Do opinion polls matter?
A majority of British people blame the EU for problems with the Northern Ireland Protocol. There are however some caveats. For a start this was asked of people who had heard about problems with the NIP, which was already a minority and given the truly terrible reporting of the EU over the years, especially from the press; this ignorance is hardly surprising.
More surprising is the idea that this puts the EU on the back foot, which seems pretty daft to me. The UK left the EU, negotiated this deal and is breaking the rules already. The EU knows, for a fact, that it has the law on its side and the consequences for the UK of walking away from the deal would be far worse than for the EU.
Also, and this is the key point I think, the UK is not in the EU anymore. Why would the EU care about opinion polls in the UK, they don’t have a vote in European elections, don’t attend EU meetings or have a veto on EU policy.
We all know the Government believes in UK exceptionalism, but the EU doesn’t care.
https://jonty.substack.com/