In Brexit-on-Sea, the left-behind still want Out

On a Sunday evening in March, Evelyn Ovington and her granddaughter Dana Marie went to play bingo as usual in their local town hall near Skegness, a resort on the east coast of England. Like many of the country’s seaside towns, it is battling decline and voted heavily to quit the European Union in the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Top prizes at the club that night included the ingredients for a chicken dinner. Dana Marie, who had just turned 18, marked her coming-of-age by drinking a can of beer. She and her 59-year-old gran joked with the rest of the crowd, spanning all ages, as they waited for the numbers to be called in the traditional way. When the caller said, “The street where she lives, Theresa May,” the players recognised the reference to the prime minister’s residence in Downing Street: Number 10.

But bingo calls are about as close as Evelyn Ovington expects to get to Theresa May. As the target deadline for Britain to quit the EU approached, Ovington and dozens of others whom Reuters met on a 14-day tour along England’s coastline said they felt increasingly let down by politicians. In line with recent opinion polls nationwide, few had changed their minds about backing Brexit. In these coastal areas, the majority still wanted to leave Europe.

“Get us out of there and get us our own nation back. That’s what I say,” said Ovington. “(I’m) just fed up with all the money that they give to the EU when we can spend it here. I want out.”

Britain as a whole voted by a narrow margin to leave the European Union. But around England’s coastline, dislike of EU was and is much more marked. A tally of the results as estimated by Chris Hanretty, a professor of politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, shows more than 100 of the 120 or so English parliamentary constituencies that have a coastline voted to leave. Reuters visited 10 of them: eight where most people voted to leave, and two where a majority chose to stay. From Skegness on the east coast to Morecambe Bay in the west, dozens of people said they were still convinced their fortunes could only improve outside the EU.

The main exception was Brighton, a southern town nicknamed “London-on-Sea,” partly for its appeal to those with jobs in the capital who have an hour-long commute to work. In this cosmopolitan, affluent university town, a clear majority voted to remain in the European community, which the UK joined in 1973.

The overall results reflect a wider trend. Across Europe, economic and industrial decline are driving anti-EU sentiment, according to a European Commission study from December 2018. The paper, “The Geography of EU Discontent,” found that areas with lower employment or a less-educated workforce are more likely to vote anti-EU.

In England’s case, Brexit also highlights a new layer in the political divide, which Prime Minister May alluded to in 2016 when she pledged to help those “left behind” by globalisation. Big cities are becoming younger, more ethnically diverse, more educated and more socially liberal, while smaller towns are ageing, are less diverse, more nostalgic and more socially conservative, studies by political geographers show.

All around the coastline, whether people voted Leave or Remain, they expressed nostalgic regret for a time when there was more opportunity - and kindness. “I think we used to take care of our communities a bit more,” said Brighton-based web designer and massage therapist Chris Baker, adding it was easy to be too romantic about the past. “I think, you know, we had more manners, we were nicer to people on the street.”

For Ovington, the problem is very real: She worries that her granddaughter’s 18th birthday brings nearer the moment when Dana Marie, like other young people in the region, will move away to university and work.

Ovington hopes Brexit means the local council can claim funds that in her view are currently being mis-directed into Europe, and invest them in a future for local young people. “At the moment there is no future for them, there’s nothing,” she said. “So out of Brexit, they’ll get more funding, help the kids more.”