Your firm moral foundations will see people starve, livelihoods and industries destroyed and the UK empoverished.
Principles are lovely as long as someone else is paying the price.
Yes, and of course this is exactly the response that I was expecting. It is to a degree a fair comment, and a moral dilemma in its own right. I know that businesses have already gone under, livelihoods been damaged and sometimes destroyed, and, as documented on this thread earlier this year, people have despaired and taken their own lives. As a leave voter, that sits heavily on my conscience.
EU policies have directly destroyed entire economies, businesses, livelihoods and lives, and continue to do so, both within and far beyond the shores of Europe. EU agricultural and fisheries policies constitute one of the most environmentally destructive forces on earth. The UK, as a member, directly and enthusiastically contributed to and influenced many of those policies, and the loss of the UK to some extent actually serves to mitigate those negative effects. At the same time, by leaving, UK governments will become far more accountable for unpopular policies that they would, as members, have been able to secrete behind the EU's institutions. Brexit reshores responsibility and governmental accountability.
UK businesses have lost some degree of access to the Single Market, and some smaller businesses have effectively lost all of their access to European customers. This is often harsh, and sometimes overwhelming. However, in the bigger picture only a very small percentage of UK companies exported to the EU, and many of those will adapt and continue to do so, even in the face of the higher costs that are being imposed by the EU.
Some people who are in the fortunate and rare position of being able to own property in EU member states will be limited on the amount of time they spend there. Diddums. Some people whose work might have been EU based will face difficulties that they wouldn't formerly have faced, but those difficulties will be by and large surmountable. I know plenty of US citizens who live and work in France and Italy. The vote of people who are in those positions to remain in the EU was, on balance, merely a self-interested (or selfish) one. I know a good few people who own property in France and who voted to leave accept the consequences of their decision, and who have adjusted their lives accordingly.
The EU in earlier incarnations acted, on balance, as a force for good, particularly in terms of the rehabilitation of former dictatorships. The EU in its post Maastricht to Lisbon incarnation as an ever-centralising, actively anti-democratic and utterly unreformable theology is an increasingly malign and destructive force, of which the crucifixion of Greece a decade ago to the salvation of the German and French banks and on the altar of the deeply disfunctional single currency was but one, albeit extreme, manifestation.
The UK suffered not at all in the Euro meltdown, of course, and we all continued to happily enjoy the EU's 'benefits', whilst abiding by its principles.
But then principles are great, so long as its someone else suffering their consequences.