Joe, you’re right, you haven’t followed it carefully. There’s always been 1/3 of English that have never wanted to be part to EU. Remember, it took 2 votes to approval to join the EU. Although the immigration issue is part of it, the bigger issue was the belief among some that they were losing too much sovereignty to Brussels. Then, of course, there were all the lies the Leave people told…Money give-aways to Europe, the EU would come begging…there were just too many to list.
And no one thought about the hard border at Ireland/NI.