Ruth Deech: Voting Leave in Hampstead ‘is like coming out’

A leading academic has spoken of being ostracised in liberal circles after admitting she had voted to leave the EU.

Ruth Deech, a Crossbench peer, said some friends in the fashionable North London enclave of Hampstead had even abandoned her after she admitted backing Brexit.

The Spectator magazine reported Baroness Deech as saying: ‘Telling people in Hampstead you voted Leave is a bit like coming out as gay in the 1950s.

‘Even some of your oldest friends suddenly want nothing to do with you.’ 

Hampstead, where the average house price is more than £1 million, was one of the strongest bastions of the Remain campaign during last year’s EU referendum.

Some 76.3 per cent of voters in the area backed remaining in the EU, compared with just 48 per cent nationally.

Lady Deech is a former chairman of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and also previously chaired the Bar Standards Board.

Her comments will underline concerns that many members of the London-based Establishment are so opposed to Brexit that they will seek to undermine it.

Hampstead, where the average house price is more than £1 million, was one of the strongest bastions of the Remain campaign during last year’s EU referendum

During the debate on Brexit in March, Whitehall mandarins and former quango chiefs lined up to speak out against leaving the EU.

At the time, Lady Deech criticised attempts to ‘defy the result of the referendum’.