If anyone needed confirmation that the British EU referendum is revealing deep fissures in the fabric of civil society, a recent poll from YouGov should suffice. The numbers there are, quite frankly, very disquieting. They suggest that a substantial portion of the Leave campaign views the referendum as a rigged process and the EU as conspiring behind the backs of the British people to launch a new round of integration.
For instance, 49 percent of the sample of British voters, and 75 percent of Leave voters, rated the following claim as “probably true”: “There are plans for further EU integration and enlargement that the EU are deliberately not announcing till after the referendum.” 21 percent of voters and 28 percent of Leave voters believe British intelligence services are working to stop Britain leaving the EU. And, most worrying of all, 28 percent of voters and 46 percent — nearly half — of Leave voters believe the EU referendum is probably rigged. Among those who voted for the United Kingdom Independence Party in the 2015 general election, that figure is 64 percent. (29 percent of UKIP voters also believe that the BBC isn’t doing an exit poll so that the true results can be more easily altered without anybody noticing.)
Two things should be noted here. First, that half of Leave voters believe the referendum is rigged reflects the long-underway severe decline in public trust for political institutions. That nearly half the country thinks the EU is holding off on some vital piece of information is surprising, but not terribly so, given the amount of ill-feeling towards the EU even among Remain voters; but for half of voters to display the same level of distrust for their own country’s institutions is astonishing and deeply disconcerting. One can also see how this echoes, in a way, the widely-held sense among the Leave campaign that pro-Remain politicians are “traitors,” perceived as willing to subvert the will of the people if it means staying in the EU.
Second, the post-referendum consequences of this degree of civic malaise among the British people, and especially among Leave voters, will be a thorny thing to deal with. A belief that the referendum is rigged is essentially a rejection of the referendum’s legitimacy. A Leave loss looks more likely by the day. But how do you assuage voters who view the referendum’s results as illegitimate in the first place? The difficulties go further than the referendum per se — half the Leave side believes it has, in a profound sense, no voice in the referendum. Distrust is the theme of the campaign (on both sides, but on Leave more than Remain), and the poll reflects that.
This is a precarious situation, and one that must be handled delicately. To maintain a sense of unity in a political system that a substantial minority views as quasi-illegitimate is a difficult thing. For Remain, winning the referendum is one thing; dealing with the consequences is quite another. And the latter may prove the trickier of the two.