Many such places voted to leave the European Union. Too often, poorly managed migration has led to segregated communities and a failure of assimilation. But, as the Casey Review reminds us, there are places in Britain where this ideal has not been realised. The movement of people across borders creates culturally richer, more vibrant and more prosperous nations: this is a truth that we must never lose sight of. After this unspeakable atrocity, it is hard to talk about immigration – but perhaps no moment could have stressed more urgently the necessity of doing so. I have never been so ashamed to be British as the harrowing day last year when Arkadiusz Jozwik was lynched by a fifteen-year-old boy in Harlow, a town only seven miles from where I grew up.
#IM PRO BREXIT FREE#
It is hard for me to talk about this issue because free movement was not a factor in my personal decision to vote leave. Having said all this, there is little doubt that the most prominent and divisive issue of the referendum campaign was immigration. So damned gullible! But did Remainers ever stop to question their own idealist delusions? Did anyone pause to marvel at how a solidly neoliberal, austerity-pushing, protectionist, dubiously democratic and hopelessly bureaucratic institution – a body utterly intransigent to reform and paralysed by infighting, that has flailed and wilted in the face of the refugee crisis, Europe’s greatest challenge of this decade – was transformed into the flag-bearer for every progressive value under the sun: the protector of all that is good and holy? How’s that for fantasy? We are likewise reminded that the silly Brexit voters got carried away with fantasies of “taking back control”. After all, how can poor people be expected to understand what they’re voting for? How can poor people, in their grubby little council houses, possibly decide what’s best for them without the help of City-types and university professors to fill in their ballots for them? Their needs and priorities are obviously not the same as those of the middle-class Guardian readers who routinely anoint themselves saviours of the working class, grazing on their hummus with no hint of irony.īrexit, we are told by aspiring paternalists, was a misdirected expression of anti-establishment sentiment. We need to wake up and accept that impoverished voters chose Brexit not because they’re thick, but because they’re poor. Think about the salary chasm between graduates and non-graduates, or the different kinds of jobs they pursue, or the fact that top universities are dominated by private school students from London and its environs. No one seems to have wondered whether these differences of opinion might have less to do with intelligence and more to do with the markedly different socio-economic situations of those with a university education and those without one. Thank God for such enlightened journalism to remind us that the Einsteins voted Remain and the thickos voted Leave. Illuminating headlines such as these prompt me to bitterly lament the paper’s online switch, preventing it from being put to its most fitting use as a lavatory aid. On 7 August 2017, The Independent proclaimed: “Brexit caused by low levels of education, study finds”. Many such places voted to leave the European Union” “Too often, poorly managed migration has led to segregated communities and a failure of assimilation. However, with one year to go until departure day, my anger at intellectual elitism and classist condescension in certain Remainer circles has reached such a fever pitch that I feel compelled to call it out in whatever way I can. I’m sorry, then, if my decision to write anonymously seems cowardly: Brexit is still such an emotive issue and I’m scared of receiving personal abuse for this article. Stereotypes of Leave voters aren’t exactly pleasant. I have told almost none of my Cambridge friends that I voted to leave the European Union because I don’t want it to colour the way people view me. “It was Facebook wot won it”: so says Cambridge Analytica whistle-blower, Christopher Wylie, playing beautifully into the narrative that the uneducated turkeys voted for Christmas only because they were dazzled by the shiny lights on the oven. Insinuations that Brexit voters were too stupid to think for themselves – simply hapless victims of a nefarious misinformation campaign – reared their ugly head again last week.
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