The Angel of the North has been widely embraced as a totem of the north-east since its 1998 installation, and having passed it so often, last month I finally carved out the time to see it up close. A small information board at the site, built on Gateshead’s Team colliery, which closed in 1974, features an explanation from the sculptor, Antony Gormley, that the angel honours the region’s heavy industrial past while aspiring towards a renewed economic future. A little detail is included about Gateshead council’s difficulties in raising the £800,000 needed for its monument to regeneration, and in the bottom lefthand corner of the board is a tiny blue and yellow symbol of one organisation that came up with the cash: the European Union.

Brexit could jeopardise £5bn 'lifeline' of EU cash, councils warn Read more

In June 2016, a majority of people in the north-east, including Gateshead, voted to leave the EU, against the advice of their local authorities, trade unions, business organisations, major political parties, universities and local employers such as the carmaking giant Nissan. All argued that the region’s progress towards economic renewal, which has made it a net exporter to the EU largely due to Nissan, would be severely disrupted by Brexit. But in a region that had suffered such prolonged industrial decay, the message simply didn’t cut through. There was and still is little clear appreciation of answers to the basic question: “What has the EU ever done for me?”

One worker at the Nissan factory told me he voted leave because the north-east got “bugger all money” from the EU. This despite Nissan alone benefiting from huge European regional development fund (ERDF) grants and, in just the eight years before the referendum, £450m in loans from the European Investment Bank (EIB). It is difficult to believe that the referendum would have swung the same way had more prominence been given over the decades to the EU’s concrete contribution, particularly to rebuilding efforts in regions suffering economic decline.

The Newcastle Chronicle did run an article in June 2016 detailing the EU’s funding of regeneration landmarks, including the Sage music venue and Baltic art gallery on the Gateshead side of the Tyne, and the Millennium Bridge over to the Newcastle side. Economic development projects qualified for millions in European grants, including infrastructure works on the Tyne’s north bank, and the old Swan Hunter shipyard’s transformation into a centre for developing offshore energy, subsea and marine industries.

The Liverpool Echo did the same exercise, listing 17 transformative developments, including of formerly derelict land around Lime Street station, major improvements to Liverpool John Lennon airport, and the arena and convention centre on the waterfront. Merseyside qualified for £1.6bn “Objective One” EU funding between 1994 and 2013 to try to haul it out of decline.

But those were isolated local newspaper efforts amid years of misinformation and a void of basic information. That Boris Johnson and his Vote Leave campaign got away with quoting an imaginary £350m weekly contribution to the EU without acknowledging the £5.6bn rebate or the annual £4bn invested back into the UK illustrated the general lack of knowledge about the basics of membership.

The European funding system has always been valued by regional leaders because it is objective, and based on the actual regeneration need. More money per head is available for “less developed” regions, as Merseyside was.

Currently almost the whole of Wales and Cornwall qualifies, while large parts of the north-east, north-west, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Yorkshire and Humberside are classed as “transition” regions for investment. EU “structural funding” – from the ERDF and European Social Fund – was worth approximately £10bn to the UK between 2007 and 2013, and approximately £11bn is allocated from 2014 to 2020, with a further £25bn available for rural development and agriculture.

It is true of course that the UK – along with France, Germany and six other wealthier EU countries – is a net contributor to the EU, according to the long-agreed aim of raising living standards across the continent to help build peace, stability and a more prosperous single market that benefits all countries.

And even while the UK turns its back on the EU it still – if you can find the corner of its website – hails the “achievements” of ERDF funding, saying that from 2007 to 2013 “billions of pounds were invested into local projects”, creating 131,375 jobs. It even publishes a little booklet, Supporting Local Growth, citing many successful investments across the country.

This government’s idea for replacing that whole investment structure has struggled to clear the sketch-on-napkin stage under Theresa May, and barely been mentioned in Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt’s unedifying Tory leadership campaigns. A consultation on the “shared prosperity fund” promised to be completed by the end of 2018 never began, and the fund remains imaginary.

As for Labour leavers, last month’s letter from 26 MPs representing leave-voting constituencies, arguing against a second referendum, contained nothing positive about Brexit itself, just defeatism that the argument was lost in 2016. Meanwhile Johnson and Hunt push us towards no deal, even though their own government’s assessments predict the north-east will face a 16% economic decline.

Even now, before it really is too late, the benefits to Britain of being in the EU need to be explained positively and clearly, not pushed to the fringes of understanding, like the tiny symbol beneath the Angel of the North.

• David Conn is a Guardian writer