Are you real? The point is not to win elections, but to change politics. What is the point of Tories or Labour winning when there's not a dime's worth of difference between them? UKIP scared the living hell out of Dodgy Dave, enough to promise the Brexit referendum.
Those votes were ironically some of the few that were not thrown away.
The only reason the referendum was promised was that internal polling showed a remain victory was guaranteed. It was to get rid of the issue permanently and allow a purge of Eurosceptic Conservative party members, not a response to UKIP, who were a fringe party and were most likely going to remain one.
It was both. I agree that all polling pointed to a comfortable remain victory, but they still wouldn't have risked a referendum if they weren't concerned about hemorrhaging votes to UKIP.
Are you real? The point is not to win elections, but to change politics. What is the point of Tories or Labour winning when there's not a dime's worth of difference between them? UKIP scared the living hell out of Dodgy Dave, enough to promise the Brexit referendum.
Those votes were ironically some of the few that were not thrown away.
The only reason the referendum was promised was that internal polling showed a remain victory was guaranteed. It was to get rid of the issue permanently and allow a purge of Eurosceptic Conservative party members, not a response to UKIP, who were a fringe party and were most likely going to remain one.
It was both. I agree that all polling pointed to a comfortable remain victory, but they still wouldn't have risked a referendum if they weren't concerned about hemorrhaging votes to UKIP.