Politicians and pundits are still scrambling to understand and explain the reasons behind Britain’s stunning exit from the European Union.  

My first thought was the debt crisis in Greece had a lot to do with it. But other explanations emerged that sounded more plausible. Wages in the UK, for example, experienced a drubbing with the influx of the foreign-born workers, which doubled between 1993 and 2014.

A more controversial (and, hence, less cited) reason was offered by Ben Stein. Writing at the American Spectator, Stein said the Brexit was caused by an epidemic of sexual assault that took place in the wake of said immigration.

“The Battle of Brexit, Britain, and Brussels was lost by Europe on the playing fields and in the alleys and immigrant housing of the British town of Rotherham.” There, over a period of twenty years, over 1,000 British girls were assaulted, raped, held captive, gang raped by Muslim immigrants to the UK, especially from Middle Eastern countries and Pakistan. It was a stupendous scandal, apparently duplicated all over Britain on a greater or lesser scale.

It has also been duplicated and then some in Sweden. In the wake of a decision about ten years ago that allowed about 1.5 million Middle Easterners and Somalis into Sweden, Stockholm’s rape rate has gone up by a factor of about fifteen. Most of it has come from these immigrants and their sons.

Not all, but a lot of white and Asian Europeans are sick of it. They don’t want any more immigrants. They’re done with Political Correctness. They’re sick of taking in refugees and seeing their good deeds go paid with rape.

Stein is referring to a report that, according to the BBC, found that at least 1,400 children of Rotherham had been sexually exploited over a period of several years. The exploitation included rape, beatings, and trafficking. A professor quoted in the BBC story says 1,400 is a “conservative estimate.”

Stein seems to be suggesting the assaults were happening all over the UK and the authorities were choosing to ignore the crimes (like they did in Rotherham).   

Intellectual Takeout has touched on the difficulty some European nations experienced in their attempts to assimilate foreign-born immigrants. It appears this difficulty was, quite possibly, worse than most Americans had imagined.

What is clear is that immigration was a primary factor—if not the primary factor—in the Brexit decision. Vox cites a pair of recent UK polls showing just how far the UK had soured on immigration.

One poll showed that 45 percent of Brits identified “immigration/race relations” as the most important issue facing the nation. A separate poll showed that 77 percent of Brits believed immigration should be reduced.

Will Britain’s exit from the EU be a blip or the beginning of a trend that sees Western nations dialing back on immigration?

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Jon MiltimoreIntellectual TakeoutFacebook.

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