I presume you mean being in the EU improves trade. Whatever you mean, IIRC the EU bloc is by some distance the biggest trade partner the UK has, and certainly the biggest we'll have without contributing massively to carbon emissions. On that basis, we'll need to have trade agreements of some kind with other EU countries, whether we're part of it or not. If we're part of the EU, we get a say. If we're not, we'll need to have those trade agreements anyway, but they'll push the rest of the package along without us having any say whatsoever (compare with what John Major did at Maastricht). If we don't like social regulations, we can, and have, leave out some of it without losing our say in the rest of the package. If we're in the EU.
I prefer to have as little government in my life as possible. But I recognise there is need for it, and given a choice between big government and no government, big government wins out every time. Within a democracy, even in a representative one, I get to have some say should I care to do so. I prefer that to pretending to be out of it, but being affected by it anyway because I don't really live outside it. I respect those politicians who face this reality and don't try to dilute it for me. Whatever their failings, they face reality head on and try to cope with it as well as they can. I don't respect politicians who draw a divide between one or the other as though one of the choices is practical. It's not, and if they say so, they're either deluded and shouldn't be anywhere near anything that governs, or they're lying.
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