The day after the Brexit vote there were several news articles on the television coverage of people who regretted voting to leave the EU. It was balanced by other articles interviewing pleased leavers, but it was enough to make me wonder if the whole thing was going to descend into a farce. It fitted in with the obvious shock on the part of the leave leaders, particularly Boris Johnson and Michael Gove who looked anything but delighted by the outcome.
But it turned out that the leavers were made of sterner stuff than their leaders. People I knew to be strong leavers and who knew my contrary views were careful to avoid saying anything to make me uncomfortable - and at least amongst the people I knew the subject dropped from conversations. In other words there was no sign of regret that I could pick up from my particular corner of the country. It was a bit of a different story on social media - but it always is. And the polls showed no sign of any shift in opinion. As per the referendum, the country was split very nearly down the middle but with an edge to the leavers.
Since then nothing much seems to have happened. The events that have come along have so far pretty much not really proved anything very much either way - with the obvious exception of the fall of the value of the pound. And there has been very little in the way of any indication that there has been any big shift in opinion.
But today I think I can discern the start of a move away from support for Brexit. Every Sunday since the vote I have done search on Brexit on Twitter. Up until now this has pulled up a range of opinions. It has always been skewed towards remain no doubt because I tend to follow more people with that opinion. But I have also followed quite a lot of leavers and they have usually been active enough to keep the other side of the debate well enough represented. But today when I did that, there was nothing from the leavers. I scrolled down some 200 tweets, every one of them was either critical or reporting bad news stories. Nobody was beating the drum for Brexit.
Obviously my Twitter feed is not a representative sample of anything but it turns out there is now some polling evidence that support for leave is beginning to erode.
The British Election Study has picked up a small increase in the numbers of people who regret voting leave. It is nothing much to write home about. I don't think you could conclude that a referendum held today would produce a different result. I think you'd need to have data on the level of motivation of the two sides to predict that. There probably are fewer leavers than remainers now, and may well have been in June. But they were more determined to get to the polling booths. I don't know if their enthusiasm has waned that much yet.
But I think at last we can plausibly point to evidence that leave is losing ground. There is plenty of bad news on the horizon. The fall in the value of the pound on its own is enough to guarantee some pretty significant economic dislocation. Everyone notices price rises. When firms start re-organising their supply chains there will be job losses. My Twitter feed is already evidence that Tigger is starting to lose his bounce a bit. There isn't any obvious thing I can think off that will bring it back.
http://uk.businessinsider.com/brexit-vote-regret-leave-margin-victory-2016-10
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