MUCH the most depressing aspect of the EU referendum campaign so far is the way it keeps coming back to the issue of immigration like a dog to its vomit. Last week's row over the Labour Europe spokeswoman Pat Glass's accusation that a constituent complaining about Polish benefit “scroungers” was racist just underlined the point.

Brexiteers leapt to the defence of said constituent, who certainly sounded like he didn't much like foreigners on benefits. But Glass was forced anyway to issue a humiliating apology, much as Gordon Brown had in 2010 when he was recorded describing Gillian Duffy as a bigot. Not calling people racist has become a kind of inverted political correctness.

The immigration figures on Wednesday provoked another row about foreigners taking British jobs.The Lord Chancellor Michael Gove – who should know better – claimed that 5.2 million immigrants will come to Britain by 2030 if we remain in the EU putting unsustainable pressure on the NHS. He claimed, with little actual justification, that only by leaving will Britain be able to keep foreigners out, even though EU workers have helped the UK to pull out of recession and are a net benefit to the exchequer.

The presumption among the Brexit camp, from Boris Johnson to Nigel Farage, is that immigration is bad and must be halted by pulling up some imaginary drawbridge.

This focus on the dark side has allowed those of us who broadly support European integration an easy ride. We can dismiss the Brexiteers as closet racists and claim that we are the good guys supporting open borders, international harmony and racial coexistence. It's rather like the opponents of Scottish independence, like the novelist JK Rowling, who dismissed the Yes campaign as closet anti-English racists and bigots who wanted to cut Scotland off from Europe.

But she was wrong and Remainians shouldn't emulate her intellectual laziness. The sorry state of the Brexit campaign is not an excuse for ignoring the sorry state of the EU. Europe is not about open borders anymore, following the refugee crisis and the terrorist attacks, and the Schengen zone is effectively dead. Nor is the EU simply about defending workers rights, as the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn insists.

Some workplace rights like maternity pay and paid holidays are broadly protected by the European Union. But as The Guardian's economics editor, Larry Elliott, will argue in a book coming out in August called “Europe isn't Working” these pale into insignificance beside the mass unemployment that has been inflicted unnecessarily by the EU's deflationary economic policies. And not just in Greece. Youth unemployment has been running at up to 50 per cent in countries like Spain and Italy. Large parts of the EU are now in permanent recession.

Like Elliott I would argue against an immediate Brexit vote, largely on the grounds that it might lead to economic chaos and a rise of the far right. But we need a solid dose of realism about the course the European Union has been taking. As Elliott says, it is very much a corporate enterprise, informed by neoliberal and free market ideas, and dominated by the global companies which lobby Brussels and shape its policies. Which brings us to the vexatious TTIP trade deal between the EU and the USA.

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, to give TTIP its full name, had been hovering on the fringes of the EU referendum until last week it nearly cost David Cameron a defeat on the Queen's Speech. Labour, SNP and Tory rebels supported an amendment calling on the PM to exclude the National Health Service from TTIP . The fear is that the trade agreement's anti-monopoly provisions, and the creation of special Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) courts will, according to Jeremy Corbyn, leave the NHS a playground for private health corporations. Since the 2011 Health and Social Care Act, there has been a wholesale invasion of the English NHS by health care companies, many from America. Unlike here in Scotland, English hospitals have to compete with private suppliers to provide health care. Critics say TTIP will make this irreversible.

It's not just the SNP, Labour and health sector unions who say this. The former SDP leader, Lord Owen – a former doctor – claims that TTIP will undermine the NHS. The former Conservative cabinet minister, David Lilly has claimed that in future it would be impossible for a private surgical care unit to be renationalised, as happened recently in his own constituency. Some 25 Tory rebels signed the Labour/SNP amendment exempting the NHS. To avoid a defeat, David Cameron announced that the government would accept the SNP/Labour amendment if it is tabled. But that has not appeased the critics.

Most of the highly complex TTIP negotiations, currently stalled, are actually about free trade and removing tariff and needless regulatory barriers between America and Europe – which is of course a good thing. Everyone benefits from free trade – except of course when very weak economies are exposed to unfair competition. But the extension of competition and deregulation into services has raised legitimate concerns that public services will be legally obliged to open up to competition from private providers. The NHS is a potential dripping roast.

Brussels insists that the UK NHS will be safeguarded under TTIP. The trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom, has given a categoric assurance that the UK “will not have to open health services to competition from private providers and will not have to outsource public health services”. However there are two problems here.

Firstly the Commissioner appears to be in ignorance of the extent to which the English NHS is already outsourced and privatised, which provides a legal precedent. Also, the TTIP negotiations between the EU and the USA are all taking place under an impenetrable cloak of commercial confidentiality, so no one really knows what is being discussed.

We are almost certainly right to be worried, especially in Scotland where privatisation has been halted, at the prospect of wealthy American health care firms being able to mount legal challenges in these special ISDS courts, assuming they come into being. They could argue that Scotland is part of the UK and there should be free competition across the jurisdiction. Alex Salmond argued precisely this in August 2014 during the independence referendum debate, warning that the Scottish service could be privatised by the back door.

The SNP said then that only independence could safeguard the Scottish NHS, and I'm sure they still do. But they must realise that a vote for Britain to remain in the EU next month will be seen by Brussels as a green light for persevering with TTIP. Critics say the UK will then have to accept deals made in secret in Brussels by unelected bureaucrats in cahoots with lobbyists from the corporate world.

I suspect there is an element of paranoia about TTIP. However, the trade talks invite suspicion by being so secretive that the public are not allowed to see any of its internal documents. The Conservatives may not be actively seeking to abolish the NHS, but TTIP would be a neat way of allowing others to do it for them.

At the very least, TTIP underlines the extent to which the EU overlaps with corporate interests here and in America. If we are to stay in the European Union, people need to know what is being negotiated in our name. The Remain parties need to get serious about reforming the undemocratic institutions of Europe. It’s not enough just congratulating ourselves, like the pro-Europe luvvies on Abbey Road, for being morally superior to Little England Brexiteers.