The Birmingham MP who led the campaign to leave the European Union says she is “enormously optimistic” about the United Kingdom’s future outside the EU.

Gisela Stuart (Lab Birmingham Edgbaston) warned that politicians and the pro-EU media must accept that the public chose to leave - and stop imagining voters were either tricked into it or were motivated by racism.

The Brexit referendum campaign and result had exposed a “big divide” in British society, she said. Many "remain" voters lived comfortable lives and didn’t want to rock the boat while many "leave" voters, often less wealthy and struggling with poor public services, felt they had little to lose by change.

Mrs Stuart admitted she hadn’t expected the leave side to win the referendum.

And the German-born MP said that despite the anger some people feel about the result, she had received little criticism from constituents in Birmingham or from fellow MPs - but there had been complaints from Germany.

“A bunch of hate letters from Germany in German about ‘how could you take the Brits out of the EU’,” she said.

Mrs Stuart was the chair of the official Vote Leave campaign, and spent much of it travelling around the country in a bus with Conservative MP and fellow leave campaigner Boris Johnson.

Politicians are "in denial" about Brexit result

Speaking to the Birmingham Mail at Westminster, she said her fellow politicians should ask themselves why the Leave campaign won despite having far fewer resources.

“We had a group of 20-30 people, the paid staff, who essentially fought against the entire establishment.”

She pointed out that the Leave campaign was allowed to raise £7 million for its campaign while the Government spent more than £9 million on one pro-EU leaflet - officially not part of the Remain campaign - delivered to homes.

“And we won. What does that tell you?

“It tells you the entire commentariat, including this place [Parliament], were utterly out of touch with what was going on out there.

“It’s the same now when you go into the [Commons] Chamber. There’s still utter denial that anything’s happened out there.”

The success of the Leave campaign reflected the failure of the political establishment to respond to the fears of voters, she said.

“If you live in a neighbourhood where the housing stock’s declining, the potholes aren’t filled, you can’t get your kid into the school of your choice, and then someone who doesn’t live in your kind of neighbourhood, who doesn’t have to rely on public services, just wags a finger at you and threatens you, you reach a point where you say ‘you know what, anything’s better than what I’ve got at the moment’.”

We can't ignore concern about immigration

Gisela Stuart on the campaign trail with former London mayor Boris Johnson in Cornwall, during the EU referendum campaign
Gisela Stuart on the campaign trail with former London mayor Boris Johnson in Cornwall, during the EU referendum campaign

And politicians still didn’t realise there was a problem, she said.

“A lot of the politicians, they heard the words but they weren’t listening.

“And the clearest one is the failure to allow people to express concerns about immigration.

“Just branding them as racist simply doesn’t do anybody any service because it means we’re not dealing with racism when it occurs.”

She continued: “There are a lot of people either trying to pretend it didn’t happen.

“Or they say, oh the electorate have been lied to.

“Now that’s very very dangerous because the electorate does make up its mind.”

Britain has a bright future outside the EU

Watch: Flashback to the morning the referendum result was announced, as Gisela Stuart delivered a speech insisting this was the UK's chance to take back control

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Mrs Stuart said she was “enormously optimistic” about the country’s future outside the EU.

The FTSE 100 index, which measures the share prices of the country’s biggest firms, had fallen but had now bounced back, she said. Sterling remains weak but this would actually benefit UK manufacturers by making British goods cheaper on overseas markets, she added.

And the UK would have been forced to change its relationship with the EU eventually - because the Eurozone will one day collapse, she predicted.

“We either do that in a planned way now or if we’d stayed in the EU and waited for the inevitable, I think, collapse of part of the Eurozone or that structure, [we] would have had to do it under conditions of panic.

“This allows us to be resilient and plan.”