"honestly telling everybody that our financial stability and indeed prosperity since the financial crisis of 2008 is much thanks to EU membership and 'passporting' through the City of London while the EU paid for the economically weaker, rural regions."
Why should the working class be happy with this? The benefits to EU membership accrued to the connected classes in the big cities. The subsidies provided to these regions by the EU are a small fraction of the economic damage which has been done to these people's lives through a triple punch of increased labor / safety / environmental regulations, free trade (with countries powered by low wage and low labor and environmental standards) and immigration of cheap labor.
Everybody wants to tell these people to just eat cake.That's not a reasonable solution to the economic challenges in the rest of the country. If London is doing so fantastic economically, they should have focused on helping those hurt by these policies.
This is a great post and describes exactly how I feel as a fellow "expatriate" in California. I've had people comment when they hear where I'm from, "well it's good thing you don't have that accent." There's so much animus towards people in these regions and it looks exactly like the contempt the upper class has for the poor. It’s pretty disgusting how blatant some of this contempt is (Look no further than Salon, Huffington Post, ...).
We can't forget about these people. And it's important to remember that these aren't hard working, enterprising people (as some say). But that we've simply criminalized their labor. We enforce labor standards and environmental standards high on our own companies (things I applaud), but are happy to import products not built under those same standards. We enforce free trade agreements, which make it impossible to oppose the flood of cheap products, but we've legislated higher costs for our own products. (This is also why these parts of the country have for so long voted for politicians who promised to remove or decrease this regulatory burden -- you may think they are voting agains their own interest, but they do not perceived it that way.)
Why should the working class be happy with this? The benefits to EU membership accrued to the connected classes in the big cities. The subsidies provided to these regions by the EU are a small fraction of the economic damage which has been done to these people's lives through a triple punch of increased labor / safety / environmental regulations, free trade (with countries powered by low wage and low labor and environmental standards) and immigration of cheap labor.
Everybody wants to tell these people to just eat cake.That's not a reasonable solution to the economic challenges in the rest of the country. If London is doing so fantastic economically, they should have focused on helping those hurt by these policies.