Winning the Referendum

If Tony Blair wants to win endorsement in a referendum for taking Britain into the single European Currency, he is going to have to change a lot of people's minds. It is still possible, but attitudes against the Euro are hardening and the hurdle is becoming steadily higher. Three recent MORI surveys (for The Times, the News of the World and Schroder Salomon Smith Barney) have explored the scale of the task facing him, and some of the factors that will work for and against him.

The biggest problem for Mr Blair is that the Euro-sceptic camp is making ground all the time, while the government is reluctant to start its campaign in favour yet in case it damages Labour's electoral prospects. Simple "for or against" surveys are now consistently finding that the antis lead by more than two-to-one, but it is clear that many of those who would vote in a referendum have not yet made up their minds. For the Times last month, we repeated a question we have used several times in the past few years, inviting respondents not only to tell us their general support or opposition but whether they are still keeping an open mind on the subject and might be persuaded. We found that over the last year, those who say they could not be persuaded to change their minds have risen from 35% to 46%, and the "waverers" ? the real battleground for an election campaign, have fallen from 59% to 45%.

Q As may know, the member states of the European Union have launched the Single European Currency, the euro. Which of the following best describes your own view of British participation in the single currency?

What does this mean in terms of a referendum? Assuming that virtually all those who say they strongly support or oppose the euro will vote, we already have about a 40% turnout, splitting 30:10 against. The overall turnout is unlikely to be more than 70%, so the Prime Minister must forge his victory among that 30% of the electorate who will vote, but have not yet made up their minds for certain which way it will be. Simple arithmetic tells us that to secure his majority, this 30% will have to split better than 25:5 in his favour, but at the moment the waverers are marginally against the currency.

Of course, the country has been through all this before. As MORI's chairman, Sir Robert Worcester, explains in his recent pamphlet for the Foreign Policy Centre, How to Win the Referendum, in the six months before the 1975 referendum in which Britain voted to stay in the Common Market, Harold Wilson managed to swing opinion from being 55:45 against to a 67:33 vote in favour, a swing of 22%. Since the latest MORI poll on voting in a referendum shows those who express a voting intention as 71:29 against entry, the 22% swing is almost exactly what Mr Blair would need!

However, there is a less hopeful parallel. At the start of 1975, as well as asking their respondents how they would vote in a referendum, Gallup also asked 'If the Government negotiated new terms for Britain's membership of the Common Market and they thought it was in Britain's interest to remain a member, how would you vote then?', This question produced a huge swing in opinion and was in fact a very close predictor of the final referendum result six months later. In the MORI Financial Services polls for Salomon Smith Barney, and in our most recent poll for The Times, we have been asking a similar follow-up question: the 'persuasion factor' is there, but it is much smaller than in 1975 and, worse, it is getting smaller ? it produced only a 3% swing last month.

Nevertheless, the key factor is sure to be the degree of trust that the public has in the spokesmen putting each side of the argument, as it was in 1975. Although Tony Blair's personal ratings have been tumbling recently, most polls continue to show him more trusted than William Hague, especially on the Euro issue. Our News of the World poll found that of the likely key figures only Charles Kennedy has a positive trust rating on Europe, but both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown break even.

Q And for each of the following, please tell me whether you would or would not trust them to make decisions about Britain's future role in Europe which will be in the interests of the British public?

Most people in Britain know little about the Euro (only 16% claim to have heard of Wim Duisenberg), and want to know more. Only a quarter believe the government has encouraged a sensible debate on the issue, while half think it is trying to hide the facts from the public, and three in five expect it to try to "bounce" the British public into agreeing to join. In these circumstances, putting the issue in emotive terms works well, and the antis are doing so. For example, we have asked about general attitudes to the Euro recently in three different ways: when we asked if respondents were generally in favour or against, 58% said they were opposed; when we asked how they would vote in "a referendum now", 61% said they would vote against; but when we put the question in terms of whether "Britain should keep the pound" or not, 72% thought that we should. The people are not anti-European ? 66% support the aim of "being at the heart of Europe" ? but they are suspicious, to say the least.

Tony Blair can still win his referendum; but it is getting harder by the day.