Re: Brexit - Can you ever please both sides?
Nowhere near all EU rules are fiddly and negative your product guarantees are now much longer than before. Gender, disability equality and employment rights are stronger along with many individual rights.
Agreed the EU is in need of emergency care. Italy raises 2 fingers to the EC and fix their own budget. The Greeks blatantly lied about their GDP to get in and paid the price. Spain's economy is a mess and yes there is a move of federalism especially from the French although their social benefits structure is untenable.
All this offers an opportunity to use our economic strength to acquire and influence. However if that market is closed to us the first thing to disappear is likely to be one of our biggest GDP earners the financial services sector. They do not have to deal with us and many leading international financial organisations are already opening companies in Europe.
Our manufacturing can be excluded by their fiddly little rules e.g. they write the ISO standards and currently our goods comply but it costs a lot to get the certification. If we want to paddle our own canoe manufacturers will have to pay for both ISO qualification (if we wish to sell to Europe) AND UK qualification test. This costs many £10k's and is an extra burden also ISO is accepted by other countries . Add in the loss of research grants (the UK was the largest beneficiary of EC research grants last time I was negotiating them).
Add in loss of security collaboration at such a time of heightened terrorism. Is it worth it? Also will you explain your justification to the relatives of the victims of the next atrocity which shared security information could have prevented?
World business is already global note the loss of 4000+ jobs at Jaguar Land Rover and the opening by the company of a new factories in Slovakia and China. One cannot turn the clock back our economy is at the mercy of global companies.
Still if you want to sail into the sunset in your sinking economy with your "we are an independent island colours nail to the mast so be it"