By Bev Haigh-Jones
We’ve been busy on the streets since our last newsletter, with three street stalls – one in Falmouth and two in Truro. Our main focus for these events was advertising our talk with Dominic Grieve, but we were also encouraging people to get involved with the European Movement’s Manifesto Campaign by emailing their prospective MPs to ask them to complete EM’s survey.
For the Falmouth stall on 31 May we were blessed with fine weather, lots of volunteers and plenty of visitors – including a pirate! There was a super atmosphere, some of our other members stopped by for a chat, we signed up nine new members and there seemed to be a new energy about the event – can’t imagine why?
We were targeting students in particular with our questions and it was really great to see that the majority of them were already registered to vote and had photo ID, though some who will be voting for the first time were quite uncertain as to who to vote for. Nevertheless, nobody was able to name a Brexit benefit, and two were unsure about benefits for Cornwall, as they were holidaymakers. Those who weren’t registered were given all the info they needed to register and get ready to vote.
As you can see from the results of our Opinionometer, the majority had already decided who they would vote for and their decision had been influenced by Brexit. One interesting visitor who spoke to Howard was a lady in her nineties, she had voted Tory all her life – BUT NO LONGER! Thankfully, this counters the myth that everyone over fifty is a Tory-voting Brexiter.
June 14 saw us in Truro and it was the first outing for our Brexit “elephant in the room”. Not as busy as we might have hoped, but then the weather wasn’t too brilliant. Nevertheless, we managed to achieve plenty of positive answers, had some good chats and more people signed up to CfE email.
I probably should mention that the two dots saying that Cornwall had benefitted from Brexit were from a husband and wife. When asked for the benefit, it was the usual response: “We can rule ourselves again now!”
Our last stall before the election took place in Truro on 21 June, and again, we had the “elephant in the room” with us, but by this time he had gained a “Rejoin” balloon. It was a quieter than average stall, but we are very lucky with our volunteers – last time Keith had travelled all the way from Plymouth to support us, and this time it was Rosemary and Udo who joined us while on holiday from Germany.
As usual, the Opinionometer results were in line with those we tend to see all the time. People want the parties to be discussing the consequences of Brexit and telling us what they would do to reverse the damage, and most of those we spoke to would vote for a party that supported rejoin. Some people are still undecided as to who to vote for, but hopefully they will reach a decision before 4 July. It was interesting, though, to see that the majority do not seem to trust the opinion polls to provide an accurate picture of public opinion.
I guess only time will tell – and it won’t be long to wait!
