Brexit Roadshow

The Brexit Roadshow has served as the Centre's first piece of academic fieldwork. The aim is to engage with communities where the proportion of the electorate who voted to leave the European Union was much higher than was true nationally. In many of these constituencies, in excess of seventy percent of votes were to leave the EU.  The list of potential interview destinations was narrowed down to the 'top ten' based on research from the Royal Holloway's Professor of Politics, Chris Hanretty.

As a university facility based in central Birmingham, the Centre has been able to engage with a large number of remain supporters.  Many have been forthcoming with their opinions and often wanted to emphasise the reasons for their belief in the need to continue to be a part of the EU.  It has been more challenging to engage with those who voted to leave the EU.  In order to adequately understand their motivations for doing so we decided to take to the road and have actively sought out the opinions of those who voted leave.

Where we visited

• Boston and Skegness
• Great Grimsby
• Walsall North
• Stoke on Trent
• Kingston upon Hull
• Canvey Island. 

What we found