Today's Guardian article against the Labour leader. Here's why I don't believe it: Poverty & austerity were #1 decisive issue in UK Brexit vote. Unless the 1,034 Labour members polled were those most affected, it's not clear if their views now changed. 1/ theguardian.com/politics/2019/…
LSE-London School of Economics Blog: Following the #EURef in 2016 an important cross-cutting observation is that Leave voting areas had been “left behind” from globalization, with the local population having been particularly reliant on the welfare state. 2/
You can read the full LSE Blog here “Had austerity not happened, Leave support could have been up to 10% lower”. 3/ blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpol…
The Guardian reported “New research from the University of Warwick suggests that Osborne’s austerity policies directly led to Britain voting to leave the EU (August 2nd 2018). 4/ theguardian.com/politics/blog/…
Institute for Economic Thinking published the same report on the Brexit vote: Places hit hardest by austerity cuts were more likely to vote for UKIP and Leave. 5/ ineteconomics.org/perspectives/b…
Many of the UK places hit hardest by austerity included Labour party constituencies and therefore the Leave vote included Labour party members even if their MPs advocated and voted to Remain in the EU. 6/
In November 2018 Philip Alston, the UN official on extreme poverty came to the UK and concluded poverty was far worse than UK Government accepted: Poverty causing 'misery' in UK, and ministers are in denial. 7/
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-462366…
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-462366…
UN Philip Alston, an expert in human rights law based at New York University, visited UK locations including Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Essex, Glasgow, London and Newcastle on an extreme poverty fact-finding mission. 8/
Philip Alson quoted figures from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, “more than 1.5m people destitute at some point in 2017, meaning they lived on less than £70 a week or went without essentials such as housing, food, clothing or heating. 9/
UN expert Philip Alston used a new measure by the Social Metrics Commission (SMC) to come up with the figure of 14m people in the UK in poverty. 10/ socialmetricscommission.org.uk/MEASURING-POVE…
The SMC is a measure of "relative poverty", meaning it looks at the percentage of people living with less than 55% of the median income, taking into account costs such as childcare, housing, debt and disability. 11/
Therefore, given overwhelming studies on UK poverty & austerity, we need to ask does today’s @guardian report of a study polling 1,034 Labour members to back a 2nd Brexit vote, target those most affected by austerity and if their Brexit Leave vote has now changed to Remain? 12/
Expert reports confirm there are now even more people affected by austerity & living in poverty than prior to the Brexit vote - which is why it is vital to identify and poll the Labour members most affected in constituencies who voted to Leave & if they now change to Remain. 13/
Yet there is no evidence stated in @peterwalker99 Guardian article today that the new poll by The ESRC Party Members Project has targeted Labour members most affected by austerity or if their vote has now changed from Leave to Remain. 14/
Elephant in the Room: As with any polling, monitoring or evaluation, the results are dependent on the questions asked and ESRC failed to determine or target to what degree Labour members polled had been affected by austerity and if their Leave vote would change to Remain. 15/
It might be those most affected by austerity now realise they were misled and should blame UK government and not the EU for their suffering. But until Labour members most affected by austerity are polled, we don’t know the answers to how they would vote now. 16/
In my opinion, given the multitude of complex factors affecting the Brexit vote, primarily austerity, a realistic Labour member poll would need to include a combination human development index (HDI) poverty analysis with opinion polls. Costly, but far more accurate. End/.
