> The idea that UK is a non-entity if it is outside
> the EU is, I believe, false.

*Disagree*: alone, we're small enough to swat, or even get run over without the offender noticing the bump.

One thing that worries me is this obsession with the "special relationship". I wonder how many people know what that actually is: a good part of it to start with was the secrets-world cooperation during WW2, whose very existence had official-secrets status until the mid-1970s or later.* Nowadays, according to those in a position to know, the secrets-world organisations of the UK and the USA overlap so much that it reminds me of Ambrose Bierce's definition of "alliance":

In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third.

This is Airstrip One, and you're welcome to it.

* "The geese who laid the golden eggs, and never cackled" (Winston Churchill)