Brexit backers branded 'not educationally equal' says former top adviser
THE SNEERING attitude of the liberal elite towards those who backed Brexit has been slammed by a former government tsar.
Dame Louise Casey served as a senior adviser to four prime ministers over nearly two decades.
She said the view that residents in white working-class areas supported Leave because they were not clever enough to understand the issues is “patronising” and “irritates the hell” out of her.
In their clamour for a re-run of the EU referendum, some in the Remain camp have continued to insist that people did not know what they were voting for in 2016.
Labour Huddersfield MP Barry Sheerman, 77, faced a backlash and was branded a snob after claiming in October that it was “the better educated people” who voted Remain.
Giving evidence to a parliamentary inquiry on integration this month, Dame Louise, 52, said that some people were seeking to link low educational attainment in poor, white working-class communities to the Brexit decision.
She told members of the Westminster committee: “It was put to me earlier today that they voted for Brexit because they were not educationally equal to other parts of the community. I find that very tough and very difficult to accept, and it is quite patronising to many people in those communities."
I feel that we need to come at the sense of a divided society in a cleverer way than just blaming people
“It irritates the hell out of me, because a lot of those communities are looking at the future for their own children and realising that it is not flat: it is going to get worse, not better.
“Meanwhile, they feel, understandably in many cases, that there is this big institution not in their own country that is sapping money away.
“At the same time, they also feel there are people who have only arrived in the country, jumping the queue for things like housing and public resources.”
She added: “Instead of seeking to understand those communities and why those families feel that way, I feel that a lot of people in the liberal intelligentsia, for want of a better expression, have jumped on that and said, ‘They’re just not clever enough to understand the issues’.
“I feel that we need to come at the sense of a divided society in a cleverer way than just blaming people, whichever side of the Brexit vote you were on.”