I'm on my phone, I'll post properly later. But one thing that's important to remember is that the EU impacts different people in markedly different ways. I'm a 29 year old, middle class university graduate working in the Creative Industries in London. I benefit overwhelmingly from the EU, which is why I voted to remain. I get to travel very easily, I have a diverse set of colleagues from all over Europe (and the world, actually), I have skills that are in demand all over Europe and I'm mobile enough to make good on that possibility if I were so inclined, and I speak decent French. When my pipes burst the plumber costs far less than they used to and if I need to move house I can pay a bunch of Romanians a quarter of the price I'd have had to have paid a removals company ten years ago. Great!
But if I'm a 23 year old from Barnsley that's just spent three years doing an apprenticeship in electrics where I got paid about 20p an hour and now find myself in a market place that's got significantly more supply of labour without significantly more demand from customers, I'm very likely to see my future prospects negatively impacted. In fact, we know this is true because I listed above one of the benefits to me is that this kind of stuff is cheaper for me. Maybe this hypothetical kid from Barnsley's dad was a plumber, and he's seen his work slow down, or he's had to take a pay cut to maintain his customer base. Their quality of life has diminished, because "the trades" have always been a way for working class people to earn a decent wage with a skill who's demand is steady - and now that's being challenged. This guy from Barnsley's unlikely to speak a European language fluently, doesn't have a university degree, after several years of an apprenticeship is unlikely to be mobile and able to benefit from opportunities across the single market (all whilst that same opportunity to others is diluting his client base at home).
Local resources can get strained, because the places migrants want to live isn't uniformly distributed around the country. Is this a failure of government? In a way. If there's an increase in demand in a certain area, it shouldn't really matter if that demand comes from migration or local population growth. But migration being the driver can make these issues far more difficult - having children who speak multiple different languages in a classroom makes it harder to teach in a way that the same number of kids who otherwise speak English would be. Likewise with the provision of most local services. Road's can't simply be enlarged to accommodate a greater number of people in residential areas, and the non-uniform distribution of people means that the desirable places to live suffer an even more extreme peak in demand for housing, which pushes up prices for everyone in these areas.
Over the last year or so, I've seen lots of graphs and tables showing the strong positive correlation between the extent of education and voting remain, the implication always being that more educated people are smarter, ergo voting remain was the smarter choice, ergo voting leave means you're a dummy. What this fails to recognise, I think, is that the better educated and the higher class you are, the more you have to gain from being a member of the EU, and the opposite is also true. The EU doesn't offer people with limited opportunities in the UK much of anything except increased competition for their local jobs. These aren't people who are able to take up trendy hipster jobs in Berlin start ups, or go work in the corporate gambling industry in Malta. These are people who declined going to university, because the job they wanted doesn't come at the end of a degree, and thus the manner in which they benefit from the EU is that shop prices are slightly cheaper by virtue of smaller tariffs and paying their staff less due to a diluted labour market.
So when you have people like Anticol up there going "Hurgh duh duh, these idiots have probably never even been on a plane!!" He's actually on to something, but he's coming at it from the idea that they're small minded little englanders, as opposed to people with limited opportunities, who don't go abroad on holiday every year and thus have little to gain from the EU.
Note that I haven't mentioned anything about the social changes that can occur when a population of an area changes really quite rapidly - which can be alienating to people that have lived there a long time, and this alone doesn't make them xenophobic - and remember as well that I voted remain. But the bit I hate is the fact people seem to struggle to acknowledge that the EU affects people differently, and all the ONS statistics about how immigration benefits the UK and blah blah blah doesn't mean much to people who feel they've been personally negatively affected by it.
So almost literally every argument is immigration then.
Your arguments contradict themselves in all kinds of ways.
The tradesman in Barnsley is probably very far from the large amounts of immigration that could affect his rates.
The people who voted for less immigration in the referendum, are those LEAST affected by it. Even those who have basically ZERO net migration.
The people who voted to leave the EU are from some of the areas who got THE MOST, DIRECT funding from the EU. Farmers, poorer rural areas.
Also, what in the wotld is with this assumption that remain voters are all well to do, with amazing prospects, who can afford things leavers can't and that's why they wanted to remain?
Could it not be that we decided we WERE going to listen to experts and thought it would be damaging for the economy? Or the fact that the xenophobia and racism the leave campaign was absolutely fraught with didn't sway us? Because as it turns out, if you actually live near brown and Eastern European people, you're less likely to be susceptible to Farage standing in front of a poster of a large amount of brown people, with he message of "leave the EU or they'll get in".
It's basically the anti-London bullshit that was being pushed during the referendum. I wonder if people who believe that have ever visited the outer areas of a city centre.
Also, once we leave the EU, these "polish" taking all the jobs and outpricing every tradesman apparently, aren't going to disappear......they aren't getting deported......they're STILL going to be here after we leave the EU.........so what is the gain?
If We're very honest here, the biggest problem was not how people from different areas are affected by the EU differently, because facts show that people who were least affected due to immigration, voted to leave on a grand scale compared to those areas that are most affected by it.
The real issue imo was the ways different people in different areas of the UK reacted to propaganda.
Areas where lots of brown people actually live, weren't scared off by Farages poster of brown people.
Areas where the most Eastern Europeans live and work, weren't scared off by all the jobs disappearing when we don't even have the numbers needed to build houses fast enough to keep up with demand.
Areas where there was literally no immigration and received direct funding from the zeal we're scared shitless if immigration and thought that London gets all the benefits.
People FEELING like the EU is shit for them is NOT the cogent argument that we are asking for, it's just a symptom of a reaction to propaganda in most cases.
And we haven't even talked about prominent leave figures just lying constantly. Boris and his NHS bus. Farage and his "nobody is saying we'all need to leave the single market" bullshit. The entire leave campaign calling every remain argument "project fear" and selling the idea that it'll be a walk in the park.
I mean, you mean to tell me that these desperate and struggling people knew that they were going to devalue the pound by 20% just by VOTING to leave and making basically everything they buy in the shops more expensive?
You mean to tell me that all these fishers/farmers pissed off with EU KNEW that we'd be marching into the negotiations where no deal is much more likely than the deal they want, which means they'll pay huge tarrifs on selling their produce to their largest customers, the EU?
Aaaaaahhhhhhhhh.
