Goldfinger

As Goldfinger once famously said to James:

“Mr. Bond, we have a saying in Chicago - once is happenstance, twice is coincidence”

Following on from the “jumping off a cliff” happenstance, today’s Twitter timeline produced this little nugget from Professor Leighton Williams: 

which neatly ties together my recent reference to the death penalty and the recent non-legally binding referendum. 

A coincidence in itself that this topic would appear, and while my reference to the death penalty was intended merely as a convenient example of MPs being more enlightened than their constituents, it’s an interesting second coincidence that support for the death penalty “strongly correlates with Brexit voting intention.”  

71% of those in favour of the death penalty indicated that they would vote to leave the EU, while only 20% of those opposed to capital punishment indicated they would vote to leave.

“This speaks to a deeper personality dimension which social psychologists dub Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA). A less judgmental way of thinking about RWA is order versus openness.”

The full article by Eric Kaufmann (@epkaufm) can be found here and it’s a well researched article and worth a read. I hope the author's accreditations are acceptable to readers – Professor of Politics, ice-hockey player, Dad.