I would be more optimistic if the UK government didn’t appear to hold the position “pivot to a no-manufacturing/service-only economy while simultaneously aiming for a trade deal that only covers food, mining, and manufacturing but not services”.
That is basically true. And the economics of this sort of situation is kinda funny; the only way Britain will be materially worse off is if the EU was giving Britain a free ride before Brexit - otherwise market forces will probably kick in and not much will happen in practice. Realistically it is hard to see Britain being worse off because of anything externally inflicted. If anything, their biggest losses will be due to getting the stuff they want; like restricting migrant inflows for non-economic reasons.
economic losses
Isn’t that the point of the club? To give all of the members a free ride with each other? In a well-defined way that doesn’t hurt each member but still a free ride?
If everyone is underpaying then it isn't free riding; it is just sensible business.
I’m not going to be too precise with terminology, but I didn’t realise you were being precise either or I would’ve at least looked up the concept before my previous reply.
A simple sort of plan that British companies might have could be, for instance, to not require tons of annoying cookie popups on their websites.
In other cases expect laws to get tighter. EU financial regulation isn't as solid as the UK's is. This was a sore point after the collapse of the Icelandic banks. British regulators had raised the alarm over those banks but could do nothing to stop them because they were regulated by Iceland and under EU rules the UK had to allow them to trade. When they went pop and the Icelandic government refused to bail them out, the Brits were left carrying the can. Given that financial regulation is popular with the public I'd expect that to be one of the areas in which regulations diverge.