> No- the UK enters a WTO agreement on the 1st jan, that means imports taxes, duties and restrictions on a whole bunch of things
The WTO's goal is to reduce trade friction, hence it puts ceilings on duties. The UK (now) sets its own taxes, duties and restrictions, being part of the WTO does not affect that. As a service dominated economy it's in the UK's interests to lower protective barriers - setting tariffs to zero would be of a net benefit to the UK. You'll note that the UK is a founding member of the WTO, its trade either side of the deadline will not violate any WTO protocol. Standards (ironically) will also be entirely in alignment with the EU. Processes will not change either as there already exist processes for handling non-EU trade.
The places where import taxes, duties and restrictions will change is exports into the EU, hence the desire for a trade agreement.
> It’s impossible to plan for because it can all change at the last minute.
No physical processes will change. Numbers on a spreadsheet may do.
> It’s easy to say nothing will change if it doesn’t affect you.
Yet you argue that people shouldn't have been allowed a say, and it will force you to argue that it doesn't affect most people while trying to maintain that an unimaginable doom will be brought on the entire UK population.
Pick one or the other but to maintain both is absurd.
> I don’t understand why a trade agreement with a few extra bits of international legislation
Those "few extra bits of international legislation" include massive changes to the UK constitution. The same lament could be said about entering into the Lisbon Treaty without a referendum (or, even better, a single issue general election), among many other changes that led to a vote where people got to show their frustration about not being consulted or even listened to previously.
> was put to a general public referendum
It was put to a referendum because those in power thought it would kill the thing dead, and the alternative was seeing a political party (UKIP) get seats in Westminster, if not usurp one of the major parties. It was only a combination of electoral fraud (in Farage's case) and the first past the post system (in the party's case) that kept them out of Westminster, that wouldn't have occured again, as the referendum result shows.
> It’s got nothing to do with the average joe on the street
Again, please, be serious.
> the general public has no understanding of this.
The choice is simple, give up sovereignty for access to a large trade bloc. That's not hard for anyone with an IQ above 85 to understand. The minutiae and ramifications are much harder but the UK is a representative democracy, not an Athenian democracy of the kind that might allow the kind of condescending sneer at the plebs you are partaking in.