Are there lingering regrets in the bastion of Brexit?

Ten years after the EU referendum, Boston, the town that became the face of Leave, remains deeply divided. Hopes of change have given way to frustration and a sense that the arguments of 2016 are far from over, writes Colin Drury

- Colin Drury

Tell the average person in Boston that you'd like to chat about Brexit and there is, it seems, an immediate wariness.

“Anyone smart will not comment on this,” says a shop assistant at European Food & Wine in the town centre. “Too many differences. Too many people are upset.”

A tattoo artist feels the same. “Whatever I say, it’s going to annoy someone,” the 38-year-old says. “It’s not a subject I get involved in.”

It is exactly 10 years this week since the UK voted to leave the European Union - and this South Lincolnshire market town wanted out more than anywhere. Some 75.6 per cent of voters here balloted in favour of Brexit in the 2016 referendum - the largest proportion anywhere in the UK. A combination of high EU immigration (one in five people here are Eastern European) and a pulsing desire to end decades of economic decline were said to be among key driving factors of the anti-union sentiment

Yet spend time speaking to Bostonians today and the almost universal view, it seems, is that little has changed in the intervening 10 years. Or, if it has, then it’s only changed for the worse.

Those who voted Remain say this is proof that the whole project was misguided and damaging. But those who voted out say, in fact, it’s proof that more should have been done to make leaving a success. When presented with data - like the Bank of England’s recent estimates that the economy has taken a 6 per cent hit because of Brexit - such Leave voters often counter that this merely illustrates how the whole process has not gone far enough. Which is to say, views here appear only to have become more - not less - entrenched.