Mnemon: I lived in the UK for 10 years until last summer, then moved back to Germany. I fear for the internal politics and landscape of the UK should it leave the EU. Those really leading the push for leave are so much worse, still, then the current government.
And I despair at just how ridiculous and simplistic the whole debate is; where far there's so little fact based; so much blamed on the external organisation that actually has been internal social and political problems that have been festering for decades, all now blamed on the EU.
I am of course also an environmentalist - and just seeing what we face here - how much we need cooperation between states to even have a tiny chance to prevent some of the damage coming our way isolationism and petty nationalism just really ought to have had its day. Keep your culture but stop that silly notion that independence can be a thing. Interdependence and common direction is so much more necessary now then ever.
I fear for the mood within the UK. Many of the people I do care about will have - and already have - such a hard stance in what is now a solidly split society.
As a fellow channel hopper who studied in the UK and spent my childhood hopping back and forth between the UK and Germany (dual passport holder here with mixed heritage), you can probably then understand the unique perspective of someone who has experienced both British and German everyday life up close and personal, and the very bizarre relationship that the British public has with the tabloid press as seen from an "outsider's" perspective.
In Germany, we basically have one tabloid of note - Bild - and beyond the frequent sensationalism, even that refrains from taking a singular political standpoint. Even the least educated among Germans are largely aware that Bild is not to be taken seriously. Contrast that with the British, and you find that even the middle classes there seem to take a remarkable amount of what they see in papers like the Daily Mail at face value.
That's where a lot of the anti-EU sentiment has come from - while the broadsheet market in the UK is fairly evenly split between left and right-wing (and only the Telegraph really taking a firmly pro-Brexit stance), all of the tabloids are firmly at various points on the right-wing - there's little balanced reporting in the printed press for the working or middle classes.
I don't quite have the insight that you had, but I've made it a habbit to keep up with the news out of the UK. I've had the impression that certain publication just get away with some unbelievable misinformation, some half-truths and some of it just being objectively false. In turn a lot of people seem (without being condescending here) uninformed about basic terminology and workings of the EU. No matter which way one wants to vote or one's opinion of the EU, just a week away from a crucial vote, that is cause for concern.
