Hellen, sorry, this post will be quite long, but I would like to give you my reasons for being a remainer. I did quite a bit of research before the vote. My Dear Old Dad had always been a bit of a Eurosceptic, and as he was an intelligent, politically aware man, I was interested in his views, and why he was a bit torn on whether we should be leaving the EU or not.
My lovely Dad voted to remain in the EU 8 days before he died. He did his research, he looked at both sides of the argument, he thought a lot about how it would affect his grandchildren, and he voted remain.
His reasons were mostly economic. He remembered what a basket case the UK was in the early 1970's (the 'sick man' of Europe), 3 days weeks, power cuts etc. He also remembered 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland, and realised that the UK leaving the EU would impact the GFA. And of course, he remembered WWII, and believed the EU would stop another major European conflict.
He was from an old northern industrial area, his father was a miner, but he was aware from the seventies that the UK manufacturing base, the mining, shipbuilding, steel industries etc., would be unable to compete with emerging markets, and that successive governments were doing nothing to reskill the labour force.
My own reasons for voting remain were as follows:
I'm old enough to have been at work before we had the customs union and free movement of goods. I worked for a company which imported building materials from European countries. It was a right royal pain in the arse. Goods were always being held up during some point in the import process. There was no 'Just in time' process. We had to maintain stocks of product in warehouses/goods yards to ensure we could continue to work, which was costly and time consuming.
I know it’s unfashionable to listen to the opinions of experts, but tbh I’d rather listen to the opinion of an economist/scientist/oncologist than some conspiracy theorist on the net; most experts think leaving the EU will be an unmitigated disaster.
We are part of one of the biggest trading blocs in the world. As part of the EU, we have a certain amount of clout when it comes to negotiating deals. We can demand trade deals with clauses about the environment, and workers rights etc. If we go it alone, so that, as Leavers suggest, we can negotiate our own, better trade deals starting with the Commonwealth, I think we'll very quickly find there is no Commonwealth any more. The USA, China and Japan are not going to roll over and give us the trade deals most beneficial to us. They’re going to negotiate hard for the trade deals that benefit them, possible opening our markets to products which are substandard and unsafe. We are already flooded with cheap Chinese plastic tat. It will likely only get worse.
Most of our former colonies don't like us very much - we didn't treat them terribly well, did we? I can't imagine places like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Rwanda etc, being quick to agree to trade deals. We are still exploiting workers in these countries now - garment workers in Bangladesh, cotton growers in India. Also, Many Commonwealth countries already have very tight trade deals with China, who are exploiting their wealth, mineral resources etc, and partnering huge infrastructure projects. Even Australia, Canada etc , who might not despise us quite as much, are in thrall to China.
People ask what the EU did for us - to me, the major part is the customs union and ease of trade. If you type 'What the EU did for us' into any search engine you'll come up with screeds of information.
We were on holiday in the Black Mountains in Wales a few years ago, and spent a day in The Valleys - and were amazed at the number of local projects in receipt of EU funding - the information boards were everywhere. I was consequently astounded when Wales voted to leave the EU.
I think a lot of people view pre-EU days as some kind of British (and of course they mean UK, not GB) utopia – kids in summer dresses and shorts and t-shirts drinking lashings of ginger beer, morris dancing on the village green etc etc. Our country was never like that, and the trouble we find ourselves in now, NHS on the brink of disaster, education rapidly going to hell etc has nothing to do with the EU – that is down to our own government’s incompetencies. It will get much worse when businesses start to leave, when we lose the financial service companies which have been propping up our economy, and what little manufacturing we still have decides it’s easier to trade from within the EU and ups sticks and moves to Dusseldorf or Krakow.
There are myriad more reasons, but this is already an essay. Sorry about your little girl – you had far more important things to worry about than a vote to leave/remain in the EU.