I don't know about you but I am quite confused on the EU-referendum as both sides seem to be stretching the truth and not being straight about the life post referendum. There is a lot of conflation around different parts of our life whether they can be attributed to the EU or not. To be clear I am currently an in but only just. Probably to about the same amount as the current polls, say 55-45 in versus out but part of that is a big don't know. It also clear that our lives and the economy are too complicated for it to be clear that one change like this would make them better or worse. Some may do better, so may do worse.

Thought I would try and do as unbiased as possible pros and cons to help me decide. These are my current thoughts as dispassionately as I can be. I am open to constructive criticism and reasoned argument and persuasion. Trolls,  and mindless acolytes toeing a particular line and internet thugs need not bother to comment as it will be deleted.


Part 1 Leaving
Pros
(as represented by Leavers and augmented where possible)

• Border controls could stem immigration of largely unskilled Europeans on minimum wage and currently entitled to tax credits and child benefits - definitely a plus for those areas inundated by immigration
• Reduction in unwanted regulation particularly in banking where bonuses are capped currently at 1x salary unless voted on by shareholders and then max 2x salary. No comment on whether this is a good or bad thing but it is definetly on the minds of UK banking executives.
• Sovereignty issues on accepting directives and regulations and EHCJ & R rulings - could be a plus or a minus see Red Herrings below
• Trade agreements -with rest of world, could be a plus or a minus depending on the quality of such agreements (i.e. what we have to concede versus what we gain). Also Farage argument was confusing. EU outgrown its usefulness as tariff savings outweigh contributions but need to do deals with China/India/Russia/Brazil etc. It is clear that tariffs have come down since the EEC was created but that also protectionism is on the rise.
• Control of VAT issues - i.e. not be forced to be compliant with single market rules on VAT on certain products such as fuel.
• Recession - a severe recession combined with loss of benefits would see many immigrants leave the UK for pastures new. A pain for the locals who could not follow them but would also reduce pressure on services and get net migration down. So a bit of a Pyrrhic victory for most of the population. However would also give welfare and NHS reformers (i.e. IDS, Osbourne etc) more room to cut social programs.
• Wages - I do believe generally wages are suppressed by both Tax credits, minimum wage and immigration. These facilities all distort the market and have allowed large companies to profit from tax payers by importing workers and subsiding wages with tax credits. Do not get me wrong I believe that workers should be encouraged and supported where wages are low but conversely businesses that are making excess profits from low wages should be taxed higher. For example coffee shops: Costa returns around 35% to its owners Whitbread. While it is a good product a lot of the excess return can be attributed to minimum wage earners and some if not all maybe receiving working tax credits. Rather than punish the workforce, the companies exploiting these market distortions should be surcharged to discourage it.
• Saving Contributions - supposedly £350 million a week would not be available to be sent to EU. Other than that number is (a) gross  (distortion), see Red Herrings below.
• Democracy - See Red herrings below.

Cons

• Tariffs hard to get away from this. British manufacturing still only about 20% of economy and  largest sectors are cars, aerospace and pharma, all of which depend heavily on EU cooperation and single market rules currently and would most likely be hit by tarriffs and/or reduction in trade and/or relocation  of jobs. Leavers arguments about importing more than selling etc seemed based upon hope and jingoism rather than anything substantive
• Lack of access to single market this is particularly important for financial services for which there is an incomplete single market, but one of the biggest contributors to UK economy. UK is home to many foreign multinationals in banking, law and manufacturing who are here because they get access to the single market. Leaving that will reduce access and potential mean jobs are exported to single market countries. Its seems to me to be intractable that we would retain access to the single market and not have to accept free movement and contribute to the budget, a "Goldilocks" fairytale in my mind presented by the Leavers.
• Recession - not a certainty but risks would tend to increase because of  likely contraction in  trade, investment (at least in the short term) and migration of jobs
• Potentially higher government borrowing costs - Current analysis by rating agencies and investors would assume some level of EU support for UK debt. If there is a recession and borrowing increases then cost of borrowing is also likely to increase dramatically, either resulting in more cuts to services or higher taxes or both.
• Introduction of consumer tariffs - currently goods and services cannot be sold at different prices and governments cannot add more than VAT for European goods and services except for say "sin" goods bought remotely or in excess of reasonable personal consumption, i.e. cigarettes and alcohol. Upon leaving the EU the government could impose additional tariffs or sales taxes on imported goods particularly grey market goods from other countries, such as electronics, white goods and cars. Also services like mobile phones and satellite TV would not be subject to EU wide competition rules on roaming and differential charging so we would be at risk of seeing them reimposed.

Red Herrings - stuff i think is clouding the issue

• EU contribution - 
• Even without considering the supposed benefit of 10 pounds to 1 for contribution I think this is largely a wash to a loss rather than a benefit. 
• Loss of GDP through a likely recession at least for the first 2-5 years and the loss in tax revenue from migrants who leave would more than offset this, at least initially.
• Sovereignty Issues - 
• A lot of sovereignty issues are around Human Rights Act which is a UK bill and  could be reformed and not a EU requirement and arises from our membership of the Council of Europe. Ironically when it was introduced the Tories tabled an amendment to force UK courts to observe ECHR rulings rather than to just consider them as currently. 
• Many of the issues around the ECHR&J are that there are gaps in UK legislation which neither political party seems committed to fixing which means the judges have no existing legal framework to consider the judgement and often complain to parliament that they are not responsible for making laws. 
• Consequently because of the stalemate between parliament and the British judiciary, the EHR & J courts are making law in the UK by default as it is adopted case law. This could be fixed without considering membership to either CoE or EU. 
• The claim of large amounts of British law being made in the EU is made on the bogus basis of pages of law rather than bills considered or impact.
•  EU regulations which are directly implemented into law typically have long preambles and give the history of the regulation as opposed to local laws. 
• On the other hand, there has been an increase in regulations rather than directives, regulations are directly adopted as law without capacity for change by local parliament,where as directives are required to be drafted into law by the local parliament before becoming law.  This is largely because either governments had been too slow in adopting directives into law (particularly in southern Europe),  or had changed or diluted the effect locally deliberately creating loop holes etc. On of the biggest recent directives hated by many of the leavers is CRR 4, which is about banking regulation, as it imposes caps on bonuses and other behaviour issues and is not open to local interpretation. Consequently it is also quite large as it includes all local issues for each country specifically, so certain parts do not apply in the UK but are still present as it is adopted as a whole.
• Most of the other EU laws are regulations on the single market to do with competition or quality, safety etc which I believe we need to avoid a race to the bottom. 
• All treaties cede an amount of sovereignty, this includes NATO (2% military spending), WTO (arbitration courts), and one of the biggest is the WB/IMF which imposes unilateral contribution levels and if required to bailout a country can impose undemocratic constraints on social spending, taxes and debt (e.g. Greece).  T
• The proposed TTIP treaty supported by our government concedes a massive amount of sovereignty in secret through ISDS mechanisms, where secret courts can be forced to change laws, contract awards or pay compensation to foreign (read US) multinationals.
• Democracy issues - again a bit of conflation here. 
• We do not elect our civil servants. 
• Also hard  to claim the high ground here as we have a unelected head of state, and an unelected, unrepresentative upper house. 
• Additionally first past the post means that the government represents only about 32% of the electorate, and parties such as UKIP and Greens are massively under represented with respect to the popular vote.
• So having appointed presidents is not that much different to me than the Queen or the house of lords. 
• If democracy was such a worry then we should get our own house in order first. I think the best option would be to introduce PR for the House of Lords and give them real powers on bill introduction and review excluding those of the budget. 
• The infamous Parliament Act is now over 100 years old  in its various forms, and in its preamble promises that it is a temporary measure (like income tax) until democratic  reforms can be carried out. Its about time that that temporary measure was removed and the promised reforms carried out, rather than as the government recently tried to do and further reduce the House of Lords power.

Unanswered questions/worries

• What regulation would be rescinded: does this include workers rights and parental rights, quality, food safety and environmental regulation? I would be concerned if new trading agreements would be a race to the bottom and we would be forced to accept GMO foods for example, or meats heavily treated with antibiotics. Would there be any replacement?
• Time to negotiate and subsequent quality of free trade agreements: 
• Trade agreements are always a case of give and take. What would we have to take to obtain access or gain free trade to say the BRIC economies. 
• E.g. UK government could be considered guilty of sacrificing the steel industry to appease and try and win trade from China as it blocked tariffs on Chinese steel products since 2008. Is this the sort of behaviour we would see in trying to negotiate deals with the BRICs
• What safeguards do we have that there is not  a race to the bottom in terms of social costs to be competitive with those economies. 
• Growth in these regions is often stoked on the bonfire of low standards for worker safety, rights and welfare. 
• Additionally the current government is big supporter of TTIP and ISDS which enables large multinationals to get there way on things like contracts and regulation or be heavily compensated in secret for it. Australia recently accepted a similar treaty with the US and is regretting it. 
• Who has the experience to negotiate advantageous trade agreements for UK and how long is that going to take? 
• A huge task without any natural candidates as UK has not negotiated its own treaties for over 40 years. Not only will the UK need to normalise its trading with the 28 members of the single market, and the other 4 members of the EFTA, but the 85 other countries which it currently has trading relationships with through the EU and also consider new trading relationships with China, India, Brazil, Russia the Commonwealth etc.
• Further EU integration
• Held up as a fear by the leavers and not to be underestimated. A stronger commitment from the government would be enact in law that any further transfers of power to be subject to a plebiscite, preventing such work arounds as the Blair government did with the Lisbon Treaty. 
• Other cooperation issues 
• UK would need to gain separate access to WTO
• On Kyoto and other climate control agreements would UK accept previous positions or would it need to reaffirm?
• Other unity issues
• Would it trigger secession referenda from other regions? Maybe less of an issue now with oil at < $50 dollars a barrel but still a risk if and when oil recovers.
• Unintended consequences
• A migrant rush similar to when eastern states first acceded to EU in early 2000s is likely for the first two years unless some accommodation with EU can be reached on borders prior.

Gainers 

• UK banks not beholden to Brussels could return to sky high bonuses.
• Sky/Google/Microsoft would not have to worry so much about EU competition law
• Small businesses not trading with Europe could be free to ignore regulations and standards imposed by EU
• Business in general if workers rights are eroded
• Multinationals if we sign up to TTIP like trading arrangements

Losers

• Pharma, Car and Aerospace workers would likely lose out as manufacturing would either be reduced or jobs exported to single market countries
• Employees of large foreign banks who are passported into the EU from UK
• Likely reduction in supporting services also (i.e. accountants, lawyers) from big firms in particular

Summary

Currently when you remove the noise around the Red Herrings, Leave seems to be mainly about immigration, and leaving could certainly solve that issue in more than one way, by allowing stricter border controls/visas etc but also by potentially crashing the economy therefore reducing the appeal of the UK to immigrants. 

This is also where Remain are at their weakest as currently there is no easy answer to immigration with the freedom of movement enshrined in the EU treaties. Much of the attraction to low skilled workers could be removed with the Cameron reforms but there are risks around those being accepted.

The biggest worry is that Leave's economic plans seem hopelessly optimistic about the short to medium term economic consequences, the EU reaction and the scale of the task in negotiating trading relations, and when questioned on this seem to resort to old fashioned jingoism as their justification. Many of the Leave arguments are predicated by "I believe" or "I have faith", so could easily be nicknamed (B)leavers (all rights reserved for Justin Bieber and the Bliebers).

However I could get more comfortable with Leave if they could answer my worries and questions above.

Other issues around trade, democracy and sovereignty are less clear cut and successive UK governments are guilty of failing to protect our sovereignty by failing to implement laws and permitting the European courts to make case law by proxy,  failing to protect our trade and failing to improve our democracy. Don't get me wrong the EU in my mind needs serious reforms and redirections but our governments are far from perfect and only really accountable to their own electorate rather than the country as a whole.