Referendum advisory and not decisive
WITH Theresa May insisting, ad nauseam, how essential it is to comply with result of the June 2016 EU Referendum, it is worth considering a few facts relating to it.
Firstly, this was merely an advisory/consultative referendum so unconditional implementation of its outcome would surely only be justified if the result was unquestionably decisive. With “Leave” winning by just 51.9% to 48.1%, this is far from being the case.
Secondly, the fact that the Leave campaign was successfully convicted for unlawful expenditure calls the validity of the referendum result into serious question. Moreover, their battle bus advert claiming Brexit would release £350m a week for the NHS was not only mendacious nonsense but they would not, of course, have the power to discharge this ridiculous promise.
An, arguably, quite decisive effect on the referendum result comes to light on examining the circulation of the London daily newspapers. At the time (early 2016), the combined circulation of the three most hysterical anti-EU “separatist” newspapers (the Sun, Daily Mail and Daily Express) was 3.8m – almost 1.5 million more than the total circulation of the other 7 daily newspapers (and some of these were also anti-EU).
There is no doubt that these newspapers had a huge and highly unwelcome influence on how their readers voted in the referendum, which meant that multi-millionaire media moguls clearly had a massive and – almost certainly – decisive influence on the referendum result.
This is, of course, the major defect of referenda and unfortunately, these moguls will exercise their influence even more hysterically if there is a second EU referendum.
Gwyn Hopkins Llangennech, Llanelli