The argument for Remaining is pretty clear: free access to the single market. There are other things too such as a huge rebate and outputs from things we don't like such as Schengen and the Euro. If you want the best reason for staying - look at the supposed golden age before the UK joined the EEC in 1973 and look at our GDP in comparison with European nations like Germany, Italy and France. As soon as we joined, our GDP and wealth began to rise - that is documented fact.
Sovereignty was never given up, we pooled sovereignty where necessary.
Most of those reasons for leaving are down to national policy, not EU policy. Cheap labour - jobs in farming, industry and other areas have been left to EU migrants because many didn't want those jobs. They were better paid staying on unemployment benefit than going to the farm to pick fruit and vegetables. If locals were willing to do more of that work - why would employers hire from Europe?
It can be argued that cheap foreign labour suppressed wages but that is down to local not EU policy.
Many like me are curious to see who the Brexiteers will have to blame once we are out of the EU. Believe me, someone else is always going to be at fault - no responsibility will be taken.
Yes, I understand the access to the single market. Remain always seems obsessed with money, money, money ......... although a system which distributes money in a singularly inequitable manner.
But the single market has caused huge problems:
1. Depressed wages for the poorest and least skilled
2. Unwanted social change to towns caused by mass migration
3. Strain on creaking infrastructure - school class sizes, children fro whom English is not a first language, excess demand for housing causing booms in rental and house prices.
All of these problems impact the working class the most, whilst the middle class in their leafy suburbs are happily insulated from such problems whilst they make a nice living from the status quo.
Your dismissal of the EU as a cause of these problems completely ignores the mass migration from EU states over which the UK has no control inside the EU. I accept that the problems outlined are not all the EU's fault (benefits policy, non EU migration etc), and UK gov has happily presided over globalist corporate gluttony, but the referendum was a cry against the political elite and their total un-willingness to listen or change.
The vocal Remain leaders are the least willing to listen or change. I wonder whether if Remain, post referendum, had been led by people who could credibly demonstrate a commitment to adopt very different policies, whether they might have persuaded very many more people to their cause? Sadly they haven't made the points you make. They've focused on more fear-mongering, and not once talked about remaining but doing things differently - controlling immigration properly to protect the character of the UK's towns, training the least skilled UK workers, cutting benefits for the lazy but capable, directing regional aid policy towards the de-industrialised towns of England and Wales, cracking down on corporate tax evasion, and re-distributing wealth in a more fair manner.
I ask you - why have Remainers spent so much time on Project Fear and insulting the intelligence of Leavers, and so little time on finding a way of addressing their concerns in a way which might have actually convinced Leavers? I suspect it's because Remain extremists really do despise the white working class, and are far more comfortable spending time in France and Spain than bothering with the concerns of what they regard as losers in cold northern towns full of 'thick racists'.
