While I'm a firm remainer, I'd still say it's not quite the same as you've described. It would be closer to New York leaving the US if we were to do it by GDP (with Germany being California and France Texas) with New York of course having much more political and financial power than Florida. With it would go numerous financial institutions and various other corporate headquarters that are based there. Also, while I know this is a very dumbed down way of looking at the issue, many people felt that the UKs contribution to the EU was not reciprocated, and the EU was only there to funnel money away from the UK down to Greece, Spain, Portugal and the like, place strange legislation that took control away from people, and force us to take in immigrants that take jobs away from British citizens and send their earnings abroad to their families in other countries.
Again, this is all the simplified, digestible summaries of arguments that were given to the British public during the referendum, hence the result of the vote. Of course, the MPs should be there make an informed decision because it's their full time job, not the general public that will only have a passing knowledge of it that is often learnt through biased media. 2 years of thorough coverage on the issue has made it clear to most people that the above summaries are not accurate, and mostly fabrications by people with a vested interest in destabilising and shorting the pound.
The idea that the U.K. was getting used is an interesting one considering they are the only one who get/got a rebate on their EU contributions: relative to their GDP the U.K. is/was objectively paying less than other members (when looking st the last couple of decades - the U.K. was struggling economically when the rebate was negotiated).
The UK also get proportionally less from the EU that those that didn't get a rebate. This was the reason the rebate was given, why else would the EU agree to it?
It's only recently that the matter of the rebate is being spun to bash the UK.
> force us to take in immigrants that take jobs away from British citizens and send their earnings abroad to their families in other countries.
UK is not part of the Eurozone. It does not suffer from the downsides of a shared currency. Why would it matter where they send the money to? Every pound sent abroad can only be used to buy goods from the UK.
If you were talking about say Germany and Greece then the story would look completely different. If Greece borrows from Germany then the Euro will not be devalued but if it still had the drachma the drachma would become devalued which makes German products more expensive and local products cheaper. Therefore Greece can buy German products and borrow money from German banks cheaply which eliminates the incentive to produce them locally despite the massive trade imbalance.
There are many arguments against the Euro but as I said, the UK suffers from none of them.
I agree completely, but this was touted frequently during the referendum. The general Leave campaign spiel was that somehow the neighbouring EU countries were leeching money from the UK. A horribly misinformed argument yes, but that line of reason works for people who want someone else to blame for their financial woes.
Unfortunately, that kind of propaganda is incredibly convincing to a person with 0 political or economic education and becomes an issue when they have the same hard voting power as a person with a PhD or other form of expertise on the said topic. The only way the vote could have changed is if there was more effort from the Remain campaign, people were better educated on the aforementioned subjects, or the voting system for the referendum was based on a technocratic system (more of a think-tank).
Again, this is all the simplified, digestible summaries of arguments that were given to the British public during the referendum, hence the result of the vote. Of course, the MPs should be there make an informed decision because it's their full time job, not the general public that will only have a passing knowledge of it that is often learnt through biased media. 2 years of thorough coverage on the issue has made it clear to most people that the above summaries are not accurate, and mostly fabrications by people with a vested interest in destabilising and shorting the pound.