This paper promotes the idea of a culturally‐sensitive Tiebout–Hirschman–Rothschild mechanism underpinning the UK's 2016 Brexit result. Our culture‐based development (CBD) model asserts a trade‐off between two rival types of voting: voting with one's feet or voting in a radical way due to being unable to vote with one's feet, akin to a protest vote. We explore the effects on the Brexit vote of shares of public spending on culture and a particular type of migration dynamic that triggers social closure. Our findings reveal that strong support for the Leave campaign was encountered in areas with lower local government expenditure on culture and in areas with higher outflows of UK residents. Previous literature had found that left‐behind places and places with concentrations of highly educated commuters are the pro‐Brexit nests. Our CBD mechanism of perceived relative deprivation offers a reconciling explanation of these seemingly controversial findings.