How middle classes won the Brexit vote

... along with EVERY social group (except for the rich)

THE middle classes’ vote for Brexit was a revolt against mass immigration and the remote political class, according to a study.

The report, co-written by an ex- senior adviser to David Cameron, delivers a blistering analysis of why 17million voters decided enough was enough.

It found a majority in every social group chose Leave – except households earning £60,000 or more.

Middle and working-class voters ignored the Project Fear tactics of Mr Cameron and George Osborne as they suffered a ‘deeper malaise’ and had little to lose in a country they felt was ‘far less fair than it used to be’.

The report by the Centre for Social Justice and the Legatum Institute says Brexit is an opportunity to regain control of Britain’s borders and make society stronger. It is also serves as a rebuke to Remain campaigners who have described the referen- dum as a mere ‘opinion poll’ which Parliament should be free to ignore. The CSJ’s Philippa Stroud and James O’Shaughnessy of the Institute say the vote was ‘a heartfelt cry from millions who feel Westminster no longer knows, or even cares, how it feels to walk in their shoes’.

They write: ‘It is perhaps no surprise that the vote disregarded the dire warnings of the Establishment … Their threats and warnings showed the Establishment understood little of the lives of the 52 per cent that voted Leave.’

The result had ‘given a voice’ to those who felt disenfranchised, they add.

The report concludes Brexit is a critical first step to wider social reform and that altering immigra- tion trends of the past 15 years will help ‘address the immediate and damaging issues of low wages and public service pressures’.

‘The Government must get on with delivering the will of the British people and implementing Brexit,’ it says. ‘But it must also learn the deeper lessons of the referendum vote and act to give many more people a genuine voice and stake in their country.’

Lord O’Shaughnessy’s comments will be bruising for Mr Cameron, who gave him a peerage. He was the ex-PM’s policy director at No 10. The

‘The will of the British people’

upper AB social class was the only one in which a majority backed Remain, according to polls by Lord Ashcroft featured in the report.

Social classes C1, C2, D and E all had a majority for Leave. Some 64 per cent of C2s – the skilled workers whom Mrs Thatcher turned into blue-collar Tories – voted to Leave.

Of people in households earning more than £60,000 a year, 65 per cent backed Remain. The figure plunged to 38 per cent among those earning less than £20,000 a year.

Many Leave voters had ‘nothing to lose’, the report finds, pointing out that they were disproportionately poorer, older and less highly educated than Remain backers.

While immigration was the most quoted reason for choosing Brexit, voters’ focus was not migrants themselves, but the impact of uncontrolled migration on wages, housing, schools and health care.

In the report, ex-You-Gov president Peter Kellner writes: ‘Controlling immigration is unquestionably something that the public want.’