In Sevenoaks on Saturday, we canvassed people for their views on whether the UK should leave the EU with No Deal or should not leave the EU at all. There was the opportunity to suggest something else.
The weather was bright and sunny and warm and there was music from the Sevenoaks Festival just a few metres away outside the Black Boy Pub. People were relaxed and friendly; people with all views that is. Many people are fed up with the whole thing, and we can all sympathise with that.
But Brexit will not go away if we were to leave on 31 October or indeed any other date. There will be many many years of negotiation (and negotiation means uncertainty) while trade deals are put in place so that we can move away from WTO terms which will be so damaging to our trade and our economy.
- 473 people gave us their views. Of those
- 375 – 79.3% – told us they wanted No Brexit while
- 53 – 11.2% wanted Brexit with No Deal.
- 45 – 9.5% – people said they wanted Something Else; more on this below.
At the 2016 Referendum the Sevenoaks Parliamentary Constituency voted 45.6% to remain – but Sevenoaks Town and the surrounding areas voted 53.8% to Remain. Today’s poll suggests a very strong move to staying in the EU.
On Sunday it was three years since the 2016 Referendum on our membership of the European Union. Today there was a still quite a significant minority of people who said that we had voted in the 2016 Referendum and we needed to do what was voted for then. Some people still have the view that nothing has changed in three years and that the fact that we are much better informed than we were then is of no relevance.
Some who want a No Deal Brexit seem content for us to trade under WTO rules, but quite a few of those are not clear on what these are or how they work. We were handing out our leaflet with information about this – you can see this below
“Something Else” was mostly unspecified but it did include:
- 8 – A General Election
- 6- A “different deal” – unspecified
- 4- Theresa May’s deal
- 3- Whatever Boris wants! ( we confess that we added this to “prime-the-pump” with ideas – but 3 people did choose it. )
Various others, including “Votes at 16” and “A deal, any deal”.
We had an excellent turnout of volunteers helping – 19 in total – and we thank them all very much for their time and work. We plan to be out again soon in other locations and if you can join us please email peter@sstie.uk and let him know.
