The working classes have seen wages depressed by eastern Europeans willing to work for less in skilled manual fields e.g. building. It's a sore point for many.
Understandable, but also completely unrelated to the recent surge of non-EU migrants. I get a feeling that populists try to connect these two things (refugees and lowered wages from EU migration).
I think the problem is related the weak labor laws of the U.K. (Compared to e.g France, Germany or the Nordics). UK workers can more easily be replaced and have less security when they are.
It's a complete failure of social democrat policies if the popular response to depressed wages is right wing populism rather than unionization and calls for stronger labor laws.
It's even worse: the NHS budget has been severely cut by successive governments, yet it was very convenient to blame European migrants for the NHS crisis even though reports have shown have shown that migrants contribute more to the NHS than they take out.
