Sovereignty, Schmovereignty.

Been doing some thinking, being the scurrilous, Remain traitor that I am:

1. The turnout for the 2014 European Elections was 37.44% - a pitiful turnout and the lowest in Europe, indicating that Europe was a non-issue at the time; it doesn't, after all, affect us on a daily basis. Ukip managed to get 4.3766m votes. That was only 9.46% of the total electorate, although still the largest representation - perhaps because of the apathy of the average voter, so not exactly a ringing endorsement of Leave. It does show, however, that extremists can take advantage of voter apathy.
2. In the Referendum, Leave managed to poll 17.4017m votes, 37.44% of the total electorate and 52% of the votes cast.

Now, if the Brexiteers are currently to be believed, their main issue in the Referendum was national sovereignty - despite the British Social Attitudes Survey in 2017 showing nearly three-quarters (73 per cent) of those who were worried about immigration voted Leave, compared with 36 per cent of those who did not identify this as a concern. Sovereignty came a poor second or 3rd. 

If national sovereignty was indeed their main issue, then why was this not a issue in the 2014 European Elections? While Labour and Conservative MEPs stood on reform of the EU, they were certainly not advocating leaving; Ukip alone had that as central to their manifesto. So, in 2 years, national sovereignty went from being the preoccupation of 9.46% of the electorate to 37.44%. What happened?

My question to Brexiteers is, if you didn't vote Ukip and wanted out of the EU in 2014, why did you suddenly vote for Leave in 2016? I wouldn't seriously expect to get an honest answer, but a  lot of people (not all) are telling porkies if they maintain sovereignty has always been their prime concern. I would conclude that immigration remains their prime concern (as indicated in the Social Attitudes Survey) and sovereignty has become a convenient hook on which to disguise that for fear of being labelled as xenophobic or racist. All you hear now from the Brexit Elite is sovereignty, sovereignty and more sovereignty. Given the extent to which the Brexit Elite lies have been debunked, it's their only liferaft, albeit a tenuous one.

Here are the Leave word cloud compared to the Remain word cloud, compiled by the British Election Study, based on frequently used words in polls:

I think you can guess which is which without a pointer from me.

The first word cloud shows very clearly that a key concern for Leave voters was immigration. The issue dominates the leave voter word cloud and other words like ‘borders’ also feature. Other words that feature prominently concern issues surrounding sovereignty, including the word ‘sovereignty’ itself and ‘control’, and ‘laws’. Any suggestion that immigration was not at the heart of this vote runs counter to what researchers found.

There was another factor in the mix - austerity. This was a good chance for non-Conservatives to kick the government in the teeth; however, given Conservatives couldn't really do that, they elected to blame the EU for a whole load of domestic problems, cheered on by the Brexit Elite - the very architects of austerity and the bastards wanting the prying eyes of the EU kept away from their tax havens.

There was, of course, Cameron's desire to get concessions from the EU prior to the Referendum, but when all is said and done, he got the vast majority of the guarantees he wanted, so that can not, despite denialist claims to the contrary, have been a contributing factor, except for the terminally gullible. On the issue of immigration, the problem was instigated by the UK not implementing rules that were already available to them at the time of accession of the new members, so a self-inflicted injury having bugger all to do with the EU - the EU actually granted Cameron an extension to the immigration rules. There's nothing, however, quite like a scapegoat.

The irony is that if you want sovereignty then, adopting the Brexiteer’s definition of democracy, Parliament is quite entitled to ignore the 2016 vote altogether, as Parliament is sovereign.