I'm rather afraid it may be too late to leave!! The EU is by far our biggest customer/market. It is not only production industry that is being moved to cheaper workforces - so is our hyped service industry.
With the biggest part of our employment and possible growth coming from small and new businesses we cannot afford to lose our biggest market, our biggest and nearest export market. Our heavy industries which traded as world leaders were decimated in the Thatcher years.
We depend on being a part of the EU for inward investment for manufacturing from foreign countries because we gave up on our own. Plenty of famous examples - Honda in Swindon just one example.
Germany being held up as an example? Massive foreign investment and help following the last war helped rebuild their industries - The trade union bank becoming their biggest bank with the interests of it's members a driving force, state support of their revived industries - all these things combined to produce their strong economy, things we lacked - the fault is ours and our rulers, not the EU.
I don't pretend to have the answers but I don't see why we just can't take a leaf out of the French book, if we don't like an EU rule - ignore it!
