In some Irish newspapers and by Remainers in Britain, the UK’s vote to leave the European Union is portrayed as an outburst of English nationalism. This theory is a convenient way to discredit the result, but it doesn’t give an insightful explanation for Brexit and nor is it mathematically accurate. By virtue of England’s size relative to the rest of the UK, its votes were always going to be decisive, but the result in Wales was broadly similar to the English result and Leave got over the winning line thanks to substantial minorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland. There were pockets of support for Brexit among ethnic minorities too; some voters in south Asian communities, for example, believed that fewer immigrants from eastern Europe could…

Source: The Times July 31, 2018 23:01 UTC