I know it's fashionable to not put your own views out there because they might make it clear that you have, like everyone, some biases, but as of next year I won't have to look at Brexit all that much as it won't be any EU law I teach, so might as well put it out there, right? /1

I was not able to vote in 2016. I would have voted to remain, not out of any particular love for the EU (nor out of self-preservation; I was always going to naturalise), but rather because the UK political system tends to extremes and the EU forces it back to the center. /2

I don't personally care about how globally influential the UK is, but if you do, remain should have swayed you - big table etc.

As an immigrant, I have no problems with immigration and my ideas on how to tackle the effects of immigration lie in domestic policy, not borders. /3

I hate the word sovereignty. Nobody uses it in a meaningful way. If I never hear it again it'll still be too soon.

I think the EU has democratic shortcomings but *emphatic gesturing at the UK and FPTP* doesn't everything? It's at least trying to improve. /4

So that's the personal takes. Then there's the perspective as an EU lawyer, which is slightly different - in that I think the UK has been more hindrance than help to the EU project, especially in recent years, and probably shouldn't be closer than the EEA. /5

So, did I ultimately think a vote to leave was a big deal? Not when presented as a choice between EU and EFTA, which is what everyone thought it was until certain wise men told us otherwise and made freedom of movement core.

Then, alarm bells did start ringing. /8

We're so closely integrated, cutting all that back is going to have serious knock-on effects, and what about Northern Ireland, and...

Well, with enough time, solutions can probably be found, I thought, and of course 5 minutes later the will of the people triggers Art 50. /9

This was where I stopped being able to look at this as a policy to be pursued and whatever to my own choices, democracy sucks sometimes - and instead actually just went, "Oh GOD, this is going to be a calamity."

3 years later, I don't feel much different. /10

So yeah. I have no problems with the choice, really, even if I personally would not have made it; I think in the medium run it may actually be a good thing for the EU; the UK will also be fine, medium term, as long as it learns to live with being smaller/less influential... /11

... but I will never forgive the execution from 2015-2021. Not only was there no plan - there still isn't a clear one?

It's been the policy equivalent of saying "I want to redesign my garden" and attacking the existing one with flamethrower before getting any new plants. /12

It's been five years of pointing out horrendously obvious problems to a government echoing back partisan platitudes about freedom and how it'll all be fine because of Malt house technology divergence blah.

Five years! And we're two weeks out, and totally unprepared. /13

So. Sure. We're out. Eventually it'll be fine. But never forget how much needless misery will have been caused by the relentlessly negligent way the outcome of the vote was pursued. It could have been so much less awful than it will be, and that's impossible to forgive. 14/14