The Electoral Reform Society says both sides of the referendum
campaign left people feeling "ill-informed" by the "dire" debate and that the impact of political leaders had been "minimal".
The ERS has called for a "root and branch" review of the way referendums are run. Their recommendations include having a public body intervene when
"misleading" claims are made by campaigns, reviewing broadcasters' role
and publishing a "rule book" to govern conduct by campaigns.
BMG
Research polled over 1,000 UK-based adults every month from February
until the end of the campaign for the Electoral Reform Society's report. This showed that prominent politicians had failed to convince the public, apart from some influence by Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and US presidential candidate Donald Trump,
who backed Brexit. ERS said that "Above all, what these numbers tell us is that
people had by and large lost faith in established political figures as
opinion-leaders - except where those figures might be said to be kicking
against the establishment," and that voters had viewed both sides as increasingly negative, and
nearing the vote date, nearly half of voters felt they were "mostly telling lies". The
government's controversial mail-shot to every household in the UK had
"little effect on people's levels of informedness".
ERS said the EU debate was in
"stark contrast" to the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, which
it said had featured a "vibrant, well-informed, grassroots conversation
that left a lasting legacy of on-going public participation in politics
and public life".
ERS said there were "serious questions" to be asked
about the place of referendums in politics, including how they sit
alongside the parliamentary system and how to ensure a "high quality"
debate.
ERS chief executive Katie Ghose said: "Now that the dust is starting to settle
after the EU referendum, we need a complete rethink about the role of
referendums in the UK. They are becoming more common, but the piecemeal
nature of the how, when and why they're done means we could simply end
up jumping from referendum to referendum at the whim of politicians."
Read in full: Glaring deficiencies in EU debate, Electoral Reform Society says. BBC News website 1st Sept. 2016 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37238641
