I’m not convinced that the adherents of the UK and Western European far-right count Polish people as white, despite the typical Polish skin color. This is like how Italian and Irish people were often not considered white in the late 19th and early 20th century in the US, and probably in the UK too although I’m less familiar with that.

I think that was true 10 years ago, but now it seems to have evened off a bit. Generally speaking (in my circles and the circles I see around me with family etc) there’s an acceptance of the “polish plumber” as a hard working person getting by these days.

How I long for a Polish plumber. Hard workers, better skilled, better value.

Now you just can't get a plumber at all. I'm not sure they really were "taking British jobs" after all.

I don't remember seeing any emphasis on immigration from the remainers. The remainers simply wanted to stay part of the EU for the economic and travel benefits. The Brexit campaign made immigration a focus point, and of course both Johnson and Farage had to provide some reasoning about replacing EU immigration. Once out of the EU, the only other immigration to replace it with was non-EU. So their argument was: we don't want to be in the EU, we still need immigration, so we'll replace it with skilled non-EU immigration.

Basically the UK replaced the culturally and economically close immigration from EU with culturally and economically far immigration from other countries, while also kneekapping itself economically...

And finally: "This is one reason a lot of us Brown people voted for Brexit. not my main reason, which was mostly opposition to further integration (the commitment to "ever closer integration") and some aspects of EU decision making, legislation and regulation."

Perhaps. Or perhaps it is the very common pattern of immigrants voting against further immigrants coming in. Notably, a very significant LatAm immigrant continent in the US are staunch Republican voters against immigration. Sure, they might come up with a variety of excuses why they are voting against their fellow countrymen being able to immigrate like they did, but ultimately it's quite clearly an attempt to burn the bridge behind them to close off further competiton for their own jobs.

It's normal for racists to create excuses for why they are not racist, and more generally, fascists to create excuses for wby they are not fascist. You have to learn to see through it.

Like, in the USA, they always complain about illegal immigration but say legal immigration is perfectly okay. If that were actually the case, they'd want an easy streamlined legal process. But they don't, because the point of the legal process being difficult is to keep certain types of people out. They're actually not okay with the kinds of certain kinds of people which mostly correlate to the ones who can't get through the legal process, and use "they're just too lazy to follow the process and if they followed the process I'd be fine with them" as a memetic shield against criticism.

The first point is true, but

> Remainers wanted less non-EU immgration and more EU immigration.

This is not true. I don't think there's a consensus on what 'remainers' wanted to do with non-EU immigration.

Rishi Sunak, our current prime minister, is brown, and I don't think that's really come into play at all.

Sadiq Khan is Muslim which is more of a wedge issue, but I would say in my circles, ULEZ, and more generally anti car sentiment, is a huge concern.

In my experience as a Brit no-one really cares about skin colour but about culture, religion (if fundamentalist), accent, etc. It basically just comes down to "are you integrated". I don't think that it's unfair to expect people to fit into society.

That's pretty much what the immigration debate is all about. If a Nigerian millionare comes over, brings his family, whacks them in a private school, basically no-one cares. Bring more.

It's unskilled, uneducated people who have issues with integration that basically everyone wants to limit.

Looks like concerns around ULEZ were way overblown, given Khan's comfortable win. A lot of noise drummed up by a small minority of fruitcakes on social media.