UK referendum debate not well presented: business leader

As Britons will make their most important decision in decades in Thursday's referendum on the nation's membership in the EU, some members of the business community operating between EU and UK highlighted their concerns about the historic referendum.

David Thomas, Executive Chairman at Council of British Chambers of Commerce in Europe told Xinhua that his "biggest fear has been on the quality of the debate and how it has been managed, the British people has not been given the simple facts so they can make a decision. They have been given exaggerations, which generated confusion, bringing the decision process down to emotions when it should not be."

He said that the "remain" side did not put their case forward, "they were all very good but they all wanted to play the 'prima donna' and did not work as team while the 'leave' side had much less individual experience but they do played as a team."

According to Thomas, it is negative then that Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party, and British Prime Minister David Cameron did not sit on the same stand together. This seemed more a referendum between former London Mayor Boris Johnson and Cameron and the biggest fear is that the discussions and the final decision base of the population will be on who will be the next prime minister.

Tom Parker, Vice-President of the British Chamber of Commerce in Brussels told Xinhua that the economic argument at stake is very critical, saying that "we are a nation of shop keepers, people quite savvy when it comes to money matters so I think UK citizens will pragmatically take at first into consideration this element."

Parker then underlined the importance to explain that it is not because UK leaving the Brussels that the migration problem will go away while he thought that some type of migrants will become even more of a problem for London.

(APD)