Also, in my view the EU is quite undemocratic. The separate Council, Commission and Parliament are an affront. Especially the fact that the Parliament, which represents the electorate, does not have the power to introduce legislation.

You do realise that the entire structure of the EU was primarily dreamt up by British legal experts? It's quite literally one of the best, most robust and most competent systems of governance in the world.

Yes, Parliament can't introduce legislation by themselves, but that's because we don't want populists like Farage, Boris or Trump to do that. They're charismatic, but not actually competent. That's why talented legal experts in the European Commission (who are each appointed by elected governments of member states, the UK had 6 iirc), people who actually know how law works, write the laws. The elected MEP's vote on the laws.

However even here we're missing the fact that the European Parliament (EP) do have a say in the legislation. The EC writes an "Impact Assessment" with rough draft of the law they're thinking of writing (which anyone can comment on), then this is presented before Parliament who propose and discuss amendments. So it's completely disingenuous to imply that the elected EP is somehow beholden to the "unelected" (but chosen for competency by elected member governments) EC bureaucrats.

And all that skips around what starts the EC's initial proposal. Aside from occassionally writing laws off their own backs, the EC responds to requests from:

• The European Council (heads of state or government of each EU country)
• The Council of the European Union (government ministers from each EU country)
• The European Parliament (directly elected by EU citizens)
• Citizens themselves, following a successful European Citizens’ Initiative

That's right, not only can Parliament demand new legislation (they just have to get the big boy lawyers to write it for them), but individual citizens can directly!

Parliament has the final say in whether or not legislation is implemented. That's completely democratic. What you call "an affront" is actually competent people writing effective legislation. Rather than bullshit like the Rwanda deal which states the UK will accept vulnerable refugees from Rwanda in exchange for the small boat migrants to Rwanda (all paid for by the UK taxpayer), or the general ineptitude of no legislation at all and a Hard Brexit causing issues like sewage being dumped in our rivers since water companies now face restrictions on importing treatment chemicals from the EU.

Here's the thing: the UK needs trade agreements in order to thrive. The EU may be only minimally democratic, but the fact that the people get any say at all in the terms of that set of trade agreements is considerably better than the say we'd get in any other trade agreement. Especially given that we would be the minor partner an any trade agreement we made with powerful partners: we'd be letting the USA, for example, dictate to our government. If we ever do an agreement with the USA, you can bet that it would come with rules about generic drugs, and allowing them to buy up our schools, hospitals and prisons -- and the people would get no say at all.

Meanwhile the EU, for all its faults, has rules based around human rights, environmental protection, animal welfare and mutual prosperity. That's the type of trade agreement that we want. Nothing on offer outside the EU will be as kind to us. Nothing.

Not only that: being out of the EU has cost us 5% growth per annum. Our exposure to global catastrophes has been worse, and our recoveries slower, than EU countries and comparable economies. Our labour market is a mess, our exporters are inundated with paperwork, and our governments, without the leavening influence of the "undemocratic" EU, have been more corrupt, more cruel and less respectful of human rights.

Whoa, you're delusional...