More than 100 constituencies which backed Brexit now back Remain – but don't expect either of the main parties to care

New research from a pro-EU campaign group showing that 112 constituencies that voted to leave the EU now back Remain is, of course, the latest Remainer/mutineer/traitor/saboteur plot to overturn the referendum result.

The apparently disgraceful survey has already drawn the predictable ire of various Brexit zealots. The sample size – 15,000 – is too small; the results too convenient; and so on and so on.

Naturally, the real horror would be if it were not true. That a comparatively small to medium-sized number of people, in a small but significant number of already quite evenly divided places, have, some years after casting a vote, come to change their minds, is the central mechanism that sustains a democracy.

If no one were to ever cast a vote and then, further down the line, decide that actually, the other option might have been the way to go, then Britain would, at best, be about to enter its fourth consecutive century of Whig government. At worst, the Cromwell dynasty would be really showing the Kim Jongs who’s boss.

But EU membership is the area where Britain doesn’t get to change its mind again so soon. It is, we are told, stuck with the choice that was made two years ago, even if that choice was, by necessity, no choice at all, because so little could possibly be known about what leaving the EU would involve. None other than Jacob Rees-Mogg made a similar point to this, in the House of Commons in 2011, when he said that, in the event of a leave vote in an EU referendum, “another referendum on the terms of the negotiation” could then be held, however many years later.

The group that commissioned the research, Best for Britain, is actively campaigning for a “people’s vote” on the terms of the UK’s exit from the EU. If there is to be a people’s vote, and the most likely form in which that could take place would be a second referendum, it of course does not especially matter that those who have changed from Leave to Remain are grouped closely together in one geographical location. It is a nationwide poll. Every vote counts, just as where every vote comes from does not count in the slightest.

The research also suggests there has been a growth in support of Leave in some Conservative areas. Again, that support has grown in areas where support was already strong, in this rare case, does not mean that support will go to to waste. A vote is a vote, wherever it comes from.

The question is whether a shift in public opinion on Brexit in Labour areas puts pressure on the Labour Party to alter its position. In Liverpool Walton, Knowsley, Swansea East, and just outside London in Hayes and Harlington (shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s seat) support for remaining has, we are told, risen by more than 10 per cent, making them clear Remain constituencies, where previously they were Leave.

It is argued, therefore, that certain Labour MPs will be letting their constituents down, when, in all likelihood, Brexit is voted through the Commons and the UK leaves the European Union on whatever terms are eventually offered by Brussels. When that happens, specifically how the howls of rage will impress themselves upon tangible political events is anybody’s guess. Whether Brexit topples Theresa May, and whether this will then involve a proper Tory leadership contest, a general election or second referendum remains entirely unknowable. Anyone who thinks they know the answer is either lying to you, to themselves or most likely both. Through what mechanisms the public will come to articulate their will on Brexit in the near to medium term future is something we can only wait to see.

According to the data, Boris Johnson’s seat in Uxbridge and West Ruislip has switched from Leave to Remain, as has Michael Gove’s in Surrey Heath. Should this make these two men wary that this change of heart will be manifested by the voters through voting for Labour, a party that is the most avowedly left-wing it has ever been?

Should John McDonnell, in Hayes and Harlington, be concerned that his party’s nuanced, constructively ambiguous position will not be tolerated by voters?

Not really. Elections are a concerto played on a cowbell, every vote a careful weighing up of passions and priorities, of concerns and contradictions, expressed through the blunt instrument of a cross in a box, those crosses adding up to something that looks vaguely like national opinion. If Remain voters in Hayes and Harlington do not like Labour’s constructive ambiguity on Brexit, will they articulate this by voting Conservative? It seems unlikely.

Will Leave-turned-Remain voters in Uxbridge and Surrey express their change of heart by seeking to propel Jeremy Corbyn into No 10? This is more plausible, but again, difficult.

That nothing frontline politicians in any party currently do appears capable of shifting the dial of opinion polls more than one or two percentage points reflects the intransigent stalemate generated by two political parties that have retreated simultaneously to their fringes.

It is often argued that the EU referendum was so much more than a vote on EU membership. It was “left behind Britain” making its voice heard. It was saying “no to austerity”. It was a mass articulation of concerns about mass immigration, even though the majority of UK immigration, then as now, still comes from outside the EU.

Indeed, the most memorable slogan of the entire EU referendum campaign tacitly confirms that EU membership is not something people cared all that much about. “We sent the EU £350m a week,” it said, down the side of a bus. “Let’s spend it on the NHS instead.”

If the NHS was flush with cash, a sparkling, unqualified success story, the Leave campaign would have needed a different slogan. It might very well have lost.

If nothing can be done to prevent a single issue referendum serving as a proxy contest for other resentments, the idea of a general election, between the current iterations of Tory and Labour, would be fought even principally on the issue of the EU is fanciful.

Leave-supporting Labour constituencies turning to Remain will not worry the Labour party in the slightest.

The government’s terrible handling of an already close to impossible task has made the deeply undesirable prospect of a second referendum increasingly necessary. A general election would not answer the question, at all. In fact it would only complicate the issue further.