Because of its size, these flaws matter in a crisis. Balkans, Euro, Ukraine, refugees - EU response to each has been ridiculous and dangerous.
Some bureaucracy, organisational headaches (and yes of course, allowing those evil men in Brussles to tell us how straight our carrots can be) are a small price to pay for getting stuff done in our closely connected continent.
Taking the moral high ground with the 'undemocratic' argument gets you nowhere really. Britain has an unelected house of Parliament and many, many more historical oddities all of its own which are deeply undemocratic.
All you end up with is 'our brand of undemocracy is better than your dirty foreign one', and yes I'm aware that this is an oversimplification of sovereignty, etc, etc.
This is a genuine question. Free trade seems to me to be a somewhat nebulous term, stretched to serve a wide range of economic approaches, and I'd be interested in getting a better sense of clarity.
The UK, like all other small and medium sized countries, is not a unit in itself in terms of any of the issues that a nation state would normally (pretend to) govern:
- Economy; You import most of what you consume and much of what you produce is exported. - Tariffs; If you were to unilaterally increase tariffs, other countries would punish you the same way. - Language; Your language is a mixture of Germanic, Old Norse, French, Latin etc. - Education and research: You have imported most of what you learn, at any level of the educational system, and you export most of your valuable research. - Demographics; you are a diverse society. Quite many British people go abroad to work or study and many British are first, second or third generation immigrants. - Military; You depend on the good will and alliances of your neighbors and the US. Contrary to most other European states, you did manage to continue to function as a nation during WW2 but were it not for the Americans and the Russians, you would have lost to the Germans. The whole notion of military sovereignty for small countries is ridiculous. It's like a small dog barking at a bigger dog (I'm Danish, so I don't mean it as an offence).
I could go on. No matter what the issue is, the solution is International. The UK, and any other European country, benefits from the EU. The UK with its financial industry, dependence of foreign labour and dependence of export more than most.
The reason we all speak English here on HN is British colonialism. That was the preferred way to regulate and govern international relations back in the heydays of nation states. I prefer voluntary cooperation like the EU. A stronger, bigger and more democratic union, but a union.
With all due respect, the UK has the 5th largest economy in the world. Countries with weaker economies than the UK manage just fine on their own. The question isn't whether the UK can or can't do it, but rather whether we should.
One of the reasons you didn't wither any further is the EU, another is pax americana, as long as it lasts. As is the case for most of the other weaker economies that do 'just fine'.
Not all economic arrangements that the UK has made rely on the EU or the US. To give one example, the UK has one of the strongest banking sectors in the world. Aside from London, none of the top 10 financial centres of the world exist within an economic union, the closest is Luxembourg at 14th:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Financial_Centres_Index
If it's not an issue for other countries to have a global financial centre outside an economic union, it's not going to be an issue for the UK either. Financial service companies based in London are unlikely to move anywhere else in the EU any time soon.
For a better perspective on the position of the UK outside the EU, consider the difference between the economies of UK and Australia. Australia has the 13th largest economy in the world, yet there aren't the same type of calls for economic unity in Oceania. How can Australia survive as an independent territory? Why can't the UK do the same?
But to imply that the only way to engage with the world is via the EU is just not true.
Almost everything you point out about the UK be it language, education, economy, immigration were true before we joined the EU (and were true before the EU) and will be true were we to leave. I've no idea what you think the EU does for us militarily. NATO, sure, but that's because of the US.
There's absolutely no reason to believe that we'd suddenly turn into a shrinking violet without the EU helping us see the big, wide world. For some of the economically smaller nations sure, the EU is fantastic. But the UK has the 4th or 5th largest economy in the world and it's not as if all the growth potential is in Europe (arguably the opposite).
Now, my personal view is that, economically, it's likely that we'd be better off in the short to medium term remaining in the EU. There are too many variables to have a meaningful long term view. Politically the EU is a mess but is likely to be a mess whether we stay or go. We're clearly not aligned politically with the bulk of the EU members but we're not going to suddenly turn into a dictatorship or a hippy commune if we left.
But to imply that the EU is the only answer for a country like the UK is as illogical as implying that the only answer is for us to leave.
Oh, and the reason we all speak English on HN is because it's the primary language of the US. If they hadn't reached economic and technical dominance in the mid-20th century I would fully expect we'd be writing in German as that was the lingua franca for scientific and technical work. There's much that the world should thank us for (by which of course I mean cricket) but this isn't one of them.