Brexit: The result of rising inequality, not rising immigration

As talk given by Danny Dorling at Imagine: Belfast’s festival of ideas and politics, Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast, March 17th 2018.

Immigration has been suggested as the reason for why a narrow majority of people in the UK voted for Brexit. The concept was used to stoke up fear in areas of low immigration. However, immigration is not what sets the UK apart from other EU nations as unusual. The real reason for the Brexit vote was widespread and rising dissatisfaction with living standards as a result of rising inequalities. This talk concentrates on that and on what the UK (and especially England) may learn about itself in the coming years, partly as a consequence of the Brexit vote.