God this Brexit thing.
I find it utterly ridiculous that it now looks like its going for a leave. Britons, look at the fucking map.
Look at Britain, now zoom out, zoom out further. You will see that Europe is actually a very small area on the globe, and that Britain is a sorry little island. The west, Europe and the US has everything to gain by standing steadfast together. A splintered Europe would be more easily manipulated by both China and the US, as well as played by the rest of the world.
You talk about sovereignty, but that is a flexible thing that you trade away a little bit of, with every shitty trade/political deal you make with all the world. You have a much worse bargaining position by sitting alone, thus if results were to be the same, you would have to trade away MORE sovereignty to gain the same.
To me it simply doesn't make any sense at all, except perhaps from an emotional point of view.
It is one thing I cannot stand from the Nationalist side everywhere. The strong tendency to blame others for your own perceived misery. You see it in Russia, Poland, US, yes, in any country with nationalist surges. It's just such an easy, emotional argument! We are actually great, but because of exterior forces we are not as great as we could be!
We are talking the mentality of a looser, a lazy stoner with delusions of greatness, IF the whole world wasn't against him. Such attitudes are laughed at, and completely unacceptable excuses in the personal sphere. Somehow it rolls in National politics though! Populist and power hungry politicians use this thinking, at the same time legitimizing it.
To make a comparison, for many Russians it's not their awfully corrupt and archaic bureaucracy to blame for their economic stagnation, nor is the inability to profit from meritocratic achievements pacifying the population. It's the awful west isolating poor Russia, which by the way is AT LEAST AS BAD, and Russia is clean with no gays. In Britain it's the same. Brits have huge problems seeing their own backwardsness. Their archaic systems, their undemocratic and extremely unfair class-system. The general merciless brutality of their own society.
The only point Brexiters might have is about immigration, but that too is moot. The vast, vast majority of immigrants to Britain are there because of your own Empire. And besides, even though the EU is a bit slow to react, I'm confident it will reduce or even stop immigration in time. Long before Europe (800 million people) will take any reasonable damage.
You can of course join the EEC. Pay a lot of money, and basically be a powerless vassal within the EU, just like Norway, having to implement all the rules and regulations anyway. Friend of mine represented Estonia in EU. She told me the Norwegian diplomats where constantly stalking the hallways in Brussels trying to find out what was going on. She found it funny.
TLTR:
Britain is a core part of Europe and the west. Don't be nationalistic idiots excusing your faults with others, head up your own arse. Look at the fucking map and think.