Time for the truth: We ‘left’ the EU because of Hampshire

Time for the truth: We ‘left’ the EU because of Hampshire

An illustrated talk by Danny Dorling (on one small part the book Rule Britannia) given at Winchester Skeptics in the Pub on April 25th 2019.

In Hampshire 546,267 people voted to leave the EU in June 2016, some 54.0% of all those who voted in the county. Hampshire was never singled out as a hotbed of leave voters and yet the people of this county, along with just a few of the other English Home Counties, were crucial to securing the referendum result. So why was this not commented upon at the time, or later – and what might it mean for how little we understand ourselves?

We can define a ‘Anti-Hampshire’ which has almost exactly the same electorate as Hampshire but is made of five northern and one Welsh district often labelled as hot-beds of leavers. In Anti-Hampshire only 494,816 voted to leave, 53.7% of all those who voted. Anti-Hampshire consists of Blackpool, Derby, Great Yarmouth, Leeds, Merthyr Tydfil and Sheffield (the fifth largest city in Britain).

It is time for a few home truths about the geography of who we are, how we got here, and where we are most probably going.
The table below is numbers voting leave and the % of all who voted in “Anti-Hampshire”

 

Blackpool               45,146 (67%)
Derby                      69,043 (57%)
Great Yarmouth    35,844 (72%)
Leeds                     192,474 (50%)
Merthyr Tydfil        16,291 (56%)
Sheffield                 136,018 (51%)

 

A different set of areas outside of the South of England where people could vote can be used to compare every county in the South of England. In each and every case the electorate of the area in the South of England was lower, but the leave vote was higher. Click play below to hear the talk.

 

The Brexit Way: A walking route through the areas of the UK that supplied the majority of Leave votes despite having a minority of voters