I think it is the way we have conducted ourselves since the vote that has done the most damage, I think the way that Mrs May allowed parliament to conduct itself was daft; and she should not have allowed the sequencing that the EU wanted for the talks. I note that whilst the rest of the UK was aware of the timescales involved, those in parliament chose to wait til the last possible minute to block Brexit. No surprise that Bercow didn't get a peerage - his conduct was disgraceful.
Our voice on the international stage now carries far less weight as it was previously amplified by our central role as a member of the EU. I disagree. There is only one other EU member state that has NATO membership, and a permanent seat on the UN Security council, and that is France. What we have, that France doesn't, is membership of the Five Eyes. The EU was supported by our being a member, not the other way around imo. Why do you think the Commission is so incandescent that we are leaving?
We have haemorrhaged goodwill with our anti- European rhetoric and continue to show a complete lack of understanding of what the EU actually stands for Not at all ; I didn't notice that people turned away from me, and refused to take my money, or walked around me in the street, from the time the result was announced until the time I moved back to the UK from Belgium last year. Indeed, dh worked at the other major ITO in Brussels, with 30 allies and 20 partnership countries, and he didn't notice any difference in his professional dealings with people.
The EU stands for ever closer union; the acquis, the ratchet, the sublimation of the Nation state into the USE. You may want that. I don't.
the free movement of goods, services and people You don't understand - it's not free movement of people - it's free movement of Labour and you either have to have a nob, be certain of finding one, or prove that you can support yourself with sufficient capital not to be a drain on the member state you want to live in.
www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en/sheet/41/free-movement-of-workers
The need to reform the EU seems no more pressing to me than the need to reform our own internal political systems, as the advantages of membership far outweigh the negatives. My husband came out of a 3 year secondment to the EU saying that he had never seen a more undemocratic organisation and was appalled that it was allowed to continue. The wastage is immense in monetary terms; the Commission manipulates the opaque procedures to achieve its own ends, and please, don't kid yourself that the EU is about anything other than the centralising of power into the hands of the Commission. At least we can vote our politicians out - can we get shot of Van der Leyen, or Charles Michel? Nope. Did we have a say in their election? Nope. VdL is there as Merkel wanted her out of Germany as the shit was about to hit the fan in the German defence ministry, and VdL was implicated.
I don't think that there are that many advantages really to membership. I want the UK to be able to set its own Foreign policy, as opposed to that mandated by the EEAS. I don't think that one size fits all in relation to policies from tax to pensions to inheritance laws, and I think our legal systems are too diverse for it ever to have worked. The European system to a great extent is Napoleonic Code; you can only do what is specifically permitted; ours is Common Law and Statute; unless it is specifically prohibited we are allowed to do it. You may not see the difference, but it is there.
We crippled our own ability to plan, to agree what we wanted to achieve, to put ourselves in the best possible position before starting negotiations. We had to trigger A50 when we did as under TFEU and TEU it was slated to move to QMV so it could have been blocked had we waited. As to what we wanted to achieve - what you want and I want is probably poles apart; there would not have been any more agreement on that, than there has been on Brexit anyway.
If you can't see that the CAP needs reforming; if you don't query why payments from the CFP are made to landlocked countries (who arguably, have no interest in the fish stocks in the Channel, as they have no coastline); if you don't wonder what Lagarde is up to at the ECB and are happy to wave it all away with a 'oh, it doesn't matter', then you do not have your eyes open.
I don't often agree with a Labour politician, but Wedgewood Benn was right about us joining; we should not have done it.