In the last few weeks, I have canvassed many residents about the EU and, on the doorstep, I get the following impressions:

REMAIN VICTORIES
The Remain campaign are convincing people on:
(1) The economy. The British economy – and particularly the North East economy – depends on trade with the EU. We are a member of the biggest free-trading block in the world, and have just renegotiated the best improvements we could to our membership package. Most people accept that it is an obvious nonsense to say that the best thing to do now is to leave … and then set about re-renegotiating terms which, as an outsider, would almost certainly be worse.
(2) Rights at work. The Social Chapter of our EU membership includes many rights and safety benefits for British workers, which will be threatened if we leave the EU. I have yet to meet anyone who believes that Michael Gove and Ian Duncan-Smith want to leave the EU so they can bring in better protections.
(3) Funding. At a time when our own government is planning to end all grant-funding by 2020, only the EU accepts that County Durham should have funding to meet its social needs. Durham County Council is currently setting up a £17 million project to help the county’s 6,000 unemployed young people into work. That money did not come from our own government, but from the EU.
(4) Cooperation. Not just our trade, but much of our scientific and medical research, our police response to organised crime, our security response to international terrorism etc. depend on cooperation with other EU countries.
(5) Endorsements. President Obama thinks Britain is better in the EU. So do the IMF, the IFS, the Bank of England, the Treasury, by far the majority of business leaders . . . the list is endless. Brexit supporters include President Putin, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson.

LEAVE VICTORIES
However, in my doorstep discussions, the Remain campaign is being challenged in two areas:
(A) Immigration. Actually, immigration is irrelevant to the EU debate. We are outside Schengen – we DO “control our borders”. The only place we have open borders is in Ireland, where closing them will wreck the Good Friday agreement. And most people I talk to confess they do not understand how Brexit would affect all the different kinds of immigration – non-EU, free-movement labour, asylum-seekers, refugees, international students. But when the Newton News prints a letter claiming that a Remain vote will see us grabbing our AK47 rifles to fight off fake ISIL refugees, one worries that the Remain campaign is giving ground to Operation ‘panic and fear’.
(B) Sovereignty. Actually, very few of our laws come from Brussels, and it is British businesses which most assiduously introduce EU regulations (so they can win contracts in EU countries). The internationalisation of our culture, cuisine etc – which so frightens the “we want our country back” brigade – is unconnected in any way to our EU membership. But when the Leader of the Town Council evokes memories of ‘Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer’ one fears the ’Leave’ campaign is winning on the bigoted nationalism front.

INTO THE FUTURE
All the evidence tells us that younger people generally want to stay in the EU. Of course they do – the only sensible way forward is to embrace our shrinking world, form international partnerships, and move into the future. Young people are very good at this. But they are bad at voting, and the danger is that the decision will be made for them by people who fear multiculturalism, seek parochialism, and want to turn back the clock to a mythical past they feel they are losing.
The full effects of the referendum will only become clear in 20 or 30 years’ time, when I will probably be long gone. So – for the future which my grandchildren would wish – I am voting Remain.
John D Clare