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Weekend reading: Teasing apart the motivation to Leave

Good reads from around the Web.

Take the stereotype of a Leave voter at face value, and they’ve already struck a blow against the wealthy and pretentious urban South.

According to an article in The Telegraph [1], the price of coffee is rising due to the declining pound.

Stephen Hurst, founder of Mercanta, a speciality coffee importer based in Kingston upon Thames, estimates a rise of 60-70p on a kilo of beans, taking the price to around £4.95.

Richard Champion, deputy chief investment officer at Canaccord Genuity Wealth Management, said: “We don’t expect sterling to recover anytime in the near future so we’d expect this to wash through into higher prices.

“It’s another clear example of what we’re going to see happening in the coming months as higher import costs filter through.”

Ye, the infamous latte factor [2] is about to become that little bit more taxing.

Oh I know, there’s now a Starbucks in Hartlepool. I appreciate, too, that maybe you voted Leave even though you live in a nice house in the Home Counties.

I wrote about [3] some such voters, remember.

Indeed back in the earliest Days After Brexit Day, there were a lot of clashes here and elsewhere due to Leave voters feeling misunderstood.

So while I think generalizations can be helpful when studying broad trends such as how a country voted, it’s true they can be superficial and perhaps misleading.

Getting personal

To that end, there’s a developing view that aside from ethnicity (the elephant in the room, maybe) a big predictor of how somebody chose to vote is how socially conservative they are.

According to [4] a London School of Economics blog:

Britain’s choice to vote Leave, we are told, is a protest by those left behind by modernisation and globalisation. London versus the regions, poor versus rich.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Brexit voters, like Trump supporters, are motivated by identity, not economics. Age, education, national identity and ethnicity are more important than income or occupation.

But to get to the nub of the Leave-Remain divide, we need to go even deeper, to the level of attitudes and personality.

These personality factors include attitudes to immigration and – most strikingly – whether a particular voter thinks we should bring back the death penalty.

Now, you might argue we’ve just swapped one stereotype for another here. It certainly won’t tell you every nuance behind a Leave vote – or necessarily describe YOU.

Some 29% of people who want to string ’em up would prefer to remain part of the EU, remember. And 20% of Remainers quite fancy a hanging.

Yet as we struggle to reconcile a new relationship with Europe in the light of this vote, it’s going to be vital to tease out the real motivations behind the decision to Leave.

No side is going to get everything it wants from any negotiation. We’ll need to get the best political and economic bangs for our buck from the compromises.

Identifying this conservative Leave instinct – which I tactfully personified as 50-something Barry Blimp in my piece [3], and which the LSE researchers more kindly refer to as the ‘Settler’ personality type – could be valuable.

It may also point to why the debate has been so ill-tempered, especially as the researcher adds:

By contrast, people oriented toward success and display (‘Prospectors’), or who prioritise expressive individualism and cultural equality (‘Pioneers’) voted Remain.

If pitting these kinds of people against death penalty supporting Leavers doesn’t sound like the classic ingredients of a family punch up, then you clearly haven’t been to my house at Christmas.

Incidentally, don’t get caught up on “success” there, Barry. We know you did very well for yourself in your career and you have a big house to prove it.

The question is how to reconcile Barry’s stance – maybe your stance – with the more disenfranchised and widespread Leave contingent, given the economic interests seem so very different.

Often, in fact, contradictory.

Brexit quarantine facility

From the blogs

Making good use of the things that we find…

Passive investing

Active investing

Other articles

Product of the week: Coventry Building Society [28] has unveiled the cheapest ever 10-year mortgage, with a fixed rate of just 2.39%, reports The Guardian [29]. You’ll need a 50% deposit to get your hands on it.

Mainstream media money

Some links are Google search results – in PC/desktop view these enable you to click through to read the piece without being a paid subscriber of that site.1 [30]

Passive investing

Active investing

A word from a broker

Other stuff worth reading

Book of the week: Post-Brexit shuffling has taken the largest position in my ‘don’t do this at home!’ portfolio to the 10% limit. (Hopefully I’ll soon face the difficult issue of it breaching that self-imposed maximum under its own steam!) Warren Buffett thinks you should [45] use trackers, but if you’re going to go active, he’s a focused investing man at heart. I keep meaning to read the recent book Concentrated Investing [46] to brush up on the subject, but if like me you’ve read all of Buffett’s letters (twice) then you probably won’t find much new to get into.

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  1. Note some articles can only be accessed through the search results if you’re using PC/desktop view (from mobile/tablet view they bring up the firewall/subscription page). To circumvent, switch your mobile browser to use the desktop view. On Chrome for Android: press the menu button followed by “Request Desktop Site”. [ [51]]