An eight-year-old girl was asked to leave her London school just weeks after the 2016 EU referendum because of her father’s prominent role in the campaign to leave the European Union, the former MP Douglas Carswell has disclosed.
Writing in Anthony Seldon’s book The Brexit Effect, 2016–2026, which is being serialised in The Independent, Mr Carswell says the decision was part of a “relentless, personal and nasty” backlash against those who led the Vote Leave campaign. “A few weeks after the result, my eight-year-old daughter was asked to leave her London school,” he writes. The former UKIP and Conservative MP describes the episode as an “unprovoked” act of hostility, adding that the real acrimony of the referendum erupted not before the vote but afterward.
Mr Carswell claims that before the referendum, Leave supporters were “dismissed as eccentrics”, but that in its wake “the media recast us as racist extremists or even Kremlin stooges”. He disputes reports of a post-Brexit surge in hate crime, writing: “We were told Brexit caused a nonexistent surge in hate crime.” The demonisation, he argues, was directed not only at prominent campaigners but also at their families.
Schools have become a focal point for the wider social division that followed the referendum. Teachers have reported increased anxiety among pupils, with some children misunderstanding political events and worrying about European friends. Parents have been observed shouting at staff and other children in playgrounds, reflecting a broader societal anger. In one separate but related case, Lambeth Council – a Remain-supporting area – has blamed Brexit for proposed primary school closures due to declining pupil numbers, a claim that has drawn criticism from opponents who say the council should focus on its own shortcomings.
Brexit leadership under fire
Mr Carswell, who co-founded the Vote Leave campaign and served as an MP from 2005 to 2017, writes that he was “elated” when the campaign won. But he reserves his harshest criticism for those who led it. He accuses Boris Johnson and Michael Gove of “making a mess of it within hours” at the post-victory press conference, where they appeared “shifty, almost apologetic”. He says the two then “fell out”, with Mr Gove “knifing” Mr Johnson, allowing Theresa May to become prime minister. Britain, he argues, is “still living with the consequences of the witless way she managed Britain’s Brexit negotiations”.
Mr Johnson did not fare any better when he succeeded her, Mr Carswell claims. “After becoming prime minister and a commanding Commons majority with a pledge to ‘get Brexit done’, Boris Johnson had a golden opportunity for transformative reform. Yet he failed at every turn. Instead of securing our borders, he left them wide open.”
Mr Carswell, who defected from the Conservatives to UKIP in 2014 and later moved to the United States, where he has served since 2021 as president and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, summarises his frustration with the post-referendum political class: “Vote Leave might have gained us self-government. We have yet to govern ourselves well. Britain might have left the EU. Tragically, we still have the European disease.”
