Brexit was built on the politics of fear. Fear destroys rational thinking, & elicits primitive emotions which drive people to identify an enemy, and seek safety in a tribe behind strong defences. The tax-dodging Brexit billionaire press then told people that the EU was the enemy.

Having said that, a fear-inciting propaganda only works when people already feel insecure and uneasy. Many of the main Brexit backing areas are suffering from post-industrial decline and the crumbling of communities and social structures. People feel neglected.

Those, white native folk feel that in our rush to end discrimination against minorities they have been ignored, while the economic and social world their families inhabited for generations disintegrates leaving them adrift in a new alien reality.

We only have to look at the poor school performance of white working class boys to see that the habits and culture of the old industrial society has left segments of the working class badly unprepared for a post-industrial world.

And this lack of preparedness is exacerbated by many of these people living in areas which only grew populous because of the demands of a now vanished economy, and which offer little attraction for businesses in the modern economy.

Unfortunately many of the white native people in these areas, rather than seeing themselves as one among many socially disadvantaged groups, instead see themselves as opposed to those groups, and have been attracted by the populist rhetoric of a cynical and privileged elite.

Having said that, the problems faced by a large part of the white native working class population are very real, and what is worrying is that it's very hard to see anything other than a long and painful process lasting decades that will resolve those problems.

I'm now hoping some folk will respond by mentioning initiatives in the UK and elsewhere which have made significant progress in overcoming the problems of communities left high and dry by the crumbling of the old industrial economy.