When I visited my hometown in the North, an industrial town, where much of the industry had gone, the sentiment was very pro-Brexit.
I pointed out to relatives who were keen on blaming foreigners for everything that a great deal of their social and health care was provided by immigrants. That the jobs in the fields and market gardens and the serving and kitchen staff in hospitality relied on an immigrant workforce.
I was told that they did not mean for them to go if they were doing a good job. It was the others they read about in the newspapers like the Daily Mail and Daily Express. The stories about the foreign criminals who are allowed into the UK because of the EU free mobility of labour rules.
Brexit, apparently, will mean they will no longer find it easy to move to the UK and perpetrate social security fraud.
I was also told that it was their impression that all these immigrants cause an awful problem in London because of their numbers.
Having lived in London for a few decades I found this a bit odd because it benefits hugely from being a world city that attracts talent from everywhere.
In this working class northern town, only a small percentage of inhabitants are from overseas. They are must evident working as doctors and nurses for the NHS. They tend to come from Commonwealth countries because the UK does not train enough health care professionals.
Maybe another couple of thousand EU working in agriculture or hospitality - jobs that UK workers are not much interested in doing. They usefully fill in the gaps in the labour market. Most are simply working away from home for time.
Nonetheless the blame for the de-industrialisation of the generation of people who felt left behind by economic changes were easy to manipulate by the Brexit faction and the newspapers that support them.
Boris Johnson promised great things of Brexit. Nigel Farage, the leader of the UKIP Brexit party that so threatened the Conservative vote exclaimed the UK was ‘Free at Last! Free at Last!’. Suggesting that the tyranny of the EU regulations from Brussels was something akin to slavery. Conveniently forgetting that the UK had a big hand in fashioning the regulations required for the huge EU single market.
The Conservatives appealed to these working class communities and managed to persuade them to vote Conservative, many for the first time. Most would have normally voted Labour, supposedly the party of working class solidarity. But Labour was led by a radical faction under Corbin that was far to the left of the electorate.
The simplicity of Boris Johnson’s ‘Get Brexit Done’ slogan was attractive and they managed the remarkable feat of persuading this ‘Red Wall’ of northern industrial voters to vote Conservative and get this awful Brexit business over and done with.
Johnson created a policy of ‘levelling up’ to support the economy of the northern industrial belt and preserve these newly converted voters. A large number of Conservative MPs will lose their seats if improvements are not delivered.
Sadly Brexit has not solved any of the problems. International trade does not change instantly and there is no getting away from the fact that the EU is a huge trade block right next to the UK.
It is now more difficult to get the staff businesses need, there is a big skills shortage.
Brexit has also failed dramatically in not solving the fundamental division is the Conservative Party. It is completely divided. Johnson turned out to be good at electioneering, but not much of a leader. His party is riddled with factions and incompetents. They are clearly not in a fit state to govern.
Labour are now looking good and electable under Starmer. But it will be two years before a General Election and the country seems forced to endure more Conservative psycho-drama.
Politics in the UK is going through a very difficult phase.