mbell wrote: (part quote)
The current governments policies has really hit a lot of poorer area's hard, they have destroyed these communities and the public services they need. There is a lot of frustration and anger in these communities around the current state of affairs. It seems the leave campaign did a very good job taking that anger and frustration around these UK government issues redirecting them the EU/Immigration problems (e.g. NHS Bus).
As we're living in the area which came out top of the "no thanks" regional list (Boston/Lincs) and we do have a high immigrant population then yes, I understand your point. If you walk round Boston market then you're just as likely to hear Polish spoken as English and if you couple that with other issues attributable to a rapid influx of
any people then it's not a hard leap to make.
But local people don't hate immigrants. It's nothing to do with skin colour, religion or alleged benefit tourism, if you dropped the population of Lincoln, Hull or anywhere else on Boston you'd get exactly the same response.
The expression I hear more than any is "we've got enough now" and sadly, with the current insistence of the EU that the UK accepts and provides for any number of EU citizens to settle in the country then that is the real issue that the Leave campaign have addressed.
The Remain campaign jumped on that and called it racism, prejudice or "little Englanders", all expressions which don't help, in fact it makes it worse.
I'm not disagreeing with your point, it's just another perspective. Most folks in our village, which includes several farmers who are supposedly "all right with those EU subsidies" voted simply to get some control back in their lives. And they did that in the knowledge that they'd probably be poorer. That says a lot, doesn't it ?
Brian