Yes, really. Nothing apart from some hysterical press ranting ever suggested that the man's murder was related to the vote, still less that his presence had had any effect on it. Xenophobia is not confined to the UK and racial hatred has been seen elsewhere not awfully long ago (something happened in Germany about the middle of the last century, I seem to recall).
I know nothing of the area of Glasgow you mention. How can you imagine that the presence of Asians had any effect at all on the vote? It's ludicrous.
Dismissing the votes of 17 million people as motivated by hatred of foreigners is phenomenally arrogant, as is pretending that people can't tell the difference between Europeans, even exotic eastern Europeans, and Asians, or that only voters' stupidity could have led to the result. There were many different reasons why Leave won, which I have encountered in tediously extensive discussions in the months leading up to the vote.
Jeremy
What may be ludicrous to you, Jeremy, is perfectly obvious to me.
17 million may not have voted
exclusively on racial hatred, but xenophobia had been the tool used by those dickheads in UKIP, and by its fellow travellers in whichever party. Remember the posters, the buses? I get UK tv here perfectly clearly - if too loudly at times; my fibre optic-provided Internet is probably better that what's available in many regions of the UK. I also see newspapers and have family still in the thick of it there. Pretty much the entire campaign of the Leavers was based on foreigners and the damage they supposedly were doing us; that is, when they weren't just plain lying through their teeth about the millions of diverted pounds they were going to make available to the great British sacred cow: the NHS. Did they give a shit about the City? Did they stop to think about whether it and its peripheral beneficiaries might be affected? Of course not: to millions, the City, wealth creators, simply repesents the enemy! Did they ever say exactly which jobs those dreadful foreigners had stolen from us? They did their hate shit well: so well that Trump's just duplicating it on his patch.
Unless you have run your own dedicated surveys nationwide, have access to special newspapers the rest of us do not, I respectfully submit that I probably know as much about the zeitgeist and the popular pulse as do you.
Your reference to the Nazi period does nothing to absolve our own, home-grown crazies; I'm surpised you raised the point. Well, at least by saying that it isn't confined to the UK, you do admit that it sure does exist in the UK, which is some sort of progress.
To what logical reasons would you, then, ascribe the Leaver victory? Hardly from a considered business perspective when we are about to ditch our best, bird-in-hand clients, lose the City's power in the world... but that it doesn't matter, because the world will flock to work with us through some imaginary notion that we are the best-loved little country in the world? The US thought that it was the biggest most loved one, but reality doesn't bear that out - especially in today's political climate. I remember the interview with the car worker in Sunderland who, when asked whether he felt we were putting his job with a Japanese company at risk by leaving the Union sniggered, and said hey, we have the best engineers, they can't do without us! Yep, that's the mindset that thinks it's all gonna be all right on the night... That it's our
current tax relationship with Europe, as well as the pool of available hands desperately keen to be employed has nothing to do with it, just reveals how blind folks are when they follow leaders, especially those with but a single item on their agenda: OUT! It didn't seem to occur to that worker that Poland has equally skilled engineers
with vastly lower wage expectations, and Spain already hosts Ford and VW amongst other multi-national companies; what would it take to expand that factory base? Just a signature on the dotted line. The enthusiasm sure exists here, as do the skills! And believe me, Europe is just as clever - if not more so - than the UK at bending inconvenient rules about slush funds. The moment the returns from post-Brexit, foreign-owned UK-based factories go south, so do the companies move. Hell, Scotland's nationalists face similar revenue problems: you can't skin a cat if that cat can still jump.
But hey, we shall never see eye to eye on this, so what's left to say? Nada.