Consent is not required for "essential" cookies, because they are essential. Things like keeping track of your logged in state or shopping cart. (Even if consent were required for that, it should be asked at the point where you login or add the first item).

For advertising and behavioural tracking cookies, consent is required if it's tracking your personal data to the level of individually identifiable people, but frankly they shouldn't be doing that.

I've personally implemented websites in the EU with logging in, carts and analytical tracking that didn't require up-front consent popups because their behaviour was already reasonable and therefore compliant.

Some of us believe that the bigger sites deliberately use obnoxious consent forms in order to encourage USA residents to remain politically in favour of "implied consent" to individual behaviour tracking. In other words, obnoxious on purpose to give the impression the EU system is more onerous to each user than it really has to be.

After the UK leaves the EU I will do my browsing via a VPN through an EU country specifically because I want to be able to deny all such consents except to sites that I trust and support. (In practice I grant consent to about 10% of sites and deny the other 90%).

If I can find a browser extension to automate denying consent that would be great, but if I can't then I'll do it manually.

The thought of my consent to being tracked down to the level of individual, personal detailed behaviour being "implied consent" the USA way is horrible. I do not consent, full stop. It seems an affront to basic legal principles that the norm is for people to not be told about or therefore have the opportunity for informed consent to the detailed databases built up about their every action online, similar to credit files but much more detailed and secretive.