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Next month will mark a decade since Britain voted to leave the European Union but, as last week’s local elections demonstrate, the vote continues to cast a long shadow.
The results highlighted the extent to which the governing Labour Party’s support has fractured along lines echoing the referendum.
Labour’s younger voters, chiefly in London and university cities, defected in many cases to the pro-EU Green Party.
But even larger numbers of socially conservative white working-class voters in Wales, Scotland and northern England — the traditional bedrock of Labour’s support — switched to Reform, the insurgent party founded by Nigel Farage, the renowned Brexit campaigner.
