The truth is that England needs the EU trade, deals, but that doesnt mean that England needs to be in the EU for that.
True. But I haven't seen anything to suggest my original position is wrong - that the UK gets better trade deals as part of the EU than it will as a stand-alone nation. The days of empire are long gone. Britain is a small and, in global terms, unimportant country. We don't rank with the heavyweights. We're not the US, Russia, China. We're not the EU.
A small country has less negotiating power than it does as part of a larger bloc. A small country gets worse trade deals.