Ed West Ed West

A bitter culture war has begun in Britain

I wrote a while back that the UK referendum wouldn’t be at all bitter or divisive, and I think it’s fair to say I was utterly, utterly wrong. I just hope whoever wins shows a spirit of magnanimity and conciliation, and tries to steer the country to the most moderate course available.

Perhaps it was obvious that this debate would turn into a sort of British culture war, one that divided the country heavily over the issue of globalisation. As James Bartholomew points out in this week’s issue of The Spectator, the referendum has exposed a huge rift between the metropolitan elite and the rest.

Although there is a very strong free-market case for Brexit, and leaving the EU might not necessarily mean controlling our borders, the majority of Brexit supporters are not cheery-faced globalists who want more Indian engineers or technicians coming to an island tax haven.

The Leave campaign, knowing that socially conservative localists outnumber Thatcherite libertarians by about ten to one, have made immigration their focus, which has inevitably made the tone more grim on one side and more sanctimonious on the other.

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