It has been suggested, as the EU referendum approaches, that younger voters are more likely to vote to remain than their older compatriots. A poll conducted in April showed 54% of over 55s back Brexit, while only 30% said they would vote to remain in the EU. It showed almost exactly the reverse among voters aged between 18 and 34. The 35-54-year olds were more evenly split, with 38% saying they’d vote to remain and 42% saying they’d leave.
There are a host of possible reasons why older people might be more likely to vote to leave the European Union. They may be xenophobic or they may distrust an alien, distant political system. They may believe that Europe is not democratic. They may fear losing national sovereignty to Brussels.
But at the core of the older Brexiter’s thinking is a combination of nostalgia, uncertainty and bloody-mindedness. Their views are born of dissatisfaction with established practices and bewilderment over technological innovation and information overload.
The world is too fast, too mobile and too globalised. Getting out of Europe would mark a return to more old-fashioned values, a half-remembered simpler life when politicians could be trusted, the media was restrained and Britain was sovereign.
There seems to be a nostalgic vision of a Great Britain, untrammelled by external pressures and domestic vicissitudes. We may know it’s wrong but, given the discomfort and mistrust of contemporary politics and the global economy, it seems as though it was somehow better then.
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Image: Pedestrians
Credit: Hernán Piñera
Geoffrey Edwards is Emeritus Reader in European Studies, University of Cambridge
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author and do not represent the views of the University of Cambridge.
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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