BRITAIN’S pollsters are facing a bit of a puzzler ahead of the EU referendum on June 23.
Yesterday saw the release of new surveys from YouGov and Ipsos Mori. Conducted over the phone, both put backing for a Remain vote ahead, with Ipsos suggesting 55 per cent of voters would back staying in the EU, compared to 37 backing Brexit, an 18-point difference.
Earlier in the week online polls from ICM and TNS suggested voters would back Brexit. TNS put support for Remain on 38 per cent. Professor John Curtice’s poll of polls, however, suggests a much closer race, with Remain on 51 per cent and Leave on 49 per cent.
The bookies say there has been a “significant” shift towards Remain and Ladbrokes have lengthened the odds of a Leave vote from 9/4 to 3/1 in the space of a week. The odds for a Remain verdict are 1/4.
James Kelly, who runs the Scottish polling blog Scot Goes Pop, said it wasn’t possible to discern any clear pattern in the EU polls this week: “Assuming there isn’t a dramatic indyref-style convergence between online and telephone polls as polling day approaches, I would imagine the Leave campaign will be hoping that they open up a much clearer online lead and that Remain’s average lead in telephone polls is lower than seven or eight points by the end of the campaign.”
For the first time since the referendum campaign began, polls have started making an impact on the pound. The 18-point lead in the Ipsos Mori poll saw the pound jump yesterday, with Sterling up 0.73 per cent against the dollar, at $1.456 and up by 1.06 per cent against the euro, hitting €1.291.
Meanwhile on the campaign trail, Vote Leave took to Holyrood to point out that the power of the Scottish Parliament to legislate was being hampered by Brussels. Tom Harris, director of Vote Leave Scotland, said: “Our elected politicians can’t pass laws they have been elected to implement.
“We’ve seen the decimation Brussels has caused our fishing and farming communities, and if we want more powers for the Scottish Parliament to create better policies, it’s time to vote Leave.”
Sir Menzies Campbell from the European Movement in Scotland called Harris’s claims “nonsense”.
“In the event of Brexit, Scotland would be at the whim of Westminster as to how any such funding was allocated,” he said.
“You don’t get increased powers to the Scottish Parliament without legislation in both Holyrood and Westminster.”
Harris was supported by two new Tory MSPs, Ross Thomson and Graham Simpson. Tory sources believe there could be as many as 10 of their party’s 31 MSPs who are against remaining in the EU.
Despite being at odds with party leader Ruth Davidson, a staunch supporter of the EU, there is little sign that the split on the Tory benches is damaging the party north of the Border.
In Westminster, the debate over the UK’s membership of the EU was again dominated by infighting in the Tory party. Cabinet Minister Chris Grayling refused to support his fellow Leave campaigner Boris Johnson’s recent remark about Hitler and the EU having similar goals.
Grayling was asked 11 times on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme whether Johnson was right to compare the EU with Hitler’s attempt to conquer Europe. He declined to answer each time, stating the former Mayor of London was “a historian making a comment in his own words”.
On Tuesday, former Tory minister Michael Heseltine said Johnson had ruined his chances of leading the party after making “preposterous, obscene political remarks”.
Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg called Lord Heseltine “a frightful old humbug”.
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