round of deliberation […]
15 May 2019
Prompted by the Newport West by-election, at the beginning of April we published an analysis of how support for both the Conservatives and Labour had slipped during the course of the Brexit impasse. The Conservatives appeared to have lost ground among those who voted Leave, while Labour had lost support among both Remainers and Leavers, […]
8 May 2019
There was a ready acceptance among politicians and commentators as the local election results gradually emerged on Thursday night and Friday morning that the outcome reflected voters’ views about Brexit. Not that they necessarily agreed as to what message the electorate were sending. Those of a Leave disposition interpreted the decline in both Conservative and […]
4 April 2019
Today regular domestic politics will provide a small interruption to the increasingly frantic attempts being made both by the government and by parliament to seek a way out of the Brexit impasse. A parliamentary by-election is being held in Newport West, following the death of Paul Flynn, a widely-respected MP on the left of the […]
