Thread by @MariosRichards

@AnthonyBarnett @helenlewis Yes - saw the link to that right *after* I'd finished writing my thread.

Very nice article, nothing to disagree with about the content ...

... however, it's *really hard* to nail down "sovereignty" as a major driver of voting Leave (among the public rather than elites).

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@AnthonyBarnett @helenlewis In fact, it's *really hard* to even know what it is that the Leavers who say "sovereignty" rather than "immigration" (as most imp. issue. for their euRef vote) even mean by sovereignty.
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@AnthonyBarnett @helenlewis Here's a plot where I used the entirety of the BES dataset to try to split Leavers who said "Sovereignty" and Leavers who said "Immigration" (as their most important issue for the euRef) using an algorithm that creates axis that maximise separation.

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@AnthonyBarnett @helenlewis (I put an example of a similarly real-world messy data undergoing the same example just to hammer home the point that whether people say "Sovereignty" or "Immigration" says *almost nothing* about the social/political attitudes/demographics/what have you of the individuals.)

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@AnthonyBarnett @helenlewis Short version: for the majority of the Leave voting public "Sovereignty" meant "Sovereignty over Immigration".

At the elite level of politics Sovereignty as something distinct from Immigration becomes meaningful among people on the economic right of politics.

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@AnthonyBarnett @helenlewis The dynamics are roughly the same as communists vs social democrats. Sane free traders will explain that 21st century free trade is all about regulatory harmonisation/frictionless trade. Insane free traders quote out of date stuff about tariffs and get frustrated with detail.

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@AnthonyBarnett @helenlewis The problem is that the counters to their argument have to come from the economic right - and they do in the FT and the Economist - but they don't have a broader platform with the Conservative Party/tabloid newspapers.

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@AnthonyBarnett @helenlewis Someone needed to be hammering "Rabid Right Hannan wants to TRIPLE RED TAPE" in the Sun or the Mail and purging the right-wing think tanks like the IEA of Minfordists.

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