The pub, called the Speculation, still had “Vote Leave” posters on its walls, and a fellow drinker exclaimed “Aye!” and banged the counter in agreement.

Sunderland stunned the country when voters overwhelmingly opted to leave Europe in Thursday’s referendum, by 61 percent to 39 percent. It was a far higher vote for Britain’s exit than pollsters had predicted, and it was the first sign that Prime Minister David Cameron’s gamble on staying in the bloc had lost.

Sunderland’s citizens seem to have voted against their own interests. Not only has the city been a big recipient of European money, it is also the home of a Nissan car factory, Britain’s largest, and automobiles produced there are exported, duty free, to Europe. The plant, which absorbed workers from the dying shipyards after it opened 30 years ago, became a symbol of the benefits of European Union membership, and Nissan opposed the British exit.

Yet Edward Pennal, 64, a former army mechanic who voted to leave, took the uncertainty in stride, dismissing it as scaremongering. “No, I can’t see them cutting off ties,” he said of Nissan, because the company has received government grants to stay in Sunderland. And the pound’s fall is a good thing for exports, he said. “I was very pleased with the result.”

Sunderland’s decision was also a vote against the Labour Party, which pushed for Britain to remain in the union but is no longer seen by many voters in Sunderland as a champion of the working class. Instead, they and working-class voters across Britain are increasingly moving right over the issue of immigration, switching to the anti-Brussels, anti-immigrant U.K. Independence Party, which campaigned for the exit so Britain could control its borders.