To assume all leave voters are “stupid and mislead people, which did not understand what they were doing” is way too simplistic (and a quite undemocratic attitude: “Liberal and open minds are those who share my view”).

As a german I don’t have an definitive position on what’s good or bad for britain, however there are also rational arguments for ‘leave’ side.

Many of the remainers are sold on the “visionary” side of the eu. However the real existing EU differs a lot from the vision.

just to name a few issues:

• it adds another layer of buerocracy (expensive, slow decision processes, inflexible)
• in many cases it takes away power from democratically elected entities to ‘commision / buerocracy’-style entities.
• EU is s-l-o-w in decision making and problem solving, too slow in many cases. In the modern world (same as in economy) the faster beats the slower, so size is not an advantage, but a disadvantage. Economically an independent Britain might be better of mid term.
• The quality of EU regulations is awkward and unworldly in many cases
• Europe is the continent of diversity and this should be reflected by EU governance. It isn’t, often caused by idelogical blindness.

So mid term britain might also have some advantages from leaving (undoubtly a lot of disadvantages also), but I don’t think its a clear choice.

Despite several alarming election outcomes across europe, there seems to be no willingness of the european political elites/leaders to address/reform some of the fundamental flaws of current EU structure.

Therefore (being totally pro europe, but anti-eu) I think the ‘leave’ vote might be a good thing for the EU as this will be a trigger for urgently needed reform of the EU vision and structure. And c’mon we won’t go into WWIII but Britain will stick close to europe, but based on a more flexible political framework be it inside or outside a hopefully renewed european union..