IN THIS tenth anniversary week of the Brexit referendum, I remain angry and frustrated that successive governments have continued at every opportunity to thwart – and even attempt to reverse – the votes cast by 17.4million people on June 23, 2016. The insults and slurs against Leave voters carry on to this day.
There were, in fact, many official Leave campaigns, of many colours.
The Vote Leave movement began on October 15, 2015, founded by Matthew Elliott and Dominic Cummings and designated by the Electoral Commission as the official lead Leave cross-party operation.
Leave.EU was formed in July 2015 and relaunched in September of the same year, founded by UKIP donor Arron Banks with Richard Tice, now of Reform UK. It was endorsed by Nigel Farage at the annual UKIP conference in September 2015.
Grassroots Out (GO) launched in January 2016, funded by then Tory donor Arron Banks. GO’s other high-profile supporters were Peter Bone, Tom Pursglove and Liam Fox of the Conservatives, UKIP’s Nigel Farage, Sammy Wilson of the DUP and former Labour MP Kate Hoey, now a Labour peer.
Better Off Out (BOO) was a non-party crusade run by the Freedom Association. Its stance was centre-right and had links with the Conservative Party. It was formed in 2006 and patrons included Norman Tebbit (former Conservative party chairman), author Frederick Forsyth and economics Professor Tim Congdon. It was further supported by a number of Conservative MPs including Peter Bone and Christopher Chope. Interestingly, supporters also included Labour MP Austin Mitchell and Democratic Unionist Party MPs including Ian Paisley.
Labour Leave, although not officially affiliated with the Labour Party, was nonetheless led by a Eurosceptic group of Labour MPs headed by Graham Stringer, Roger Godsiff and Kate Hoey, who co-chaired the group. Also in the front line of this outfit was Frank Field, who resigned the Labour whip in 2018, citing anti-Semitism and a ‘culture of intolerance’.
Other leave groups included Left Leave, Trade Union and Socialist Coalition, Green Leaves and Liberal Leave.
Therefore, the popular ‘far right’ tropes misattributed to ‘Leavers’ and promoted by the woke left are a total misnomer. We were a very mixed bunch!
During my own experience of the months of doorstepping, alongside Boris Johnson, Gerard Batten, Steven Woolfe and the late Peter Whittle, I encountered numerous supporters of all the above groups. At the time, I was part of the operation in Hillingdon, West London.
We spent months walking the streets, in all weathers.
Many of us worked together on the various groups, each co-operating with others and sharing literature. This included the Labour Leave faction and other left-and-centre-leaning gatherings. We all shared leaflet distribution and manned high street stands side by side.
Foremost in my memory are the comments of hundreds of people we spoke to during those months of standing in the cold and wet, or searing heat.
For instance, on the day after then US President Obama commented that Brexit would leave Britain ‘at the back of the queue’ on trade, we were met by an outraged public, many of whom ranted, ‘I’m not having HIM telling me how to vote.’ One woman declared: ‘I WAS going to vote to remain; now I want OUT!’ Unwittingly, Obama had literally swung the vote overnight.
Another Hillingdon resident, a legal immigrant from India, raged: ‘I came to this country to make a life and set up a business,’ and proceeded into a foul-mouthed rant about illegal immigrants ‘getting it all for free’, while I stood, cringing, hoping passers-by wouldn’t misinterpret the conversation. He finished by handing back the leaflet with the retort ‘I don’t need no [expletive deleted] leaflet. I want OUT and I’m VOTING OUT!’
I subsequently had many similar outraged encounters from leave voters venting their spleen at the injustice of the very concept of the European Union. Many of them had clearly done their homework on the subject or had seen the official campaign video Brexit: The Movie, written and directed by Eurosceptic film maker Martin Durkin and distributed by all Leave groups.
In 2016 Hillingdon’s projected population was 157,800. Asian and Asian British stood at 95,300; black or black British 25,200, mixed and other ethnic groups 19,700.
The result of the Referendum for Hillingdon was 56.36 per cent of voters voting to leave the EU. The Leave vote stood at 74,982 votes and Remain at 58,040. Turnout was 68.9 per cent with a total of 133,022 votes cast. This one result alone belies the myth that the Leave vote was the work of the white ‘far right’. Hillingdon was one of the five London boroughs that voted to leave. The others were Havering, Bexley, Barking and Dagenham, and Sutton.
The overall national Leave vote won with 51.9 per cent of the vote on a 72.2 per cent turnout. If only general elections could elicit a response of that magnitude! The general election of 2024 resulted in a measly 60 per cent turnout, with the London Mayoral elections of the same year struggling to find a 40.5 per cent turnout. The highest ever turnout in a general election was the post-war 1950 vote at 83.9 per cent.
The spectre of the Brexit vote needs putting to rest once and for all. Hopefully the next government will exorcise it by tying up the loose ends such as the Northern Ireland problem, border control and trade agreements in favour of those who worked hard to secure our exit from this parasitic behemoth.
To this day, the sour tirade from remainers continues, as does the vehement refusal of subsequent governments to exercise the wishes of the Leave voters and whose attempts to sabotage the result continue unabated. This, of course, continues with the current Labour government doing its level best to burrow its way back into the EU like a mischief of rats! It is imperative that this total defiance of the largest democratic mandate in British history is derailed once and for all.
