It sticks out in my mind that leaving the EU won’t bring manufacturing back from China. Leaving the EU won’t redistribute CEO wealth from London to the public. I am an outsider thousands of miles away, but it seems that a better referendum would have addressed specific points like that (which are the real status quo), not detaching from a regional union/bureaucracy.

Also, about not being able to plan on population size because of potentially unlimited immigration, have there been documented cases of suddenly unexpected numbers of immigrants overwhelming the schools or other public services? I assume that in most areas immigrants are just a fraction of the population? You mentioned half a million immigrants from poorer countries. That’s less than 1% of a population of 65 million. Which suggests they only play a marginal role in what are larger pre-existing public problems.

Here in the USA we have failing schools, collapse of manufacturing, poverty, and people like to blame “welfare” and “illegal immigrants” for sapping our National Strength. In reality we spend our money on military technology and decades of overseas wars, all while CEO pay has vastly increased while normal wages have been stagnant or decreased. The economy has expanded and left behind the lower and middle classes….this cannot be attributed to immigrants. The USA version of voting to leave the EU is “Vote for Donald Trump”. Neither “solution” seems to have anything to do with the true source of the problems, which I think could be summed up as dysfunctional economy and government that are controlled by and for the benefit of self-interested wealthy people instead of society.