White Riot—Brexit, Trump, and Post-Factual Politics

Derek Sayer

In memory of Jo Cox, MP (1974-2016)

The triumph of feeling

The term "post-factual politics" (or "post-truth politics"), which Wikipedia usefully defines as "a
political culture in which debate is framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the
details of policy, and by the repeated assertion of talking points to which factual rebuttals are
ignored," has been widely employed in relation to Britain's EU referendum and the 2016 US
presidential election. At issue here are not just particular lies, like the £350 million per week Leave
campaigners in the UK falsely claimed went to the EU, but the whole spirit in which the debates
were conducted. Warnings of negative economic consequences of a pro-Brexit vote were routinely
dismissed as "Project Fear"—the implication being that is was unpatriotic even to question
Britain's ability to prosper outside the EU. A willingness to ignore facts came close to being
presented as a moral virtue. Michael Gove encapsulated this spirit in his claim that "people in this
country have had enough of experts"—a remarkable statement to come from a former Secretary
of State for Education.1 On the other side of the Atlantic Donald Trump's contempt for facts
scarcely needs documenting, but those interested might consult the Toronto Star's list of 560
falsehoods he uttered during the campaign on every conceivable topic from youth unemployment
rates among African-Americans to the numbers of Syrian refugees admitted to the USA by the
Obama administration.2 On Trump's first day in office White House press secretary Sean Spicer
berated the press for understating the size of the crowds at the inauguration, insisting that this was
"the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period."3 When challenged with evidence
that clearly showed the contrary, presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway described Spicer's
falsehoods as "alternative facts."4 Such abuses of truth by the powerful do not augur well for the
future of democracy, which depends on an informed electorate. My concern here, however, is not

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primarily with Westminster and the White House. It is with the extent to which left-wing analysis
of the Brexit and Trump victories has become clouded by the same post-factual fog.
Perception of these victories as "upsets" or "shocks" is arguably itself a symptom of a
political culture in which feeling and belief count for more than evidence or argument. No rational
observer should have been surprised by these outcomes. In the British case, though most polls
published during the last week of the campaign predicted a slender win for Remain, over the
previous three weeks 17 out of 26 polls had predicted a Leave victory. 5 In the US, where most
polls had shown a majority for Clinton for months, the gap sharply narrowed in the week before
the election, leaving her with a bare 3.1% lead on election day.6 The US polls proved remarkably
accurate, since in the event Clinton topped Trump by 2.1% in the nationwide popular vote while
Trump outperformed his national poll totals by only 1-2 percentage points. As Nate Silver has
commented, "the result was not some sort of massive outlier; on the contrary, the polls were pretty
much as accurate as they’d been, on average, since 1968."7 The last-minute narrowing may well
have been due to FBI Director James Comey's surprise statement, eleven days before the election,
that the bureau was reopening the investigation into Clinton's emails. But given the evidence of
deep hostility toward Clinton among certain demographic groups—above all white, working-class
males—whose votes could alter the outcome in battleground states, so precarious a lead should
never have given anyone confidence in a Democratic victory in the first place. If we add to this
the abundant evidence of strong support for Brexit and Trump provided in journalists' reports from
rust belt regions that delivered Trump his victory, nobody should have been shocked.
The cognoscenti—politicians, bureaucrats, academics, lobbyists, journalists, media
pundits—were "shocked," not because these "upsets" could not have been foreseen, but because
they lay beyond the horizons of what had previously been deemed politically possible. Those to
whom we usually look for truth were as guilty as anyone else of believing what they wanted to
believe and ignoring all evidence that contradicted it. The feeling that Brexit was inconceivable
was sustained not by any evidence of people's voting intentions but by the range of establishment
support the Remain campaign enjoyed. This included the UK, Scottish, and Welsh governments;
the Labour, Liberal Democrat, Scottish National, Plaid Cymru, and Green parties;8 London,
Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Cardiff, Bristol, and Sheffield city councils; the
Confederation of British Industry; the Trades Union Congress; all 20 football clubs in the Premier
League; Universities UK; NATO; the European Central Bank, the World Trade Organization, the

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World Bank, the IMF, the OECD, and the Group of Seven; Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande,
Barack Obama, Xi Jinping, Shinzo Abe, and a raft of other international notables. Letters to the
newspapers supporting Remain were signed by hundreds of leading scientists, academics, and
figures in the creative industries, while celebrity Remainers included Lily Allen, David and
Victoria Beckham, J. K. Rowling, Idris Elba, Jeremy Clarkson, Rio Ferdinand, Jamie Oliver, and
Elton John. No other issue in modern British history has brought out such a display of unanimity
across the boundaries not only of political affiliation, but also of high and popular culture.
The situation was similar in the United States. Outside the GOP (and sometimes within it)
most everyone who was anyone, from Beyonce and Bruce Springsteen to Warren Buffet and
George Soros, agreed that a Trump presidency was unthinkable. Only 20 daily and six weekly
newspapers endorsed Trump (of which only two had circulations above 100,000), while 243 dailies
and 148 weeklies endorsed Clinton. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Milwaukee Journal-
Sentinel, among others, recommended voting for anyone but Trump. The Tulsa World and the
Dallas Morning News endorsed a Democrat for the first time since F. D. Roosevelt; the Cincinnati
Inquirer and Columbus Dispatch endorsed a Democrat for the first time since Woodrow Wilson;
and the Palm Beach Desert Sun, the Arizona Republic, and the San Diego Union Tribune endorsed
a Democrat for the first time in their respective 90-year, 126-year, and 148-year histories.
Breaking with its 34-year-old tradition of neutrality, USA Today ran an editorial urging readers not
to vote for Trump.9 While many had reservations about Clinton's candidacy, the overwhelming
consensus was that (in the words of the Atlantic, which had only endorsed two presidential
candidates in its 159-year history, Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon B. Johnson), Donald Trump was
"the most ostentatiously unqualified major-party candidate in the 227-year history of the American
presidency," and "a demagogue, a xenophobe, a sexist, a know-nothing and a liar" to boot.10
Rather than facing up to the kind of unpalatable facts to which lone voices like Michael
Moore11 (and even the redoubtable Nate Silver, who denounced the Huffington Post's assurance
of a Clinton victory as "fucking idiotic and irresponsible") drew attention,12 Remain and Clinton
supporters based their confidence on the fact that people whose opinions mattered thought (and
perhaps more importantly, felt) the same way about Brexit and Trump as they did.13 Though
political and media circles may be especially prone to living in bubbles, they were not the only
ones living in denial.14 The communities of the like-minded in which most of us live, and the

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echo-chambers of the social media through which many of us communicate, nurture a culture in
which strength of shared feeling is treated as a proxy—and ends up as a substitute—for truth.

A failure of elites?

It was evidently time for a wake-up call. "In this Brexit vote, the poor turned on an elite who
ignored them," wrote Ian Jack in the Guardian, just two days after the referendum.15 "People who
did not feel they had been heard have not just spoken. Given a one-off chance to tell the world
what they think of how they are governed they have screamed a piercing cry of alienation and
desperation,"16 agreed Gary Younge. "Hyper-globalization in trade and finance, intended to create
seamlessly integrated world markets, tore domestic societies apart," provoking a "popular revolt
against globalization,"17 claimed Dani Rodrik. "The electoral victory of Donald Trump, the Brexit
vote and the rise of an aggressive nationalism in mainland Europe and around the world are all
part of a backlash to globalization," asserted John Rennie Short. 18 "The backlash stems from a
growing realization that the biggest winners of globalization have been international corporations,
wealthy families, skilled and educated workers and those with easy access to capital. Older,
working-class families in many Western nations have instead struggled with stagnant wages, job
losses and staggering debt," explained Don Lee.19 The anti-Brexit, anti-Trump consensus among
what were now suddenly being dismissed as urban, liberal "elites" was quickly transformed into
proof of just how out of touch with "the people," and in particular "working class families," these
supposed elites had become. The Brexit vote was payback time, wrote the veteran campaigning
journalist John Pilger, for "an insufferably patrician class for whom metropolitan London is the
United Kingdom. Its leading members see themselves as liberal, enlightened, cultivated tribunes
of the 21st century zeitgeist, even 'cool.' What they really are is a bourgeoisie with insatiable
consumerist tastes and ancient instincts of their own superiority."20 It is remarkable how events
that were so unexpected by most commentators lent themselves to such confident instant analysis.
Per this account, while the neoliberal economic policies pursued over the last thirty years
by governments of both the left (Clinton, Blair, Obama, Brown) and the right (Thatcher, Major,
Bush, Cameron) benefited those with the resources to succeed in global markets, they massively
exacerbated social inequalities. London and some other privileged enclaves in the UK may have

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boomed, but the cost of globalization can be counted in the boarded-up factories, disappeared jobs,
and decimated communities of the hinterlands, where the "settlements strung along smoky valleys
and perched on the oily river’s edge ... began to look as abandoned as gold rush towns." The
resonance of Ian Jack's description with Trump's "American carnage" of "rusted out factories
scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation"21 is plain. Jack insists, rightly, that
deindustrialization is not just a question of economics. He quotes Michael Sandel's observation
that "A large constituency of working-class voters feel that not only has the economy left them
behind, but so has the culture ... The sources of their dignity, the dignity of labour, have been
eroded and mocked by … globalisation, the rise of finance, the attention that is lavished by parties
across the political spectrum on economic and financial elites."22 Jack laments not just the passing
of "the spinning, weaving, stitching, hammering, banging, welding and smelting that went on in
the manufacturing towns" but the attendant loss of "much of the country’s former character" that
"was also owed to them—non-conformist chapels, brass bands, giant vegetable championships,
self-improvement, association football." John Harris draws attention to "a too-often overlooked
sense that men (and men are particularly relevant here) who would once have been certain in their
identity as miners, or steelworkers, now feel demeaned and ignored."23 Western governments'
responses to the 2008 financial crisis—led by Labour's Gordon Brown in the UK and the
Democrats' Barack Obama in the US—compounded this sense of betrayal, it is argued, as bankers
were bailed out while ordinary people lost their houses and their jobs. The Cameron government
that succeeded Brown in 2010 added insult to injury by implementing "austerity" programs to
reduce the resulting deficits. The parliamentary expenses scandal that broke in 2009, involving
MPs of both major parties, did nothing to restore trust in political elites. In the US Donald Trump's
promises to "drain the swamp" of Washington corruption struck equally resonant chords. "Bernie
Sanders endorsing Crooked Hillary Clinton is like Occupy Wall Street endorsing Goldman Sachs,"
the New York billionaire gleefully tweeted on 12 July 2016, killing two birds with one stone.24
This "failure of elites," Jack and many others maintain, is "a failure common to the western
world."25 The rise of Marine Le Pen's Front Nationale in France, Geert Wilders's PKK in the
Netherlands, the Freedom Party in Austria, Fidesz and Jobbik in Hungary, the Sweden Democrats,
the Danish People's Party, Poland's Law and Justice Party, and Pegida and Alternative für
Deutschland in Germany have all been analyzed in these terms. While these are all right-wing
nationalist organizations characterized by varying degrees of racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia,

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and Euroscepticism, the same diagnosis has been applied to the left-wing Syriza in Greece and
Podemos in Spain as well as to Bernie Sanders in the US and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK (whose
election as leader of the Labour Party was not foreseen by the cognoscenti either). Though their
platforms and policies may differ, it is argued, all these movements are "anti-establishment," and
it is this that makes them the beneficiaries of the "protest votes" of the victims of globalization.
The implication is that what these movements are against is more significant than what they are
for. As the Los Angeles Times's Vincent Bevins put it, "many voters are motivated not so much
by whether they think the projects will actually work, but more by their desire to say FUCK YOU
to people like me (and probably you)."26 Two weeks before Americans went to the polls (and on
the same day as the New York Times elections model gave Hillary Clinton a 92% chance of
winning),27 Michael Moore predicted that "Trump’s election is going to be the biggest ‘fuck you’
ever recorded in human history," because "voting for him is a giant message that disaffected
Americans will be happy to send to media and political elites who they see as not caring about
them." Trump's promise to impose a 35% tariff on cars made in Mexico, Moore added, was "music
to the ears of people in Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—the 'Brexit states.'"28
It was a prescient comparison.
Trump and Brexit supporters have understandably embraced this narrative, which after all
confirms what they have been saying all along. UKIP leader Nigel Farage exulted in "a victory
for real people, a victory for ordinary people, a victory for decent people" against "the
multinationals ... the big merchant banks ... big politics ... lies, corruption and deceit." 29 "For too
long," Donald Trump told "the forgotten men and women of our country" at his inauguration, "a
small group in our nation's capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have
borne the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians
prospered, but the jobs left and the factories closed ..."30 Theresa May promised to lead a new UK
government "driven not by the interests of a privileged few, but by the interests of ordinary,
working-class families. People who have a job, but don’t always have job security. People who
own their own home, but worry about paying the mortgage. People who can just about manage
..."31 Closing the 2016 Conservative Party conference, May attacked "the way a lot of politicians
and commentators ... find your patriotism distasteful, your concerns about immigration parochial,
your views about crime illiberal ..." She recorded her sympathy for "those people who lost their
job, who stayed in work but on reduced hours, took a pay cut as household bills rocketed, or—and

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I know a lot of people don’t like to admit this—someone who finds themselves out of work or on
lower wages because of low-skilled immigration." She made sure to remind her audience that "not
just those from minority backgrounds" suffer injustice, because "White working class boys are less
likely to go to university than any other group in society." This was also the speech in which she
announced: "if you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere."32
What is more surprising is the readiness of so many on the left to accept this analysis,
notwithstanding that a key sector of the masses whom it claims to represent appears to have
repudiated the liberal internationalist values for which it stands. Glenn Greenwald acknowledges
that "All sorts of demagogues and extremists will try to redirect mass anger for their own ends.
Revolts against corrupt elite institutions can usher in reform and progress, but they can also create
a space for the ugliest tribal impulses: xenophobia, authoritarianism, racism, fascism." But like
John Pilger, he reserves his sharpest condemnation for the "unreflective rage, condescension, and
contempt toward those who voted wrong" of the "political, economic, and media elites" (he later
includes "financial" and "academic" elites), who "demonize those with little power, wealth, or
possibility as stupid and racist." Consistently with their characterization of populist movements as
"fuck you" protests rather than serious political programs, Greenwald and others regard the racism
and xenophobia that were central to the Brexit and Trump campaigns, and are the very foundation
of many of the continental European populist organizations, as secondary phenomena. "Economic
suffering and xenophobia/racism are not mutually exclusive," Greenwald tells us; "The former
fuels the latter, as sustained economic misery makes people more receptive to tribalistic
scapegoating."33 We are back in that familiar left-wing land of the last instance where "It's the
economy, stupid," and all the evils of the world, including white racism and xenophobia, can be
laid at the door of neoliberalism and capitalism.34

Far from the madding crowd

It is time to confront this new consensus, whose main purpose seems to me to be to exonerate
Brexit and Trump voters from any suggestion that many of them might be racists and xenophobes,
with some facts. In the US general election, nearly three million more people voted for Hillary
Clinton (65,853,625 votes, or 48.03% of the total) than for Donald Trump (62,985,105 votes, or

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45.94% of the total)—a record margin for a candidate who won the popular vote but not the
electoral college. A further 8,259,713 votes (6.01% of the total) were cast for third-party or write-
in candidates.35 In all, over 11 million more people voted against Trump than voted for him. The
national turnout was 55.3% of the voting-age population and 60.0% of the voting-eligible
population, meaning that 40% of those eligible to vote did not cast ballots at all.36 Thus only a
little over a quarter of those eligible to do so voted for Donald Trump.37 In the UK the Leave vote
was 17,410,742 (51.89%) and Remain 16,141,241 (48.11%)—a clear majority, though a relatively
slender one. The turnout was also higher than in the US, but it was still only 65.38% of the voting
age population (51,356,768) and 72.21% of registered voters (46,500,001).38 In this case, less than
30% of those eligible to vote Leave did so. Had 16- and 17-year-olds been allowed to vote, as
they were in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, the evidence suggests that they would
have mostly voted Remain.39 The popular mandates claimed by Trump and May lie squarely in
the realm of alternative facts. Nearly three-quarters of those eligible to vote did not signal their
"deep worry and often seething anger"40 at out-of-touch elites. Sizeable minorities may have done
so, but their importance was greatly magnified by the vagaries of the British and American political
systems. The single-question referendum allowed UKIP, which had just one MP in the UK's 650-
seat parliament, to masquerade as incarnating the "will of the British people." The electoral college
enabled Trump to do the same in the United States. In Judith Butler's words, "when we ask about
support for Trump, we are asking how a minority in the United States was able to bring Trump to
power. We are asking about a deficit in democracy, not a popular groundswell."41
From what we know of those who voted for Trump and Brexit, the picture is far more
variegated than "the poor turned on an elite who ignored them." While the overall vote in the UK
referendum was close, it was much less so at regional and local levels. Scotland (62% Remain,
38% Leave) and Northern Ireland (55.8% Remain, 44.2% leave) were both strongly in the Remain
camp. To dismiss these as anomalies on the basis that "certain nationally specific factors applied
in Northern Ireland and Scotland"42 only begs the question of whether equally national factors—
like, in the English case, a more xenophobic post-imperial culture—did not influence votes
elsewhere in the UK as well. Wales (52.5% Leave, 47.5% Remain) was more evenly divided.
England voted Leave by 53.4% (15,188,406 votes) to 46.6% (13,266,996), but this too conceals
significant variations. London (59.9% Remain, 40.1% Leave) was the only English region in favor
of remaining in the EU, but its Remain majority was massive. The South-East narrowly supported

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Leave (51.8% Leave, 48.2% Remain). Five of the remaining seven English regions registered
Leave votes of between 56% and 59% (the exceptions were the South-West, at 52.6%, and the
North-West, at 53.7%).43
There is no consistent correlation with income levels across the regions that might help
explain these disparities in class terms. In 2014, the latest year for which data are published, gross
disposable household income (GDHI) for Scotland—where the strongest regional vote for Remain
was recorded—was £17,095 per head, which was below both the UK average of £17,965 and the
England average of £18,315. Northern Ireland, which cast the third highest Remain vote, is the
poorest UK region, with a GDHI of just £14,645. Wales's GDHI (£15,302) is less than all English
regions except the North-East (£15,189), yet it recorded a higher Remain vote than seven out of
nine English regions. London's Remain vote correlates with the highest GDHI in the country
(£23,607) and the region with the second-highest GDHI, the South-East (£20,434), recorded the
next-highest Remain vote. But the region with the third-highest GDHI, the East of England
(£18,897), recorded a 56.5% Leave vote—higher than the North-West (£15,302) and Wales, both
of which had a much lower GDHI. These latter regions also suffered more from the ravages of
deindustrialization—as did Scotland and Northern Ireland. In fact, the East of England was the
only region apart from London and the South-West to increase its share of the total UK GDHI
since 1997, while the North West saw the largest decrease from 10.6% in 1997 to 9.7% in 2014.44
Many of Britain's larger cities strongly supported Remain, irrespective of where they were
situated (Edinburgh 74.4%, Glasgow 66.6%, Bristol 61.7%, Manchester 60.4%, Cardiff 60.0%,
Liverpool 58.2%). Newcastle-upon-Tyne (50.7%) and Leeds (50.3%) narrowly favored Remain,
while Birmingham, Nottingham, and Sheffield voted Leave by equally slender margins (50.4%,
50.8%, and 51% respectively). Bradford (54.2%) and Coventry (55.6%) did so in greater numbers.
In all these cases the Remain vote was higher than in the surrounding region, sometimes
substantially so. Only three of Britain's twenty largest cities (Stoke, Hull, and Wolverhampton)
were among the 102 electoral districts in which over 60% voted Leave. Seven of the ten electoral
areas with the highest Remain vote (75-78%) were wealthy inner-London districts—though inner
London not only has a high proportion of people on a high income (28% in the richest fifth), but
also "by far the highest proportion of people on a low income (29% in the poorest fifth)."45
Remain also received support from well-heeled London suburbs like Richmond upon Thames
(69.3%) and Kingston upon Thames (61.6%), dormitory towns like Brighton and Hove (68.6%)

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and St Albans (62.7%), some historic cities like Winchester (58.9%), Warwick (58.8%), and York
(58%), and the university towns of Cambridge (73.8%) and Oxford (70.3%).46 Manchester, on the
other hand, where John Pilger claims "over 600,000 residents are experiencing extreme poverty,"47
strongly supported Remain despite being among the bottom ten areas in the country for GDHI and
experiencing the largest decrease in its GDHI (from 91.8 to 76.5, where the UK average = 100) in
the country between 1997 and 2014.48 Similarly, Glasgow had the lowest GDHI (£14,757) for
2014 in Scotland, while Aberdeen, capital of the UK oil and gas industry, had the highest
(£20,547), yet they voted 66.6% and 61.1% Remain respectively. While these data do not wholly
undercut the case for an association between voting Leave and economic deprivation, they suggest
that any such connection is (at best) strongly mediated by other factors.
Moving to the local level, many areas that fit the image of deindustrialized hinterlands did
vote Leave. Hartlepool, Stoke-on-Trent, Doncaster, Barnsley, Rotherham, Burnley, Redcar,
Middlesborough, Wigan, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Wolverhampton, South Tyneside, and Blaenau
Gwent, among others, recorded Leave votes of upward of 60%.49 I do not dispute that the
deindustrialization narrative has some purchase in some localities, of which these are all excellent
examples—though it still needs to be qualified, because the Remain support in Scotland and
Northern Ireland show that deindustrialization does not always produce Leave voting, while many
of these areas also exhibit other characteristics that correlate with (and may better explain) it. What
is more interesting is that the strongest Leave votes did not come from such places. Of the top ten
Leave-voting electoral areas (of which nine voted Leave by over 70%), only two, Mansfield
(70.9%) and Bolsover (70.8%) on the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire border in the East Midlands,
fit the stereotype. The nearby districts of North-East Derbyshire, Amber Valley, Ashfield,
Wakefield, Erewash, and Chesterfield also all voted leave by 60% or more. This is an old mining
area whose pits were closed in the 1980s and '90s. The unemployment rate is slightly below the
national average of 4.9% in Bolsover (4.1%) and slightly above it in Mansfield (5.2%).50 Bolsover
has been represented in parliament by the left-wing Labour MP Dennis Skinner since 1970, though
his majority has fallen from a high of 74% in 1997 to 51.2% in 2015, with 21% of the vote going
to UKIP. Mansfield has also been a safe Labour seat for most of its history, but UKIP took 25.1%
of the vote in 2015. That same year workers in North-East Derbyshire received the lowest median
gross weekly wage (£389) in Britain. The highest, in the City of London, was £921.51

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 The rest of the top ten Leave-voting districts are a very different kettle of fish. Five (Boston
75.6%, South Holland 73.6%, Fenland 71.4%, East Lindsey 70.7%, and North-East Lincolnshire
69.9%) lie in a rural strip in the east of England running from the Humber to north Cambridgeshire.
The neighboring districts of North Lincolnshire (66.3%), North Kesteven (62.3%), West Lindsey
(61.8%), and South Kesteven (59.9%) also strongly supported Leave. All these districts except
Fenland are in Lincolnshire,52 an agricultural county producing and processing grains, beet, canola,
flowers, and vegetables—industries that do not employ a large permanent workforce but rely
heavily on unskilled, seasonal labor. In recent years, this need has been met by European migrants,
especially from the East European countries admitted to the EU in 2004. Lincolnshire has an aging
population (21% are over 65, compared to 16% nationally), mostly living in small towns and
villages.53 The largest town, Lincoln, had a population of 100,160 in the 2011 census, ranking
80th in the UK. The level of unemployment is around the national average, and median weekly
wages range from £417 in Boston to £530 in North Lincolnshire. While this is lower than the UK
median of £528 (which is skewed by London wages, at £660), it is not untypical of rural areas in
large parts of the country. These districts are all also overwhelmingly white (ranging from 96.0%
in North Lincolnshire to 98.5% in East Lindsey),54 and mostly white British at that. This is one
factor they do have in common with Bolsover (95.6% white British) and Mansfield (94.7%).55
The other three top-ten Leave districts share many of these features. Great Yarmouth
(71.5% Leave) is a borough of around 98,000 inhabitants on the Norfolk coast, of whom around
47,000 live within the town of the same name. Yarmouth's days as a thriving fishing port are a
distant memory. The last fisherman quit in December 2009, blaming "the EU's quota system for
forcing him out and for destroying the town's fishing fleet over the past decade,"56 but there were
only a handful of boats based in the harbor as far back as the 1980s. Yarmouth's tourist industry,
like that of other coastal areas around the country that voted leave (e.g. Blackpool, Scarborough,
East Linsey, Thanet, Dover, Shepway, Arun, Torbay, Isle of Wight, Weymouth), has also
languished since working-class Britons started vacationing abroad back in the 1960s. The area
has an aging (22.9% over 65), overwhelmingly white (96.9%), and mostly British-born (92.8%)
population, a median weekly wage of £450, and an unemployment rate just above the national
average. Castle Point (72.7% Leave) in south Essex is also aging (19.3% over 65, 7% aged 75-
84), 96.6% white, and rural, and has an average rate of unemployment and an above-average
weekly wage of £570. Its largest town, the onetime seaside resort of Canvey Island, has a

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population of 38,170. Neighboring Thurrock (72.3% Leave) differs from other top ten Leave
districts in both its age structure (only 11.8% over 65) and its ethnic composition (82.5% white, of
which 76.5% white British; 10% black British). Its unemployment rate and median weekly wage
are close to national averages. Despite these differences, Castle Point and Thurrock respectively
cast the third and fourth highest Leave votes in the UK.

White riot

"In the UKIP heartlands of Lincolnshire," writes John Harris apropos his video documentary series
Anywhere but Westminster, "we chronicled communities built around agricultural work and food
processing that were cleanly divided in two, between optimistic new arrivals and resentful,
miserable locals ..."57 The highest Leave vote in the country was recorded in Boston. Here the
proportion of the population aged 65 or older was 22.9%—a figure that would be higher but for
recent immigration. Boston also has the highest proportion of eastern European immigrants of any
local authority area in England and Wales. In 2001 the population was 55,753, of whom 98.5%
were white British—a higher proportion than anywhere in England and Wales today. In 2011,
reported the Guardian, "10.6% of the 64,600-strong population comes from one of the 'new' EU
countries such as Poland, Lithuania, Latvia or Romania." The 2012 census figure was 8,100 "other
white" inhabitants, or 7.57% of the population—though it is clear that many locals believe this
hugely understates the true number of East Europeans. They also believe that migrants are
responsible for increased crime, strains on housing provision, health services, and school places,
and lowered wages. Above all (in the words of local Conservative district councilor Mike Gilbert)
they believe that "they come over here and take our jobs."58 This is demonstrably untrue: as the
local MP Mark Simmons noted in June 2012, "there are effectively 1,300 [unemployed] in Boston.
If we got rid of 10,000 migrants who would do the work?" Unemployment was officially 4.1%,
below the national average, in 2015. A council task force investigated (and comprehensively
refuted) these allegations in 2012, but warned—in an early recognition of the power of the post-
factual—"Opinion is hugely influenced by what residents believe to be true and how this makes
them feel. Evidence gathered during the review has on occasions contradicted ‘local’ viewpoints.
'Mythbusting' is limited in effectiveness and needs constant, repeated effort."59 In the context of

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the EU referendum, "what residents believe to be true and how this makes them feel" is likely to
have been of much greater importance in explaining voter behavior than facts.
The numbers of recent eastern European immigrants in South Holland (7.27%) and Fenland
(5.9%) are similarly high. East Lindsey (1.49% "other white") and North-East Lincolnshire (1.7%
other white), on the other hand, did not see any such influx, yet still voted overwhelmingly in favor
of Leave. This suggests that it was not necessary for a district to have directly experienced high
immigration for strong beliefs and feelings about its negative impacts to influence voters' choices.
The Leave Campaign, and particularly UKIP, made immigration a wedge issue in the referendum,
one of whose most enduring images was of Nigel Farage standing in front of a billboard-size poster
showing an endless line of refugees with the caption: "BREAKING POINT: The EU has failed us
all. We must break free of the EU and take back control of our borders."60 So did Britain's tabloid
press, which amplified local horror stories (whether true or false). Once again, the parallels with
Donald Trump's campaign in the United States are palpable. Opinion polls repeatedly showed
immigration to be a major concern among potential Leave voters. In an Ipsos-MORI poll (which
got very close to the mark in predicting a 53-47% Leave victory) published a week before the
referendum, 33% of respondents said immigration was "very important" in deciding how they were
going to vote. This was the highest level of concern expressed on any single issue. But pace
Theresa May, who believes "the people spoke on June 23 [and] an important aspect that
underpinned [their] approach to that vote was a concern that they had about control of movement
of people from the EU into the UK," 61 immigration was not of equal concern to all the people.
More than half (52%) of those who said they were likely to vote Leave listed immigration as
important, which compared with just 14% of those likely to vote Remain.62
We need to be wary of what we infer from Lincolnshire and similar areas. The great
majority of the 102 districts in England and Wales where 60% or more voted Leave are among the
most ethnically homogeneous—which is to say, the least exposed to immigration, from the EU or
anywhere else—in the country. Seven had a white British population of over 95%, 62 of 90-94%,
29 of 80-89%, and only four of below 80%. More than fourth-fifths (85) had a white British
population above the England and Wales average of 83.35%. For John Molyneux, Ebbw Vale in
South Wales—"practically the cradle of the Labour Party and the British Labour movement ... the
constituency of Nye Bevan and Michael Foot"63—"really epitomizes" Brexit as a "working-class
revolt." It is also the case, however, that the counting district within which Ebbw Vale is situated,

13
Blaenau Gwent, has the highest proportion of white British inhabitants in the UK (96.5%). It voted
62% Leave. Conversely, of the 25 districts in England and Wales in which 60% or more of the
population voted Remain, 18 were in London, which is by far the most ethnically diverse region
of the UK with only 59.52% of people identifying as white British. In two of the London boroughs
that voted Remain (Tower Hamlets and Ealing) white British people formed less than 50% of the
population; in nine, they comprised 50-59%; in five, they made up 60-69%; only in Kingston upon
Thames (71.45%) and Richmond upon Thames (73.23%), did they exceed 70%. By contrast, all
five London districts that voted Leave had a white British population well above the London
average. The only two London districts to give Leave over 60% of the vote, Havering (69.7%)
and Bexley (63.0%), are also the only districts in London to have a white British population of
over 80% (83.68% and 80.17% respectively). Of the other English and Welsh areas in which over
60% voted remain, Manchester (69.3% white British), Oxford (72.4%), and Cambridge (73.49%)
are significantly more ethnically diverse than most of the country, while the white British
population of Bristol (80.6%), St Albans (80.76%), Brighton and Hove (81.19%), Cardiff
(84.24%), and South Cambridgeshire (84.24%) is close to the national average. Places 64 like
Boston, South Holland, and Fenland are outliers. Far from the presence of immigrants inclining
people to vote Leave, the more ethnically diverse the area, the more likely it was to vote Remain.
Figures obtained by the BBC giving a localized breakdown for 178 of the 399 counting
districts in the 2016 referendum65 confirm this finding, but add some interesting nuances. A small
handful of areas with majority Asian populations recorded high Leave votes (the highest was
Osterley and Spring Grove in Hounslow at 63%), but these were exceptional. They reinforce the
association between electoral districts' support for Remain and their ethnic diversity, however—
which is not quite the same thing as the propensity of different ethnic groups to vote Remain
(which is what most analysis of opinion polls has focused on). In general, nevertheless, the BBC
data confirm that members of ethnic minorities were significantly more likely to vote Remain.
While at the national level educational qualifications were the single best predictor of voting
patterns (the least educated were the most likely to vote Leave), the ward of Northumberland Park
in Haringey in London, which has few graduates but a large black population, voted 85% Remain.
In Birmingham, five wards (Aston, Bordesley Green, Lozells and East Handsworth, Sparkbrook,
and Washwood Heath) likewise registered Leave votes of under 38% despite having low numbers
of inhabitants with university degrees (17%). As Martin Rosenbaum notes, these "are also the five

14
Birmingham wards with the highest ethnic minority populations—under 15% of their residents are
white." By comparison, the Birmingham ward with the highest Leave vote, Shard End, is 82%
white.66 The BBC data also show a pattern across urban areas of white housing estates on the
periphery voting Leave and inner cities with high ethnic minority numbers voting Remain. While
Blackburn with Darwen as a district voted 56% Leave, 65% of the voters in Bastwell ward, which
has an ethnic minority proportion of over 90%, voted Remain. Ethnic minority wards also bucked
the Leave trend in Bradford, Oldham, Rochdale, and Walsall, all of which, as we have seen, were
among the top 100 60%+ Leave districts in the UK. Most, if not all, of these wards are likely to
be working class as measured by income or occupation. Reading through the literature on Brexit
and Trump, I sometimes think the left needs to be reminded, in both Britain and the United States,
that the working class is not only "traditional" and white. The children of generations of
immigrants and the descendants of African slaves are part of it too. All this prompts the question:
are we looking less at a "misshapen class struggle"67 than the electoral equivalent of a white riot?

Circling the wagons

Nobody will be surprised that in Lord Ashcroft's Brexit referendum exit poll of 12,369 voters,
which is the largest sample we possess, 57% of people in social classes AB voted Remain, while
51% of those in class C1 voted Leave, rising to 64% in classes C2 and DE.68 The two demographic
factors that correlated most closely with voting patterns, however, were not occupation or income
but age and educational level. The older the voters, the more likely they were to vote Leave. A
majority of those aged over 45 (and 60% of those aged 65 and above) in Ashcroft's sample voted
Leave, while 73% of those aged 18-24 and 62% of those aged 25-34 voted Remain. There may
be something in Anatole Kaletsky argument that "the conflicts generally ascribed to economic
grievances and globalisation are actually the latest battles in the culture wars that have split western
societies since the late 1960s ... the last gasp of an ageing generation that tried to impose its
nostalgic parochialism on an increasingly cosmopolitan younger generation,"69 even if this is
clearly to oversimplify a complex story. The effects of this division will have been amplified by
the fact that turnout was higher among older voters, though the extent of this has been disputed.70
Of the 30 areas with the highest proportion of elderly people in the UK, 27 voted Leave.71

15
London's Remain majority, by contrast, was delivered by an electorate whose proportion of
inhabitants aged 65 and above is well below the national average, at 8.5% for Inner London and
11.06% for the metropolis as a whole. Ashcroft also found that 64% of those with a higher degree,
57% of those with a first degree, and 81% of those in full time education voted Remain, while a
large majority of those whose education did not go beyond secondary school voted Leave. In fact,
the top 10 Leave areas proved to have among the smallest numbers of residents with university
degrees in the country.72 While some will claim that educational qualifications are "an indicator
of class rather than intelligence,"73 Ashcroft's data show that voters with lower qualifications were
more likely to back Leave than the better qualified even when they were in the same class as
defined by occupation or income. The BBC's figures for local wards confirm both these findings.
Statistically, they show "The combination of education, age and ethnicity accounts for the large
majority [83%] of the variation in votes between different places."74
Some of Ashcroft's most interesting revelations relate to political affiliation and social
attitudes. Almost all (96%) of UKIP and 58% of Conservative voters in the 2015 general election
voted Leave in the EU referendum, while 63% of Labour voters, 64% of SNP voters, and 70% of
Liberal Democrats voted Remain. In views of the claims made for Labour hemorrhaging support
to UKIP, it is important, I think, to recognize that almost two-thirds of Labour voters did follow
the party line and vote Remain, notwithstanding the palpable lack of enthusiasm (or indeed, clarity)
with which the Corbyn leadership articulated it. In England, Leave voters (39%) were more than
twice as likely as Remain voters (18%) to describe themselves either as "English not British" or
"more English than British," and two-thirds of those who did so voted Leave. Asked what was
their biggest single reason for wanting to leave the EU, 49% of Leave voters responded "the
principle that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK" and 33% said leaving "offered
the best chance for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders." The fact that
81% of Leave voters viewed multiculturalism, 80% immigration, and 69% globalization as "forces
for evil" strongly suggests that these are simply codes for xenophobia. Leave voters were equally
hostile to social liberalism (80%), the Green movement (78%), and feminism (74%). Meantime
the British Election Study, which asked around 24,000 people their voting intentions in the EU
referendum, found that support for public whipping of sex offenders and the death penalty were
much stronger predictors of Leave voting than class status or income.75 I am not sure what to infer
from Ashcroft's finding that both Leave and Remain voters regarded capitalism as a "force for

16
evil" by the same slender majority of 51-49%, but it certainly further muddies the waters of the
class struggle narrative. Half of Leave voters, it seems, had no quarrel with the neoliberal assault
against which they were supposedly rebelling, while half of Remain voters despised the economic
system of which they are alleged "elite" beneficiaries.
This is much the same cocktail of nativism, xenophobia, misogyny, "traditional values,"
and mixed messages on capitalism that animates Donald Trump's base in the United States, minus
the evangelical Christianity, which is a genuine American peculiarity. Trump took 81% of white
evangelical and born-again Christian votes to Clinton's 16%.76 The demographics behind the
Brexit and Trump votes are also similar. Exit poll data77 from the US election indicate that 59%
of people living in cities voted for Clinton and only 35% for Trump, while Trump took 50% of the
suburban vote and 62% of the rural vote to Clinton's 45% and 34%. Trump won 53% of the vote
among those aged 50 and above, and less than 40% of the vote of those under 40. The racial
divides were even starker than in the UK. Trump gained the support of 58% of white voters, 29%
of Hispanic and Asian voters, and a mere 8% of black voters. Of the 250 counties with the largest
proportion of whites in the population, 249 voted for Trump.78 Unlike in the UK's referendum,
where there was no measurable gender discrepancy in voting, men voted for Trump in significantly
larger numbers than women (53% to 41%). But 63% of white men voted for Trump as against
only 31% for Clinton. By contrast, 80% of black men and 62% of Latino men voted for Clinton.
It is even more significant, perhaps, that 53% of white women voted for Trump, despite his well-
publicized misogynistic statements (the most notorious being "Grab them by the pussy") and the
serious allegations of sexual assault made against him during the campaign—and notwithstanding,
also, the historic opportunity to elect the first female president of the United States.79 I can only
conclude that in the circumstances, whatever it was led these women to vote for Trump must have
mattered to them very much indeed. I'm afraid I don't believe it was anger over Benghazi, or email
servers, or even Clinton's lectures to Goldman Sachs. Black and Latina women had no such
reservations, supporting Clinton by a massive 94% and 68% respectively.
As in the UK, educational attainment was the overall best single predictor of voting
behavior. White voters without college degrees were "by far Trump's strongest demographic
group," with seven out of ten less educated men and six out of ten less educated women voting for
Trump. Crucially for the election outcome, these voters were "disproportionately concentrated in
swing states."80 But in this instance, too, we cannot simply treat education as a proxy for class.

17
Based on an exhaustive analysis of all 981 US counties with populations of over 50,000 people,
Nate Silver has shown that in 47 of the 50 counties where the smallest proportion of the population
possessed degrees, Clinton's share of the vote fell (on average by 11 percentage points) in
comparison with Obama's in 2012, independently of variations in income. High-education,
medium-income counties shifted to Clinton, while low-education, high-income counties shifted to
Trump.81 However, and just as in Britain, non-whites without a college degree were an important
exception to this overall trend, with 75% voting for Clinton and only 20% for Trump.82 This once
again underlines the independent significance of race and ethnicity. Finally, US exit polls show
that the poor—a label that has been used as loosely and inaccurately in many of these analyses as
that of "elites"—strongly voted Democrat, with Clinton outscoring Trump by 10 percentage points
among those with family incomes of under $50,000 (who comprised 36% of the sample). In all
higher income brackets the candidates were more closely matched, with the biggest discrepancy
being in the $50,000 to $99,000 range, where 50% voted Trump and 46% Clinton. Little here
supports the argument that Trump owes his victory to working-class economic deprivation.
Whether significant elements of the white working class voted for him for other reasons—possibly
tipping the election in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania—is another matter.

Postfactual politics and the erasure of race

"Since the results were finalised," wrote Omer Aziz soon after the Brexit vote, "there has been a
stubborn refusal among the commentariat and the political class to acknowledge the role that
racism played in the vote. Racism not as a peripheral cause. Racism not as a tertiary cause, but
rather racism as the central factor in determining who won on June 23."83 This is a rare moment
of dissent against a narrative that from the get-go, with extraordinary rapidity, and based on little
empirical evidence became the new consensus, explaining and justifying political actions not only
on the victorious right but also the shell-shocked left. Britain's Labour Party is in a state of possibly
terminal collapse, with its supposedly left-wing Corbyn leadership requiring its MPs to give May's
government free rein in negotiating a "hard Brexit" (that was never on the referendum ballot in the
first place) on the grounds that "the Labour party accepts and respects the decision of the British
people."84 The Democrats in the US are in similar disarray, with some on the left complaining that

18
too much attention has been paid to "identity politics" (or what some of us used to call civil rights),
when the task is to win back the "traditional" working-class base. Bernie Sanders made his racial
priorities pretty clear when he suggested that "We need candidates—black, white and Latino and
gay and male, we need all of that. But we need all of those candidates and officials to have the
guts to stand up to the oligarchy. That is the fight of today."85 I beg to differ. The evidence I have
presented here supports Azis's view. While neither I nor (I imagine) Aziz would seek to explain
every Trump or Leave vote in these terms, the racial and ethnic dimension has been scandalously
ignored or downplayed in discussions of these supposed "upsets."
It is here, I believe, that the left is as mired in post-factual politics as the right. It does not
feel good, least of all to those who think of themselves as progressives, to admit the centrality of
white supremacism and xenophobia to the Trump and Brexit victories, least of all when many of
those for whom racial identity outweighs class or gender loyalties come from the working class.
The facts nonetheless suggest that far from being John Harris's "misshapen class struggle" that has
sometimes unfortunately assumed racist or xenophobic forms, this is centrally a race war—a war
on the ethnic Other, be it a Black (lives matter), Syrian (refugee), Mexican, Polish, Chinese, or
Muslim Other—that has successfully managed to pass itself off as a revolt of the deprived and the
dispossessed. The Leave Campaign in Britain and Trump's presidential campaign in the US
articulated a coherent political agenda, whose core is a militant and entitled nativism. Since we
are talking of the two leading world powers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this nativism
is bound up with assumptions of national exceptionalism and racial superiority. The nostalgia is
for an imperial past, which is why race remains so salient an axis of difference. To the populist
right, every non-white or non-British presence is a reminder of power lost. That was why Obama's
presence in the White House was such anathema to so many. "Make America Great Again" means
making America white again, while "Taking Back Control" harks back to an age when Britannia
ruled the waves. As Paul Gilroy long ago said, there ain't no black in the Union Jack.86
Though the circumstances are different, this contemporary populist agenda has much in
common with the fascism of the 1930s in its ideological amalgam of racism, nostalgic nationalism,
and social conservatism, as well as in its social base. Its base is not "the white working class" per
se, though a shift in the political loyalties of white workers in the American rust belt and England's
former mining and manufacturing districts may have had a disproportionate effect on the electoral
outcomes. Even if the new populism gains most support lower down the social scale, it has wide

19
appeal across classes because its core message is of racial rather than class solidarity. Capitalist
elites, as distinct from the chattering classes, will doubtless accommodate to and seek to profit
from it, as they did with the Nazis and as they do with political regimes from feudal Saudi Arabia
to communist China. But it is not their preferred modus operandi. The multinational corporations,
big banks, and international vehicles of neoliberal globalization like the IMF and the World
Bank—the true elites—did not want to see a Leave victory or a Trump presidency. For this reason,
among others, "the fight of today" is not the struggle against "the oligarchy." There may be time
for that tomorrow. The fight of today is the fight to defend the real victims of this vicious agenda—
who today are not the white working class, but immigrants, refugees, Muslims, and members of
racial and sexual minorities, and tomorrow may be anyone who dares to challenge the brave new
world of alternative facts—against the clear and present danger of born-again fascism.
The strongest support for this politics of resentment is to be found among the less educated,
among older people, in rural and suburban areas, on urban peripheries, and above all in places that
are overwhelmingly white (in the US) and white British (in the UK). Or should I say, in most
cases, white English—for white British is merely a census box, whereas for many Leave voters,
white English is an identity. And identity is the nub of the matter. Brexit and Trump supporters
are not "the poor." Many of them are not even economically disadvantaged. They are not "victims
of globalization," to be patronizingly sympathized with by those who claim to speak on their
behalf. They reject globalization, for reasons that are more to do with culture than economics—
at its simplest, they don't want to hear foreign languages spoken when they walk down the High
Street. They have not been duped by demagogues taking advantage of their miseries, even if both
Trump and Farage merit that label. They know what they are doing and they know what they
want. They are fighting for a way of life and a vision of their country. It is a vision in which,
however deprived and demeaned they may otherwise be, they retain the privilege and entitlement
that comes with being (indigenously) white. So far they are winning, at least in Britain and the
United States. A key part of their victory has been their successes in claiming to represent "the
people" while the majorities that did not vote for Trump or Brexit are vilified as out-of-touch
"elites." In a misguided attempt to win back its lost working-class votes, the left has been
thoroughly complicit in this post-factual whitewash. It has thereby helped legitimate what may be
the biggest threat to democracy and human rights in the western world (elsewhere they were never
secure) since World War II. Sad.

20
1
Henry Mance, "Britain has had enough of experts, says Gove," Financial Times, 16 June 2016,
at https://www.ft.com/content/3be49734-29cb-11e6-83e4-abc22d5d108c. All websites cited in
this paper accessed between 23 January and 12 February, 2017.
2
Daniel Dale, "Donald Trump: The unauthorized database of false things," Toronto Star,
November 4, 2016, at https://www.thestar.com/news/world/uselection/2016/11/04/donald-trump-
the-unauthorized-database-of-false-things.html#analysis
3
Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Matthew Rosenberg, "With False Claims, Trump Attacks Media on
Turnout and Intelligence Rift," New York Times, 21 January 2017, at
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/21/us/politics/trump-white-house-briefing-inauguration-
crowd-size.html?_r=0
4
"Conway: Press Secretary gave 'Alternative Facts.'" Video interview with Chuck Todd, NBC
News, 22 January 2017, at http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/conway-press-
secretary-gave-alternative-facts-860142147643.
5
"Opinion polling for the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum,"
Wikipedia, at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_United_Kingdom_European_Union_me
mbership_referendum
6
New York Times National Polling Average, November 8.
7
Nate Silver, "The Real Story of 2016," FiveThirtyEight, 19 January 2017, at
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-real-story-of-2016/
8
The Conservative Party was officially neutral. All information in this paragraph is taken from
"United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, 2016," Wikipedia, at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum,_201
6
9
"United States presidential election, 2016," Wikipedia, at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016

21
10
Quoted in Jim Rutenberg, "The Editorialists Have Spoken; Will Voters Listen?" New York
Times, October 5, 2016, at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/business/media/the-
editorialists-have-spoken-will-voters-listen.html?_r=0
11
Michael Moore, "5 Reasons Why Trump Will Win," at
http://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/
12
Joe DePaolo, "Nate Silver Goes to War With HuffPost Writer: 'You Have No F*cking Idea
What You’re Talking About,'" Mediaite, 5 November 2016, at
http://www.mediaite.com/online/nate-silver-goes-to-war-with-huffpost-writer-after-highly-
critical-column/
13
It is ironic that in one respect this subordination of cold thought to warm feeling may have
helped the Democrats lose the White House. Trump's margin of victory in Wisconsin, Michigan
and Pennsylvania was smaller than the number of votes in those states for the Green Party
candidate Jill Stein, who attracted at least some support from self-styled progressive Democrats.
14
I use the term in the psychologists' sense of seeking "the reduction of anxiety by the
unconscious exclusion from the mind of intolerable thoughts, feelings, or facts." Random House
Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, 2010.
15
Ian Jack, "In this Brexit vote, the poor turned on an elite who ignored them," Guardian, 25
June 2016, at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/25/brexit-vote-poor-elite
16
Gary Younge, "After this vote the UK is diminished, our politics poisoned," Guardian, 24
June 2016, at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/24/eu-vote-uk-diminished-
politics-poisoned-racism
17
Dani Rodrik, "The Popular Revolt against Globalization and the Abdication of the Left,"
Social Europe, 19 July 2016, at https://www.socialeurope.eu/2016/07/the-popular-revolt-against-
globalization-and-the-abdication-of-the-left/
18
John Rennie Short, "The new globalization: Brexit and Donald Trump represent a different
backlash to free trade," Salon, 30 November 2016, at http://www.salon.com/2016/11/30/the-
new-globalization-brexit-and-donald-trump-represent-a-different-backlash-to-free-trade_partner/
19
Don Lee, Will the 'Brexit' mark the end of the age of globalization?" Los Angeles Times, 24
June 2016, at http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-brexit-globalization-future-20160624-snap-
story.html
20
"John Pilger: Why the British Said No to Europe," Telesur, 25 June 2016, at
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/John-Pilger-Why-the-British-Said-No-to-Europe-
20160625-0022.html
21
Donald Trump, transcript of inauguration speech, Jan. 20, 2017, Time, at
http://time.com/4640707/donald-trump-inauguration-speech-transcript/
22
Michael Sandel, "The energy of the Brexiteers and Trump is born of the failure of elites," New
Statesman, 13 June 2016, at http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/06/michael-sandel-
energy-brexiteers-and-trump-born-failure-elites
23
John Harris, " 'If you've got money, you vote in ... if you haven't got money, you vote out,'"
Guardian, 24 June 2016, at
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/commentisfree/2016/jun/24/divided-britain-brexit-money-
class-inequality-westminster?CMP=share_btn_tw
24
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump, Twitter, 12 July 2016, 6.01 p.m.
25
Ian Jack, "In this Brexit vote."
26
Vincent Bevins, Facebook post, 24 June 2016, at
https://www.facebook.com/vincent.bevins/posts/10105426634702363?pnref=story

22
27
"Clinton vs. Trump: Election Odds for October 27," Heavy.com, at
http://heavy.com/news/2016/10/clinton-vs-trump-election-odds-for-october-27-chances-
probability-forecast-models-betting-odds-early-voting-turnout-results-who-will-be-president/
28
Matthew Sheffield, "Michael Moore: People will vote for Donald Trump as a giant 'F**k you'
— and he’ll win," Salon, 26 October 2016, at http://www.salon.com/2016/10/26/michael-moore-
people-will-vote-for-donald-trump-as-a-giant-fk-you-and-hell-win/. See also Michael Moore, "5
Reasons Why Trump Will Win," at http://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/
29
"EU referendum: Nigel Farage's 4am victory speech—the text in full," Independent, 23 June
2016, at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-nigel-farage-4am-
victory-speech-the-text-in-full-a7099156.html
30
Donald Trump, transcript of inauguration speech.
31
"Read in full: Theresa May's Conservative conference speech on Brexit," Politics Home, 2
October 2016, at https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/conservative-
party/news/79517/read-full-theresa-mays-conservative
32
"Theresa May's conference speech in full," Daily Telegraph, 5 October 2016, at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/10/05/theresa-mays-conference-speech-in-full/. My
emphases.
33
Glenn Greenwald, "Brexit is only the latest proof of the insularity and failure of western
establishment institutions," The Intercept, 25 June 2016, at
https://theintercept.com/2016/06/25/brexit-is-only-the-latest-proof-of-the-insularity-and-failure-
of-western-establishment-institutions/
34
"We regard the economic conditions as conditioning, in the last instance, historical
development." Friedrich Engels, letter to Hans Starkenburg, in "Engels on Historical
Materialism," at https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/ni/vol01/no03/engels.htm. The
phrase "The economy, stupid" was associated with Bill Clinton's 1992 election campaign against
George H. W. Bush.
35
United States Presidential Election Results, at http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/
36
United States Election Project, 2016 November General Election Turnout Rates, at
http://www.electproject.org/2016g
37
German Lopez, "Trump was elected by a little more than a quarter of eligible voters," Vox, 10
November 2016, at http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/11/10/13587462/trump-
election-2016-voter-turnout
38
United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, 2016, Wikipedia, at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum,_201
6#Result
39
Michael Bruter, quoted in Toby Helm, "EU referendum: youth turnout almost twice as high as
first thought," Guardian, 10 July 2016, at
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/09/young-people-referendum-turnout-brexit-
twice-as-high
40
Harris, "'If you've got money, you vote in.'"
41
Judith Butler, "Reflections on Trump," Cultural Anthropology, 18 December 2016, at
https://culanth.org/fieldsights/1032-reflections-on-trump
42
John Molyneux, "A Working Class Revolt? The Meaning of the Leave Vote," Socialist
Worker, 27 June 2016, at http://www.socialistworkeronline.net/a-working-class-revolt-the-
meaning-of-the-leave-vote/

23
43
"EU referendum: The result in maps and charts." BBC website, at
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36616028
44
Office for National Statistics, "Statistical bulletin: Regional gross disposable household
income (GDHI): 1997 to 2014," at
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/regionalaccounts/grossdisposablehouseholdincome/bulletins/r
egionalgrossdisposablehouseholdincomegdhi/2014
45
"United Kingdom: Income Inequalities." The Poverty Site, at
http://www.poverty.org.uk/09/index.shtml
46
"EU referendum: The strength of the Leave vote, full list," BBC website, 24 June 2016, at
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36622039
47
"John Pilger: Why the British Said No to Europe." Pilger is speaking of Greater Manchester,
and gives no source for his figure.
48
Office for National Statistics, "Statistical bulletin: Regional gross disposable household
income (GDHI): 1997 to 2014."
49
"EU referendum: The result in maps and charts." BBC website, at
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36616028
50
Office for National Statistics, "Official Labour Market Statistics," at
https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/reports/lmp/la/1946157166/report.aspx. Figures are for 2015. All
UK unemployment data from this source unless otherwise noted.
51
Office for National Statistics, "Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings: 2015 Provisional
Results," at
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/b
ulletins/annualsurveyofhoursandearnings/2015provisionalresults#regional-earnings. All UK
income figures from this source unless otherwise noted.
52
Confusingly, they fall into three different UK regions: Fenland is in the East of England, North
and North-East Lincolnshire in Yorkshire and the Humber, and the rest in the East Midlands.
53
Lincolnshire Research Office, "2011 Census Population Estimates Lincolnshire," at
http://www.research-
lincs.org.uk/UI/Documents/2011%20Census%20Estimates%20Info%20Sheet_Lincolnshire%20
11 December 2012, at unrounded.pdf
54
Office for National Statistics, "2011 Census: Ethnic group, local authorities in England and
Wales," at https://www.ons.gov.uk
55
"The ethnic population of England and Wales broken down by local authority," Guardian
Datablog, at https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/may/18/ethnic-population-
england-wales. All subsequent data on ethnic composition of UK counting areas is from this
source unless otherwise stated.
56
Jasper Copping, "Town's last fisherman driven out of business by EU rules," Daily Telegraph,
13 December 2009, at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/6796366/Towns-last-
fisherman-driven-out-of-business-by-EU-rules.html
57
Harris, "'If you've got money, you vote in.'"
58
Helen Pidd, "Census reveals rural town of Boston has most eastern European immigrants,"
Guardian, 11 December 2012, at https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/dec/11/census-boston-
eastern-european-immigration
59
Boston Borough Council, "Social Impact of Population Change: A Report of the Task and
Finish Group," November 2012, at
http://www.boston.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=8079&p=0. Simmons is quoted on p. 25.

24
60
Heather Stewart and Rowena Mason, "Nigel Farage's anti-migrant poster reported to police,"
Guardian, 16 June 2016, at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/16/nigel-farage-
defends-ukip-breaking-point-poster-queue-of-migrants
61
Quoted in in Andrew Woodcock, "Theresa May refuses to back down on Brexit immigration
controls," Independent, 6 November 2016 at
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-refuses-back-down-brexit-
immigration-controls-eu-referendum-a7401581.html. My emphasis.
62
"Immigration is now the top issue for voters in the EU referendum," Ipsos-MORI Political
Monitor, 16 June 20116, at https://www.ipsos-
mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3746/Immigration-is-now-the-top-issue-for-
voters-in-the-EU-referendum.aspx
63
John Molyneux, "A Working Class Revolt? The Meaning of the Leave Vote."
64
Apart from those discussed in the text, other districts that both had a relatively high non-white
British population and voted to Leave by 60%+ included Burnley, Pendle, Oldham, Hyndburn,
and Rochdale in the North-West; Sandwell, Walsall, and Wolverhampton in the West Midlands;
Gravesham and Dartford in the South-East; and Broxbourne, Forest Heath, and Peterborough in
the East of England. I stress relatively high: in only two of these districts (Forest Heath and
Wolverhampton) was the non-white British population less than 80%.
65
Martin Rosenbaum, "Local voting figures shed new light on EU referendum," BBC website, 6
February 2017, at http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-38762034
66
Martin Rosenbaum, "Ethnic dimension to Birmingham's vote," BBC website, 4 July 2014, at
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-36703570
67
Harris, "'If you've got money, you vote in.'"
68
Lord Ashcroft, "How the United Kingdom voted on Thursday… and why," Lord Ashcroft
Polls, 24 June 2016, at http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2016/06/how-the-united-kingdom-voted-and-
why/. This is the NRS demographic classification routinely used in UK market research. In
brief, A = upper middle class, B = middle class, C1 = lower middle class, C2 = skilled working
class, D = working class, E = non-working. Note that the term "middle class" has a far more
restrictive compass in the UK than the US.
69
Anatole Kaletsky, "Trump's rise and Brexit vote are more an outcome of culture than
economics," Guardian, 28 October 2016, at
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/oct/28/trumps-rise-and-brexit-vote-are-more-an-
outcome-of-culture-than-economics
70
See Michael Bruter, "EU referendum: youth turnout almost twice as high as first thought,"
71
BBC website, "EU referendum: The result in maps and charts."
72
"Every area by key demographics," Guardian, EU referendum: full results and analysis, at
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2016/jun/23/eu-referendum-live-results-
and-analysis
73
Charlie Kimber, "Why did Britain vote Leave?" International Socialism, 152, 6th October
2016, at http://isj.org.uk/why-did-britain-vote-leave/
74
Rosenbaum, "Local voting figures shed new light on EU referendum."
75
Alex Burton, "The link between Brexit and the death penalty," BBC website, 17 July 2016, at
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36803544. The respective accuracy of these variables as
predictors was 55% and above 70%.
76
Wikipedia, "United States presidential election, 2016."

25
77
Unless otherwise indicated, the following exit poll data is taken from the Wikipedia article
"United States presidential election, 2016," cited above. Their source is the Edison Research for
the National Election Pool, a consortium of ABC News, The Associated Press, CBS News,
CNN, Fox News and NBC News. The voter survey is based on questionnaires completed by
24,537 voters leaving 350 voting places across the United States on Election Day, including
4,398 telephone interviews with early and absentee voters.
78
"US election 2016: Trump victory in maps," BBC website, 1 December 2016, at
http://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37889032
79
See Adam Lusher, "Donald Trump: all the sexist things he said," Independent, 9 October
2016, at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/donald-trump-sexist-
quotes-comments-tweets-grab-them-by-the-pussy-when-star-you-can-do-anything-
a7353006.html
80
Nate Silver, "The Real Story of 2016."
81
Nate Silver, "Education, Not Income, Predicted Who Would Vote for Trump,"
FiveThirtyEight, 22 November 2016, at http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/education-not-income-
predicted-who-would-vote-for-trump/
82
Wikipedia, "United States presidential election, 2016."
83
Omer Aziz, "Brexit Wasn’t About Economics. It Was About Racial Hatred," Huffington Post,
29 June 2016, at http://tinyurl.com/hjose23
84
Jeremy Corbyn, quoted in Heather Stewart and Rowena Mason, "Corbyn to order Labour MPs
to vote for article 50 trigger," Guardian, 19 January 2017, at
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/19/corbyn-to-impose-three-line-whip-on-labour-
mps-to-trigger-article-50
85
Brent Griffiths, "Sanders slams identity politics as Democrats figure out their future," Politico,
21 November 2016, at http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/bernie-sanders-democrats-
identity-politics-231710. My emphasis.
86
Paul Gilroy, There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and
Nation, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1987.

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