CONCLUSIONS

My best conclusion to all of this data is that about 20% of Leavers can be regularly classed as liberal Leavers.

Those who are very firm in their stance are probably fewer— down to as low as 12%-14%. But it does seem to be about 20% who consistently turn up in polls.

But there are fair numbers of people who gather above my 20% baseline figure. The figure may well reach 30% of Leavers when including those who are open/agnostic about the liberal Leave position and may be an even higher number (up to a half) who could be persuaded with the right leadership and the right EU deal package. The Comres/BBC poll, the Yougov/Adam Smith Institute poll, and the Yougov poll on 1st August all provided the highest scores with around half of Leavers being apparently open to the position.

By contrast, the lowest score was shown in the Yougov poll of 28th June where only 12% supported the liberal Leave position, although a further 10% supported other positions covering “Don’t Know” (7%), “None of these” (1%) and even trying to reverse the Leave vote (2%). Of course it may be possible since the result that the regular narrative pushed by some on the Leave straight after the vote that it was “all about free movement” may have had some impact on the public.

In all the polls, there are Remain voters who are different to the Remain camp’s natural position i.e. who are worried about immigration or who now want a deal that stops free movement. But as I have discovered, particularly since the referendum result, there are a number of Remainers out there who seem keen to interpret what they think Leavers want and to then ape that imagined position. Some even try to out-Leave the Leavers.

The key point in all of this is that liberal Leavers made a decisive difference to the close referendum result (52/48). Had such people decided, before voting, that it was impossible to get a relatively economically-neutral “liberal Leave deal” in the event of a Leave vote, who knows how they may have voted?

As Jonathan Portes has previously noted, if the result had gone the other way so that Remain emerged victorious, the question about allowing free movement to continue as now would have been stated as “settled” and indeed accepted.

To leap from that position to one that says “free movement must be instantly stopped” after a narrow Leave victory, especially as this victory was only achieved with the help of liberal Leavers, seems like a leap too far.