Something that perhaps hasn't been adequately explained is that much of the "mainstream media" in the UK was not pro-Remain. Although their sales are declining

Something that perhaps hasn't been adequately explained is that much of the "mainstream media" in the UK was not pro-Remain. Although their sales are declining, daily newspapers remain a fixture of British political life. In particular, the Daily Mail and the Sun are extremely popular, with circulations over a million each[1]. And just a few years ago they sold vastly more copies than they currently do. The stock-in-trade of nearly all these newspapers is rightwing populism, and nearly all were stridently pro-Brexit. Long before this referendum, they sold copies by demonising immigrants and the EU, through hysterical, mendacious reporting. For decades, they have poured lies and poison into the hearts of a huge swathe of the British electorate. Their readership matches almost exactly with those who voted out: Old people, poor people, white people. A lot of pundits have spoken of Brexit as being about disenfranchised voters giving a bloody nose to the political establishment, or being fed-up with the runaway effects of austerity an globalisation. Yet when Brexit voters are asked why they voted the way they did, most don't talk about getting revenge on some abstract metropolitan political elite, defying the mainstream media, or even about their own relative poverty. Instead, they talk about immigration, and taking back power from Brussels. And that's basically all they talk about. On the liberal left, there has been an attempt to take these concerns at face value, talking about the potential negative effects of large scale immigration. But even this ignores an important fact: Many of the communities most opposed to the EU, and most concerned with immigration, have actually experienced almost none of it, and have in fact benefitted greatly from EU redistribution of funds from richer parts of the UK to them, via redevelopment funds. Personally, I don't believe in explanations about resentment at those providing handouts. I think it comes down to certain rightwing narratives, about immigrants, and about the EU, being printed and reprinted by the mainstream, rightwing media for so many years that they have become articles of faith amongst large parts of the British population. They have taken on a life of their own, nowadays spread via social media, and are essentially immovable. Frankly, the biggest surprise of Brexit to me is that anybody would be surprised. Anti-EU and anti-immigrant reporting has been such a pervasive part of the British political landscape for so long that it would be an astonishing repudiation of media influence if people hadn't voted out. But, as it was, they did. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_United_Kingdom_by_circulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_Unit...