Senior remain supporter and British government minister Alan Duncan has slammed 2016’s Brexit referendum as an artificial blue-collar tantrum, blaming concern around immigration for encouraging people to vote.

The outspoken remarks have left him facing accusations of holding the 17 million British voters who cast their ballot for Brexit in “contempt”.

Addressing a meeting of the Chicago Council of Global Affairs, the Foreign Office minister with a responsibility for Europe and the Americas branded leave voters as hypocrites for not performing menial labour tasks like agriculture. He also appeared to sneer at some remain supporters, who he dismissed as “not habitual voters” who in his opinion were only motivated to vote because of immigration issues, reports The Guardian.

Underlining his belief that Brexit was essentially the fault of the working classes, Duncan said: “You could feel in the last 10 days of the campaign, traditional blue-collar urban Labour opinion going viral for leave. They were stirred up by an image of immigration, which made them angry and throw a bit of a tantrum. That was part of the chemistry that explains the result.”

Poll: Controlling Immigration Is the Public’s Top Brexit Talk Priorityhttps://t.co/WdyF8l2JyY — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) August 20, 2017

Noting that Boston in Lincolnshire voted for Brexit despite using imported labour in local industry, he said: “That is one of the paradoxes. Lincolnshire folk said ‘ooh, they are coming to pinch our jobs’. Well, they would not do the jobs themselves anyway so it was a rather artificial anger.”

UKIP’s new leader Henry Bolton reacted with anger to the comments, calling for the minister to be sacked.

Speaking out Tuesday afternoon, Bolton said of the remarks: “How can a man who is meant to represent the UK in Europe feel that way about the majority of the people in the UK? The old joke about the Foreign Office must be true, it represents foreigners in Britain, rather than the other way round, it is clear that the Minister represents the interests of Europe rather than the interests of the UK.

“The contempt that he shows towards the 17 million is a disgrace, but is symptomatic of a political elite who despise the ordinary people of our country and their hopes and aspirations.

“The Prime Minster cannot just sit back and allow this. Her authority and credibility already are already in question and the words of her minister will undermine her even further if she doesn’t act. How can those millions believe her leadership in negotiations, and how can our EU colleagues not laugh at her if she fails to do so?”

Breitbart London reported after the Brexit vote in 2016 that Alan Duncan was one of a group of key European ‘financial insiders’ who predicted Britain wouldn’t leave the European Union at all, despite the referendum. In addition to the democracy-defying prediction, the group also foresaw a “major economic slowdown as uncertainty hits ‘confidence, consumer spending and investment’, whereas they predicted the wider European economy will fare much better”.