Long Melford, England

Of all the lazy criticisms of Brexit, the laziest is that those who voted to leave the European Union were being “emotional,” not rational. You hear it said most often in London, which voted overwhelmingly to remain.

Yet walking through the Church of the Holy Trinity in this village of fewer than 4,000, I grasped right away why Brexit won. The reason wasn’t emotion but that potent, rooted, ineradicable sense of local and national civilization that is plain to see in England.

Long Melford voted for Brexit, as did nearly 60% of the county of Suffolk, to which it belongs. The village is only 60 miles northeast of London, but the contrast is striking. Long Melford isn’t a melting pot; it is gentle, proud England, and wants to stay that way. There is a belief that being part of a transnational union dilutes England’s essence, and it is not a belief that people easily abandon.

This shouldn’t be mistaken for racism or xenophobia. It is, instead, the purest cultural conservatism. And it is hard not be conservative in a place like Long Melford. The beautiful church through which I walked was completed in 1484. Another preceded it, built in 1050, and the names of the rectors can be traced back to 1198.