James Williams, 37, lives in Wandsworth, a district of southwest London, where 75% of voters wanted the UK to remain in the European Union. He was part of the minority. He’s a partner at a financial institution in London and says leading up to the Brexit vote most of his colleagues either kept quiet or were swept up by what he calls “perceived wisdom.”
“The perceived wisdom is that going against the grain or voting for a Brexit was mad. That story was pushed out by the educated elite, be they politicians, business people or institutions like the IMF,” he says. “People don’t want to get painted as xenophobic and racist, which was the kind of rhetoric that was being used to depict Brexit supporters.”
But he was skeptical about the warnings from people like IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, who painted a bleak picture of Brexit. She said the UK’s departure from the EU would be “costly in the long run even after uncertainty has been resolved,” and the impact on the UK would range from “pretty bad to very, very bad.”
Williams says that he and pro-Brexit voters weren’t acting out of blind patriotism; rather, they could “see through what these leaders were saying on one hand but then receiving funds from the EU.”
In fact, the IMF has received €168,138 ($185,705) from the European Commission since 2007, according to the organization “Vote Leave Take Control.” Academic institutions like the London School of Economics receive funding from the European Research Council, an organization within the EU. The director of the prestigious university Craig Calhoun penned an opinion piece claiming “Brexit was a vote against London, globalization and multiculturalism as much as a vote against Europe.” LSE Professor Nicholas Barr is also a vehement anti-Brexit advocate, even writing a 14-page sourced article about the “wide range of arguments” to remain in the EU.
“It was almost a scare campaign that the outside world is worse,” he said. “But that project fear backfired and so much negative campaigning and bad press really turned people off.”
He claims the British have had a “healthy disregard for the EU for several years.” Britain joined the European Economic Community in 1973 along with Denmark and Ireland (which later became the Union). “We never chose to join the EU in the first place,” he said. “We voted in a referendum to join the Common Market but we never actually voted to join the EU.”
When asked whether the Brexit would affect his job in finance, he said he does not anticipate much of an impact because he works more frequently with companies outside the EU. “In my strain of finance, three-fourths of our money is outside of the EU,” he says. “Our relationship with trading hubs like Hong Kong and Singapore won’t be impacted.”
When it comes to the day-to-day lives of Britons, he says that basic workplace culture will actually improve post-Brexit. “People are making a lot of hysteria about nothing because there’s a lot of misinformation coming from both sides,” he said.
Britons will continue to get more holidays than citizens of other EU countries. FullFact, an independent fact-checking charity, backs up his claim. While the EU minimum for annual paid vacation is 20 days, the British government increased that number to 28 days in order to cover bank holidays.
Further, he says, he doesn’t imagine there to be stiff tariffs when purchasing other European countries’ products. But he won’t be fazed even if there are more tariffs. “If a German car becomes that much more expensive because of an imposed tariff, I’ll just buy a Japanese car,” he says.
Ultimately, Williams says any of these sorts of trade-offs don’t hold a candle to the bigger reason he voted to leave the EU. “What this comes down to is our country’s sovereignty and ability to dictate our own rules, laws and the direction that we’re going in. I voted to regain that right.”
