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    1. “I’d still vote the same way,” says Jim Venness, 50, as he walks to work along Boston’s high street. “I’m not a short-sighted person; I know it’s going to take five to 10 years minimum to do Brexit properly. A lot of people think it’s going to happen overnight, but it’s not.”

      “The only thing that changed at the time was that [David Cameron said he can’t work any more](https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron-resigns-after-brexit-11934?ico=in-line_link),” he adds wryly. “That’s about it really.”

      Boston, in Lincolnshire, was the most leave-voting area in the UK, with more than 75 per cent of its population wanting out of the European Union compared to the national average of 52 per cent.

      In the run-up to the election, **i** has been travelling across the UK to find out how life has changed since Brexit – and how this experience might affect their vote on 4 July.

      [Farmers in Wales](https://inews.co.uk/news/brexit-forced-farm-stop-sheep-lost-thousands-3132453?ico=in-line_link), [fishermen in Scotland](https://inews.co.uk/news/im-a-fisherman-and-lifelong-tory-who-voted-brexit-i-wont-vote-for-them-again-3139146?ico=in-line_link) and [border dwellers in Northern Ireland](https://inews.co.uk/news/scam-from-day-one-how-brexit-changed-northern-ireland-3141973?ico=in-line_link) overwhelmingly said their experience with Brexit had been negative, but here in Boston, many say they wouldn’t think twice about voting again to exit the EU.

      [Immigration](https://inews.co.uk/opinion/real-truth-immigration-hard-sunak-farage-stomach-3143734?ico=in-line_link) drove them to vote leave, they say, and remains their top issue when considering how to vote at the general election. But not everyone here agrees, with some Boston residents feeling frustration at the decision.

      Boston is considered a Conservative safe seat, with MP Matt Warman enjoying a [25,000 majority at the last election](https://members.parliament.uk/constituency/3348/election/397). In 2015, the year before the Brexit referendum, [UKIP came second](https://members.parliament.uk/constituency/3348/election/369), winning a third of the vote, but dropped into third in 2017 and didn’t contest the last election.

      This year, Mr Venness says he plans to vote Reform because he likes leader Nigel Farage.

      “He doesn’t use big long highfalutin words with more than six letters,” he says. “I’m an English person. I’ve got nothing against [foreign] nationals, but I’m from this country, I’m not very well educated, and he speaks my sort of language.”

      However, he says he thinks all of the major parties – Reform included – are “all going to piss in the same pot”.

    2. Beanandcheesepastry on

      They still probably think we are in the EU because we have friendly relations with European countries

    3. martzgregpaul on

      Farage will speak any “language” that gets him money or power. Including ones that are mutually exclusive.

    4. CautiousAccess9208 on

      Wasn’t Brexit good enough for these people? They don’t even know what they’re voting for. 

    5. Farage is very good at blathering on, but when there’s a whiff of work to do he disappears. He’s workshy, hence why he’s a kept man (see Aaron Banks).

      How anyone thinks he’s a good politician is beyond reason. He stirs the pot on a professional level (paid for by whoever pays the best) and then runs.

      As an MEP he never bothered to turn up to fishery committee meetings but had the audacity to get on a boat on the Thames acting as the (late to the party) voice of fishermen and women.

      People rallied around him because they wrongly believed what came out of his mouth during the Leave campaign but the moment people voted leave he disappeared claiming job done when the real graft was to come, all so he could buzz around Trump like a fly to faeces (which coincidentally Trump allegedly stinks of due to excessive drug use).

      Then when Brexit wasn’t going his or his handlers way his Brexit Party decided to stir the pot again ahead of December 2020 but then disappeared to become some halfwit TV personality on some gutter news echo chamber channel.

      Anyone who thinks he’s a good politician, let alone “speaks their language”, needs their head examined. He’s a grifter. A wolf that does an appalling job dressing up like a sheep for incredibly dumb sheep who’ll believe anything.

      It’s a good thing you can only vote for Reform on Saturday, today is a test vote for the polls (obviously joking but let’s face it, Reform voters and candidates probably burn through their braincells getting up in the morning and would believe anything).

    6. GunstarGreen on

      I hate how the goalposts for Brexit keep moving. It went from us having £350million immediately available to the NHS, to Brexit not being doable for 3 years, to Brexit being a short term hit, to being a medium term hit. Now we are at “it’ll be a decade before we see the benefit.” So 18 years after we voted for it we MIGHT see some good developments? In the meantime we have to have the lowest growth of the G7 nations. Oh and all that freedom to control our borders has lead to £72million cost per deported illegal migrants. 

      Honestly, when you ask pro-Brexit folk to name one good thing it’s done it’s always so nebulous and vague like “we took back control”. There’s nothing I can point to that suggests it’s done this nation a lick of good 

    7. One_Success_7076 on

      > “He doesn’t use big long highfalutin words with more than six letters,” he says.

      An actual quote.

    8. Urban_Polar_Bear on

      I saw the headline and thought “please don’t be Boston”.

      I grew up in Boston and still visit every other year, it’s really sad to see what the town has become. The high street is mostly dead, it’s a mixture of phone shops, pawn shops and charity shops.

      It’s kind of ironic how anti Europe the town was considering the European population are what are keeping the town alive.

      Boston suffers from a brain drain as there are no opportunities for the young and the nearest city is an hour away.

      I think it must be easy to fall into the trap of blaming someone else when you’re living in a zombie town and there’s no real way of saving it.

    9. nerdowellinever on

      It’s like how in certain Americans areas they will keep voting republican even tho all their services are suffering, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida to name a few..

      Voting against their own interests as they’re blinded by their racism and bigotry.

      Dying to own the libs..

    10. AgeingChopper on

      Really?  You went to an elite public school then worked in the city due you ?

    11. I really feel sorry for the people of Clacton. If they do vote for Nigel Farage then they’ll have no one representing them in Westminster. We all know that his goal is to get inside Westminster and shit stir. That’s all. He doesn’t care about the people of Clacton, he only cares about the grift.

    12. “The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for the Axe, for the Axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood, he was one of them.”

      Turkish Proverb

      Sums up Rich Farage and his white poor working class voters.

    13. I remember listening to an NUT rep try to claim that Boston was ‘the crime capital of Britain’ in ’16 because of EU membership and FOM. People can be educated and still thick as two short planks.

    14. > “He doesn’t use big long highfalutin words with more than six letters,” he says. “I’m an English person. I’ve got nothing against [foreign] nationals, but I’m from this country, I’m not very well educated, and he speaks my sort of language.”

      I count 11 highfalutin words in that phrase. Did your dad even die in the pits mate?

    15. TheThreeGabis on

      If Farage “speaks your language” you should be terrified of your language.

    16. deathly_quiet on

      I know a bloke in Boston who voted Leave because, and I quote, “there’s too many *insert Pakistani slur here* working in the NHS.”

      This was a thing. It happened.

      The average IQ in Boston is not world class, I’ll say that much.

    17. The sheer volume of Reform posts on social media, often prefaced with “Without sounding like a conspiracy theorist”, has been quite a surprise. There’s a fair few in the boomerbook car groups that I’m a member of, which means I often have to bite my digital lip and just block them, so not all obviously bots and trolls. Apparently Farage “just makes sense” and “no one else has said they will sort out our farming”. I just despair about people and then remember Brexit happened and that a big chunk of the electorate are thick as mince.

    18. Aggressive_Plates on

      But Reddit told me mass immigration is an unalloyed benefit to the working class areas of the UK

    19. Hemingwavvves on

      I like how Farage (and the media quite frequently) frame Reform as speaking for ‘normal people’ but the actual people everyone knows who vote for reform are like you’re one weird uncle who starts stupid arguments every Christmas, the crazy lady in your office everyone hates, your dad’s horrible mate from high school who does sex tourism holidays in Thailand etc.

    20. These are the type of people to shoot themselves in the foot and still blame the gun.

    21. RegionalHardman on

      My local reform candidate is a solicitor for Shell. Real man of the people

    22. Underscore_Blues on

      Random guy say it was going to take 5-10 years for Brexit to work.

      The vote was 8 years ago and we left 4.5 years ago. Clock’s ticking mate.

    23. Gooner-Astronomer749 on

      He does well in older, pro-leave, anti-immigration settings and rural areas. So basically the old labour areas and Tory consistuences in the countryside. 

    24. Long_Age7208 on

      The working age reform voters who claim immigrants steal jobs are just lazy little twats who will not work in manual labour.

    25. The irony of patriotism being a big sale for your party while being the most harmful to said country out of all the parties by a country mile.

    26. It is totally understandable why he would vote for the Reform Party. I have family that moved from Boston. They would no longer go out on weekends drinking because they felt unsafe. Driving through Boston feels like being in another country, with groups of men sitting around drinking by the side of the road. Working-class people are sick of the number of immigrants and rise in knife crime in their town.

      Lincolnshire Police recording a 25% increase in knife-related offences from 2018 to 2019
      According to the 2021 Census, 23.6% of Boston’s population was born outside of the UK.

    27. Crazy-Audience-3743 on

      Why do people who voted leave or for Farage get a free pass considering it’s been so crap for the country as a whole? People should vote for whoever they want, but when they’ve voted for things that made other people’s lives and businesses so much harder, why are they so glib about doing it again? Farage couldn’t deliver a birthday card, let alone complex political strategy. Our town is shit now, but it’s got nothing to do with small boats, but it’s like everyone else is eating mushrooms.

    28. Waste-Block-2146 on

      “I’m not very well educated” – yep, this sums up all we need to know about this pro-Leave town.

      You think the UK government is going to be able to do a proper “Brexit” after all this time? They can’t even deliver HS2 or anything remotely useful for this country except line their pockets at our expense.

    29. Rough-Chemist-4743 on

      I’m old enough to remember him as an MEP. Prick barely ever voted. He’s a fraud. I feel really sorry for the people of Clacton.