Our YouGov poll proved what we have said from the beginning. Ending the foreign billionaire capture of our democracy is not a left/right issue.
YouGov questioned 2,097 UK adults on 6th and 7th July, and tested all five of our measures. It found something that ought to have been on the front page of every newspaper in Britain.
There is not one political group in this country where opposition to any of our measures outweighs support for it. Not one.
A ban on UK media being owned by foreign-based individuals or foreign-owned companies
- Labour voters: 71% support, 10% oppose
- Lib Dem voters: 70% support, 13% oppose
- Reform UK voters: 67% support, 16% oppose
- Conservative voters: 65% support, 21% oppose
- Green voters: 65% support, 15% oppose
- All adults: 63% support, 15% oppose
Reform voters, by a four-to-one majority, want Britain to take back control of our national media and ban foreign ownership of it.
Leave means leave
The irony is not lost on us. The newspapers that pumped out Brexit propaganda for two decades are nearly all owned by foreign-based media billionaires — The Sun, the Mail and The Telegraph, now owned from the US, Bermuda and Germany respectively.
Leave supporters in our poll backed a ban on foreign ownership by 68% to 16%. That is a more than four-to-one Leave majority demanding our sovereignty back from the largely foreign-based media billionaires who have captured our democracy.
This is why our logo deliberately unites imagery valued by left and right: Lady Liberty and the national flag. The unity is real, and it is in the data.
The numbers nobody has seen
Foreign ownership is not even our strongest result. Two others are bigger.
Requiring national newspapers to join a press regulator independent of the media owners: 72% support, 8% oppose. That is a nine-to-one margin. It includes 74% of Conservative voters and 70% of Reform voters. There is no serious constituency in Britain for leaving the press to mark its own homework.
Requiring think-tanks to publish who their donors are: 78% support, 7% oppose. Eleven to one. It runs from 90% of Green voters to 83% of Conservatives to 78% of Reform voters. Three-quarters of us also want them to publish how much each donor gives.
And on ownership itself: 63% back a ban on one company owning more than one national newspaper or broadcaster, against 14% opposed; 62% back a levy on the large social media corporations to fund independent and local journalism, against 11% opposed; and 56% back limiting how much of a national media organisation any single person can own, against 14% opposed.
Five measures. Every one of them wanted by more people than oppose it, in every party, in every nation, in every age group, at every income level.
Their response? Silence.
Despite our poll press release being sent to every billionaire-owned outlet, not a single one covered the story.
Despite it being about the most powerful political force in our democracy: the media billionaires themselves.
Their political power lies not only in their screaming front pages, but in their power to suppress stories that go against their vested interests — even when those stories are backed by the majority of Britons.
So the only way people find out that they are not alone in wanting an end to this is if you tell them.
What you can do today
Please share these findings, and share them especially with people who did not vote the way you did. Share them on Leave and right-wing social media. Your relatives who read the Mail are, on this issue, on our side — they have simply never been told.
The petition closes on Friday 18 September. Every signature on it is evidence we can put in front of Parliament, trade unions and party conferences in the grassroots phase that starts the moment it closes.
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Please sign and share our petition to ban foreign media ownership: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/760061
And help us cover Campaign costs by donating to our Crowdfunder: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/crowdfunder-for-polling-the-publics-view-on-billi