It is increasingly clear that Brexit has cost not saved money, encumbered not liberated trade, inhibited not enhanced our sovereignty, and threatens to break up the UK. In fact, argues Nick Westcott, it is nothing more than a political Ponzi scheme – and it is still going on.
Bernie Madoff died last month. The obituaries, and there were many, reflected on his extraordinary ability to persuade people to join a pure Ponzi scheme, worth $64.8 billion when it collapsed. But he simply exploited human nature: that people are happy to believe a lie, without asking too many questions, if it promises them what they want. This applies in politics too.
The essence of a Ponzi scheme is to offer impossibly attractive returns – 15 per cent a year in Madoff’s case – which keeps attracting new investors whose savings pay for the impossible returns to the initial investors. So it only works if it keeps growing. And that requires keeping people’s confidence, assuring them that everything is working as planned come good times or bad, and in all circumstances keeping up the pretence, sustaining the lie. It invariably – invariably – collapses when people start smelling a rat or, as with Madoff in 2008, need to cash in their savings and ask for their money back. Then the whole thing was revealed as ‘just one big lie’. Many of Madoff’s investors lost every penny.
Brexit is a political Ponzi scheme, and it is still going strong. The crash in this case is a slow-motion one. But it is happening. In politics it is almost easier. People are looking for reassurance as much as cash, so it is easier to sustain the lie. Of course, many people who voted for Brexit just wanted out, whatever the cost. They believed Brussels was interfering with our national way of life and wanted it over. For them, if they lost their money or their job, or if the Union broke up, it was all worth it. But not for every Brexit voter. There were some among the 52 per cent who believed the promises they were sold.
So do any of those promises hold water?
The first was that Brexit would save money: £350 million a week for the NHS said the big red bus. True, the NHS is getting more money, but that is because of COVID, and it is borrowed from the future not recovered from the EU. The truth is that the costs of Brexit far outweigh the cash benefits. In 2016, the net annual cost to the UK of EU membership was £9.4 billion (£181m per week). From 2021, the UK will still make a net contribution to the EU for continuing liabilities of nearly £2.5 billion (€3 billion) p.a. and in 2018/19 alone the Chancellor set aside an extra £1.5 billion for Brexit costs, which only partially covered them. On top of this roughly £100 m per week cash cost is the impact of the 4 per cent hit to GDP estimated by the Office for Budget Responsibility, which cuts government revenue as well as national income. Overall, there is now no question that Brexit costs, not saves, money.
The second promise is that it would free the economy, stimulate enterprise and make Britain more ‘nimble’ on the world stage. But far from liberating British business, it has tied it up in red tape. The essence of the EU’s Single Market was to cut costs and reduce bureaucracy for internal trade – and it succeeded. Rules will always be needed to safeguard competition as well as people and protect consumers from environmental harm, bad food and dodgy products. It is cheaper and more efficient to do that with our neighbours than on our own. Now the costs and bureaucracy are back, especially for services, and the more we diverge, the heavier the costs will be. It will be many years, if ever, before the benefits of other fabled free trade deals will match the losses on trade with the EU.
Thirdly, there was a presumption that where England led, the other nations of the United Kingdom would dutifully follow, and that Brexit would not impact Northern Ireland. The Unionists were complicit in this, vetoing the only deal that would have both delivered Brexit and preserved the Good Friday Agreement with no major change for the province. The Prime Minister swore blind there would never be a border in the Irish Sea, and then agreed one. True, he never promised the Scots anything at all, but his view of Scotland seems to have been set around the time of Culloden.
Finally, there is sovereignty. This has become the last refuge of the Brexiteers. Even if Brexit has cost money, increased bureaucracy and imperilled the Union, we have our sovereignty back. Really? As I have argued before, this is only true if you adopt a North Korean definition of sovereignty. If you judge it instead by the ability to defend our national interests and control our own destiny, we were far better able to do that within the EU than outside it. Brexit has thrown away control, not taken it back. This, in some ways, was the biggest lie of all.
The Remain camp failed to persuade the public of the Ponzi scheme or puncture the hot air balloon of Brexit. ‘Project Fear’ just bounced off. As the balloon rises majestically into the sky, it is meeting the cold air of reality and the politicians are running out of hot air to keep it up. So we are coming back down to earth, quite fast. ‘It was worth the view’ some will say, or ‘we always knew it would take 10 years to work’, while others nurse their broken legs.
My argument is not that Britain should rejoin. Brexit is a fact: it has happened. But we must accept that the associated facts have also happened. The money and the sovereignty have gone, for good. The Ponzi scheme has popped. It is crucial for the country’s future that people understand the consequences of the choice and accept not only the fact of Brexit but the falseness of the premises on which it was sold.
Some may argue that this is nothing new: ‘all politicians lie’; it’s naïve to believe their promises; even, ‘we got what we wanted’. And then we are in Trump-land, where people are willing to say ‘I’ll vote for you because I like what you are saying, whether it is true or not.’ But this undermines political life itself. It polarises political discourse because there is no longer a rational base on which to debate outcomes, and destroys the consent of the governed: ‘this is not my government, so I will not obey it’. And that is the beginning of the end of democracy.
Ponzi schemes are always costly. They just get more so if you refuse to admit they exist.
This post represents the views of the author(s) and not those of the Brexit blog, nor of the LSE.
Pity there is no vaccine for BDS.
The facts used to persuade nembers of the public to vote for the Tory neoliberal Brexit are clearly laid bare here for all to read. Brexit was built up on lies – we should rejoin – do we ever consider the dreadful impact Brexit has had on our European friends as well – if we don’t we should.
‘BDS’, where reality is delusion and delusion reality.
If nothing else, Dr. Westcott gives us a fascinating insight into the mentality of the membership of the League of Empire Loyalists, in the 1950s and 1960s.
“Dismantling the Empire is weakening, not strengthening, us… decolonisation is risky, in a dangerous and volatile world… surrendering valuable assets, with no guarantee of access… evidence so far shows that decolonisation benefits only the small elite that took over each former colony,” and so on.
The League evolved over the years into the National Front, and then the British National Party. It will be interesting to see how the hard-core Remainers, like Dr. Westcott, evolve politically over the next decade or so.
His post “gives us a fascinating insight into the mentality of” David McKee. A truly amazing example of turning white into black. But I suppose that’s all that’s left for Brexiters, as the ghastly truth becomes clearer – a retreat into fantasy, and ‘the world turned upside down’.
Comparisons involving the EU and the historic empires of several European countries, including the UK, are similarly intriguing but the EU’s evolution was profoundly different: ‘commonwealth’ and consensual aspects quickly became dominant; countries actively sought to join; democratic measures grew steadily. Those features alone are a lot to lose.
You have made no attempt to respond to any of Dr Westcott’s points, that seem to me undeniable. Instead you have tried to suggest a connect between pro EU opinion and nationalistic groups. In reality BNP supporters were more likely to gravitate towards UKIP, and the Brexit party, surely?
There is nothing hard-line about former Remainers. We just think politics should be about being truthful to the public. And if the public get to realise they were conned over Brexit they will be wiser with their future voting.
The UK did not have voluntary members and then leave its Empire to the other ‘members’. The UK had no alternative to its Empire break up. Most Leavers want the EU to break up and if that was happening your anology might be correct. A better comparison is the desire for Welsh, or indeed Cornwall and Yorkshire, ‘independence’.
On the contrary it’s you that gives ‘fascinating insight’ into the mentality of Brexiteers, absurdly positioning a voluntary union for mutual benefit of sovereign states – a union including clear mechanisms for said members to both leave and join – as equivalent to an empire acquired mostly by violent conquest for the economic & political benefit of a single dominating member, the other members of which had little influence on the rules & laws governing them & exploiting their resources, & even less capacity to choose to leave by their own volition. As well as describing the ‘mentality’ of Brexiteers, this is of course precisely the mentality of many of those who refuse under any circumstances to countenance the independence of the member countries of the United Kingdom, which in their minds is the last remnant an empire they still long for…..
Dear David,
Ready to gobble up for free all that meat from “Down Under” at next year’s Carrie-Boris plush marriage? It’s “Fwee Twade” for all you gullible Brexiteers!!
Best wishes,
Fernando
@pauline As a European whose partner and family have been greatly disrupted by Brexit, I have no desire to see the UK rejoin anytime soon. That ship has sailed for good, as far as I am concerned, and I suspect a substantial number of European citizens agree with me.
Remember that rejoining the EU would not be a unilateral decision of the UK, but that every single member of the EU must approve it. I find it rather unlikely that at least 1 out of 27 members won’t object, considering that the UK has squandered any ounce of goodwill on the continent.
Letting the UK rejoin is a high risk high reward situation and it will become ever more difficult once the EU finds a new internal balance. At that point it will make no sense to put that newly found balance in jeopardy for an ex member whose biggest, if not only, reason for reapplying is that its wildest fantasies did not materialise.
I recall that Madoff got incarcerated for 150 years for his transgressions. Clearly Boris and chums made off with the political loot. Will they get away with it?
David McKee’s comment is not only outrageous, it has nothing to say about the facts. He invents a parallel that does not exist, although of course he will insist that it does. If these people all “reason” like him, then the Ponzi scheme has a long life ahead.
Spot on, Nick. Brexit is damaging us economically in all the ways you point to. It has removed valuable rights from us as citizens, and may yet disadvantage us as workers and consumers.
Brexit is destabilising Northern Ireland. In Scotland, our seafood and fisheries communities are hampered, our food exports are impacted, the loss of EU workers is hobbling our businesses from hospitality to agriculture to health and care. The Internal Market Act is an assault on devolution. No wonder pro-Independence, pro-Scotland in EU parties were returned with a significant majority to the Scottish Parliament last week.
The suggestion in the comments that the EU is some kind of empire is ludicrous – it is an international organisation grounded in democratic consent and co-operation for mutual benefit. The imperial power we need to be rid of is English nationalism.
Remarkably foolish article that as ever, completely fails to posit a single argument for the UK to be governed by the unelected and unaccountable in Brussels.
Why this utterly blind faith in the EU? No-one familiar with the reality of the EU retains it.
This is not a balanced article so let us have some balance.
The dramatically poor economic growth of EU economies and especially of the Eurozone states shows how over decades the EU has been making Europe steadily poorer as this article shows:
https://www.technicalpolitics.com/articles/clifford-miller-the-european-project-is-making-people-poorer/
Only Antarctica has a worse GDP growth record.
This is clear empirical evidence of the record of the EU from historical International Monetary Fund [IMF] growth records.
What is most disturbing is the scale of this and the cumulative effect over the 46 years of the European Project.
It is the cumulative effect of making and keeping European economies poorer.
That is only part of the failure of the European Project.
If the economic growth of the UK [or just England if the UK disunites] starts to pull away from other European states once matters have settled post-Brexit – that will be a demonstration of the failure of the European project.
It is unhelpful to write polemic lacking balance. It reads as polemic.
Here is other information about the EU making people poorer:
http://www.brugesgroup.com/images/howtheeukeepsyoupoor.pdf
“My argument is not that Britain should rejoin. Brexit is a fact: it has happened.”
What bizarre phrasing and/or argument, if that indeed is an argument. Yes, Brexit has happened. We should rejoin nevertheless. Whatever the past, the question always must what is the best course of action from where we are now. And, from where we are now, with Brexit having happened, the best course of action is to rejoin, even if it means on terms not as good as we had before (though they won’t be terrible; what people seem to forget is that in a REJOIN negotiation Britain indeed holds significant power as it’s in the EU’s interests to get to yes).
as with any Ponzi scheme where there are buyers there will be sellers
Grifters like Farage are never short of willing punters
Not to mention too the freedom of movement issue which has limited the rights and freedoms of Brits to live and work in Europe much more than EU citizens to live here:
1. Because applying to live here was really simple and anyone could get pre-settled status whereas the rules for us to apply in the EU were extremely complex, you actually had to live there.
2. We are now subject to harsh 90/180 days whereas EU citizens can come here for 180, leave for a day and restart the 180 clock (indefinite essentially)
3. The U.K. government will be forced to add more and more occupations to the list, and make concessions, meaning it will remain much easier to come here than vice versa
4. U.K. border force do not always stamp passports
The FOM issue affects young people and many professions (not just the arts who of course are very vocal but oil rig workers etc. too). It means we are frozen out of European universities as many only accept EU citizens or charge the higher home fee for non EU citizens (which is often huge). Plus of course all the visa costs and bureaucracy which is not to be underestimated in terms of its complexity and risk.
I am bitter about this on a person level as my boyfriend lives in Switzerland and is from Italy. Before we just met up as we pleased and spent extended periods in each other’s countries (not ideal but it was the only option for work purposes). Now we are faced with the very real question of me needing to fully emigrate to Italy as he has a new job there. I have a successful business here which in essence I would need to move to Italy. It looks like a marriage too is needed as I don’t qualify for many visas and they take months, if not years to sort out (alongside huge costs for visas, lawyers). I do qualify for a freelance visa but there are only ~2000 (I think) per year which is run as a lottery and I am in competition with the rest of the world for one. It runs once a year.
There are 1000’s of stories like this but the Brexiteer attitude is ‘if you don’t like it leave’ or that we’re ‘unpatriotic’ (words ten years ago I never thought could be part of public discourse here).
Sadly too the media paint British people in Europe as fry up loving ‘Brits abroad’ or rich second homeowners. This is sad firstly as most don’t fit this stereotype and secondly it smacks of snooty classism at both ends of the scale.
“Of course, many people who voted for Brexit just wanted out, whatever the cost. They believed Brussels was interfering with our national way of life and wanted it over. ”
This statement presupposes that this was evidential to them and not part of the Big Lie; some, such as the fishermen (particularly the less than 10m fleet) and some farming communities, could possibly justify their positions in this way.
But for the remainder many of these were systematically fed lies and half-truths by the anti-EU elements of the British media over an extended period; or simply misattributed rule changes to the EU.
Examples here included: the great banana debate; the Kipper rule (as claimed by Boris Johnson at the 2019 Tory Party leadership hustings) and rule changes which led to chips being served in newspapers, all of which were cited by individuals as reasons to leave the EU due to its perceived meddling.
In many cases, the foundations for these views were by and large exposed to be urban myths, alongside other outright lies such as the formation of a conscript EU Army (not true, in fact the majority of EU members’ armed forces have been volunteer only for many decades) and Turkey’s imminent accession to the EU.
So, I would challenge the notion that there was evidence to back these attitudes and that the beliefs held were a product of anti-EU propaganda instilled in the electorate over many years.
“Some may argue that this is nothing new: ‘all politicians lie’” This is essentially my position. Politicians are nearly always dishonest and nearly always have been dishonest. This goes back to the Ancient Greeks, as you can read in the plays of Aristophanes (for example The Knights – go and read it). “But this undermines political life itself. It polarises political discourse because there is no longer a rational base on which to debate outcomes, and destroys the consent of the governed” Since political life nearly always involve dishonesty, the article author seems to be suggesting that it is better to keep the electorate in a fools’ paradise where they believe politicians always tell the truth. Actually I think virtually every voter is well aware that politicians are dishonest. The reason democracy doesn’t collapse is that most of us are aware that the alternatives are worse.
The article itself emphasises “The first was that Brexit would save money: £350 million a week for the NHS said the big red bus. “. In this the article itself is being dishonest. The famous red bus said “We send the EU £350 million a week” and then on a new line “let’s fund our NHS instead”. These are two claims. But they do not, taken together, mean logically that ALL of the famous £350 million would go to the NHS, though it does imply that funding the NHS would be one of the things you could do instead with the extra cash. I don’t say this to accuse the author of being deliberately dishonest, but just to show how difficult absolute honesty is.
On the general point, one wonders how many voters actually saw that red bus. Not many, I assume, it cannot have been everywhere. The reason we all know about it was that Remainers and much of the media went on and on about the lie in the “£350 million” claim, falling into Dominic Cummings’s trap. So nearly all who heard about the “£350 million” heard at the same time the Remain objections that the correct figure was actually lower (say for the sake of argument £200 million). Of course few people are statistically literate enough to be able to conceptually distinguish between the two figures, so they concluded that one way or the other a lot of money was being sent to Brussels, which was what Dominic Cummings wanted.
There were of course lies on the Remain side too. We were told that David Cameron would stay on as Prime Minister in the event of a Leave vote, that George Osborne would introduce his “punishment budget” shortly after.
Recently I watched the Channel 4 drama about the campaigns “Brexit: An Uncivil War”. I know it is traditional for Brexiteers to accuse this film of being biased towards Remain and vice-versa. Actually I found it scrupulously fair to both sides (presumably it had to be to get it past the libel lawyers) as well as being great fun to watch. I certainly didn’t get the impression that there were gentlefolk on one side and pirates on the other. In an alternative universe in which the support of the major parties, Craig Oliver’s long experience of political campaigning and Andrew Cooper’s polling analyses had won it for Remain, Brexiteers would no doubt be complaining about the establishment elite, political tricksters and practitioners of political dark arts who conned the British people in 2016.
The other side of this is delusion, that they understood zero about Europe and hence were genuinely unable to negotiate at a, while thinking they understood something. But what? Madoff at least made himself rich, so if this is a Ponzi scheme, who is richer? Sunak? Rees-Mogg? Rather than a Ponzi scheme this was a putsch under a form of typically Mussolinian nationalism, Johnson’s exactly. But who is behind it? Been reading Barnier’s diaries. Of course I was a remainer but not for this right wing gaullist sentimental authoritarian ultre neo-liberal management/H/R speak.
Political statements do often carry some dishonesty. But once that’s done, statements such as that on the side of the bus cannot be justified by revealing their constructional details or by pleading how difficult absolute honesty is.
Hugh: “But once that’s done, statements such as that on the side of the bus cannot be justified by revealing their constructional details or by pleading how difficult absolute honesty is.”. You are right. The bus statement was a lie and I condemn it (not that my condemnation is worth much). But calling lying the “beginning of the end of democracy” is a bit rich. If that’s the case, the beginning of the end happened in Ancient Athens and the end is remarkably long …
It would be truer to say that where there is democracy there is lying, except that I think lying happens in other political systems as well. (The dictatorships of the 20th century were also pretty good at dishonesty. In fact they were light-years better at it …)
I would also appreciate if people would stop pretending that Remainers in 2016 were wholly honest. When David Cameron he would stay on after a Leave referendum, was he being honest? Was the “notorious cooked Brexit forecast” issued by the Treasury before the referendum, to quote a recent opinion piece in the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/20/johnson-fiscal-orthodoxy-gordon-brown-golden-rules-prudence honest?
Sure, the £350 million promise was an exaggeration. But it’s one we all remember, and it’s a measurable part of the reason why people voted leave in 2016. some people realised that it was a dishonest statement, because even if you believe the Cummings figure of what our contribution to the EU was, spending all the £350 million on the NHS would mean breaking the promises to match EU funding for areas of the UK that got grants, and all the other places where the Leave campaign said the government wouldn’t leave the holders of EU granted money in the lurch.
But to assert that the campaign wasn’t widely understood, and deliberately intended to imply that if you voted Leave the result would be that the NHS would be £350 million pounds a week better off is intellectually dishonest. The author of this article is using the big bus promise as a symbol of what a Ponzi scheme the leave campaign was. Your weasel words attempting to justify the lie as politics as usual, and not really a lie doesn’t really touch the argument made here in my opinion. Plus it’s maddening.
Arguing abt whether democractic politicans lie won’t reslove that Brexit is not good for the UK but lying is an important issue..
Hitler was a politician in democratic Wiemar Germany and lied.. He blamed the Jews for the problems of Germany…
Yellard: “Hitler was a politician in democratic Wiemar Germany and lied” I’m rather superstitious about Godwin’s Law but if you are going to take the risk, so will I. The Nazi Party was fundamentally anti-democratic, they argued that democracy was broken (no doubt one of their reasons was dishonesty among other politicans in the Weimar Republic) and needed to be replaced by a fascist system. In the first years of the Third Reich, there were plenty of people even in the UK who agreed with this and though that while Hitler might have a bit of a bee in his bonnet about the Jews, he was nevertheless a Good Thing. If we want to defend democracy against the Hitlers of this world, we have to accept that while democracy has numerous flaws, including the fact that politicans lie, it is better than all the alternatives.
Perhaps that’s why I think the EU Referendum 2016, even though it reached a result which I think was probably the wrong one, has to be respected. Of course any political party has the right to campaign for the UK to rejoin the EU, but I think it is anti-democratic for a party which consented to the referendum (as nearly all UK parties, with the exception of the SNP, did) to then campaign for it to be disregarded.
We do however need to think long and hard about how to do referenda better in future. I’ve seen very little discussion about this, which is why I keep banging on and on about it. Although personally I think parliament is usually the best forum for making political decisions, there are some (such as Scottish independence) which I think must in certain circumstances come down to a popular vote. Perhaps membership of the EU was also something which needed a popular vote, but I wish it had been done better.
From across the puddle: All this talk about lies obscures the reason your Brexit decision was different from the usual debate. The difference with Brexit is actually simple. Normally, politicians make various more or less honest promises. Those promises are made so that they can win elections. Once they have won, they then (may) control the legislature, and thus enact policy. With Brexit, the public was given the opportunity to make policy, a kind of end run around the (actual, if quiet) consensus government opinion about the EU. The general public was asked to act as a legislature would, but in the medium of regular politics-that is, as if it was having a policy debate, while not doing so. Once you are enmeshed in that particular trap, so long as those seeking the change they could never otherwise obtain act as if this was a political matter (that is, dishonestly) it is if not inevitable, fairly likely that the public may reach an ill-considered result. In short, your system was gamed to achieve a result that could not be obtained in the usual way precisely because it was so poor a result factually that it could only be obtained by fudging not the promises, but the rules. And that is a fundamentally different matter than electoral promises.
ttu: I think you’ve hit several nails on the head. In a normal UK General Election, I would expect politicians and the campaigns to avoid obvious lies, because the voters are not just voting for policies but for politicians and are unlikely to want a dishonest Prime Minister. (The obvious exception to this is Boris Johnson in 2019, but he was elected on a Get-Brexit-Done ticket and I think these really were exceptional circumstances.) But a referendum is different. There were no doubt many Leavers in 2016 who were repulsed by obvious lies like the 350m claim, but their repulsion was not a good reason for them not to vote Leave.
In the Brexit Channel 4 film I mentioned, the actor playing Dominic Cummings stated near the beginning that a referendum is pretty well the worst method of reaching a political decision. I suppose this must be Dominic Cumming’s actual opinion. I suppose one can hardly blame him for the decision to hold the referendum (which wasn’t his) nor his successful attempt to game the system to get the result he wanted, though as I said I do condemn the lie on the bus.
However if there are going to be any more referenda (one on Scottish independence looks quite likely) I certainly hope there is going to be a lot of work beforehand on how to make sure the result will be more respected on both sides. Otherwise we just risk a repeat of the mess after the Brexit referendum.
Agreed. Ilike the Ponzi analogy. There are many more examples of broken promises. One is that Brexit will lead to a stronger Global Britain, with the resulting benefits in terms of trade deals and geopolitical influence. Brexit will actually lead to a massive loss of regional and global influence, as the UK is a small country on a global level (60 million inhabitants). The big issues will be discussed and agreed between the big powers i.e. USA, China, EU and India. And this will probably be even more striking for European affairs
Paul: “Your weasel words attempting to justify the lie as politics as usual, and not really a lie doesn’t really touch the argument made here in my opinion.” Are you addressing me? Did you read my words “The bus statement was a lie and I condemn it”? I don’t justify the lie (and it certainly was a lie) at all. However I think the original article is wrong when it states ” this undermines political life itself. It polarises political discourse because there is no longer a rational base on which to debate outcomes, and destroys the consent of the governed: ‘this is not my government, so I will not obey it’. And that is the beginning of the end of democracy.” Let’s face it, politicians and political campaigners are human and where there are political campaigns there will be lying. If this is the “beginning of the end of democracy” then democracy looks to me to be in surprisingly good shape.
Moral outrage on the LSE blog is all very well (whether mine or yours), as are exhortations by the Archbishop of Canterbury or any other moral instance to honesty in politics. But it doesn’t really solve the problem. I think it would be more practical to think of ways the system can be modified to make dishonesty less of a winning strategy.
The authors final comment – Overall, there is now no question that Brexit costs, not saves, money. The author was UK Representation to the EU in Brussels from 1985 to 1989. I would like him to define Brexit. Does he mean the untangling from this non-democratic institution? It seems to me, just a student, that yourself and Pippa Norris and the majority of universities and lecturers are class bias and are somewhat apprehensive as to the survival of the educational system. Which hopefully will now, since leaving, teach in a professional manner and not misguide students into thinking voting leave is nationalistic and anti-immigration. The U.K. will regain its sovereignty, given away in an underhand matter by Edward Heath. Tony Benn and Michael Foot and Powell all knew what was happening. The remainers had all the levers of power – in the end intelligent people voted – knowing far more than the so called establishment gave them credit for. This was not a demographic divide – the left behinds as Remainers love to call Leavers – as the mostly the 52% earn 3 times more than academics and are far more intelligent, business minded and dont rely on the public purse for their salary. Never underestimate those who dont put money first – LEST WE FORGET