As for your STEM point and life experiences being preferable on your academics, I would strongly recommend you enter British Academia some day.
Valentine2 I was an academic in an RG university for over ten years 
. In my experience, there is now a significant schism between theory and actual practice in many disciplines. We are pumping out engineering grads that can't actually design something you can viably manufacture for purpose, for example, which is why engineering firms up and down the country are begging retired engineers and draughtsmen to come back to work. Our business and engineering postgraduate schools are now mostly international students who return home after their studies, and whose research and learning focus is on manufacturing and export in their own countries.
But how much of our economy is manufacturing and export based?
You would be surprised. Exports make up about 28% of our GDP. We are the world's seventh largest industrial nation with 2.54% of the share of world manufacturing output (Italy has 2.7% and France 2.46% with Germany at 6.7%: the big hitters are Japan, China and the US), and manufacturing makes up 45% of UK exports. The key areas are aerospace, automotive, chems and pharma, construction, defence, electronics, energy, food and drink (which is currently a strong performer), plastics, security, steel, telecoms, and textiles/clothing. We are also world leaders in bank note production and sub-sea base engineering.
And all that is before we look at the non-manufacturing products we export across the world: music, films, computer games, books, TV (no country exports more TV formats than the UK; the industry is worth about £1.25bn a year).
Again, more than 63% of British SMEs export with exporting revenues contributing 59% of their total revenues. 63% of exporting SMEs export outside of Europe with 38% exporting to the US.
It is an enormous area of economic activity. And just who is asking people in these exporting industries that actually make and sell things to other countries what they think about Brexit? After all, they are the people that are currently doing it and are going to have to face the outcome of any Brexit deals.
Whatwouldyoudo Picking I agree that Valentine has overemphasised the role of academics by not including trade associations, trade unions and business leaders, as well as the representatives of the organisations that run our public services etc. in the list of people that should be involved in a complex decision like Brexit.
Again, this is ignoring the reality on the ground. Why would you ask trade unions and representatives of public service organisations to be involved in discussions about trade and the EU? What international trade does a union engage in? What commercial product or activity does it export?
Why ask these people their thoughts over a delegation of SMEs owners that actually sell to the EU or the wider world?
It strikes me that there is a very distinct perspective here about British economic activity that has quite probably been fed by years of the narrative that Britain has no industry and no manufacturing anymore. That is just simply not true. We are not a country that is solely made up of a lumpen proletariat, an academic, media and political elite, and a sandwich filling of public service workers in-between.
The whole Brexit debate has been driven by concerns over immigration, British labour shortages, and political ideology. This is like trying to assess a cake by constantly fixating over the colour of the icing when the real matter, the sponge underneath, is about trade and capital within or outside of a single market and the regulations imposed therein.