I certainly relate to your opinion in one sense - if people will ultimately vote economically and not democratically, in the sense that they will rather get more money to give away their democratic rights, then they are nothing but slaves to the perceived pimp that is the EU. they know that the EU is bad for democracy and the health of the nation-state, but like heroin, they need their fix of the EU, regardless of that long term damage (in both economic and democratic metrics in the sense that we can control our own rationally-calculated trade arrangements as one country from outside) because they can't perceive of the long term as a concept - only the short term gain in defiance of what is over the horizon. even if we have to go through a recession, a very small one if any (which I don't even accept as a possibility), then it will be worth it, because the EU, regardless of what is promised to us, will still inevitably keep growing. it is laughable to say we won't be integrated into it more and more legally when the project is destined to become a super state - anybody who knows the history of the EU and its establishment knows this. the people who argue that we need to stay in the EU because of economics are those same people who will, by the time the EU becomes the USE, argue still for economics even when our democracy is almost not even there anymore.