{"id":1023862,"date":"2026-06-13T10:35:43","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T10:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1023862\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T10:35:43","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T10:35:43","slug":"brexit-britain-now-patrick-freyne-revisits-leave-voter-heartlands-10-years-on-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1023862\/","title":{"rendered":"Brexit Britain now: Patrick Freyne revisits Leave voter heartlands 10 years on \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Saturday night karaoke crowd arrive in the Rose and Crown in Holyhead<\/a>, dapper older men with braces, young men in leather jackets, women in appliqu\u00e9d frocks, cowboy boots and hats. <\/p>\n

Everyone we meet is a disillusioned Brexit<\/a> voter who thinks things have got worse. A man called Alex sings Somebody to Love for an elderly Queen fan who clutches my shoulder with emotion then introduces me to the man next to him. It\u2019s Jeff Evans, three-time mayor of Holyhead and, also, the town crier. He once glued himself to the Houses of Parliament<\/a> to protest against drug-dealing in Wales but has lost interest in national politics since Brexit. Now he focuses entirely on community and family. He has a sick daughter and a tattoo with her name on it. He thinks things are worse than ever. \u201cI wanted us to take back control,\u201d he says, of Brexit. \u201cBut the world got so crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AbandonedAbandoned phone boxes on the main square in Boston, Lincolnshire. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

Jeff sings The Fields of Athenry. Two girls in cowboy hats sing Shania Twain. Suzy, who works for a haulage company, explains that the cowboy contingent were planning to go to a country music event and when that was cancelled came here instead. \u201cEveryone says we\u2019re like a hen,\u201d says Suzy. She voted for Brexit because she worried about migration. \u201cJust the illegal migrants,\u201d she stresses. Ultimately, she thinks Brexit did little for the town and was based on \u201cpropaganda\u201d.<\/p>\n

An older man sings Dirty Old Town. The Irish Times photographer sings Outside by George Michael. I sing Kris Kristofferson. Aimee, a childcare worker, says Holyhead \u201cis the best place in the world if you can find a job. It doesn\u2019t have the problems of the rest of the world\u201d. She adds: \u201cBut they\u2019re reaching us now.\u201d<\/p>\n

She believes Britain\u2019s cities are filling with \u201cillegal migrants\u201d. She voted for Brexit but thinks it\u2019s been \u201ca disaster\u201d. Her partner Tom, a welder, agrees, but he\u2019d still vote the same \u201cto get my country back\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0The Brexit diaries: Patrick Freyne\u2019s travels in 2016 BritainOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Since the EU referendum<\/a>, I\u2019ve travelled around the UK several times reporting. Ten years after the vote I\u2019m revisiting three Brexit-voting locations \u2013 Holyhead, Boston and Dover \u2013 as well as Stoke-on-Trent, part of the former industrial heartland. <\/p>\n

A number of people we meet cite \u201cillegal migration\u201d as their key issue. There is a particular focus on those who come by boat. Net migration to the UK was 171,000 at the end of 2025, the lowest figure since 2012. In 2025, 813,000 people entered the UK and 642,000 left. The majority of those are on work, student or family visas. Some 41,500 came across the channel by boat. <\/p>\n

Holyhead is in Anglesey, one of the poorest regions in Britain. In the 2021 census the non-UK born population of Anglesey was just 3.3 per cent (this includes Irish people). <\/b>In Holyhead, there are some vacant shopfronts, though a recent painting project has made things a little brighter. The Roadking Truckstop, where we stayed in 2018, is closed, replaced by a border force facility. People in Holyhead currently put hope in Anglesey\u2019s new freeport status, a planned tidal power scheme and a long-heralded nuclear power plant.<\/p>\n

\"AlunAlun Roberts in Holyhead. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

Alun Roberts, a Remain voter we met in 2018, recently left the community development group M\u00f4n Communities Forward (MonCF). After Brexit, he says, trade \u201cdwindled significantly \u2026 That\u2019s taken a number of years to recover. EU funds stopped coming to the UK … the government stepped in to provide funding for areas that used to get EU funding.\u201d Brexit is \u201cthe B-word now \u2026 Looking at the local economy, we have suffered … Why would you break ties with your biggest customer?\u201d<\/p>\n

Above the mirror in Danny Jones\u2019s barber shop are the words \u201cIawn boy\u201d. \u201cIt\u2019s like the Welsh \u2018Aloha\u2019,\u201d he says. He says it to everyone who enters. He has been running his shop for three years. His partner, Tasha Harper, a teacher, calls it \u201ca safe haven for young men and old men\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"DannyDanny Jones in his barber shop in Holyhead. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

The country has, Jones believes, gone \u201ca bit mental\u201d. \u201cSometimes I feel like everyone just needs a joint and to chill a bit \u2026 The Green Party\u2019s so far left and Reform is so far right. I just want someone that\u2019s in the middle.\u201d<\/p>\n

They both believe Brexit was \u201ca scam\u201d. \u201c[Reform leader Nigel] Farage is a bit of a snake-oil salesman, really,\u201d says Jones.<\/p>\n

\u201cUs two travel a lot,\u201d says Harper. \u201cIt\u2019s so much harder now to get visas and all the correct paperwork.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was looking to work in a barbershop in Marbella and he was only taking Irish [workers] because they had a EU partnership,\u201d says Jones.<\/p>\n

Former teacher and newly elected Reform party assembly member Helen Jenner (43 Plaid Cymru members and 34 Reform members were elected in the recent Senedd Cymru\/ Welsh parliament election<\/a>) feels people need to \u201cmove on\u201d from Brexit. On the doorsteps people focus on cost-of-living issues and NHS waiting lists and, yes, migration. She thinks any disillusionment is because of politicians like Boris Johnson putting \u201c\u00a3350 million on the big red bus \u2026 Some people perhaps felt shortchanged\u201d. <\/p>\n

She believes the transition would have worked under Farage. She fondly recalls the day after the vote. Her Remain-voting colleagues were depressed but \u201cI skipped into school … It was quite funny\u201d. Later she says: \u201cIt was about taking back control, and it was up to us to mess it up or not afterwards, wasn\u2019t it? I rarely met anyone who says they regret it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NeilNeil Brownsword, artist and academic at Staffordshire University, beside a bronze recreation of a classic ceramic by Josiah Wedgwood, in Stoke-on-Trent. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

Neil Brownsword, potter, artist and academic at Staffordshire University, meets us at a statue of pottery pioneer Josiah Wedgwood in Stoke-on-Trent. \u201cI started off employed at Wedgewood when I was 16 \u2026 I was surrounded by a group of guys with incredible embodied knowledge \u2026 It was in the early 90s things started to shift. Factories couldn\u2019t compete with east Asia and most companies decided to outsource production. That was pretty much the death knell.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a lot of dereliction and vacancy in Stoke; empty shops and derelict old factories. Brownsword shows us part of a heritage trail he helped devise, with bronze recreations of classic ceramics and a downloadable audio-guide. At its peak, in 1948, the pottery industry hired 79,000 people. The biggest employer in Stoke now is gambling company Bet365. Labour held Reform at bay recently, but the area voted for Brexit in 2016.<\/p>\n

We stop to look at Charles Vyse\u2019s frieze, Mining, Pottery and the Sciences, over the doorway of Staffordshire University\u2019s Cadman building. Brownsword is appalled by the tattered St George\u2019s flags flying around the city. He has visited Jingdezhen, the porcelain capital of China with a 1,000-year history of production. \u201cWithout cultural migration or exchange none of this history would have existed. The archetypal British cup of tea wouldn\u2019t exist without China.\u201d He says: \u201c\u2018Bone China\u2019 \u2013 \u2018China\u2019 kind of gives it away.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Hanley car boot and market on Hinde Street is filled with people from all over the world selling second-hand shoes, clothes and wheelchairs. Phil Ridgway and his son Andrew rent tables to stallholders, with the money going to charity. Their retired friend Keith Jones starts recounting his employment history. \u201cTell him you did two days in the coal pit,\u201d jokes Phil, who spent 22 years there.<\/p>\n

\"Stoke-On-TrentStoke-On-Trent has a high level of dereliction after the collapse of local industries. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

They believe \u201cillegal migration\u201d is a big issue for Stoke. They don\u2019t mean their immigrant friends who come to the market or who work in the NHS. \u201cWe\u2019d be nothing without them,\u201d agrees Jones. \u201cWe wouldn\u2019t have an NHS without them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the idle ones we don\u2019t want,\u201d says Phil.<\/p>\n

\"BoardedBoarded houses in Stoke-On-Trent. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

\u201cPoverty\u201d is the big issue for Stoke, says Jones. He has Welsh dragons tattooed on his arms as well as his own name (\u201cIn case he forgets,\u201d says Phil). He came from Wales in the back of a lorry in 1971. \u201cWe said to the driver give a bang on the back of the lorry when we\u2019re coming into Stoke … Our David, my brother and I, stuck our heads out and you couldn\u2019t see Stoke for smoke. The pits were going, the steel was going, the pottery was going. You could tell the boss on a Friday afternoon \u2018stick your job up your arse\u2019 and you could get a new job on Monday. And I did that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery week,\u201d says Phil.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need A-levels now to clean the s**thouse,\u201d says Jones.<\/p>\n

Their great hope for Brexit was that these industries would return, but \u201cit\u2019s worse since Brexit,\u201d says Andrew. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still governed by Europe,\u201d says Jones.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d vote same way again,\u201d says Phil.<\/p>\n

\"EtruriaEtruria Canals Festival in Stoke-On-Trent. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd \"BargesBarges arrive for the Etruria Canals Festival in Stoke-On-Trent. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

A number of barge owners have gathered around the canal for the Etruria Canals Festival. \u201cJames Brinley in the industrial revolution built the canals for the pottery industry,\u201d explains Craig, who is sitting listening to dance music next to his barge with his dog, Koda. He is a single man with health issues. He can\u2019t get a council house. \u201cThe winter months are hard,\u201d he says. He voted for Brexit but things just \u201cgot worse\u201d. He still trusts Farage. He would vote for Brexit again.<\/p>\n

At the stall for the armed forces charity SSAFA, retired soldier Geoffrey Arthur shows us a 19th-century Maxim machine gun used both in the Boer war and still, to this day, in Ukraine. He says he has an internationalist mindset so voted Remain. He was, he says, in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. \u201cI didn\u2019t fire a weapon when I was there,\u201d he says quickly. <\/p>\n

He did a year in the coal mines, because his father worked there. \u201cLabour was how I was brought up \u2026 Not any more. They didn\u2019t think of the working man. They were more interested in London and fighting among themselves.\u201d He is sad for young people because the youth unemployment rate is 14.7 per cent. \u201cWhen I was growing up here we had everything. It was never hard to get a job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Raj, a young Sikh man who works in arts marketing and facilitation, says that between Brexit and Covid it\u2019s been a terrible decade for young British people. \u201cEmployment is the big thing. In Stoke-on-Trent now, small businesses struggle. Businesses are closing down … The money goes to the biggest cities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AbandonedAbandoned phone boxes on the main square in Boston, Lincolnshire. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

He says he has experienced more racism in recent years. He volunteered helping refugees recently and all of them would go home if they could, he says. And most of them are here because of the actions of the West. He is there himself as a consequence of empire, he says. His parents are from India. \u201cThe first Sikh migrant in the UK was forced to come here, Maharaja Duleep Singh [the last Sikh emperor]. <\/b>Britain would never work without migration. Look at the NHS.\u201d <\/p>\n

A&A Help Services Limited in Boston, Lincolnshire, is owned by a Bulgarian man named Anastas Pachev. He helps Bulgarians with little English grapple with bureaucracy. Nearby there are similar operations for the Polish and Romanian people. There are lots of immigrants in Boston, mainly working in the fruit and vegetable picking and packing industries (in the 2021 census 23.6 per cent of Boston residents were born outside the UK). The seasonal work has dried up due to Brexit, says Pachev, though people still come. \u201cI don\u2019t think they fully understand Brexit yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AnastasAnastas Pachev runs A&A Help Services Limited in Boston and helps emigrants with little English grapple with bureaucracy. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

So what are the farmers doing for workers? There\u2019s still a large Bulgarian population, he says. \u201cI have a lot of friends who do six days a week, 12-hour-shifts.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThere are special visas for temporary work from Uzbekistan,\u201d says his cousin who co-runs the business (a seasonal agricultural worker scheme was introduced in 2019). \u201cThey come for two or three months. I see them a lot here. It\u2019s very cheap for the owners.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pachev first came to Britain in 2014 to work on the farms. \u201cI did it in one of the better farms where you don\u2019t need to squat all day to pick strawberries. I did raspberries. Tight spaces … They expect a lot of speed. You have to constantly meet the norms and, woah, I did not meet the norms.\u201d He laughs. \u201cIn the fields it\u2019s raining. Six people sleeping in a three-man caravan. It\u2019s not pleasant at all. I remember one morning the whole greenhouse was frozen in ice. Your fingers just freeze up and you cannot move them \u2026 Our best picker could barely work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Could English people do farm work? He laughs. \u201cI doubt anyone who has better prospects will go there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jonathan Drummond is painting the woodwork of Shodfriar\u2019s Hall, a beautiful Tudor priory now housing Eva\u2019s hair salon and a nightclub. He voted Brexit \u201cto get back to manufacturing,\u201d he says. \u201cTo stop just being a service economy to Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JonathanJonathan Drummond believes the benefits of Brexit may be felt in 60 years. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

That didn\u2019t happen, he says. \u201cMost people thought it would be quick, all singing, all dancing \u2026 I knew Europe were going to punish us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why did people think it would be easy? \u201cThe \u00a3350 [million] on the side of the bus. People were misled.\u201d<\/p>\n

He dislikes Keir Starmer but also dislikes Reform: \u201cFarage makes it up as he goes along.\u201d<\/p>\n

He would still vote for Brexit because he thinks it will work eventually: \u201cI was thinking probably my kid\u2019s kids. Sixty years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"VanessaVanessa Losty in Shodfriars Hall. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

Vanessa Losty, the building manager, gives us a tour. \u201cEva is Latvian or Lithuanian. The [nightclub] owner is Bulgarian. Boston has one of the largest migrant communities. There\u2019ll always be work for migrants here because land is more valuable here with potatoes than with buildings. I don\u2019t think enough people here were educated on what [Brexit] meant. It was all on social media, \u2018migrants are taking your jobs\u2019. But they weren\u2019t taking your jobs because you weren\u2019t doing those jobs \u2026 I live in the middle of farmland and I see them, back-breaking, picking the cabbages.\u201d<\/p>\n

She points at a well-dressed young person there on a work-experience placement, Tom. \u201cYears ago, Tom at 17 wouldn\u2019t be suited and booted, he\u2019d be sat on the tractor from the age of five.\u201d <\/p>\n

Losty voted for Brexit, because of \u201cillegal migration\u201d, she says, but regrets it. \u201cI was lied to,\u201d she says. She\u2019s now likely vote for Rupert Lowe\u2019s Restore party. \u201cIt\u2019s troubling times we\u2019ve got at the minute.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"RachelRachel Carter in Shodfriars Hall hanging 3D-printed models as part of an artwork about the establishment of Boston, Massachusetts. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

The hall has been taken on by a community arts organisation called Transported. Remain-voting artist Rachel Carter is on a scaffold hanging 400 3D printed models of a pilgrim woman. It\u2019s an ongoing artwork about the establishment of Boston, Massachusetts by Bostonians seeking religious freedom.<\/p>\n

Transported fosters art in the community and works with both migrant and indigenous groups. \u201cWe\u2019re call Transported because this area is massively determined by the transport infrastructure,\u201d says director Nick Jones, \u201cinitially rivers and canals and the railways and now the road systems because of the food haulage.\u201d<\/p>\n

He puts Boston\u2019s problems in the context of globalisation. \u201cThirty years ago, the supermarkets in this country wanted to find a way of competing, specifically with the German supermarkets \u2026 and asked the farmers here to reinvent the fresh food offer [and] to build all those packing and processing factories \u2026 There weren\u2019t enough people here to do it so they brought all these people from eastern and central Europe \u2026 They were absolutely necessary for the local economy, but nobody was honest about that meaning there was going to be a big influx of people \u2026 That led to a backlash where people began thinking [it] was connected to immigrants on boats but of course it\u2019s not. So there\u2019s this constant challenge for us to get people to be positive about the future rather than wrongfully coming to a negative judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NickNick Jones, director of Transported, an artist-led initiative in Boston, Lincolnshire. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

Upstairs in the 7th Heaven Caf\u00e9 on Market Square, a beautiful market area refurbished with EU funding, we meet retired teachers Ronnie Robinson and Judith Warnes and retired radiographer Mary Trafford. They say the town has declined in their lifetimes. Warnes voted remain \u2013 \u201cPeople shouldn\u2019t be creating barriers,\u201d she says \u2013 but Robinson and Trafford voted for Brexit.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing changed for the better,\u201d says Robinson.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt stopped people coming to university in Boston college,\u201d says Trafford.<\/p>\n

\u201cA friend whose son and partner are Dutch can\u2019t come back here to live,\u201d says Warnes. <\/p>\n

\"JudithJudith Warnes and Ronnie Robinson in the 7th Heaven Caf\u00e9 on Market Square in Boston, Lincolnshire. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

\u201cI went to a talk given to Nigel Farage, just to listen,\u201d says Trafford. \u201cOne of his main points was that he was going to improve the situation for fishermen … But nothing has been done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trafford returned to Boston in the noughties after years abroad and was thrown by the demographic change. \u201cI used to say to my friend, \u2018we\u2019re going to sink under the number of people\u2019,\u201d says Trafford.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought the town was overwhelmed with immigrants,\u201d says Robinson.<\/p>\n

Their views have softened. They do a lot of volunteering and praise a local Methodist minister who has brought the different communities together. They\u2019re still concerned with the level of migration but speak fondly of migrants they know. Trafford says she\u2019s ashamed of her Brexit vote now. \u201cI think with America being what it is, our allies lie in Europe \u2026 Unfortunately, Great Britain can only be referred to as Britain now, sadly \u2026 We relied on commerce and banking for so long we have no industry, nothing to hold the country up. When AI comes, I think we\u2019re in even more trouble.\u201d <\/p>\n

When the eastern European waitress comes to clear the table, Robinson says: \u201cMartina works very hard and looks after us very well. After we said all that to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dover Foodbank provides three-day emergency supplies for people \u201cin absolute crisis\u201d. It has seen increasing numbers in need since it opened in 2012 but things have improved in the past six months because of its new financial advice service. \u201cWe\u2019re a very high deprivation area,\u201d says project manager Laura Ashman.<\/p>\n

\"Dover,Dover, whose docks are overlooked by the famous white cliffs. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd \"NoelNoel Beamish, chief executive of the Dover Outreach Centre. and project manager Laura Ashman. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

There\u2019s a big focus on Dover because of the \u201cboats\u201d, says Noel Beamish, chief executive of the Dover Outreach Centre.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t wash up on the shores like people make out,\u201d says Ashman. \u201cThey\u2019re picked up when they\u2019re far out. And they\u2019re not \u2018illegal\u2019, they\u2019re asylum seekers.\u201d<\/p>\n

In reality, the issue of people coming by boat is \u201cminuscule,\u201d says Beamish. \u201cThe half million coming on work visas, family visas, they\u2019re not even mentioned \u2026 We do need immigration.\u201d In the food bank, \u201cwe haven\u2019t noticed any meaningful benefit of Brexit at all\u201d.<\/p>\n

The RAF Manston History Museum is across the road from a refugee processing centre. Volunteer Andrew Leigh spent years abroad with the British army. When he returned in the 1990s, he says, \u201cI was getting undercut and slammed by workers that would do it for half the amount [because] their living standards in their country were far less than mine\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"AA horse is tied up on the main street in Dover. Picture: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

He voted for Brexit to return high-quality jobs to British citizens. A 28-year-old colleague, Joshua Simpson, says there was never any hope that mass manufacturing would return. \u201cWe\u2019ve been a service-based economy since Thatcher \u2026 They killed off any proper manufacturing base.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leigh admits that things haven\u2019t worked out the way he hoped. He recently bought a house in France which he can now only visit for short periods of time. He stresses that he doesn\u2019t dislike migrants personally. \u201cIf you can\u2019t find work, what are you supposed to do? You\u2019re on the brink of civil war at the minute \u2026 Colleagues that I used to work with in the military, they\u2019re on their ass in the street, and the people they used to go to war against are stepping over them … That hurts.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Brexit – A Very British Civil War review: Ghastly portrait of ruling classes having a larkOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

His colleagues, Remain voters, push back. They talk about hardworking, kind immigrants they know and how the loss of EU subsidies affected farmers. Leigh tells a story about an ex-girlfriend from Poland who overstayed a visa. He was appalled, he says. But he still stayed with her?<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was fit!\u201d he says and laughs. He would, for the record, still vote \u201cleave\u201d.<\/p>\n

On the London Road in Dover there are lots of charity shops and bric-a-brac operators. Lisa Britnell, proprietor of B&H Fireplaces and Stoves, explains that Dover folk are called \u201csharks\u201d because \u201cwhen they had shipwrecks, people were known to bite rings off fingers, to get the gold.\u201d<\/p>\n

The town today is slightly worse than it was before Brexit, she says. \u201cI was hoping for a bit more control but that\u2019s not happened.\u201d She would change her vote. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t enough information for people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LisaLisa Britnell, proprietor of B&H Fireplaces and Stoves in Dover. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd \"ThomasThomas Wiggins, a Canadian based in Dover who advocates for the Gurkhas. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

White-haired Thomas Wiggins is listening to Delta blues while manning a stand advocating for the Gurkhas. He\u2019s from Canada originally and supported Brexit. \u201cThey were telling Britain what to sell and how to sell it and they were able to say, \u2018this is our product, we\u2019ll sell it the way we choose\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a migrant himself, he has no issues with immigrants. He became a supporter of the Gurkha cause because he worked as a cleaner alongside many Nepalese women. \u201cThey called me \u2018buba\u2019, which means grandfather, and I called them \u2018natani\u2019, which is granddaughter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nobody we meet under the age of 30 supports Brexit. We ask 20-year-old coffee-shop worker James Proctor what young people do for fun in Dover. \u201cLeave,\u201d he says, and laughs. \u201cIf you go down the high street you\u2019ve got kebab shops, barbers, cafes. That\u2019s about it … There\u2019s not much going on here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JamesJames Proctor (20) in Dover. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd <\/p>\n

A tentative Green Party supporter, he\u2019s sceptical about people citing immigration as a concern. \u201cIf people are coming over illegally on boats, why would making tighter borders for legal immigrants change that fact? … I can\u2019t personally say that I\u2019ve met any illegals \u2026 My boss is from Morocco and I think he\u2019s doing all right for the Dover community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Down by the port, beneath the white cliffs of Dover, I meet Si, a retired soldier walking his dog. He believed Brexit would mean more autonomy for Britain but concludes that, financially, \u201cit would have been better if we\u2019d voted Remain\u201d. It would, specifically, have been better for him because he owns a house in France and now every time he travels he must register his dog as an \u201cimport\u201d, he says. He still thinks it will work out in the long run. He would still vote to leave.<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Enda O\u2019Dowd<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Saturday night karaoke crowd arrive in the Rose and Crown in Holyhead, dapper older men with braces,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1023863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,282977,384,282976,16,15,1764,37368],"class_list":["post-1023862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brexit","tag-brexit","tag-britain","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-union","tag-great-britain","tag-holyhead-port","tag-nigel-farage","tag-patrick-freyne","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wales","tag-weekendreview"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116742361419376315","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1023862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1023863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1023862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1023862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1023862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}