Crunchy, I have a couple of good friends who very nearly voted leave. They wavered and liked the idea of 'taking back control'. They only decided how to vote, right at the last. They voted remain, but were extremely close to voting leave. They are quite strict in parenting style, believing in discipline (and law and order type stuff) but otherwise are very much fall on the liberal side of the culture war.
They've subsequently been horrified as to how everything has played out and can't believe how close they were to voting the other way. Its more or less everything they dislike.
They are a professional couple (Father has a senior role in a scientific job and is highly educated. Mother a teacher).
We know another family and their extended family. Very much from a working class tradesman background. Solid labour voters. They are now very much middle class in nature. They too, all struggled to decide which way to vote. DH and I didn't tell them which way to vote and made a point not to. We just gently asked them to consider several questions and make their decision from the answers they came to from those questions and hoped they'd get the point we were trying to make from that. We know they ultimately eventually decided to go remain.
I think they serve to remind me of where actual voters sit, rather than hard core Brexiteers or Remainers. Both could easily have gone the other way. The thing they share most in common is that politics wasn't something they were too interested in. That's changed somewhat and that's what I think is now ultimately more important.
The culture war is seeking to exploit the fracture that the referendum caused along those lines and polarise views. So it's important to see it and understand it and how it appears.
Remain and Leave as identities feed upon those ideas as essential parts. If you do not believe in them wholeheartedly and without question, you are a traitor / bigot.
Thus if you hold views which are nuanced or acknowledge these are complex issues with lots of grey areas it is awful. And likewise if you hold views which are the 'opposite' to the way 'your side' voted its awful.
That's essentially what popularism is, and authoritarianism is. The rejection of being able to legitimately hold complex views or the view that you must hold the 'right' views to belong.
It's important to see and recognise.