Blame Europe – Justifying a Leave vote?

Who or what is responsible for the the big issues fuelling the EU referendum debate?
Fishing decline: Since we joined the EU in 1972 our fishing industry has been decimated with thousands of jobs lost at sea and on shore. Over fishing of traditional North Sea and Atlantic locations during the 20th century caused fish stocks to fall precipitously leading to other countries unilaterally increasing the extent of territorial waters and banning foreigners from fishing them. The Cod wars with Iceland in the 60s and early 70s were lost (at great expense), and the British trawler fleet became unsustainable, concentrating efforts in waters closer to home using EU money to improve vessels and technology to find ever more scarce shoals and further depleting stocks. The UK industry was already dying by the time the EU stepped in with the Common Fisheries Policy in 1983 and many trawlermen had already left and retrained as offshore welders in the expanding North Sea oil industry. Very strict quotas to conserve stocks made fishing much less profitable than alternatives, and in some ports UK licenses were bought by Spanish and Portuguese crews who were willing to pay more for the meagre profits available. There were problems with the CFP rules which had to be changed over the years, but fish stocks are finally recovering and profitability of the remaining UK fleet should now improve.
Conclusion: The EU made mistakes but the UK fishing fleet was in decline long before we joined, and without the CFP the current situation would be far worse.
UK steel industry: If we weren’t members of the EU we would be able to directly support the steel industry through the current crises caused by falling demand and dumping of underpriced Chinese steel in Europe. However EU attempts to impose tariffs on underpriced Chinese steel, that would have protected all European manufacturers, were blocked by the UK as it chased massive Chinese investment in UK infrastructure projects.
Conclusion: The EU could have done more to protect steel but the UK government is willing to swap our steel industry for a white elephant nuclear power program funded by communist China.
NHS: Underfunded, reeling from badly structured and delivered total top-down ideological reorganisation to make privatisation easier, swingeing cuts to local authority social care provision have increased demands on far more expensive acute care hospitals, cuts to already deficient staff training programs require increased use of overseas trained doctors and nurses, ideological attacks on doctors in training have been catastrophic for skills retention.
Conclusion: Problems are nothing to do with the EU and very much down to a government ideologically opposed to the NHS. Brexit won’t fix any of the underlying problems and will probably make the funding shortfall worse if tax revenues drop.
Migration: Business needs migrant workers to control wage inflation for indigenous unskilled labour and to overcome serious skills shortages. This has resulted in huge increases in net migration since 2010 are putting housing, infrastructure and underfunded services under extra strain, but the additional taxes coming from this expanded workforce are not being used to supplement the under pressure services. Additionally a significant proportion of society are xenophobic or racist and are destabilising communities. The EU (aided by UK government) has made it easy for business to import unskilled labour, improve productivity and reduce costs, but the majority of immigrants are from outside the EU, drawn by the chronic skills shortages due to our dreadful failing education system and lack of investment by employers developing staff with the required skill set.
Conclusion: Leaving the EU won’t remove the skills shortages but the resulting reduced economic activity may reduce demands for unskilled labour from Eastern Europe. Investment in education by government, rather than the current push to privatise academies with a cheap test driven core rote knowledge, plus improved training by industry is required to deal with the skills shortage.

 

NB. Written on my phone under the influence of insomnia, hence the poor structure and failure to proof read before posting