Last night Anna Soubry must have been taking maths lessons from Dianne Abbot. Soubry claims that the 2016 referendum result is invalid because 63% of eligible voters DID NOT vote for Leave in the vote.
Of course what Anna is saying isn’t necessarily incorrect:
Voted Remain: 16,141,241
Voted Leave: 17,410,742
Total Electorate: 46,500,001
Didn’t Vote: 12,927,001
Voted Remain + Didn’t Vote For Leave = 29,068,242 (or 63%)
On that note, lets look at the 2017 Broxtowe Election of Anna Soubry herself:
Voted for Anna Soubry (Consrvative): 25,983
Voted for Greg Marshall (Labour): 25120
Voted for Other (Lib Dem, UKIP etc): 4405
Didnt Vote: 18,385
Voted for Soubry: 25,983
Didnt Vote for Soubry: 47,910 (or 65%)
So Anna, let’s do the honourable thing and have a respectful, binding ‘Peoples Vote” in Broxtowe considering using your dodgy maths, 65% of your constituency didn’t vote for you?
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Using Anna Soubry's logic, only 34.7% of the population voted to remain.
The question these Remoaners need to answer is if the referendum result had gone the other way, what would the remainers have done to appease the brexiteers? I suspect we all know the answer.
Some of them didn't vote for "Leave" because they were dead. Electoral registers are as at October and the referendum was the following June: those who died in the meantime amounted to roughly 3% of the "didn't vote". Rather larger number didn't vote because Alzheimers or other illnesses meant they were physically or mentally unable to do so.
A lot, probably over a million would be on the electoral register twice - once at their home address and once at their term-time address or at the week-end and mid-week adresses.
Either Anna Soubry doesn't know what she is talking about, in which case she is too stupid to be an MP as electoral numbers are part of basic training for candidates, or she is deliberately lying.
Guilty on count two. She ran for election on a manifesto promise to implement the Leave decision.
The electoral register is updated monthy, except for December and the month of an election. The register at any particular election is no more than two months out of date. Almost every coronor's office and registry office in the country has a code of practise to inform electoral services of any deaths.
Since when? Can you produce monthly requests for an update of residents in *your* house from your Electoral Registration Officer? I haven't received one. I get ANNUAL requests to confirm the names on the register.
Obviously it would be desirable to notify the electoral registration service of deaths to reduce the amount of electoral fraud - and when I was young we used to check the local newspaper every week for death notices so that we didn't cause offence/distress by writing to dead people - but you seem to be claiming that (i) this practice has been created except in my locality and (ii) someone in each constituency in the four countries comprising the UK has collated all notices of deaths and adjusted the "electorate number" reported.
The double-counting of students registered both at home and at college and of those with second homes or digs near their jobs are each even greater than the number of dead people counted by anna Soubry as supporting her views.
Great post Tim.
Anna Soubry et al do the right thing? More chance of a hand job from a nun
I know which chance I would take.
Following la Soubry's logic, 30,337,743 people didn't vote to Remain (65%)...
Exactly. So should we do what 65% didn't want or what 63% didn't want?
Surely its 63%?
Just spotted your point after I made my own similar point.
In any democratic vote - from the bridge club committee to national government - the only legitimate interpretation of a decision to abstain is: "I have no strong views on this matter and will abide by the will of the majority". Note that democracy is only sustainable so long as those who lose a vote do abide by the decision.
Soubry has little, if any, connection to reality and little, if any, chance of remaining an MP past the next election.
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. And the worst of these are Remainer statistics.
Approximately 30 million out of 45 million (~66%) did not vote to Remain.