There’s a simple explanation for the Brexit ‘hate crime’ spike

A New Year is upon us and a new wave of racism, bigotry and xenophobia is meant to be stalking our land. That’s according to a Sky poll released on Monday which proclaimed that ‘Britain is more racist and less happy since Brexit vote’. If this made you check your pulse and wonder what racism has started coursing through your veins since June 23rd, fear not. The headline does not reflect reality but simply some peoples’ perception of reality. It is the result of a question in the poll which asked people not whether they felt more or less racist since last June, but to answer the question ‘Would you say Britain is more or less racist than a year ago?’ To this question 57 per cent said ‘more racist’ with just six per cent saying ‘less racist’.

I can understand why some people might have come to that conclusion. More than a half a year of headlines and opinion pieces interpreting the vote to leave the EU as one great big racist hate-crime will have that effect on people. But is it true? This is a question many people proclaim themselves interested in, while very few demonstrate anything much in the way of follow-through.

I have written here before about the strange claim that, emboldened by the Brexit result the British people suddenly turned against the gays. Indeed in October I posited the more likely possibility that rather than the ‘Leave’ vote turning people homophobic, it is more likely that the constant urging by the police and other authorities that minorities should report ‘hate-crimes’ and should report as hate-crimes anything they ‘perceive as such’ may – when added to the lowering of the bar for a hate-crime to ‘something mean somebody said to me on social media’ – together provide an altogether more likely explanation for the figures.

On Sky