Much of the post Brexit autopsy has been focussed on those left behind by Globalisation (whose wages have stagnated or fallen and whose Government provided support has been eroded by austerity) and the Daily Mail supplied narrative that "Immigration" is to blame for all that.
However I really don't think the statistics support that analysis - the total net immigration into the UK last year was
330,000 which is equivalent to just 0.5% of the population. Even if every one of these is of employment age (which they aren't) this is not much larger than the percentage of the UK population who went from employment age to retirement age last year and this in an economy that grew by 2.2% that year (over four times the population growth).
However the wage stagnation, zero hours contracts and reduction in state supplied services are very very real. So - if not caused by immigration, what has caused it?
The thing about measuring an economy by size is that it does not differentiate between productive capital (factories, farms, office buildings) and unproductive capital (land banks, owner-occupied property, student loans) - and it is the change in ratio between productive capital and unproductive asset accumulation that is largely behind this economic malaise (cf. Pickety etc.) - for example the Langwell Estate is "worth" many tens of millions of pounds as an asset but in fact is a net cost to the taxpayer (
http://farmsubsidy.openspending.org/...ngwell-estate/)
So instead of the money flowing around keeping business large and small going and providing employment and tax receipts for all, it has been taken out of circulation and hoarded. This means the general population feel less wealthy and are open to finding a scapegoat for this - and the narrative of blaming the Polish immigrant rather than the wealthy asset hoarder is, for some unfathomable reason, the one which the papers choose to sell us.
We bought that narrative, and in my opinion, Brexit is the 40 pieces of silver we have paid.