A Brexit voter has set up a support group for fellow leave campaigners, who she claims are being unfairly demonised.
Londoners voted nearly 60% in favour of remaining within the European Union in this summer's referendum, despite the UK as a whole deciding to pull out.
Lucy Harris believes Brexit backers represent such a minority in the capital they have been routinely denounced as "anti-immigration closet racists" by those not sharing their views.
She set up the Leavers of London group in an attempt to end the stigma by changing perceptions and showing other leave voters they are not alone.
"I want to change the common perception that leave voters are nothing more than anti-immigration closet racists, by showcasing the positive people and arguments behind the UK's vote to leave the EU," said the 25-year-old, who works in publishing and has sung at the Royal Albert Hall as a soprano.
'Leavers feel isolated in London'
"I also want to tell people who voted leave and feel slightly isolated in London, because they're so outnumbered, that myself and others like me are here to talk."
She plans to organise monthly meetings where like-minded Londoners can get together to "build a positive case" for the UK's future outside the EU.
She hopes the group will go some way towards healing the rifts exposed by the referendum not just in London but across the country.
She said she had already received some 600 messages within a day of launching the website for the group.
Ms Harris, who lives in Crouch End, hails from Suffolk but moved to London as a teenager and studied publishing at UCL.
'Not your stereotypical Brexiteer'
She is a far cry from your stereotypical Brexiteer, or at least the kind perceived by remain voters, she says.
Not only is she much younger than the average leave voter, she speaks Italian and says she has "benefited greatly" from immigration and from the EU, having worked for many European companies.
However, she believes the EU is "wholly undemocratic" and takes too much power away from Britons.
"I'm not uneducated by any means, which is another false stereotype many people want to apply to leave voters," she said.
"I'm educated enough to have read (George Orwell's dystopian novel) 1984 and I feel we're better off safe than sorry.
"At the moment people in Britain are free to say what they want and to protest, but I worry that wouldn't always be the case if we stayed within the EU."
For more about the new group, and the crowdfunding page set up to finance it, visit the Leavers of London website.
