The divorce analogy is really grating.
It is the termination of a contractual relationship. It is quite normal for this to involve payment.
When a large company decides to sell one of its divisions or assets, negotiations with the buyer will include, early on, who will be liable for various on going arrangements, such a pension liabilities, contracts with outside suppliers relating the division entered into by the selling company etc.
These can mean ongoing payments from one company to another for years and years.
So it's not that weird that we may well have to pay them something. This is not the EU being a wronged spouse seeking revenge. It is doing a perfectly rational and legal thing.
If we don't pay, we can still leave. We just won't be able to have free trade with any EU member state. Maybe the UK will decide that is the price it is willing to pay. If not, we have to pay the EU the cold hard cash. That is the choice. It's not a romantic relationship.
There is a weird obsession of Davis to "get us out of the ECJ".
Any legal contract has to have some authority to enforce it. If you sign a contract to buy a house, you need a court system to enforce it if the other person decides not to move out and refuses to hand over the keys.
The ECJ is needed from enforce any aspect of a trade agreement that the UK has with the EU. Otherwise who enforces the deal? There are a lot of very mundane rules, like regulations about the safe transport of chemicals or how gas pipelines function, that are harmonised across the EU to make life safer and to allow companies to trade. If we refuse to follow the rules for how to package some chemical, we can't sell any chemicals to anyone in the EU.
If we decide we are fine with the chemical packaging rules, we can sign an agreement to enforce them. But there needs to be a body to enforce that we can complain to if it turns out Portugal is not enforcing these rules and therefore are at an advantage because it is cheaper to stick them in an envelope than in a sealed drum.
That body is a European court. What else can it be?
This obsession with not being dictated to by the ECJ is worrying. All trade agreements (WTO, NAFTA, east Asian trade community) have a legal body they can fine or punish participants for breaking rules.
If we want to trade with anyone, we are going to need to be overseen by some international court.
The press are doing a woeful job with understanding and reporting brexit, seeing it entirely as some emotional divorce (both leave and remain) or statement of patriotism (leave only). Although the press are largely just giving the public what it wants which is some some emotional story and a hatred of experts, evidence, and the reality that life, law and politics all involves compromise.
David Allen Green in the FT is the only person worth reading on it.