You're correct. So far every proposal by the EU is actually worse than just cancelling it and staying a member. The EU's position can be boiled down like this:

You're correct. So far every proposal by the EU is actually worse than just cancelling it and staying a member. The EU's position can be boiled down like this: if you're geographically in or close to Europe, you must submit to total control by the EU Commission and its courts or be frozen out of all intra-European collaboration completely. Any attempt at compromise just results in them starting to talk about cherries and cakes. It's been like that for years. This is a problem because the EU is not a democratic body. There's a "parliament" but its members can't actually change EU law, and at any rate, a single parliament for all of Europe works about as well as you'd expect. For them to issue ultimatums to European populations of the form "submit entirely or we'll force other Europeans to shun you" is totalitarian and should be raising massive alarm bells around the world. UK today, but it could be your country tomorrow.