> I found I identified as a Londoner – a city where the vote to remain in the EU hit 60% (in some areas, the remain vote was more than 70%) – but as to the rest

> I found I identified as a Londoner – a city where the vote to remain in the EU hit 60% (in some areas, the remain vote was more than 70%) – but as to the rest of the country: it suddenly felt like a foreign land that I didn’t understand and in which I was not welcome. I voted Remain. I've also lived in working class areas that voted mostly for Brexit. I understood a lot of both sides of the argument. It's a shame the author hasn't seemed to have mixed or talked a lot to people of other backgrounds in areas of the UK. If they had done so, they possibly would have been less surprised and alienated at the referendum result. I expect they would also have a vastly different view of widely politically held views in Germany and the EU (and the Frankfurt-based ECB in particular) if they were an average Greek member of the public living under austerity imposed by the "troika" after the European sovereign debt crisis. A good book to read on why people in the UK voted Brexit is Paul Embery's "Despised". It covers the drastic demographic change immigration brought to Dagenham in Essex, after EU enlargement happened with no restrictions on immigration (which the UK Labour government was actually allowed to impose by the EU, but didn't). The people who lived there felt exactly the same as the author of the article, but before Brexit: they, too, felt like where they had grown up had become a "foreign land". They weren't against immigration, the point was it was too much, and too fast, and they were facing pressures on underfunded public services and downward pressure on wages through more competition. I was shell-shocked after the referendum, but liked to see the high voter turnout. Usually the public is criticised as being apathetic. Working class voters were continuously told that they were better off being in the EU. But in many working class areas couldn't dream of the funding that London receives. They also faced more competition from EU migrants, who could work for lower wages, as they would have more purchasing power back home. There are challenges now, but it's also true wages have gone up for working class jobs, now that labour is controlled.