Economists around the world have been scanning the horizon with their high powered Zeiss binoculars in search of the cause of the next global recession.

It has been a conundrum of the first order because a recession has never taken place in the face of low interest rates and low oil prices.

However, we may have just found the trigger.

The possible impending departure of the United Kingdom from the European community has cataclysmic implications for economies everywhere.

We’ll know for sure when the referendum is held on June 23.

Yikes! I’ll be in England then!

The move is being driven by the same factors present in the American Republican Party presidential nomination race.

Working class Brits have lost jobs to a tidal wave of immigrants from the rest of the EC, whose common passports allow unfettered access to Old Blighty.

Take a weekend trip to London, and chances are that the desk clerk is from Poland, the porter is from Croatia, the waitress is from Italy, and the cleaning ladies are from Spain and Greece.

Actual Englishmen are to be found only in distant suburbs, or in unemployment offices.

The recent influx of immigrants from the Middle East has also placed a massive strain on the country’s social services resources.

Visit your local neighborhood National Health GP, and you will share the waiting room with foreign refugees missing arms or legs, or bearing near fatal combat injuries. It’s almost like visiting a wartime MASH unit.

Net net, the view is that EC membership is costing England jobs and money, probably in the billions of pounds per year.

As with the US, the populist view is at odds with the economic reality.

While the UK is a net contributor to the Brussels budget, that misses the point. It is greatly outweighed by the additional economic growth generated by EC membership.

Goods flow freely, duty free between all 23 member countries.

A manufacturer in Birmingham, Leeds, or Manchester doesn’t think twice about jumping on the Channel train to call on customers in Paris, Munich, or Copenhagen.