Not so Little England

The December 2015 issue of Prospect magazine seems particularly exercised by the possibility that the UK could leave the European Union. Anatole Kaletsky tells readers that “Leaving Europe could be the biggest diplomatic disaster since losing America” – An ugly divorce. Peter Kellner, President of pollster YouGov, warns that “It cannot be taken for granted that voters will keep Britain in the EU” and Edward Docx (Word ® users should resist reading that as edward.docx) thinks that the “in” campaign is faltering, while the “out” campaign has the benefit of Dominic Cummings, who he describes as “ferocious, committed, unafraid, serious, passionate and utterly certain of his cause”. In his article, called The problem with the EU Debate? The “In” campaign… and the “out” campaign on the Prospect website and Nigel Farage’s Dream in the magazine*, Docx warns:

Make no mistake: in less than a year, Great Britain could be out of the EU and no longer Great or, indeed, Britain. David Cameron’s departure will surely follow Brexit, which will also be followed by Scotland’s attempted split from Britain. The splenetic strain of the Conservative Party will be left running Little England—for that is what we will be—and its business for decades to come will be the treaty-by-treaty renegotiation of our relationship with every other country in the world.

Perhaps he’s right, but just how small would this “Little England” be? To answer that, it first has to be defined and presumably for Docx it would consist of the UK less Scotland, that is to say, the countries of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

In terms of area, he clearly has a point as the table above shows. During the discussion of Scottish independence in 2014, rUK, (r meaning rump, residual or ‘rest of’), was used rather than Little England, so for brevity I will use it here. rUK has only 68% of the area of the present UK, something which would be reflected in comparisons with the other major EU countries (and the USA):

The UK is the 8th largest EU country (of 28) in terms of area, between Italy and Romania. Curiously, rUK would still have been 9th between Romania and Greece. Scotland would be 15th between the Czech Republic (up to 14th in rUK’s absence) and Ireland. However, in population terms, because Scotland has only 8% of the UK’s people, the difference is rather different, as the next table shows:

So, within the EU, where UK is 3rd largest between France and Italy, rUK would have only dropped to 4th between Italy and Spain. Scotland on its own in the EU would be 19th between Slovakia (up to 18th in rUK’s absence) and Ireland.

Another way of presenting these conclusions is to plot population size against area as below. This shows that rUK would have remained one of the handful of EU countries with a population over 20 million, while Scotland would join the ‘shrapnel’ of over 20 smaller ones. Of course, the disproportionate influence of these countries in terms of their population is an important aspect of the EU’s democratic deficit. It might also explain in part why EU membership would be so attractive to an independent Scotland.

While on the subject of population, the UK Office for National Statitics (ONS) has recently published its projections to 2035. As the table below indicates, if Scotland were to become independent by 2025, the rUK population would be 5.6 million lower than the UK’s would have been. However, by 2035 rUK’s population has increased to the same level as the UK’s had been 10 years earlier.

Even more instructive are the equivalent Eurostat projections out to 2080. By 2050, the UK has become the most populated country in Europe. However, so would be rUK by 2060 – hardly “Little England”. (This table is calculated assuming that Scotland’s population remains at the same percentage of the UK’s from 2030 onwards, whereas the ONS figures show a downwards trend from 2015 onwards).  The quality of life in such a densely populated country as rUK (essentially England) will become is also likely to be on a downward trend.

Finally, and probably most importantly for many who will vote in the Brexit referendum: perceptions of the economic benefits of leaving the EU. The chart below, again from Eurostat, shows GDP per capita in PPS**relative to the EU’s overall 100. Many people would expect rUK to be better off than the UK, which now makes net payments to the EU while rUK is making transfers within the UK to Scotland. Conversely, Scots could be expected to be worse off. Perhaps the “in” campaign, rather than worrying about “Little England”, should concentrate on disproving this expectation – if they can get their arguments past Dominic Cummings.

* On Docx’s own website, it’s called Are we Sleepwalking to Brexit?

**According to Eurostat: “Gross domestic product (GDP) is a measure for the economic activity. It is defined as the value of all goods and services produced less the value of any goods or services used in their creation. The volume index of GDP per capita in Purchasing Power Standards (PPS) is expressed in relation to the European Union (EU28) average set to equal 100. If the index of a country is higher than 100, this country's level of GDP per head is higher than the EU average and vice versa. Basic figures are expressed in PPS, i.e. a common currency that eliminates the differences in price levels between countries allowing meaningful volume comparisons of GDP between countries. Please note that the index, calculated from PPS figures and expressed with respect to EU28 = 100, is intended for cross-country comparisons rather than for temporal comparisons."

New Year Predictions 2015

At the start of the year I post not my predictions but some of those which people have come out with in the previous 12 months (January 2014’s are here). This time we are weeks from the UK 2015 election, the outcome of which is currently looking uncertain. One of the first people to point out just how uncertain was the pollster, Peter Kellner, in a post on the YouGov website, Ukip, the SNP and the risks of parliamentary paralysis. He explained:

In recent months it has looked unlikely that either Labour or the Conservatives would win an overall majority next year. There is now a real chance that neither will have a secure majority, even in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. 

… In order for us to be certain that a viable two-party coalition with the Lib Dems is available to at least one of the two main parties, the number of Lib Dem MPs must exceed the total of the other minority parties. 

… the decline in Lib Dem support could leave them with fewer MPs than the combined ranks of the ‘other’ minority party MPs. If that happens there is a real possibility that the parliamentary politics of the House of Commons will be exceedingly messy.

Tony Blair, according to the Daily Telegraph on 25 October, thought otherwise:

The Conservatives will win the next general election because of Ed Miliband’s failure to connect with voters, Tony Blair has said. David Cameron will remain in power next year because Labour has not persuaded Britain it is ready to govern, the former Labour prime minister has apparently told friends. Mr Blair’s verdict on Mr Miliband follows criticism of the Labour leader’s performance from several MPs and will increase concern within the party about his ability to win in May. Mr Blair’s apparent prediction was made in a private conversation with long-standing political allies earlier this month. The Telegraph has been given an account of that conversation by one person who was present. 

“The Conservatives will be the next government because Labour has failed to make a good case for itself. That is what Tony thinks,” the person said. “He does not think that Miliband can beat Cameron.”

Just after the Telegraph had gone to print on 24 October, the Office of Tony Blair tweeted a denial:

And then on 30 December, it was déjà vu all over again. Anne McElvoy tweeted (from Islington, where else?) to puff a piece about to appear in The Economist (incidentally, why does the full URL end “-don’t-go”?):

The key words:

In an interview with The Economist, Mr Blair says that he fears that the next election, due to take place in May 2015, could be a rerun of those before his ascent to the leadership, which regularly ended in disaster for his party. The result in 2015, he quips, could well be an election “in which a traditional left-wing party competes with a traditional right-wing party, with the traditional result”. Asked if he means a Tory win, Mr Blair confirms: “Yes, that is what happens.”

Next day, surprise, surprise, the Office of Tony Blair tweeted a denial:

TB’s prediction methodology: heads he wins, tails he doesn’t lose, one might think. But earlier in the month the Independent on Sunday had run a story, Tony Blair wants Chuka Umunna to be the next Labour leader, which, as far as I can tell, went undenied:

Tony Blair is backing Chuka Umunna to be the next Labour leader, the former prime minister's friends have revealed, in an intervention that will set the battle for succession alight. Several Labour frontbenchers are preparing their leadership campaigns in the event that Ed Miliband fails to secure victory next May. But being anointed by the party's most successful leader could be either a blessing or a curse for Mr Umunna, the shadow Business Secretary, given how far Mr Blair's popularity in the wider Labour movement has fallen.

It would hardly be worth expressing an opinion to “friends” unless, of course, he thought the Labour leadership was going to be an issue in 2015. But Blair has other things on his mind. At the Aspen Ideas Festival in June, he was interviewed by “Yahoo’s Global News Anchor”, Katie Couric, and warned that returning British jihadists ‘could use Kenya terror tactics’ to disrupt UK.

And things could be worse. In October George W Bush’s former Vice President, Dick Cheney, was interviewed by Bill Kristol and warned:

… we’re in a very dangerous period. I think it’s more threatening than the period before 9/11. I think 9/11 will turn out to be not nearly as bad as the next mass casualty attack against the United States, which if and when it comes will be something far more deadlier than airline tickets and box cutters.

Happy New Year.

Ukippered

Last month Tim Whitemore headed a post on his Daily Telegraph blog How many Ukippers will be dead when the referendum happens? Sorry, but it matters.

He asked the question because of … a new YouGov poll [which] shows, while the old loathe the EU the young still think that we're better off remaining in it. While those over 60 would vote two-to-one to leave the EU if there was a referendum tomorrow, those under 25 would vote two-to-one to stay in, as this [chart] shows:

Something similar is true of immigration: those with degrees think it has been economically beneficial by a margin of almost three-to-one, and younger people are much more inclined to support taking refugees from Syria.

He went on to point out that:

While the population is ageing, the number of people who have been to university, lived abroad and weren't born until after Britain joined the EU is increasing – and these people, even as they get older, are more inclined to stick with Britain's membership.

and concluded:

The good news for Ukip, and Eurosceptics more generally, is that the ageing voters more inclined to support them are much more likely to vote. But ultimately both have the same problem: how can they address their lack of appeal with the young? If they do not find some compelling answers, changing demographics could destroy their ambitions at the ballot box.

I covered similar ground in a post here in 2011 which looked at the effect of age on views about Europe, international aid and the death penalty. I wondered:

Whether older people’s attitudes reflect biologically-driven changes in psychological outlook due to ageing, or past levels of formal education [is] something that will become clearer over the next few decades. Perhaps by the time people reach 60 it is the experience gained in the ‘University of Life’ which counts.

Whitemore didn’t actually answer the question he posed, perhaps out of deference to the elderly demographics of the Telegraph’s readership (the paper if not the website, though the majority of those who provide comments on the latter “below the line” seem to be either senile or deranged). However, Peter Kellner has gone a long way towards answering it on the Guardian Comment Network in an interesting analysis of how voters seem to have switched between parties since 2010. He made “a rough estimate of the number of supporters of each party who are likely to have died since the last election” as can be seen in the table below:

Kellner’s estimate is for the period between May 2010 and January 2014, 44 months, which is also the duration from now to September 2017, as good a guess as any for the date of the referendum. So, if there are currently 3.3 million Ukippers and the same proportion of them expire as Kellner estimated in the contingent who voted UKIP in 2010 (0.1 million in 0.9 million ie 11%), we could expect about 370, 000 of them to have popped their clogs by then. Assuming that most of the 2.4 million who have rallied to UKIP since 2010 have the same age profile as Ukippers in 2010, this answers the question as posed, but does not address the more interesting one as to how many people will be both alive and still supporting UKIP by then.

There is a problem with Whitemore’s chart in that there are not equal numbers in each of the age groups. If the areas are adjusted to correspond to the sizes of the four groups it looks like this:

and the preponderance of the older groups is brought out. However, a recent YouGov poll shows a smaller level of support for leaving, overall -3% as opposed to -10% here. In this recent poll the 40-59 age group seems markedly less opposed to the EU (-2% as opposed to -16% here).

Could Ken Livingstone really bring Ed Miliband down?

Toby Young, now at the new Sun on Sunday, wrote a piece on 26 February about Michael Gove’s prospects of leading the Conservative party which began:

THERE'S a good deal of speculation in Westminster about who might succeed Ed Miliband if Labour don't start performing better in the polls. The next big test of his leadership will be the London mayoral elections on May 3. If Boris beats Ken, it will be one more nail in Ed's coffin.

The polling so far this year certainly suggests that the race is neck-and-neck between Boris Johnson (Conservative) and Ken Livingstone (Labour), most recently, according to YouGov, at 51% and 49% respectively, when the other candidates have been eliminated. Before that, Boris gets 46%, Ken 45%, Hugh Paddick (LibDem) 6% and others 3%. But as UK Polling Report points out, the YouGov poll shows that in a national election the same Londoners would vote 35% Conservative, 47% Labour and 9% LibDem, a slightly bigger swing towards Labour since the general election than nationally.

Obviously, it would be better for Labour nationally if Ken were to win, but I really can’t see the  party wanting to blame Ed Miliband (42) for the inability of Ken Livingstone (66, a generation older) to stop some of Labour's natural vote defecting to Boris Johnson or to discourage a greater proportion of the LibDems from making him their second choice. Nor is Ed Miliband likely to be blamed for not attempting to obstruct Ken’s adoption as Labour candidate in the first place.