THE EU referendum result was met in Scotland with puzzlement at English enthusiasm for Brexit, and despair. “What did they go and do that for?” is the question that still lingers about the 53% of English voters who backed Leave, compared to just 38% in Scotland.

The UK, often termed a family of nations, certainly behaves like one. Just as you might wonder how you can possibly share a granny with the cousin who tweets “Piers Morgan for president!”, the strangeness of our familiar neighbours can cause serious brain ache.

The referendum result has entrenched a long-held belief among some that England is inherently more right wing than Scotland, a pub debate trope that tends to be aired in support of independence.

But is it really true? If you look at the available evidence, the answer is: not by much. England just seems so much more Daily Maily because of the ludicrous Westminster voting system that squeezes out progressive smaller parties like the Greens and the Lib Dems. More than half a million votes were cast for the Greens in England & Wales in 2017, electing just one MP, while there were 274,088 Lib Dem votes cast for every Lib Dem elected. The figure for Labour was 47,678, and for the Tories, just 42,352. In 2015, the Conservatives and Labour together got just 73% of votes but 98% of seats. It’s not just Scots who feel ignored by Westminster.

In contrast, Scots have a voting system for Holyrood that much more accurately reflects the political make up of the land, and a political scene in which five parties flourish.

Of course, none of this explains the pro-Brexit sentiment in England, but to assume that the Leave vote indicated half of England had fallen for hard right ideology would be mistaken.

For one thing, there’s a long-standing socialist case for leaving the EU which beguiles one Jeremy Corbyn, among others, and according to which the EU is attuned to the needs of big business, offers weak democratic oversight, forbids much state aid and has free market ideology written into its DNA. (The fact that it also has the might to stand up to the likes of mobile phone companies, guarantees high employment and environmental standards that could be at risk from a post-Brexit UK Government desperate to strike trade deals, and is home to a number of flourishing state-run companies like those dominating the UK energy market, does rather challenge that perspective, but never mind about that for now.)

Above all, the Brexit vote was a cry of pain from working class voters who feel the political establishment ignores them.

Which brings us to immigration. Is it right wing to vote to reduce immigration? It can be, of course (and no doubt often is), but it doesn’t have to be.

While at one extreme there may be troubled souls occupying the remoter regions of the internet who’d like to spend the UK aid budget rebuilding Martello towers around the south coast of England, other voters are just a bit worried about their livelihoods. The big picture research shows that immigration boosts GDP and does not negatively impact on unemployment, while any negative impact on wages is small, and typically offset in the long term by wage rises.

But if you are a low skilled, low paid worker, subsisting on a very small pay packet, then the research also shows that the “small depressive effect” on wages is liable to hit you the hardest. Unfortunately, this group has seen their predicament ruthlessly exploited by the hard right.

In any case, the contrast between Scotland and England over attitudes to immigration is greatly exaggerated. Research released this month by polling god Professor John Curtice reiterated that attitudes to immigration in Scotland are broadly similar to the rest of the UK.

But wait a minute, some will say, England would have been a Tory fiefdom for decades if it weren’t for the lefty Scots giving Labour a leg up (with their one-time crop of Labour MPs). In fact, the only election the Tories would have won without those pesky Scots was in 1964, while Cameron would have had an outright majority in 2010 instead of having to wait until 2015.

No, arguably the real political boundary in the UK is not the Berwick-Carlisle line, or the North-South divide, but a rural-metropolitan schism that affects England and, to some extent, Scotland. Those media election graphics may show a sea of blue but in reality, a lot of Tory constituents are sheep.

So England isn’t so very different from Scotland after all. Glasgow voters probably have much more in common with Liverpudlians than with those of Aberdeenshire or Hampshire.

And yet people in Scotland voted to Remain while the English voted to Leave, so if all else is broadly equal, then why did that happen?

Political leadership happened, and the dominance of the SNP. All the Holyrood party leaders were resolutely pro-Remain at the time of the referendum. SNP voters proved more likely to vote Remain regardless of any personal misgivings about EU membership. In short, the strong positive case for remaining in the EU was made unwaveringly and with a pretty united front by Scotland’s political leaders, most influentially the SNP. What a contrast with Westminster.

And so where from here? Many in Scotland are fed up about Brexit and if it goes ahead, a critical number of erstwhile No voters could back independence.

Some will do so strictly because they want to be part of the EU, but others will be motivated by Scotland’s wishes being overruled. They will be all the more irked because the government that delivered them into this mess was a Tory one, and they feel that England keeps electing Tory Governments against the better judgment of Scotland.

And with Scots fuming about the iniquitous behaviour of governments they haven’t elected, any PM who wanted to try and deflect the break up of the UK could make a start by championing a change in the electoral system to something more proportional. This is the only way to give a real voice to all voters: Scots, Welsh, Irish and English; northern and southern; urban and rural; Leave and Remain. If the system is broken, this would be the way to start fixing it.