The Left's EU problem

Since my move from being pro-EU to being anti-EU, the questions and contradictions that dog the left still remain.  The EU, along with the EC and EEC before that, is essentially about trade, that is the free flow of goods, capital and people. Therefore at its inception the left was hostile to the concept of a trade bloc. Indeed, during the original EEC membership referendum the late Margaret Thatcher campaigned for a yes to enter vote and the late Tony Benn campaigned for no to stay out vote.  This changed slowly in the 80s and 90s as the EC and later EU moved more to the left with laws to protect worker's rights, thereby circumventing the sovernignty of its member states. But in the 2000's a new factor entered the mix - immigration.  The addition of the former Eastern bloc countries and the Blair government's policy of allowing citizen's from these new members to enter the UK to work and live turned the whole debate on its head. So instead of the EU being a businessman's club to help them earn more profits, the paradigm was about cultural diversity, enrichment and the benefits of immigration. Now the axiom was that if you were against the EU then you were racist, in the same way that being against mass immigration was racist.

We can see this in the way UKIP are demonized during the 2015 general election, and the Green's party rather confused policy of campaigning to stay in the EU during the referendum but cutting down on the amount of trade between the UK and EU.  Strange that Greens do not mention cutting done the free movement of labour, only the free movement of goods and capital.

So therefore now we are in a situation where the British left are essentially campaigning to stay in a businessman's club , because it does not want to be seen as being pro-nation state, pro-sovereignty and against immigration.  This all ties in with the fact that since the fall of the USSR, the left has been pushing a cultural marxist of Frankfurt school agenda rather than an economic one.  In that anything that undermines British or western culture is good as the western or British culture is essentially racist, imperialist and made no positive contributions in the the left's view of the world.