Credit: Leave.EU
There are now less than four months to go until the EU referendum. Yet all the signs are that the hard facts of the debate are not seeping through to the public. So far the discussion has been dominated by internal party politics and personalities – where an MP backing the in or out side means a media-dominating rift in this or that party. The debate, when not focusing on individuals and spats, has largely been confined to stat-throwing on either side.
Last month Mike Berry argued on OurBeeb that "the public is currently hampered by an information deficit which threatens their ability to make an informed decision at the ballot box". Berry noted that the Electoral Commission recently found that most voters’ “personal understanding of how the EU worked was low” and that they felt “under-informed about the EU as an institution, as well as about the arguments for and against the UK remaining a member”. At the same time, research has found that EU-related reporting outside of summits and elections is “relatively sparse.” The result is that the referendum becomes a Westminster parlour game – rather than the crucial constitutional matter which it is.
