True north: Three years on, what do Newcastle and Sunderland really think of Brexit?

They have been scorned as turkeys voting for Christmas, but Patrick Cockburn finds many in the northeast think this oversimplifies their reasons for wanting to exit the EU

Pro-EU supporters in Newcastle. The city’s narrow Remain vote was out of step with the wider region (Getty)

Many in northeast England express anger at what they see as patronising and insulting explanations for their vote to leave the EU. They say that they are being portrayed as hillbillies from the deindustrialised wastelands of the north who stupidly acted against their own best interests. They particularly object to the cliche describing their strong support for Brexit as “turkeys voting for Christmas”.

“I call it ‘prole porn’,” says one Leave supporter from Newcastle who did not want his name published, condemning what he considers to be a crude caricature of the reasons why a majority in the northeast – and particularly those from “proletarian” areas – want Britain out of the European Union. He says that the reasoning behind the region’s 58 to 42 per cent vote for Leave in the 2016 referendum was nuanced, rational and not simply an ill-considered thumbs-down to the status quo. “It was far more complex than a simple wish to give the government a kick in the teeth,” he says, “and voters really did understand why they were voting for Brexit.”

Others in the northeast vigorously contest this. Tony Curtis, a vicar in Shiremoor, North Tyneside, has a parish centred on deprived housing estates, but with a flourishing business park employing 8,000 people at one end of it. Asked to explain why people voted for Brexit, he says: “They largely did so because of scapegoating – blame everything on Brussels, blame everything on immigration. In the past this has been a useful excuse for governments that failed to replace traditional shipbuilding and heavy industry, particularly along the coast from Sunderland to Teesside where you see the strongest support for Leave. When the referendum happened, all those chickens came home to roost.”