Rationality is no match for "the passionate and nationalistic fervour"

A Singaporean in London writes why he decided to vote Leave:

Businessmen and bureaucrats from all across the country warned that the average British family would be thousands of pounds worse off each year - money we could all ill-afford to lose in these challenging and austere times - and a barrage of statistics to support these claims were unleashed upon the public.

In contrast, the Leave campaign focused less on facts and figures and more on the intangibles and unquantifiables. Much attention was trained on issues such as national identity, uncontrolled immigration and the democratic deficit that resulted from being part of an European super-state.

...while there was no doubt that Brexit would be detrimental (particularly to Londoners) in the short term, I had faith in the resourcefulness of the British people to identify and iron out any issues in the long run.
I was swayed by Leave's uplifting message of optimism that despite the risks and uncertainty, Britain was better off being the master of its own destiny, unshackled from an EU that lacked democratic legitimacy.

Here's the icing on the cake:

...policymakers need to recognise the importance of "feeling" over "fact" when addressing their electorate. Humans do not behave like the hyper-rational spreadsheet-modelling omniscient being portrayed in most economics textbooks. And that is why I think the Remain campaign's focus on the economic angle was misguided: its attempt to appeal to cold, hard, unfeeling reason could never be matched by the passion and nationalistic fervour inherent in the Leave campaign.

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