I think at this point we can safely say that the Brexit was a protest vote against immigration that got out of hand (in that it got >50% of the vote) and the UK is now left to pick up the pieces.
Look into this for even a few minutes and you'll come to a conclusion that leaving the EU is a ridiculous idea.
- The Good Friday agreement gives the UK the obligation to maintain an open border with the Republic of Ireland
- An open border with Ireland brings the UK into the EU customs union
- The only compromise solution here is to include Northern Ireland in the EU customs union but not the rest of the UK. In essence this puts a border between the UK and Northern Ireland.
- The DUP, who are now an essential part of the Conservative majority in Westminster will fight tooth and nail any separation from the UK as they see this as leading to an inevitable (and undesired, by the Protestants at least) reunification with Ireland.
- The UK wants to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to freedom of movement in that they want UK citizens to have freedom of movement but not have to allow EU citizens freedom of the movement in the UK. The EU has made it pretty clear that they don't want to set this precedent and that any freedom of movement needs to be reciprocal.
- The UK wants a deal like Norway or Switzerland. The EU, who wants to not encourage further separation, will fight against this. The UK will get a deal but it won't be as good.
- Being a non-voting member of the EU in the Norway/Switzerland model will give the UK all of the negatives (primarily the outflow of money to fund the EU) with none of the benefits (they lose voting rights). This is really a worst of both worlds type scenario.
Honestly I see a hard exit as probably being the best outcome (short of calling this whole thing off, which I don't think will happen).
Sadly, this whole affair has kind of shown just how useless the UK media is as pretty much everything written about this is blatantly opinionated on whatever the editorial position of the paper is. It doesn't even matter if the article that someone like the Guardian or the Economist produces is good in isolation. You just know that the Guardian isn't going to publish anything positive or even neutral on Brexit. As a result you really can't trust anything they say. They aren't alone in this.
There are some positive outcomes that would come out of a hard Brexit:
- Not handing over 50B+ euros to the EU. It's true that when the UK pays into the EU budget they get some of that money back but the net position is a deficit.
- The UK regaining sovereignty over territorial waters for fishing purposes. These waters have been heavily overfished and the tragedy of the commons has definitely applied here. Ironically when the EC was originally formed the UK refused to join. Had they done so they would've maintained sovereignty over territorial waters. When they later joined they didn't.
- The UK is no longer under EU jurisdiction and could go the route of Switzerland and become a financial haven.
- The UK would no longer be on the hook for the bailouts for precarious economies (Greece, Portugal, Italy). It's true that the UK isn't in the eurozone so there's some separation already but this is still more insulation.
Sadly I think efforts like Scotland remaining in or rejoining the EU are doomed as they would present the same border issues that plague Northern Ireland.