I base it on what I see around me, both personally and professionally. I think our exposure to and cooperation with those in Europe has benefited the UK enormously. Globalisation has benefited the world enormously, and it would be criminal if we tossed that away.
Regarding your accountability thing Pete, I don't buy it. If you look at who voted to leave, it was predominantly those who had not benefited from globalisation. Folk in post-industrial towns whose livelihoods had gone, whether through the shift to a service based economy, moving low-skilled manufacturing overseas, technological displacement or all of the above. They've seen the communities they were used to wither away, and in many places, an immigrant culture form in its place.
If you believe this basic narrative, there is nothing the government has done since the vote to make the lot of such people any better at all. Before the vote, there was a mass of hyperbole about Europe needing us more than we need them, how trading with the world would be a doddle, how the Commonwealth would flock around her majesty and an Anglophile world would emerge. That hasn't happened, and instead the reality has shone through the rhetoric, such that the 'trading with the world' and 'taking back control' slogans were exposed for the meaningless soundbites they are just last week by parliament.
May spoke after the vote about re-crafting the economy to better support those towns that had been left behind, but the reality is that bugger all has been done, either intellectually or practically to make that happen. The Tories may well be accountable, but they're the only party that wanted us to leave, so if you hold them to account and vote them out, who else do you go to? Do you say "yeah, this isn't working out, lets go back in..." or do you double down and vote for an 'ultra-Tory'/UKIP style party that says the strategy was great but we didn't do it hard enough?
With respect Pete, this whole 'not getting behind the UK' thing is daft. Do you think remain voters go into work in the morning and put in 50% effort, just to show them leavers? I'd say that's unlikely, and the very suggestion that we have a 'treasonous' half of the country who are the reason we're not sticking it to Johnny Foreigner is buck passing from those who should know better. You said people would be held to account, but I'm afraid all evidence to date suggests that Johnson, Gove et al will look anywhere for blame except themselves.
