>there's a minimum salary requirement; previously this didn't apply to labour from the EU, now it doesExcuse me but how is this the EU's fault and not the UK's own fault for not enforcing some sort of minimum wages before?
Where I live now in Austria, there are legally require minimal salary bands negotiated yearly by unions for every profession, so no matter where you come from for work, an employer here is mandated to pay you at least that legal mandated salary regardless if you are Austrian, EU or non-EU, just so it's much more difficult for an employer to wage-dump by using desperate migrants.
So, what stopped the UK from enforcing minimum salary bands on all workers instead of going through the extreme self flagelatory route of leaving the EU and loosing out on the EU membership benefits instead? You might say that would have been difficult and complex to implement, but so was Brexit and that came with pain on the side.
To me, most of the issues the UK complained it was suffering because of the EU, like this one and others, were all self inflicted through poor internal policies, as other wealthy nations in the EU did have proper measures in place to not have the issues the UK had, so blaming the EU was UK's lazy way of pointing fingers for it's own pollical incompetence.
>sounds like they got exactly what they wanted
For now maybe, but long term that could be being penny wise but pound foolish. Investors invested a lot in the UK post 2014 because being part of the EU was a big selling point. Who knows how it will play out now that the UK is isolated and with open borders.