Minority rule: Migration, Brexit and Mandates

It is generally (not universally) agreed that the issue of migration played a large role in leading 52% of UK voters to want to leave the EU. However that does not mean there is a mandate to end Freedom of Movement (FoM) at the cost of losing access to the single market. I’m rather surprised by the number of people who think it does. There are lots of reasons why it does not, like voters being told they could end FoM and still stay in the single market, like that many people voted to end FoM because they wanted a better NHS, whereas the opposite will be true in practice. (Tony Yates discusses this general point here).

However the clearest reason why Brexit does not mean there is a mandate for ending FoM was made by Ian Dunt yesterday. Put simply, it is that a majority of a majority can be a minority. The fact that many people voted Brexit because they wanted more control over immigration does not imply that a majority of all voters did.

Suppose that everyone understood that there was an unbreakable link between freedom of movement (FoM) and membership of the single market. Suppose all the 48% who voted to Remain prefered to keep membership at the ‘cost’ of retaining FoM. Suppose 48% of those voting Leave felt the opposite. But 4% of those voting Leave wanted a Norway style arrangement, and wanted to leave for some other reason than FoM . In this case a majority want to keep FoM, and do not want further migration controls if that means being out of the single market.

Of course these numbers are made up, although polling evidence does suggest a majority of people prefer being in the single market to ending free movement. But the key point is that we do not know what the true numbers are. Yet the presumption seems to be being made in lots of quarters, from researchers to politicians, that the referendum result means that we cannot go for any arrangement involving FoM. This just does not follow.

Nor does the fact that the Leave campaign focused on immigration make any difference. Again imagine that the 4% who wanted to leave for reasons other than immigration were rock solid about voting Leave. For the undecideds, however, immigration was critical. In which case any decent campaign would focus on the undecideds. We could change the figures to make it even clearer: 30% of Leavers were rock solid because of sovereignty or financial issues, but 22% were undecided and also worried about immigration. Again a good campaign would focus on immigration, even though it was a minority concern. Election results, like prices, are determined at the margin.

There is therefore no mandate from the referendum result to sacrifice membership of the single market in order to end free movements. Which is one excellent reason why we need a second referendum on the final terms for Brexit before we leave.

Postscript (17/10/16) Here is some polling evidence supporting these arguments.