[pavlov]

...it was also about the notion of freedom - being less intertwined with the EU (and thus its regulations, economics, security concerns, etc.)

That is an illusory kind of freedom because you can't turn the clock back. Reducing trade with the EU would be a loss for everyone. If the UK breaks from EU norms and enacts its own regulatory frameworks, that just means more overhead for companies that want to operate there... And so on.

The English habit of blaming Europe for regulations has always puzzled me, because pre-EU Britain was in many ways a bureaucrats' paradise. The number of civil servants peaked in the mid-1970s and has been declining since.

From what I've heard, just getting a telephone line in '70s England could be a nightmare. There's a lot of things that are so much better today thanks to a pan-European competitive environment and free trade. Imagine if Britain had created its own mobile phone standard instead of going with the European GSM. That would have been more "independent", but to no benefit at all.

A lot of things post-Brexit will end up like that: it's just easiest for everyone if Britain tags along with the EU standards rather than reinvents the wheel -- only Britain won't have a say in the processes anymore.