Pretty much every sticking point of the UK/EU negotiations boiled down this. And the stated reasoning was an "I'm Me" argument. The UK deserved sovereignty because I'm me. The UK deserved market access because I'm me. The UK should not lose access to their cake just because they ate it because I'm me. The UK deserved no border in the Irish sea and no border in Ireland because I'm me. Absolutely no effort was spent on meeting the EU halfway or, at the very least, trying to adopt a negotiating position that was not immediately poked full of holes by random Internet commenters.
And, for what it's worth... the UK never intended to leave the EU at all. Brexit was a sham vote intended to go the same way as the Scottish independence referendum. When it blew up in David Cameron's face he basically jumped ship and handed UKIP the keys to the country.
This is the problem with antiglobalism: it has yet to suggest a viable alternative to the thing it is fighting. Putting up borders and trade barriers everywhere means rolling back everyone's living standards to the 1970s; but it does not matter because the antiglobalists would become richer in the process. In a sense, the UK's negotiating position was less "we want market access and a trade deal" and more "we want you to unconditionally surrender and join the new British Empire".
As the UK is demonstrating, it was always possible to leave simply by giving notice, and it's possible to negotiate a new arrangement.
The "I'm me" refers to the UK wanting its cake and eating it - by not meeting the EU half way in the trade relationship, of course the UK does not get the benefits either, but they assumed they would get similar benefits.
Sucks for those of us who live in the UK. We've basically lost a bunch of rights and privileges. For the individual person in the UK I would say we have less personal sovereignty now than we did before, just because there's less we are free to do with our lives than before. For UK businesses that trade with the EU - and this includes IT contractors - there are considerable barriers to trade now as well, which are causing customers in the EU to be increasing disinclined to bother with UK suppliers.
Much of the talk about the EU is about trade, but there were a lot of personal freedoms enshrined in the EU treaty granted to all EU member citizens as a condition of membership as well, which we UK citizens have now lost. For many of us it's a severe and painful loss. You can probably tell, I care much less about the trade, and much more about what personal rights and freedoms individuals (and families etc) have to be free to enjoy their lives.
I think individual persons have been harmed by Brexit much more than a "global elite", who can manage their assets just fine and aren't really affected.
Y'know what we call countries who think their right to self-determination overrides others? We call them paraiahs, or war criminals if they really push the issue.
This is an internet myth. The EU common market has four pillars of freeeom and one of them is free immigration between EU countries.
The Free Movement of Goods
The Free Movement of People
The Freedom of Services
The Freedom of Movement of Capital
The UK left the EU because it wanted to limit migration and they thought that somehow they could get a special deal even though there are some very carefully chosen reasons why they have these four freedoms in one package.
For example, trading between countries requires people to cross borders and if they need a visa to trade, there is no more free trade as the government could introduce policies to prevent people from trading by denying visas to transportation companies.
If you compromise on the four freedoms, the entire concept of the EU will collapse not because other member states will leave the EU to get concessions, rather because there are plenty of loop holes to reduce 3 freedoms to two freedoms and two freedoms to one freedom to zero freedoms effectively eliminating the EU entirely without having a single member leave.
From my outsider’s perspective, the EU’s justification is far stronger than a “cautionary tale”: a Union means a Union. No other country or state structure in the world allows its constituent members to carve out only the bits that they themselves like; that would subvert the entire point of the Union.
The EU more or less does exactly that with Norway, a non-EU country with common market access and freedom of movement etc. That was the model I recall being promoted for a UK/EU relationship. They never intended to leave the common market or eschew all regulatory commonality.
Britain is too proud to agree to that. It would have been very hard to explain to voters why UK resigned all its influence in the EU but still has to follow all the rules. And anything else meant losing access to the common market. This was explained many times during the Brexit campaign and subsequent years of confusion, but somehow the idea persisted that UK would eventually get an exception that breaks the fundamental design of the common market by allowing one country to produce goods and services that don’t follow the common market’s rules.
And the EU did offer the UK various flavours of "a non-EU country with common market access and freedom of movement etc.", according to the news in the UK at the time.
Those were all turned down by the UK government. What you're describing was called by many a "soft Brexit".
As you may recall, there were many voices demanding a "hard Brexit" instead. In the end, the hard-Brexiters won by political strategy. I don't think they were even in the majority.
So I don't think it can be said correctly that "they never intended to leave the common market". The UK wanted some trade benefits of the common market, but they also wanted something they could sell politically as a "hard Brexit". That meant a lot of things had to be seen to be changed, and also it required "freedom of movement will end" - that is, the UK in the end insisted that it be nothing like the Norway or Switzerland models.
They refused, because that would effectively mean they still have to follow all the same rules, but now without any say in how they're decided.
But turns out you can't just demand all the benefits of a club without following any of the obligations and now the UK is where it is.
People were being sold a lie and they believed it. The optimum relationship with the EU was always the one they already had, membership with a few extra carve-outs.
That is how some people advertised it to yes voters, but from the start May's and then Johnson's government were clear that they would not accept freedom of movement or the jurisdiction of the ECJ (both of which Norway has). And even if the EU was willing to do another Switzerland (unlikely), that _still_ has to accept freedom of movement and, well, something that, while not the ECJ, could easily be mistaken for it in a dark alley.
The UK also regularly complains that the EU won't let them opt-out of ECJ jurisdiction in any trade deal negotiations, which is pretty basic as far as a deal goes. US trade deals demand ISDS processes which are arguably worse, and the WTO has its own court jurisdiction for trade disputes under its treaties. All global trade requires an agreement as to who can sue where for what, which means surrendering some sovereignty.
> However, the EU wouldn’t let them keep access in the divorce if for no reason other than as a cautionary tale for other member states.
How would you propose that this access would work, given that the UK refused to accept EU regulation?
The problem is that the Leave campaign had promised the impossible: to stay in the common market for goods and services, but leave the common market for labour (free movement), and not pay for anything anymore. The world just doesn't work that way.
I won't get into a discussion about who is to blame for the breakdown in negotiations, as those discussions tend to get ugly fast.
Now introducing any level friction of trade quickly moves trade to somewhere else if price is competitive and there is less friction.
My understanding from the news during the negotations was that something similar to common market access under substantially similar terms was on the table from the EU, as were several variations of it. But these were all rejected, because they were viewed by some _in the UK_ as "too soft, soft Brexit, Brexit in name only". Enough politicans and, how shall we say, "influencers", wanted a "hard Brexit", and that meant something bold, symbolic and rejecting things too similar to what had been in place before (including much that was on the table from the EU).
Many little things were on the table from the EU as well, regardless of the main deal, that were seemingly rejected by the UK for no convincing reason.
The ability for performing artists such as musicians, DJs, etc to do tours of Europe as they did before, for example, was on the table from the EU, but the UK turned it away, because of course we would not want EU citizen artists able to do the same reciprocally. So that wiped out a large part of those UK artists' businesses and lifestyles for no obvious reason.
The Erasmus program, also, which allowed students to travel on exchange programs through many of the countries, swapping with their counterpants coming to the UK.
I think both of those suffered from ideology, because in virtually every speech by Theresa May that I heard with regard to the negotiations when she was PM, one of the most up-front and prominent sentences seemed to be in the prelude over and over: "Freedom of movement will end". It sounded more important than anything else. She has also been the architect of the "hostile environment" too, which is frankly legislated evil and still ruining lives. She was reportedly upset at the Brexit vote initially, but saw immigration control and removal of the UK from the European Court of Human Rights as a silver lining, so everything bolsters my view that it was a major motivation for her.
The famous "oven ready deal" which Boris Johnson said he would get through if he was elected in 2019, won him an election, and then he got it signed and ratified, and then within about 6 months he was already publically committing to breaching the terms. One wonders if the UK gov't ever intended to honour the terms or if it was a bait and switch at the time it was signed.
It's because of how that was done (and still is being) that the UK's access to the Horizon science & technology Europe-wide collaborative R&D funding pool has not been renewed. That too, is something the EU had kept on the table, if the deal treaty was honoued.
That one's a particular shame because the UK was a net beneficiary and had many top quality R&D groups depending on that funding. The UK gov't says it has its own R&D funding pool to replace it, but nobody believes it will really roll out matching anywhere near the previous level, nor with the previous quality of international collaboration.
My understanding is that they never intended to leave the common market but to gain a trade deal that would leave market access substantially the same. However, the EU wouldn’t let them keep access in the divorce if for no reason other than as a cautionary tale for other member states. So, it turned ugly and there they are.