Revisiting Brexit demographics

Even some of those who believe Brexit to be a thoroughly bad idea are beginning to realise that it is a process that cannot now be stopped. Indeed, I have long believed that full EU membership will end in March 2019 because of (a) the investment that the UK government has sunk into delivering Brexit, which will likely preclude parliament overturning the decision, and (b) the sheer cost in terms of time and effort required to deliver a second referendum which rules out the option that people will be given a chance to change their mind.

Wolfgang Münchau in his FT column last week gave four reasons why The time for revoking Brexit has passed: (i) both sides have made significant progress towards an agreement; (ii) domestic opposition to Brexit remains fragmented, which means that it has been hard for Remainers to find a credible figurehead to get behind; (iii) the UK economy has held up better than expected thus reducing the extent of buyers’ remorse and (iv) the EU has itself moved on, and having accepted that Brexit is inevitable is now turning to the issues which matter for its own future (relationships with the US and Russia and reforming EMU). Obviously this has not gone down well with hard core Remainers but sane commentators, such as the lawyer David Allen Green, increasingly point out that the energy would be better spent trying to shape the post-2019 transition rather than fight battles that have already been lost.

In order to consider what should be the appropriate strategy – fight Brexit or shape the future – consider the demographic evidence. The ONS’ population projections suggest that the 55+ cohort which voted predominantly for Brexit will have declined by almost 1.6 million between mid-2016 and mid-2019 (chart). To put this into context, the margin of victory for Leave was slightly less than 1.3 million. Not surprisingly, the further ahead we roll the numbers the bigger the decline,  such that by 2026 the 2016 cohort aged 55+ will have declined by 5.3 million (a 27% reduction). This raises the obvious question: In whose name is Brexit being conducted? It is all very well older voters opting to leave the EU but useless both to them and younger voters if they are not around to see it. So on that basis, there is an argument in favour of continuing to oppose Brexit.

As an aside, I did do some back of the envelope calculations a few months ago which bear repeating. If we were to apply a weighting structure based on the fact that younger voters have more to lose from leaving the EU and therefore we allow their votes to count for more, it is possible to come up with a scenario in which the June 2016 vote would have produced a Remain vote. Assume (arbitrarily) that votes account for a positive weight so long as voters are under the age of 90, with the weight derived as follows (90 – age / 90). For those in the 18-24 age group, if we assume a median age of 21, applying the formula gives their vote a weight of 0.7633; for those in the 25-34 bracket, the median age is 29.5 and the weight declines to 0.672. As age rises, so the weight declines. Even allowing for a low turnout amongst younger voters, survey-based evidence of voting patterns indicate this would be enough to give Remain a 52.5%-47.5% majority. Whilst such an idea should not be taken too seriously, as it cuts across the principle of one person-one vote, it does at least try to introduce some inter-generational fairness which many people claim is lacking in the whole debate.

The case for instead campaigning for the best post-Brexit settlement is also supported by the fact that the constituency most in favour of Brexit will soon become less politically relevant. The likes of Nigel Farage, who did so much to whip up Brexit support, might bewail the nature of any agreement hammered out between the UK and EU27 but he is increasingly becoming a political irrelevance as those who bought into his vision of a backward-looking Britain become less active (look out for UKIP to take a serious beating at the local UK elections on 3 May). The same may also be true for Jacob Rees-Mogg and Boris Johnson, the hardliners on the front line of Conservative politics, who belong to a party with an average membership age of at least 57 and whose numbers are only around 20% of their Labour opponents. The point, of course, being that Conservative parliamentary MPs will not in future have to be quite so beholden to their increasingly ageing party membership.

You can never say never on Brexit-related matters. But if there is to be any subsequent vote it will most likely only take the form of a parliamentary vote on the terms of the final agreement offered by the EU. After all, the will of the people has already been heard so there is no need to ask them again. It’s just a shame that large numbers of those who voted for Brexit will not be around to enjoy it.