“If you look at the constituencies that really voted for Brexit in large numbers, they represented the forgotten heartlands of working-class Britain,” said Chris Wells, a UK Independence Party (UKIP) politician in Thanet. “That frustration is still here on these streets.”
Founded in 1993, UKIP has had little success in terms of getting candidates elected to the U.K. Parliament. But its entire mission was Brexit — and the party’s anti-E.U. views resonated and pushed the ruling Conservatives to hold the referendum. Former UKIP leader Nigel Farage counts Trump as a personal friend.
Brexit means the U.K. will lose E.U. funding for regeneration projects, money that has helped revive Margate’s old town and pay for a major art gallery, both key tourist draws.
“All the business owners I know in town are completely anti-Brexit, and they haven’t changed their mind,” said Liam Nabb, who co-owns a bed and breakfast.
Nabb, a Briton raised in Italy who is proud of his European identity, said he felt “physically sick” after the Brexit vote and says many people are “scared” of its implications.
“We’ve already lost so much,” he said, “in terms of our credibility, in terms of our social cohesion.”
More than 300,000 people have signed a petition demanding another referendum, to give the public the final say in any Brexit deal. “We have watched the chaos unfold in Cabinet and the turmoil in negotiations with dismay and foreboding,” the People’s Vote demand reads. “None of us voted for a bad deal or no deal that would wreck our economy.”
But for many Brexit supporters, warnings of harsh economic consequences are lies or distortions by cynical pro-E.U. elites hellbent on protecting a system that has served them well, and they oppose another referendum.
“We’re going to struggle for a few years but we’ll adjust,” said Gary Jones, who has a stall at a vintage goods emporium. “We did well before the E.U. — I was alive back then.”
A fisherman, Steve Barratt, said: “I’m fed-up of people telling me that I didn’t know what I was voting for. The elites didn’t like the result.”
He said that May — who backed staying in the E.U. during the referendum campaign — and other politicians negotiating the divorce deal were “trying to keep us as tightly tied to Europe, their culture and their laws as possible.”
Barratt added: “They’re all on the gravy train. … They don’t want to leave because all they’re thinking about is themselves. … Six months cannot come quickly enough as far as I’m concerned.”
One of Margate’s few residents with a sunny outlook is arguably its most prominent anti-Brexit campaigner.
Sitting in an apartment that has “BLOCK BREXIT” in giant letters in the windows, Rob Yates, a wind farm contract manager, said he feels “surprisingly positive.”
The message, high up on one of Margate’s tallest buildings, prompted a threat of eviction from his landlord but also national publicity and support.
Yates runs street-level pro-E.U. information campaigns and has noted rising numbers of volunteers as well as growing public appetite for another national vote on a final Brexit deal.
“It definitely feels like momentum is changing,” he said. “People are seeing reality and saying, ‘Actually I want to stop this, I want to change the direction of this country.'”