UKH

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/oct/24/majority-of-voters-think-vi...

70% of Brexit voters and nearly 60% of remain supporters in England think that violence against MPs would be a ‘price worth paying’ to get the outcome they want.

 Half the country believes Brexit would lead to the breakup of the union and to the country being substantially poorer, but three quarters of Brexit supporters who think this consider it would be worth it.

And we are about to embark on the most toxic and divisive election campaign in history 

We’re all stuffed, aren’t we? 

Yep. 

Jk

Are there any other examples from recent history of nation states deliberately f*cking themselves up for no good reason?

I must say though that I'm really not sure about a survey methodology that could come up with such extreme answers. E.g. 

"Similarly, voters overwhelmingly felt that the potential destruction of the country’s farming and fishing industries would be a price worth paying for getting the result they wanted in the Brexit negotiations"

Really? What was the question to receive such an irrational response?

What's the betting that an annual Purge Night will be in the Tories next Queen's Speech and they'll get her to kick it off with a burst of automatic gunfire from Buckingham Palace.

Every civil war you can think of?

I pray this is hyperbole otherwise it's a disgraceful state of affairs!

I keep on thinking that we are reprising the decline of Rome, when populist politicians whipped up 'the mob' to demand bread and circuses that couldn't possibly be delivered.

We do have a problem, and I suspect a united reland and independent Scotland, both within the EU, will be the outcome. England will become like Hungary, only without the constraints and benefits of EU membership. Oh well, all good things come to an end, and 400 years of being Top Nation isn't a bad record.

https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/1708631/Copy-of-Engla...

Its here.  Three options to answer each question - want x to happen anyway, think it’s worth it, don’t think it’s a price worth paying.  So people pick B.  Next questions - will x happen, vast majority say no.

A heavily loaded survey is how you get these results.

E.G: some people say that remaining in/leaving ithe EU will cause time to end, do you (a) want this to happen (b) think it’s worth the risk or (c) think it’s not worth the risk.  You’ve got to pick one...so it’s B.

Yes; there is a worrying feel of the end of an era to current events. The U.K. and the USA, the two global powers of the last 2 centuries, appear to be rejecting the very attributes that made them successful- stable governance, executives that accepted they were bound by the the rule of law, a willingness to submit to convention, an acceptance that power must change hands between factions periodically and a willingness to allow this, policy making grounded in reality rather than wishful thinking, an acceptance that the truth can be bent in political campaigning but shouldn’t be broken, a valuing of expert opinion, the placement of the civil service outside of the political arena and respect for their independence from party politics, an attempt even if not always successful to govern inclusively, the prioritisation of improving standards of living by pragmatic means over pursing dogma- all of these seem to be being rejected. Populations of both countries are being turned against themselves by political factions intent on complete victory for their viewpoint, which is increasingly incompatible with alternatives. This looks like how empires end. 

Actually we got to where we are by dominating half the world, and by force if needed. We had military and technological superiority and so reaped the rewards. Soon after the USA did the same to great effect. 

Good governance is needed of course but we all know how we got to our place in the world and it wasn't by being nice and fair.

Well it wasn’t just that. Being sat on readily accessible coal reserves at the same time as we developed the technology that needed a cheap source of energy, and a workforce to extract the coal and make the products the resulting power led to, was pretty important too. But being the birthplace of the industrial revolution doesn’t generate tax receipts in this financial year, and your observation isn’t an option any more, for the UK anyway. so good governance becomes all the more important. It’s possible for countries that once dominated the globe to f*ck things up completely, and some never recover the lost ground. This looks worryingly like one of these situations. 

Right, so it’s bollocks then, as I thought.

From the raw data you linked-

35% of brexiters thought violence against MPs was likely or very likely

72% of brexiters thought that this was worth it to take back control

8% of brexiters wanted violence against MPs irrespective of brexit

for remainers more thought violence was likely, but only 12% thought it was worth it, or wanted it irrespective of brexit

even allowing for the way the question was posed, that’s a lot of brexit supporters that think violence against elected officials is both justified and likely. 
 

I think that is dispiriting 

Yup, tiny sample size, bollocks questions, worthless study.

And the same lot will get voted in next time around.  

Yes but the people who want to do the violence are all old sexuagenarian farts like me and couldn't punch their way out of a paper bag. Don't worry too much. 

Bread and circuses works as long as there's bread. At the moment we are a population addicted to entertainment which is why we are content to be ruled by clowns and seem incapable of taking anything seriously. 

When people say they are in favour of violence its because they have never experienced it. 

There is a degree of complacency to some of the responses here.

The sample size is definitely not tiny. 500+ respondents for each of the items is a fairly large sample size I think. I’m not a statistician but my work does involve interpreting statistics; and provided the methodology was sound, and given that its involved a professional polling company I see no reason to doubt that it is, then that sort of number should give reliable results. There will be margins of error, but they will not be anywhere near the size needed to render the findings non significant 

however, if any statisticians here disagree, I’d be glad to be corrected.

and the findings across most of the items are plausible, if depressing. Most remainers believe a range of bad outcomes will follow Brexit, most Leavers just don’t give credence to these. That looks entirely in line with what I’d expect. 

The additional information this provides is that respondents were offered the opportunity to effectively rank the value of a range of hypothetical consequences against their preferred outcome of the Brexit process. Again, the results are hardly surprising- we already know that most Conservative party members put Brexit above the union, polls at their conference made this clear. And we are regularly told that Leavers want to ‘take back control’ even if this leads to the country being poorer- I believe them when they say that, and this is entirely in line with existing knowledge.

the contentious items are the ones relating to political violence. Here, I am not making an entirely partisan view. One in 8 remainers rejected the opportunity to repudiate violence against elected officials and members of the public. I find that horrifying. The rates among those identifying as Leavers are considerably higher, though they at least have the get out that most don’t really believe it’s going to happen. But the intersection of the Venn diagram of ‘believe that there will be violence’ and ‘think that the violence is worth it to get my preferred outcome’ is likely to be a non-trivial number. That’s potentially a lot of people out there to whom a previously unthinkable course of action has become an acceptable one.

Overall, the bits of the study that cover known ground look too similar to what we already know for me to reject the findings on political violence out of hand. I find this worrying. 

Isn't it that they think 'the risk of violence is a price worth paying', that is significantly different to 'violence is a price worth paying'? For example, I don't think climbing is worth dying for but its worth taking the risk of dying for. It depends on how likely the respondent thinks the risk is of actually materialising. 

On the other hand, if the Guardian or people on this thread aren't making the distinction then its unlikely respondents to the survey were either.

Re sample size, it's not tiny. One of my many shit jobs was cold calling surveys for TNS and the target sample size for national surveys was 1000. Provided the demographic weighting (male/female, social class, age, etc) was representative, they clearly thought that was enough to extrapolate for analysis purposes.

They would think that though wouldn't they, or at the very least they'd tell that to the client they were flogging the survey to. Doesn't make it true though.

Look at typical samples sizes for stuff that's actually life or death, like medical trials. The last one I looked at was Crash 3, investigating if patients were less likely to die if given a drug called TXA. This was a randomised controlled trial with a placebo group and involved 13,000 patients, plus it had an objective outcome...alive Vs dead.

This Brexit survey had some questions addressed to just 500 people and the questions themselves were dodgy. For this survey to have an validity, instead of asking the highly hypothetical 'do you think Brexit is worth the risk of violence', it'd be better to ask 'are you prepared to be violent for the Brexit outcome you want' (and remember how many bar room heroes have told you "If it'd been me, I would've smacked him one").

In reality, a much higher proportion of people will find hypothetical violence involving other people acceptable, as opposed to it being acceptable to find themselves involved in real life hurty violence.

That’s not really what the study was saying; it wasn’t asking if the respondent themselves was prepared to take up arms for their cause. It was whether the respondent considered such actions, if they occurred, would be a ‘price worth paying’- the implication being that the respondent could disapprove of the action, but accept it as ‘necessary for the greater good’.

i don’t think for an instant that 4 out of 5 Leavers are going to be firebombing their MP’s offices. The question is how many, should some firebombings happen, would take a view that ‘if this is what it takes to get what I want, I don’t want it’. The answer seems to be, fewer than is healthy for a functioning democracy 

to reiterate- this is not really a remain vs leave point; a willingness to tolerate means I find repugnant is present on both sides of the argument, though much more mainstream on the leave side. 
 

and it matters because it sets the climate in which actions take place. The number who would actually engage in politically motivated violence is going to be tiny. But the position of the mainstream can constrain or enable such people. When death threats to politicians  are commonplace on social media, and the language of betrayal is coming from the Prime Minister, that has an influence on those who may actually engage in violence. If large numbers of the population are willing to reluctantly accept such violence as a sad but necessary price to pay, another restraining factor is removed. We seem to be on a journey to an unpleasant destination, with no apparent way to get the vehicle to stop. 

The people on the thread and the Guardian aren’t looking for it, they’ve got the answer they want.

The two violence qs are violence against MPs and people injured in protests.  The other day MPs were escorted by police to stop the crowds attacking them, is that the violence against MPs people have in mind?  People injured in protests - does that mean idiots who attack the police get injured doing so?  Neither are a big deal, neither are people saying they’d commit violent acts or that those on their side will.

In my field, sample size of 400 is the largest you’ll ever see. Properly constructed and run, that’s more than adequately powered. 
 

see my last reply re why the hypothetical aspect matters. No sane person would think that 80% of Brexiters actually plan to make Molotov cocktails themselves. That’s  not the point.

Again, the study didn’t specifically ask about the ‘severity’ of the violence, so it will include a range of possible scenarios. MPs requiring large police escorts to ensure their safety is not a great place to be though, minimising it isn’t helpful as it shifts the goalposts of what is legitimate political discourse. Those were remainers I believe, well they don’t speak for me. 
 

as to the injured members if the public, if that’s what people thought when they answered the question then yes that would be included. Given the way that the question was framed, my guess is that that wouldn’t be a common response, but I accept we don’t know. more detailed interviews with a subset of Participants to explore this would be interesting. 

Asking 500 people hypothetical, depersonalised questions about political issues and then extrapolating the answers to determine the national attitude of a nation of 67,000,000; that seem adequately powered to you?

We've had 4 years of irresponsible politicians and a muck raking media constantly stirring up shit and making ludicrous claims over Brexit. In that atmosphere they've asked a load of hypothetical questions that are completely consequence free for the respondents.... I'd put about as much faith in this survey as I would in mystic Meg's predictions.

Yes, exactly.

Its not ideal, no, but we’re not looking at people trying to kill MPs here, just people accepting that the other side (some small proportion of) feel strongly and might kick off.  Should we stop what we’re doing due to that?  Of course not.

What do you think people thought?

I'm less surprised than I would be had not a dinner guest recently announced that he'd be prepared to take up arms to defend British sovereignty if necessary.  This was a solidly middle class guy we've known for years and generally well to the left.  It rather stopped the conversation. 

I knew he was a leaver, and as far as I can make out his main issue is the OJEC tendering process, which, although tedious, isn't something that has ever quite brought me to serious consideration of armed rebellion.

Yes, if the statisticians who were involved in preparing the methodology said so. I’m not a statistician and it doesn’t seem you are either. It doesn’t look out of keeping with what I’d expect though- and RCTs such as the one you have been involved with are not common. I’ve been involved with 5 RCTs over the last 2 years, none have had a sample size of over 500. 
 

This is just the raw data- to extrapolate to a wide population will involve uncertainty which will be quantifiable. With this sample size the confidence intervals would be fairly narrow I’d expect.

and the context you note in the last paragraph is exactly the point.

What did people think- I expect a range of things- large scale demonstrations ending in civil disorder would be a common interpretation I think. 
 

I think your interpretation in para 2 is  incorrect though- the study didn’t ask what people thought the ‘other side’ would do- it was whether violence carried out during a process which led to the outcome they preferred was an price worth paying’. It didn’t specify, but for leavers it seems unlikely they would have interpreted that exclusively as angry remainers turning on leave supporting MPs; it’s more likely that there is a recognition that the rhetoric may lead to leave supporters expressing their frustrations with violence, and an acceptance that this would be a unwelcome but necessary by product. without more detailed interviews we don’t know for sure. On the basis of this study, I hope such work is taking place 

You're right, I'm no statistician and my only involvement in RCT's is reading them. I'd still say that this is a really shoddy survey, totally unfit to explore the issues it seems to be addressing.

Extrapolation is perfectly valid if the data you've acquired is solid and of a statistically significant magnitude. I can't see that this survey meets either criteria.

This headline and article is fake news. 

Here's a good analysis:

"Some of you may have seen this headline tweeted out by @guardian. It seemed incredible to me, so I took a bit of a look deeper. Here follows a short thread about not believing everything you read, always tracking back to source data, and survey design."

https://twitter.com/Fellwolf/status/1187610735729369090

The raw data (for England) from the study is available here:

https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/1708631/Copy-of-Engla...

As Coel points out, it appears to be a misleading survey. For example, take this question:

Some have suggested that **leaving the European Union** might present challenges to the UK but others disagree, labeling this as Project Fear. For each of the following please tell us whether you think this would be a price worth paying or not worth paying for Brexit...

Violence directed towards Members of Parliament:

• I want this to happen regardless of Brexit
• I see it as a risk but it’s worth it to take back control

• Leaving the EU is not worth the risk of this happening

As a remainer, how can I respond to this? My preference is not represented at all. The final choice suggests I want to leave the EU, but I'd prefer to avoid violence. My position is that I don't want to leave the EU and I want to avoid violence. Also, there's the emotive and potentially leading use of the phrases "Project Fear" and "take back control".

The flip side question on remaining is:

Some have suggested that stopping Brexit and **remaining in the EU** might present challenges to the UK but others disagree. For each of the following please tell us whether you think this would be a price worth paying or not worth paying for stopping Brexit...

Violence directed towards Members of Parliament:

• I want this to happen regardless of Brexit
• I see it as a risk but it’s worth it to remain in the EU
• Staying in the EU is not worth the risk of this happening

It's still not clear to me as a remainer what the options mean. Is the suggestion that the violence would be from my side as a means to an end (i.e. that violence is justifiable to achieve our goals)? Or is violence the possible reaction from leave voters to the cancellation of Brexit? Furthermore, is the implication that the risk of violence is acceptable, or actual violence is acceptable? It seems to me that each choice of response to the question could encompass several positions which aren't even that closely related.

A useful reminder about polls:

youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA&

"Art thou for King or Parliment?"

A common cry at the start of the last Civil war we had