See, the benefit of being in a large market is that you have large buffer when something goes bad in one part of it.

That’s definitely a Brexit issue, because of UK being out of the single market the shock in the UK cannot be absorbed by the other countries in the EU.

If Spain did the same mistakes, there would not be shortages in Spain when everything is fine in France. Without any central governmental intervention, the sudden demand would be absorbed naturally through the rest of the EU.

That’s why UK has issues everywhere but not only in, let’s say Leeds. Because UK cities are in the same market, they absorbed sudden demand as a whole up until the whole market dried up.

I agree that shortages are caused by government intervention. In this case both limiting new driver approvals, and also limiting imports of cheap labour. Although I am a supporter of Brexit, it is indeed nonetheless a form of market manipulation like any tariffs or border controls are.

Nonetheless, there is hardly a matter of principle here. The EU imposes very strict tariffs, border controls and various forms of market manipulation within its territory. There is a difference of scale, but not a huge one. The proximate issue here is that the social class of people who stand to lose out from Brexit saw an opportunity to both (a) stiff the workers leading to (b) more money whilst (c) scoring an ideological goal over their opponents, hence telling the press there were going to be imminent huge fuel shortages despite no actual change in the trucking situation ... thus neatly creating the problem they were warning about.

Yes, that's what happens when you are out of the club but still want to use the facilities. It's called not being member of the EU. Welcome to club of not-in-EU. Want to sell stuff to EU? You need to prove that's it's up to the standards since you no longer commit to be aligned to EU standards and that's why you need the paperwork. This is valid not just for selling stuff but for anything that UK diverges from EU.

I guess for the foreseeable future UK will continue to blame all of its problems on EU, like 40 years old dude claiming that it's his parents fault since they didn't let him take dance classes. It's all his parents fault that he tries to meet the ends when living in a rundown neighbourhood instead of being world famous and rich dancer. Damn parents, it's totally not because of partying instead of studying.

What "facilities" and what "club"? The EU is not a club and does not have "facilities" - we're talking about people and governments here.

You seem to be replying to arguments I didn't make. I haven't mentioned selling stuff to the EU anywhere nor does this topic have anything to do with that.

Brexit is excellent because the EU is a terrible political/constitutional project, but that has nothing to do with petrol stations or truckers. Indeed Brexit supporters aren't blaming the EU for this because it'd be a non-sequitur, it's the other way around: people loyal to EU ideology are blaming Brexit for it, without evidence actually and in ways that appear to be quite manipulative (e.g. deliberately lying to provoke a run on petrol then blaming that on Brexit).

BTW the attitude you display here is exactly one of the reasons leaving the EU was so important. I've never once encountered an EU fan who displays a friendly and cooperative attitude, or an understanding of why people voted to leave. It's always immense bitterness, stupid analogies and insults.

The club thing is a metaphor, not even an analogy. Essentially it means, there are different rules for doing things in the EU for people and companies that are from it or from the outside and UK is now from outside and as a result will need to deal with the stuff for outsiders. Why there are different rules? Because within the EU we have agreed on how things should work, with the outsiders we don't have such an agreement therefore they can do whatever they like as long as the stuff that comes to EU or affects EU citizens directly needs to happen according to the standards we decided to.

As a result, this will bring you the opportunity to do your own thing like all the outsiders out there, like produce and eat chlorinated chicken, put asbestos in kids toys if that's your thing but you will be required to prove that you are sending the un-chlorinated ones to EU. That's why you have checks and paperworks at the border, it's not to piss you off. Anything that's happening currently is the logical outcome of Brexit, it's not a conspiracy to make life hard for the British. We love UK and the British culture, that's why we are so sour about this "We are better than the EU" thingy. Seriously, besides some jokes and snarky comments, no one wishes bad things to the British people.

Anyway, so since you left, when do you expect to meet the friendly, cooperative people who don't insult you for expecting unreasonable things?

Again you seem to be responding to arguments nobody is making, or at least not in this thread.

Where has anyone said "Britain is better than the EU"? Nowhere, that I can see.

When did anyone express incomprehension at the existence of border controls? Not here.

Has anyone said they want to put asbestos in children's toys? No, that's some sort of straw man.