Re: When to move abroad
Your characterisation of the UK in the 1970's joining the EEC to insulate it from the effects of globalisation was correct, but down plays the challenges the UK was facing in many of the industries affected by globalisation.
The EEC postponed the inevitable for many of those industries rather than insulated them forever - they had to modernise. I say this based on similar stories playing out in many countries, particularly around Japanese manufacturing and fossil fuels. British Coal may have collapsed due to political decisions, but the reality was and still is that deep seam coal is dangerous and expensive to extract while much cheaper, higher energy alternatives were available from other countries.
The EEC did give the UK significant breathing space to reform many of the industries that couldn't survive in their pre-EEC forms, but the EEC gave the UK more than that through the 1980's and 1990's in terms of economic stability and then with the reunification of Germany putting significant economic strain on the German economy, the UK was in a position to benefit from the economic reform from the late 90's to mid-00's.
Then came the economic crisis in 2007 - you trace it to lax British regulation and oversight, but ignore the actions of their equivalents in Europe. While the UK banking sector reformed in a very painful manor, the French and German banks tried to ride out the crisis culminating in the Greek debt crisis. If you look at UK public opinion, this is where the UK began to worry about their potential future place in the EU.
Germany's decision to open its borders wasn't really a choice once the Syrian crisis was in full swing - Germany had screwed Greece over the debt crisis to save their own banks, resulting in Greece allowing immigrants into Europe. When the EU tried to stem the tide by working with Turkey, the EU couldn't meet Erdogen's demands to allow Turkey to join the EU as it stood and so they had to accept the consequences. Interestingly, it had very little effect on the opinion of the EU that had reverted to hovering around 50% in favour of staying/leaving again.
As for Cameron's decision to hold a referendum on Europe, I don't dispute that it was done for party politics BUT I'm astonished he choose to do it so quickly. If he had waited, he had electoral reform to help shore up the Tory vote if the referendum didn't go as planned. Instead we have the current mess.
There's too much summarisation to really cover this topic aside from rebuffing some of your points.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
