DaveO wrote: ... What they are doing instead is peddling a myth that plays to nationalistic tendencies easily stoked up by a biased press. It's a vote winner but its an unrealistic myth of withdrawal that they peddle...
The only truths about Europe I have heard from any of the sceptics are all numbers ... but none of the facts/reasons/comparisons behind those numbers. e.g. How much it costs but no mention of the benefits or what the alternative would cost.
Lots of mention of federalism and European state and no real analysis of what that would mean (if it were to occur).
If you ask most Brits about federalism, they will immediately think of centralisation, of control over them from a distance.
If you ask a German, Austrian, Swiss etc the same question, they immediately think the opposite, of the benefit of subsidiarity and the local power that federalism gives them.
e.g. The Germans have 16 local Länder, the Swiss have 26 Cantons ... only the stuff that can't be dealt with at the Länder level or is more effectively done at the higher level is allowed to be controlled at that higher level.... and the terms of what is dealt with at which level are enshrined in law, not subject to the whim, gerrymandering or political advantage of successive governments (e.g. Thatcher's abolition of shire county authorities because the persky electorate kept voting for the other guys).
That's just one example of how the majority of the UK population don't actually understand what they are voting for half the time
The current government would love us to be a sort of offshore tax haven with a nice large malleable pool of unpaid and unemployed, kept in their place and desperate for work at almost any price.
European ideas of trying to make the world a better place to live, for as many as possible, is not an aim for this government.
They are not called "conservative" for nothing.