The Reverse Groucho Rule and Brexit

Anyone surprised that the deal the British will get from the EU may sucketh mightily?  Nope.  On the road today, I tweeted thusly:

I don't know the deets but as an IR prof who studied separatism, my take is: if EU members could agree to It, it must suck mightily for UK. https://t.co/vaIlobylpM

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) November 25, 2018

How can I explain this tweet?  I have been focused on other shitshows so I don't know the details, but I don't think I need ot know them as we have two different routes lead to the same answer:

1. Invoking Monica Duffy Toft and ye olde Chain Store Paradox: When it comes to dealing with separatist units, when a country fears that letting one separatist unit go might lead to others seeking to secede, they resist mightily, if only to deter the subsequent units.  While it may not be so rational to spend a heap of effort resisting the first secessionist unit, the desire to deter others make such resistance more likely. Which explains why some secessionist conflicts are far more violent--that it is the country doing the resisting against the secession that causes the conflict to be violent.  If we think of the UK to be a separatist movement (and it certainly acts like one), then it makes sense for the EU to impose steep costs--so that no other member tries to imitate the UK. 
2.  A simplistic application of veto player theory: For the EU to make a deal with the UK, it needs to get its members to agree.  If they are operating by consensus or anything close to it, any one member or a small group of members can block the EU from offering a deal.  To get enough countries (or all?) to agree to a deal with either each one holding a veto or a subset, the question becomes--which kind of member is going to be the hardest one to persuade, the one getting in the way: a country or coalition that wants to soften conditions on the UK or a country or coalition that wants to impose costs?  I'd bet on the latter every day and twice on Sunday, as the British path to this point has not exactly been all that kind to other EU members.  Some may enjoy an EU sans UK, but my guess is that there is more bitterness.  So, whatever deal that Theresa May can introduce to parliament first had to get past the intra-EU bargaining process, right?

I am no expert on the EU, but it was pretty easy to foresee that the EU would not be letting the UK go without making it quite hard and even painful.  Indeed, seeing how May is having problems not just with her own party but within her own cabinet, I can't imagine that the deal is that good for the UK.  The funny thing, ok, not funny, the tragic thing is that this was all pretty obvious two years ago before the Brexit vote--that leaving the EU would be very, very costly.  If the UK had some leaders who could, well, lead, one could imagine them sacrificing their careers to back out and go back to something approaching the status quo.  But leaders are in short supply.  Congrats on the second biggest unforced error of the 2010s..... 

And, yes, if the Groucho Rule is that he would not want to be a member of any club that would have him, the Reverse Groucho Rule is that one would not want any member who wants to leave an organization to do so.