[jlokier]

It's sillier than that:

1. We could have had blue passports without Brexit.

2. Many of these unfavourable conditions on UK firms and UK citizens are imposed by the UK government itself.

It's not a simple case of the larger trading partner giving the smaller one unfavourable terms. In this case, the smaller partner chose to impose hardships on its own firms and people, while the larger partner was willing to offer more benefits so long as they were mutual.

For example, those UK musicians who can't tour the EU any more. That's a UK decision. The EU was willing to allow that touring as long as EU musicians could tour in the UK on similar terms. But the UK declined. That's why there are petitions about it, because if the UK changed position on that, the EU would probably accept.