Why you think people will become more Remain I don’t see. I agree it’s possible but we have had two votes on the subject, one in 1975 when Remain won hands down, another in 2016 when Remain lost, just. The trend is the other way if anything. Finally I am not sure that you are right about the Conservative Party. From 2016 and 1975 they seem the party that came closest to the what people generally think, Tory or otherwise.

Thanks for the reply Andrew. Fascinating paper.

If our old system was based around consumer sovereignty (voting by spending) to settle resource allocation decisions along a rich v poor, left v right axis then the future is labour sovereignty (voting by the job we take) with decisions being made along some definition of ‘good’ axis (sustainability, social inclusion, peace etc), mediated by our social media persona. If nobody wants to work in polluting or #MeToo industries they will have to increase wages or perhaps even be capped in what they can achieve by a shortage of labour.

Of course this vote is only available to those with the luxury of choice in the labour market but to an extent you can increase your freedom by living in cheaper places. If I squint I can see some virtuous circle effects and a path to Cadbury style benevolent capitalism.

Great stuff, lots to chew over here. Good to have hope while we struggle through the paradigm shift 😃 Thanks again!

@DougalF. This depends on whether you believe that cohort effects or lifestage effects are more important in framing political and social attitudes. I didn’t go into it here, but there seems to be some evidence to suggest that Leave/Remain attitudes are more cohort-based, framed by whether you’re one of Inglehart’s “moderns”, with values and attitudes shaped by the post-war economic boom, or one of his “post-materialists”, whose attitudes (I’m short-handing here) were more shaped in the wake of the 60s cultural/counter-cultural movements. In the UK post-materialists are now at around 50% of the population and climbing; moderns 50% and declining. I wrote more about this in an academic paper here: http://jfsdigital.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/A1.pdf.

Given that we seemingly become more conservative as we get older it could be that the Brexit majority actually grows with time rather than literally dying off. People who were on-the-fence Remainers at 55 are more likely to become on-the-fence Leavers at 65 than the other way round. The population demographic of the UK means that there is an increasing numbers of old people, ironically likely exacerbated by young Europeans deciding to leave.