The basic problem, chaps, is that there is very little prospect of getting a European IR which is significantly more accessible to the typical appropriately funded aircraft owner client who is a business/professional type in his 40s or 50s, i.e.
- one exam, doable at any school, no fixed timetable
- doable in any IFR certified plane
- doable in your old PPL school
- doable with the IFR hood (no window screens)
- doable on the Class 2 PPL medical (no Class 1 audiogram)
- sensible syllabus without silly stuff like the JAA fancy NDB holding techniques
and one could throw in a few other reasons why in the USA such a large % of private pilots hold the full IR; of the order of 30x higher as a % of total.
The current (recently started) EASA committee process has a chance of chipping away around the edges of some of the above but it has a zero chance of addressing the really major accessibility issues like the # of exams and the ability of any school to teach it.
So, practically and pragmatically speaking, we are stuck with the desire for the continuation of the IMCR or some similar privilege.
Pace's very "Marxist-like" ideology will always resonate productively with the professional pilots, ATC, the national regulators, and all the other assorted self proclaimed guardians of heavenly purity and aviation safety. But most of these people haven't got a clue because if any of them have ever flown privately (most have not) they have not done so for many years.
The IMCR is wholly appropriate for the UK "user pays" way of approaching everything, the UK airspace structure which is mostly Class G in which you have a free for all because nobody has the authority to issue an IFR clearance in G, where there is no meaningful enroute ATC service (and if there was, who would pay for it?), and its huge private pilot community which often needs a way to deal with IMC but most often outside CAS where nobody is going to care about you anyway.
Finally, never forget that the State has no business in dictating individual attitude to risk. To argue the converse is to ban mountain biking, scuba diving, climbing, etc etc. Flying will always have a certain risk and the pilot should be free to decide whether he accepts this risk. Any passengers flying with him must also realise (unless they are stupid) that they must reduce their expectations of safety relative to flying in a 747.
For every IMCR holder who killed himself in IMC, one could dig out a dozen airliners which were ploughed into terrain by two highly experienced and current professional pilots with gold plated ATPLs, flying a piece of hardware with a fantastic mission capability. So, trying to pick on some IMCR holder's accident is a complete waste of time. There are very few anyway - accidents flying proper published instrument approaches are very rare and just as many of them were done by IR holders.