MSNBC Host: Britain Left The EU Because The Population Is Xenophobic [VIDEO]

MSNBC host Craig Melvin concluded that the reason Britain left the European Union was because their voters are xenophobic.

In an interview Friday, Melvin asked The Daily Beast World News editor Christopher Dickey how the Brexit vote “broke down demographically” and Dickey replied, “[Y]ou can look at a map actually and get a pretty good general idea of how things broke down.” (RELATED: BREXIT: UK Votes To Leave European Union In Shock Result)

“The people who put this proposition through, who decided to get out of Europe, were essentially in the shires outside, the small cities, the small towns, outside of London,” Dickey said. “In London, the heart of the economic life of Great Britain, the vote was massively for staying in the European Union. In Scotland, it was to stay in the European Union. In Northern Ireland, it was to stay in the European Union. But the vast majority of the population of Great Britain is English and the English in the shires, as they say, they voted to get the hell out.” (RELATED: Oklahoma City Mayor: If Texas Was Given The Opportunity To Secede, They Would [VIDEO])

Melvin followed up asking about how the different age groups split on voting whether or not to leave the European Union.

“Well, one of the things that surprised people looking at the demographics of this is that they expected the old English voters to be very conservative and to tend to go for the policy of leaving the European Union but a lot of young english people decided they wanted to leave the European Union too,” Dickey said.

“A lot of it has to do with, as earlier commentators said, the fear that was driving this, the idea that terrorism, immigration, migrants, all of that was somehow threatening the British way of life and threatening the possibilities of getting jobs for young people, even though there was very little proof of that. It’s all about building walls to try and keep the status quo and say ‘we can improve things if we can keep the status quo and keep our, as they say, independence.'”

Melvin then summarized Dickey’s argument saying, “It sounds like some old-fashioned xenophobia.”

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines xenophobia as the “fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign.”

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