A large section of the Brexit vote was made up of old people who were worried about Turks coming to Britain even though they had never met an immigrant, Sir Vince Cable has suggested.

Sir Vince acknowledged the characterisation was "slightly facetious" and said there was undoubtedly a mixture of factors behind Brexit, with left-behind voters in towns in the north "clearly disaffected" since the financial crisis.

The former business secretary said the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition he was a part of had helped the economy recover, but admitted there was still hardship among those communities, with pressure on real wages and people "dissatisfied".

He characterised much of the Tory Brexit vote as older people he had encountered in church halls in places like Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset - and suggested they had been told lies.

Sir Vince Cable: I can see Brexit not happening

Sir Vince said: "They were overwhelmingly elderly people who were obsessed by the worry of 80 million Turks coming over and being in their village. Immigration was a massive issue for them although they never actually encountered any.


"I'm putting it slightly facetiously, but in that age group, which was a very powerful one, mostly Conservative voting, there was a sense of nostalgia - the Britain that they'd been brought up in and loved and were comfortable with was no longer there.

"There were in addition to that undoubtedly what you would call the left-behind: not the first-tier cities in the north of England like Manchester and Newcastle and Sheffield and others which were on the edge or pro-Remain.

"But some of the smaller towns, you know the Blackburns, the Blackpools, the Hartlepools, where there is a kind of... a bitterness about economic failure and decline over many years and that is a deep-rooted problem we have to address."

Johnson: EU can 'go whistle' over exit bill

In a wide-ranging discussion during a Westminster lunch, the likely next leader of the Liberal Democrats said:

:: The possibility of Brexit not happening is becoming "very real"

:: Theresa May had reached out to Labour to try to fashion a "grand coalition" to force through a "hard Brexit"

:: The Lib Dems are in a good position to "break through the middle" because Mrs May has "trashed" David Cameron's Tory modernisation project

Sir Vince said politicians, civil servants and voters are increasingly thinking Brexit will not happen.

He said "enormous" difficulties will become apparent during the exit negotiations, which will amount to "Euratom times a hundred".

Parliament has 'active role' to play on Brexit

The Prime Minister's desire to leave the European civil nuclear regulator has been the subject of a row among Tories in recent days.

"More and more people, politicians and civil servants (are) saying actually this thing isn't going to happen and it's based on several things," Sir Vince said.

"I think the sheer enormous complexity and difficulty, and then something like Euratom... an issue that nobody had thought about, but we've got Euratom times a hundred out there and nobody can see a way through that."

Sir Vince continued: "So when you add all that together you start to ask the question well how can this possibly happen?

"I'm not putting my reputation as Mystic Meg on the line in saying I'm absolutely confident it would happen, but I think the possibility of this just not getting any further is now becoming very real."