Here's why 52% of British voted to leave

[Denzil_DC]

126. But this is the myth of austerity used to promote good old divide and conquer tactics.

Take a look at this to see the simple spreadsheet error that's fuelled this so convenient fixation on the need for austerity in the latest phase of what can only be described as a class war: How a dodgy spreadsheet and a bad joke created the Tory austerity lie

How does immigration help them? - Don't immigrants spend money? Don't they buy food and goods and services? That money goes round and round. If they earn enough, they'll pay tax. They'll pay National Insurance. If they buy VAT-rated goods and services, they'll pay tax. The pie is actually elastic. Even the Tories' archetypal scapegoats, the dole scroungers (say, some of those very people in Sunderland), are economically active.

Our central bank just this morning splurged £250,000,000 to stop the pound tanking. I'd imagine there's more to come. The pie's pretty damn big when it suits the government (and feathers their pals' and their nests). Ever heard of Trident? The Chunnel? The Millennium Dome?

As for an increased population, we actually need population increase. I'm in Scotland. We have an ageing population profile. Same goes for the rest of the country as birth rates decline. In my local area, we have schools that are closing or perpetually threatened with closure because they don't have enough children attending them. We have empty social housing nobody wanted to live in on the Isle of Bute that we've used to house Syrian asylum seeker families. We need younger generations to pay into the pot to support the old age pensions some folks may live long enough to eventually claim if they're not abolished altogether. Heaven forbid, I may need some younger person to help me with my daily needs if I don't die relatively young. I doubt I'd actually be bothered what part of the world they might have come from.

Your argument might be more persuasive if we didn't have post-referendum polls that show that xenophobia - antipathy to immigration - was the main issue that people said led them to vote Leave. It may be uncomfortable to acknowledge that, but that doesn't make it untrue. It isn't the only reason, but it really is quite simple. And factions in Leave weren't promoting that with dogwhistles, they had dirty great posters and shouty spokes spreading it all over our media for the past few months.

And guess what? As somebody living in Scotland, I'm firmly in the sights of some of them too, on very similar grounds to those you've mentioned applying to immigrants. Because I'm Other. A scapegoat. Because they believe economic lies about how my country relates to the rest of the UK and who pays for what and how much, who's leeching off whom etc. etc. Please don't excuse them or try to explain all this away.