Because the Leave campaign was hateful. Literally, full of hate. The economic arguments are capable of being pitched either way, like any set of numbers, and the argument that leaving would be "more for us, you lot stay out, even more for us" I found less than compelling. There is a bigger picture than all that, and it is this; the EU is full of people. The UK is full of people. Every country is no more nor less than its people; the referendum is all about what happens to us, and to them, as people, and division is never in people's, or a peoples' best interests.
The thing that chilled me the most about the hateful Leave campaign was not Johnson's about-turn on the EU the second he saw a personally advantageous career move, and never mind the cost to anyone; not Gove lying about some Nazi propaganda concerning scientists and Einstein which he basically made up for the same reasons as Johnson (though in his case he may just be dim enough to believe his own rhetoric).
The thing that chilled me the most about the hateful Leave campaign was not Johnson's about-turn on the EU the second he saw a personally advantageous career move, and never mind the cost to anyone; not Gove lying about some Nazi propaganda concerning scientists and Einstein which he basically made up for the same reasons as Johnson (though in his case he may just be dim enough to believe his own rhetoric).
What really got me was hearing Farage telling us that his dream, his vision, was for Europe to become totally independent sovereign states once again, and as he described it my mind's eye wandered inevitably to Serbs fighting Croats and the siege of Kosovo, tanks rolling up the high streets of Prague, and Ukraine and the others, and camped outside the mines in Poland, and shoot-to-kill curfews, and of an emboldened Germany or France, or whoever, making their grab for land and power from their neighbours, and the thousand years of war that Europe enjoyed until recently. That more than anything.
Especially not migrants FFS!
I also think it's massively ironic that the main thing that seems to be motivating the Leavers is that "migrants are willing to work for low, below minimum wage pay". Well, the EU have rules about that, and employers are breaking the law and could, and should, be prosecuted and workers paid the national going rate. To fix this they are voting to leave the EU whereupon the practice will instantly become not only legal, but encouraged.
It would be funny if it weren't so damn tragic. The biggest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people he didn't exist.
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