Play the 'Should we stay or should we go?' EU referendum game

Here's an engaging starter to your next lesson which should help stimulate further discussion about the upcoming referendum on the UK's membership of the EU entitled 'Should we stay or should we go?' Heck, you may want to play this yourself or with your colleagues! How many can you score out of 10?

Using the listed viewpoints of 486 Westminster MPs (as stated by the BBC on 22 Feb 2016), students are asked to say which way they think the MPs will campaign during the referendum. The game randomly draws 10 names (along with their party and constituency) onto the Powerpoint slide. Give your students a couple of minutes to work out which way each MP will campaign (get them into teams if necessary) and then see how many they get correct out of the 10 listed.

Hopefully, they will know some obvious points (and if they don't this is a good learning exercise). For example, all of the SNP and Plaid Cymru MPs will campaign to remain in the EU. The DUP MPs will campaign to leave. Almost all of the Labour MPs will vote to remain (there are just 7 'leave' names). What do your students know about any of the cabinet members?

The data behind this is available as a spreadsheet as well. We believe this is currently the only database of MP names in this format - you can filter the spreadsheet by party, constituency or name if you wanted to check your own MP's viewpoint.