At first blush, London, where heavy rains helped push the turnout a notch below the average, appears as the capital of another land again – an island of Euro-enthusiasm amid a south-east that was mostly resolved to quit.
The majorities for remain in some inner-city boroughs in the capital were truly crushing: fully 75% of the ballot in Camden; 78% in Hackney; 66% in wealthy Kensington and Chelsea.
But move out a notch from the heart of the metropolis, beyond Zone 3 as the locals would say, and a few of the outlying districts begin to merge into the countryside beyond. To the south, Sutton went 54% for leave, and to the east, in working-class Barking and Dagenham, 63% wanted out. [...]
The exceptions, where voters wanted to remain part of Europe, sometimes came in pockets of particular prosperity – supposedly reactionary Tunbridge Wells, for instance was 55% remain, well-to-do voters there, perhaps, fearing they had more to lose. Then there was a whole cluster of relatively prosperous districts to London’s west, covering parts of Berkshire and Oxfordshire, which provided a pro-European blob on the map.
But the most notable exceptions were the cities in which universities loomed large – 56% for remain in Norwich, over 60% in Bristol, rising to 70%-plus in Oxford and Cambridge. All of these cities home, no doubt, to many of “the experts” derided by the leavers. Exactly the same trends were at work in Wales, with the prosperous Vale of Glamorgan and the student-heavy capital in Cardiff bucking the overall trend.
No comments:
Post a Comment