Beautiful goal . Not sure about that red card though . <| sep |> Isn ' t brexit itself an act of cutting off your nose to spite your face ? Not an unreasonable question and it certainly seems to appear that way to many Remain supporters . But the answer is no because this isn ' t making things worse for us just to make things worse for them . The EU is also prepared to take short term hit , in this case it will be to defend its existence . Whilst that ' s a flattering suggestion , Brexit isn ' t an existential crisis for the EU . Deliberately worsening trade with a state that has previously had free trade with you and continues to want free trade with you on the other hand will make the rest of the world look askance at an organisation that took ten years to fail to arrange a trade agreement with the USA when the UK expects to have one within a year or so of Article 50 taking effect . Brexiteer ideology claiming that the EU should disappear is a perfect illustration of this . This is not an economic battle , its an ideological one , and there is a fraction of Brexiteers who want the idea of the EU to die . Its in the interest of members who want to EU to live to fight these people . As ' one of those people ' who want the EU to ' die ', again it is flattering to think I have that level of influence but , also again , the answer is no . Few if any in the Brexit camp care about what the rEU want to voluntarily agree with one another postBrexit . If they want ever closer political union , fine . No skin off our nose . Same with scrapping borders , mandatory French as the working language , adopting the Euro or any of the other harebrained schemes they can come up with . We want free trade and support their right to screw themselves over as much or as little as they wish so long as they don ' t try to impose it on us . We want free trade and ever closer union to occur organically through shared mutual interests , not imposition of unwanted policies on unwilling individuals .