“TTT - you are grateful for EU support and yet you appear to be a hard-line Brexiteer. How do you square that???”
I too am a hard-line Brexiteer. I too am grateful for the support given to the UK. But my gratitude goes to the individual 27 nations, not to the EU itself. It is not “Europe” which I oppose, nor the individual nations and certainly not the citizens of those nations. It is the institution that is the EU (and its officials) which I despise and from which I want the UK to remove itself as completely as possible.
Nobody among the Leavers has suggested that co-operation on matters such as this would cease with our departure. Nor will aircraft stop flying between the UK and Europe. Nor will trade cease between the UK and the 27. Nor will we run out of vital medicines. Nor we will run out of atomic material for our power stations. Nor will travel to and from Europe become any more difficult. None of this will happen; only “Project Fear” suggested that it would (and is still continuing to do so).
It is quite easy to square the conundrum. The EU that I despise is the supra national organisation that has subsumed all manner of rights, responsibilities and privileges from the UK Parliament. It is the organisation that will continue to do that until a federal nation called “EU” exists and the role of national Parliaments is reduced that that of rubber-stamping Parish Councils.
As it is in other “normal” parts of the world, co-operation and trade between individual nations on all manner of topics can be facilitated without the need for Jean-Claude Juncker and his mates gumming up the works with their ideological Utopian dream. And certainly without compromising the sovereignty of individual European nations.