When I voted to leave I chose democracy over GDP

Very often I encounter remainers exalting the virtues of EU funding. What they fail to realise is that this spending, very often match funded, is not chosen at random. Eligibility depends on how well it serves the long term grand designs of ever closer union such as the Trans-European Transport Network; a planned set of road, rail, air and water transport networks in the European Union. Similar initiatives exist to create a single European energy market. This ties in with EU research programmes; a major source of revenue for universities.

All of this is drawn up and passed down to quangos, councils and "local" enterprise partnerships. The development agenda is one drawn up by people you've never heard of, never voted for - and it's an agenda you have no say in whatsoever. We are told that it promotes growth and creates jobs, which is true, to a point. It creates any number of big ticket items politicians can take credit for. 

All of this then goes into the Official Journal of the EU, which is effectively a government procurement classified ads system in which local councils are compelled to advertise these very projects and consider bids from across the EU. The cheapest qualifying bid must win. 

And here's the thing about about government procurement. Wherever you find a big pot of money you can find all the top tier consultancy firms putting in a bid. The little guy can get stuffed. If he wants to put in a bid he has to prove conformity to a dozen mandatory standards and a supply twenty page company environment plan, along with water usage statistics and mindnumbing eco-reporting. 

As a data and software consultant I once made a living helping small firms jump through the hoops, finding that much of it is meaningless guess work and adds no value at all. More often than not these tiresome data chores are delegated to temporary admin staff who don't care and will probably just make it up because nobody is going to check. Not even the KPMG junior auditor.

This is less of a problem for the likes of Serco and Crapita who are well versed in producing meaningless paperwork which is what makes them preferred bidders. This how we have a contracting oligarchy in the UK. But it creates jobs right?

Well, sort of. These companies no longer bother to employ engineers and consultants. Many of them are in the business of bidding for the contracts and only crewing them up if they actually win. They'll employ contractors and take a cut from their hourly rate. We then see further subcontracting where the unskilled jobs are done at minimum wage, and freedom of movement makes that possible. 

Anyone who has worked in the consultancy sector knows this dynamic well - and they also know it runs like a mafia syndicate. The only difference between our system and the mafia syndicates in Italy is that we legalised the corruption. This notionally makes it more transparent. That's why we knew in 2011 that £38.1 million awarded through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) was misspent or unaccounted for, while a further £133.9 million was written off.

The EU development blueprint, however, is only part of the picture. Here's where we find EU directives become a vast contracting gravy train. Directives very often compel governments, councils especially, to draw up their own plans to meet targets on anything from wetlands quotas to recycling. Councils, therefore, are committed to implementing policy which is expensive, often inappropriate and in the case of the Somerset flooding, completely counter productive.

Moreover, being that the EU seeks to create a single market in services, much of the local rules which would otherwise prevent bids from other member states are steamrollered meaning incumbent suppliers who know the patch are chucked out in favour of fly-by-nights. 

It is oft said that the UK has been a reluctant member of the EU, but in actuality the UK has been the most ruthless in liberalising government procurement and implementing EU directives regardless of whether they make sense. That is why the public are a great deal more sceptical of the EU than our politicians.

Looked at in the round, what we see is the entire apparatus of UK government dedicated to implementing the grand design of the EU - to bring about a single marketplace with identical rules, with a high mobility workforce all working to the same terms and conditions and to the same labour laws. That, of course, can only happen if the EU controls labour laws. This is why we have seen the atrophy of trade unions. 

We therefore find that policy is not devised locally, local businesses are shown no favour, the spending agenda is dictated to us, and councils are not free to innovate or refuse to implement unworkable or undesirable policies. Democracy is completely absent from this entire set up. Councils are demoted to the status of regional development agencies, unions become obedient cogs in the machine and local politicians might as well be mannequins for all the influence they have. We now have corporate CEOs setting the financial agenda. 

The effect of all this is to render politics redundant where we increasingly see politicians engaged in displacement activity or using what little powers they have to gold plate EU initiatives, often to suit their own vanity or peruse their favoured hobby horse - which is what has gradually hollowed out politics over the years. The results of which are glaringly evident right now.

Eventually this becomes something of a problem. You do not have to be a "climate denier" to be a sceptic of greenwash policy, very often mandated by the EU, not least insulation targets such as outer cladding on buildings and the wind turbines that intrude on our treasured landscapes.

Here remainers would point put that most of this is down to "Tory neoliberalism" but neoliberalism would imply there were some sort of political ideology at work. There isn't. This is largely a result of the drift toward managerialism and government by accountancy which is massively influenced by the EU in a hundreds of insidious ways.

The great genius of the EU of the EU though is that it does not intrude on the bread and butter of politics - schools, hospitals and welfare. This is why so many gullible remainers proclaim that we still have sovereignty. The effect is that social democrat consensus politics (the establishment paradigm we've had for the last thirty years), bickers in Westminster feeding the coprophagiac media, completely neglecting any form of technical governance or ambitious regional development. 

We get the occasional nod to the "Northern Powerhouse" and HS2 but the one thing that's been missing in all this time is a vision for the country. Politicians will happily cut the ribbon on EU funded projects, with parties taking the credit for it, but the grand design they are unwittingly working to is the one in the DNA of the EU... Ever closer union. The grand design never appeared on any party manifesto and consequently politics of vision has disappeared off the radar entirely, reducing politics to tribes buying off their respective voter bases with goodies. 

The EU seeks maximum harmonisation of rules to liberalise the European market, but more than that, it wants to create uniformity throughout for the sake of its utopian European ideal. EU academic programmes subsidising jollies for academics are there to brainwash the intelligentsia while social funds exist in order for the EU to get its tentacles into local politics. Civil society is bought and paid for because it needs a fifth column. 

The one thing the EU knows is that the utopian ideal cannot be realised if voters have a choice in the matter. The laws of nation states must be swept away and replaced so that no barriers exist. Consequently nationally, and locally, votes are meaningless. We cannot use our votes to shape our own laws, define our own rights and spend according to our own designs. 

It is one thing to have common standards on food labelling and electronics so that goods can cross borders and ensure that food is safe and products are fit for use, and if the EU were only a single market then there would be a balance of sovereignty, but the EU for as long as it exists will assume ever more competences and it will do so with the collusion of our own ruling class without us ever having a say.  

This is where we see the ultimate clash of values in the UK. There are those for whom economic growth is the only concern, where every political decision must be measured in terms of its effect on GDP from trade to immigration. That is the remainer mindset to the core which is why they only speak in terms of economic costs of Brexit and the GDP contribution of migrants. In their eyes any decision impacting on growth should be overturned. 

As a Brexiter my view is that we are not economic units to be farmed like battery chickens. We must have the right to self determination and the power to define our own rules according to our own values and spend according to our own priorities. Some things matter more than GDP and in respect of that, yes I did vote to be poorer.

What should be noted, however, is that being poorer is not assured over the longer term. If we are free to innovate, to set our own labour laws, to design our own frameworks according to our actual needs, what is to say an engaged public cannot design a fairer, better society than one designed by EU commissioners who have never even visited the places they rule over? We are told we should listen to the experts. When it comes to the way we want to live, we the public are the experts.