Joseph Brean - National Post:
Carl Court/Getty ImagesPeople who identify primarily as English were overwhelmingly more likely to vote Leave in the Brexit referendum, at 72%.
This has been baffling and distressing for many in London, where national pride sits lightly on the shoulders, and mixes easily with foreign influence. Cosmopolitan London, which voted strongly to Remain, just elected a left-wing Muslim as mayor, and was proud of how little his religion seemed to matter to an electorate for whom cultural diversity is a way of life.
Most of London’s workforce, its younger residents especially, have grown up as a part of Europe. They have no personal memory of what came before. They can work in Germany, holiday in Spain, marry a Belgian, hire a Slovak. Now, their mobility rights will be severely curtailed, and their opportunities sacrificed to ease the insecurity of their parents’ generation. The age gap was especially wide, with older people much more likely to vote to Leave. On this view, millennials were sold out by baby boomers, and their smartphones have buzzed with angst ever since the vote.
Mary Turner/Getty ImagesYoung protesters demonstrate outside Downing Street, following the United Kingdom's decision to leave the EU following the referendum, on June 24, 2016 in London.
But all the rest of England got what it wanted. Even Birmingham and Sheffield, England’s second- and third-largest cities, went Leave. The euroskeptic vote was strongest in the Midlands, the East and Yorkshire, in the rural and industrial heartlands of Middle England, which is not so much a geography as a terrain of cultural memory. Its residents have always been uneasy about being a province of Europe, and will damn well not stand by as England becomes a state in a Fourth Reich, dominated economically and politically by the nation their parents defeated on the beaches of Normandy.
This is where the Conservative government’s austerity measures have caused the most pain for working-class people, and it is where the vote was won.
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Leaving in E.U for Brittain is costly in terms of trade, export and currency.However it may save their identity ,culture and even their race for a while longer because at this rate the place will become a united nation entity with a population of people that havie noting in common with one another, no sense of history, culture, linkage and pride.
"Cosmopolitan London, which voted strongly to Remain, just elected a left-wing Muslim as mayor, ..."
That was the last straw.