From: DMcG - PM
Date: 19 Dec 17 - 01:52 PM
I'm not too bothered by polls either way. The referendum mattered, and the elections matter, but not polls.
So let us try a thought experiment, making three big assumptions. All painful for some here, but I hope they agree they are not impossible. Unlikely, perhaps, and unwanted, but not impossible.
Suppose
(a) an election is called next year
(b) Labour is finally clear and says it will leave the EU, but wants to be as close as possible, including keeping the single market and the social chapter on the same terms as now
(c) Labour win the election.

In that hypothetical situation it would depend what the other parties to the election had had in their manifestos as well. Prior to the rise of UKIP we had many elections where neither of the main parties were prepared to consider leaving the EU, and we voted for the party we best considered able to lead the country. Voting for them didn't mean that we wanted to be part of Europe (as we weren't even being asked about that).

The referendum was a single-issue vote which allowed the public to make their preferences known.

In your hypothetical scenario, the Labour party might win, solely because of those who always vote Labour. It would not necessarily mean that those voters supported the manifesto view on how to deal with Brexit.