Then there is the difficulty of getting a visa. The expense, the time, the effort, the weird rules.
I looked at getting a German visa as I worked there on and off. But I can't because my German is meh. That was no problem for my employers, coworkers or people I knew there. But it is now.
That's what I stopping us...
That's literally the UK governments job. It is not Germanys job to make Brexit work for British citizens.
Brexit itself passed by a relatively narrow margin following an illegally run campaign from Vote Leave, and on the back of promises which have turned out to have been worth less than the buses they were written on.
However, the governments of Theresa May and Boris Johnson successively expected the EU to solve all of the UK's problems by accommodating their ridiculous red lines. The EU essentially held the same bargaining position from the beginning which was 'no single market access without freedom of movement', and the UK squandered an awful lot of time trying to convince the EU to change that position.
OP may have a different view, but although I don't blame the UK government for Germany's visa rules[0], I do blame the UK government for the fact that I am now subject to them, when I previously was not.
[0]: I'm not familiar with Germany's visa rules for British citizens. However, I do know that Russia (for example) operate broadly reciprocally - whatever hoops a Russian citizen has to jump through to get a visa for another country, citizens of that country have to jump though the same hoops to get a Russian visa.
Then the UK Government rescinded that agreement, but said they might negotiate some new deal.
Ultimately they then decided to make No Deal.
Meanwhile the <German> government is just sitting there and staring and wondering what on earth is going on.
Ultimately it seems to me to be a British internal politics thing.
There is no question that Germany would have reduced visa requirements for UK citizens, if the UK reduced visa requirements for EU citizens.
During Brexit negotiations, the EU offered UK freedom of movement, similar to how, for example, Switzerland is not a member of the EU but citizens have freedom of movement as if it was a member.
But not unilaterally. One of the duties of the EU is to support basic rights of EU citizens, and one of the mechanisms for doing so is to insist on reciprocity with countries outside the EU. If the UK will not grant EU citizens rights in the UK, then roughly speaking, UK citizens are not granted equivalent rights in the EU.
Naturally the UK turned that down, which closes the border to UK citizens going to the EU, just as much as EU citizens going to the UK.
Weaker, limited forms of freedom of movement were also offered. For example the Erasmus student exchange program, and visas for travelling performers.
All turned down by the UK. Thus the EU institutions and member countries are not minded to offer UK citizens rights, even limited, which the UK declines to offer to EU citizens.
As a Brit who has now lost their ability to work in the EU, and whose children will not have that wonderful opportunity to travel and work in a multitude of countries which all EU citizens enjoy (and many of them use), this is a profound loss.
It is not a surprising outcome, though. Politically, most speeches I heard by Theresa May during the negotiation period started with something like "on XXX date, freedom of movement will end".
The removal of freedom of movement was emphasised as a central, non-negotiable purpose of Brexit during such speeches.
So it is not surprising that it was stripped from us, because that freedom will not be removed in one direction only. And it's not surprising that the new visa requirements are the "hard default" which apply to countries that have declined to negotiate something better. Germany is unlikely to offer UK citizens preferential treatment so long as the UK holds an equivalently hard stance against German citizens.
Recently, I read that children from Germany no longer come to the UK on foreign exchange school trips, even if the purpose is to learn English. They have switched destinations to Ireland, Netherlands and elsewhere. That's because UK visas for such trips are now too difficult and expensive to obtain. Also, about 4% of children in Germany are non-EU citizens, and in practice those would have to stay at home while their classmates travel (before Brexit they could be part of a travelling school group). So the UK foreign exchange school trip industry for EU children has now collapsed, and the UK is no longer a place they'd think of visiting.
With that sort of abrupt change of rights affecting German citizens and residents, and the UK making it clear it doesn't want to make such things easier even for temporary stays, let alone working, of course Germany is not going to offer preferential work visa options to UK citizens.
I voted remain and made extensive use of freedom of movement, but the decision was made and there is no going back.
I'm not sure why you think I'm arguing against that. My GP comment was intended merely to address why the German visa situation for UK citizens is a near-inevitable consequence of the UK's decisions (as opposed to being entirely up to Germany as you suggested); my comment had little to say about why the UK made those decisions.
It really was down to decisions made on the UK side, not the German side. It seems irrelevant whether those UK side decisions were due to politicians, government as a whole, or the people.
That said, I looked up the last election's conservative manifesto, curious after you cited it, and ending freedom of movement for EU citizens isn't one of the key manifesto pledges. An "Australian-style points-based system to control immigration" is, but that is more about changing the worldwide immigration entry requirements.
I do not believe ending freedom of movement for themselves was what the minority who voted for Brexit had in mind - witness all the leave-voting holiday home owners who were distressed when they found out they can no longer visit their own Spain residence as much as they did before, for example.
Many surveys about people's views of Brexit have been done by now, and if there is one thing that stands out, it is that what people who voted leave voted for is lots of different things, many of whom now say "this is not the Brexit I voted for". Those I know personally did not even particularly want to end freedom of movement for EU citizens, although it's obvious they didn't think too hard about their reasons for voting. As for the 2019 election, there are only two things I would say with confidence based on what others have said: Many just wanted Brexit "done" and didn't really care how it was done, and many people found Boris more exciting as a "leader" than Jeremy. I think the conservatives would have won just as much of a majority if the "oven-ready" Brexit deal had been quite different.
> Nothing stops the German government from relaxing visa requirements if they choose to.
The world would be such a better place if it weren't so that the less people know, the more sure of their supreme knowledge they are.
A) Yes, the EU Schengen agreement on internal and external borders stops the German government from relaxing visa requirements.
B) You know, the agreement that was one of the main reasons for Brexit, so all those horrible foreigners wouldn't come and take British plumbing (and lorry-driving!) jobs.
C) So Britain makes sure the foreigners are really "foreigners" and not "fellow Europeans" who are allowed in as a matter of course any more... But the German government is supposed to make sure Brits are still "fellow Europeans" who are allowed in as a matter of course and not really "foreigners"? Because a few posh British students are so much more important to Germany than a cheap labour force to fix Britain's clogged toilets, clean Britain's dirty floors, and give Britain's elderly their weekly sponge-bath were to Britain?
Can't you even hear how preposterously entitled (in addition to uninformed) you sound?