Who are these intellectuals Urmstongran? And, what constitutes being one?
I may not agree with you politically, but you are perceptive and articulate. By the token you appear to be 'judging' intellectuals - you could just as easily be one of them 
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Personally, I tend to think of people like the late Stephen Hawking as belonging to that demographic.
I made a post a while back suggesting that the Remain campaign had been lacklustre (to say the least) and that one of the reasons could have been because some Remainers did not understand that, in our very unequal society, our EU-membership benefits were not equally 'distributed' (for want of a better word)... and got taken to task over it because it was not our job to 'right the wrongs', it is Government's job.
Which is true, but it would have helped if we'd better understood that being a member of the EU felt more comfortable for the guy working in the City of London commuting back to the leafy suburbs than it did for the agricultural worker in the Midlands.
Of course, the situation you described is not the fault of the EU - workers in each country both native and immigrant are supposed to be paid on a par. We should have had the regulations in place to make sure this happened and prosecuted those that flouted them. And the inequality endemic in this country is home-grown, it is a domestic issue.
And I personally think Tony Blair made the wrong decision in allowing the influx of East Europeans before we'd had time to build up the infrastructure to support them - a point which the EU recognised as important, which is why they allowed the option of staggering the immigration levels, an option which other countries took up. Of course, other Remainers will disagree with me because our failing infrastructure is not the fault of the immigrant, it is the fault of government. But it doesn't do any harm in recognising that it was a problem in some areas nonetheless, and not one to be airily dismissed as being of no consequence.
I've done agricultural work (are you familiar with "beet singling"?). It is the most tedious, boring, physically draining work imaginable. I ended up with a bad back and acid reflux from continual bending over, callouses on the palm of my hand from the constant leaning on the half-spade and the same on the front of my hands from the exposure to the sun. My sun-hat kept falling forward over my eyes and I fell over a couple of times because I couldn't see and, at the end of the day, my mother had to pick me up in the car because my legs ached and were too weak to pedal the bike she lent me. And all for 'tuppence and a bit o' pudding. Not that this is relevant, just thought I'd throw in a 'poor-me' observation!
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