On June 23, the British people voted, by 52% to 48%, to leave the European Union (EU). The turnout was 72.2%. This was the highest turnout in an election across the entire UK since the 1992 general election. There were regional variations in the voting, with England voting to leave by 53.4% to 46.6%, Wales voting to leave by 52.5% to 47.5%, while Northern Ireland voted to remain by 55.8% to 44.2% and Scotland to remain by 62% to 38%.

Why did the majority of Britons vote to leave? No, I am not going to give you my opinion. I do not have to. We have data. British business mogul, supporter of the Conservative Party (and a pro-Leaver) Lord Michael Ashcroft is fascinated by British politics and has invested a significant amount of his own money, over a period of years, in researching voters’ attitudes, opinions and beliefs through both opinion polls and focus groups. The results are available on a dedicated website (easy to find if you do an online search). He employs professionals and the outcomes of the research he funds are highly regarded. He has never hesitated to publish results that have upset the leadership of the Conservative Party!

For the EU referendum, he carried out an exit poll, but on a megascale. Normal British political opinion polls use sample sizes of between 1 000 and 2 000, with 3 000 being a rare big poll. Ashcroft’s EU exit poll had a sample size of 12 369! The bigger the sample, the more reliable the poll is likely to be. Thus, the outcome of the Ashcroft poll can be taken as a good reflection of why people voted the way they did.

And what were the main reasons Leave voters opted for Brexit? The number one reason, given by 49% of Leavers, was “the principle that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK”. The second reason, given by 33%, was that leaving the EU “offered the best chance for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders”. The third reason was that remaining would mean that Britain would have “little or no choice about how the EU expanded its membership or powers”. Overall, voters thought that leaving the EU would (from weakest to strongest motivation) improve the quality of life in the UK, improve rights for “people in the UK”, lead to a better National Health Service, improved fairness in the welfare system; far stronger, cited by just under 40% of voters as a factor in their decision, were the beliefs that leaving would result in a better immigration system and improved border controls (these two ranked equally); but the strongest motivation of all, cited by about 57% of the respondents, was the “ability to control our own laws”.

Ashcroft’s research also reveals the main reasons Remainers voted to stay in the EU. He gives breakdowns on age groups (the younger the voter, the higher the support for Remain, the older the voter, the higher the support for Leave). There was, by the way, no gender gap. Before the vote, some commentators had assumed (sexist bias?) that women would be more likely to vote to remain because they were more cautious. In the event, women voted to leave in exactly the same proportion as men – 52%. Moreover, of the socio- economic classes into which analysts divide British society (and others) – A/B, C1, C2 and D/E – all but A/B (generally speaking, the professional and managerial people) voted to leave. In educational terms, 43% of those with a university degree voted to leave (57% to remain) as did 36% of those with higher degrees (64% to Remain). (To digress with my own opinion for a moment, these minorities among the best educated are big enough to give a solid intellectual core to leave and to show that a significant number of “experts” supported Brexit, contrary to the Remain propaganda that “all” the “experts” supported remain.)

Separately and independently, a couple of days after the referendum, polling company ComRes published a poll, on behalf of the Sunday Mirror newspaper, with a sample size of 1 069, which reported that the main reason why Leavers voted the way they did – selected by 53% – was “the ability of Britain to make its own laws”. The issue of immigration trailed far behind, being cited by 34%. Of course, this is a standard poll, with all the flaws that they have; but that it pretty closely reflects the findings of Ashcroft’s far (nearly 12 times) bigger poll does reinforce the message of his research.

It is, thus, very clear that the single most important reason the Leave side won the EU referendum was the desire to reassert the sovereignty of the UK, including the sovereignty of the British Parliament and the laws passed by that Parliament. Concerns about immigration ranked significantly behind, and, while some voters undoubtedly want to halt immigration, others, equally undoubtedly, really do want Britain to regain control over immigration and not to halt immigration.

Yet we have had an explosion of “analysis” that, completely ignoring the data, asserts that the British voted to leave because they wanted to stop immigration or because they were hostile to globalisation (there is, in fact, not the slightest shred of evidence supporting the latter contention). I have never been so depressed at all the drivel published, masquerading as expertise, about a major international development. The further you get away from the UK, the worse it gets. North Americans seem to be especially bad. I have seen Brexit described as an English pheno- menon – but the Welsh also voted to leave. How can you take seriously an “analyst” who manages to forget (or, much worse, ignore) an entire country and people? Regarding Northern Ireland, you have to be totally ignorant of its history to think that its links with the rest of the UK will be weakened by the Leave vote. A unique concern in Northern Ireland is that it has a border with an EU country; of the voting districts lying on that border, all voted to Remain; of the voting districts not on that border, all but one voted to leave; many nationalists did not bother to vote at all, showing they didn’t care one way or the other, while a significant minority of unionists voted to remain. Scotland is a more serious case, but, as Scots political analysts point out, the nationalists will not, in fact, call another refe- rendum until they are certain they have a real chance of winning. With oil prices as they now stand, that is not the case now!