Jerf, you're a smart fellow, this comment is not at your usual level. The EU exists solely to reduce the chances of war, further commerce and to reduce the profile of nation states.

The 'take it or leave it' attitude has to do with the founding principles of the EU, if a club has a founding principle and you do not wish to subscribe to it then by definition you can't be part of the club. Putting the founding principles of the EU on the chopping block to deal with the internals of a single country is not acceptable.

In such a situation the single country then has the option to either resolve their internal conflict or to leave the union.

This has nothing to do with over-centralized government or the Trump administration, it's simply the reason why the EU exists in the first place.

The UK already has a special position within that EU, amplified by virtue of being an island. The illusion that the UK can 'go it alone' is still very strong but I suspect that when the rubber meets the road there will be some pretty harsh and quick realizations that the promised utopia is not going to arrive. The brunt of the impact will land squarely in the demographic that voted 'brexit' so at least there is some justice but it will also be felt elsewhere in the country.

The UK's days as an independent world power were counted in the 60's. Being part of the EU was good for the UK and good for the EU. A UK that will be further diminished when and if the Scots leave the union.

All in all this is a very bad decision made by the UK and the UK alone, to ask the EU to put their founding principles on hold for the UK was going to have a very predictable outcome.

The irony of all this is that now the UK will go into a very uncertain phase the best exit of which is to rejoin the EU at a later date, but then it will be without any privileged position, likely without their own coin and likely with a much worse negotiation position than they had so far.

Please do not point your finger at the EU about this debacle, it belongs solely to the UK and specifically to BJ, Farage et al. If you wish to apportion blame they should be your primary targets, and May you secondary for going further down a road that need not be taken at all.

  The EU chose to not make solutions available and stuck it into a "take it or leave it" basket.

What do you suggest the EU should have done? Free movement is one of the cornerstones of the EU and pretty much not up for negootiation. This includes associated countries like Norway or Switzerland.

So I'm really curious: What, do you suggest, should the EU have offered?

Britain didn't take advantage of the tools it had available. Britain could have kicked out people who stayed more than 6 months without a job, for example. But they didn't.