Given how close the result was, I would have thought that racism probably made the crucial difference. (largely in relation to the refugee crisis, which, unlike existing immigration from, say, South Asia, was directly entangled with the EU issue, as most refugees had to come through Europe)
But I think racism is still primarily directed at black and asian people rather than white European migrants. I don't accept it compares in intensity or even in motivation. A complication that makes comparisons difficult is that white EU migrants went to parts of the country that had not seen much inward migration of any kind before. Those areas didn't react well to it.
The regions that had long had higher levels of immigration and (non white) ethnic minority populations (most of the big cities) were precisely the ones that voted strongly for 'remain'. You can't really say how the more insular, previously unaffected areas of the country would have reacted to significant numbers of non-European immigrants because they have never had any. I believe it would have been worse.
I'm still not a fan of the EU (its economic policies have for some time now been aimed at benefiting the wealthier groups in the northern member states at the expense of everyone else, and God, is it a baroque and inefficient and in practice undemocratic organisation), but for me the number one reason to vote remain (and to stay and try and fix things from within) was fear of those who would feel hugely encouraged by a leave victory. A fear that seems to be being bourne out. Farage is as repellent and extreme as Trump but a little bit better at hiding it.
The only bright spot is that the leave voters were very disproportionately elderly. If only the vote had come a decade later I suspect the result would have been different, as quite a few of them would have died off (hurrah for Millennials, I say). Cameron was an unmitigated idiot in holding an unnecessary referendum - solely to serve the short-term interests of his party - without even considering the possibility of losing it. The British ruling class seems to regularly produce these inept dilettantes for whom its all a jolly game (at least Thatcher, significantly, the last of the 'striver class', was competent). British history is full of upper-class nitwits and the fiascos they bought about (I think there are a few statues of some of them still around).
Things are not going to go well from here on, I reckon.
But I think racism is still primarily directed at black and asian people rather than white European migrants. I don't accept it compares in intensity or even in motivation. A complication that makes comparisons difficult is that white EU migrants went to parts of the country that had not seen much inward migration of any kind before. Those areas didn't react well to it.
The regions that had long had higher levels of immigration and (non white) ethnic minority populations (most of the big cities) were precisely the ones that voted strongly for 'remain'. You can't really say how the more insular, previously unaffected areas of the country would have reacted to significant numbers of non-European immigrants because they have never had any. I believe it would have been worse.
I'm still not a fan of the EU (its economic policies have for some time now been aimed at benefiting the wealthier groups in the northern member states at the expense of everyone else, and God, is it a baroque and inefficient and in practice undemocratic organisation), but for me the number one reason to vote remain (and to stay and try and fix things from within) was fear of those who would feel hugely encouraged by a leave victory. A fear that seems to be being bourne out. Farage is as repellent and extreme as Trump but a little bit better at hiding it.
The only bright spot is that the leave voters were very disproportionately elderly. If only the vote had come a decade later I suspect the result would have been different, as quite a few of them would have died off (hurrah for Millennials, I say). Cameron was an unmitigated idiot in holding an unnecessary referendum - solely to serve the short-term interests of his party - without even considering the possibility of losing it. The British ruling class seems to regularly produce these inept dilettantes for whom its all a jolly game (at least Thatcher, significantly, the last of the 'striver class', was competent). British history is full of upper-class nitwits and the fiascos they bought about (I think there are a few statues of some of them still around).
Things are not going to go well from here on, I reckon.
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