The issue with the ESL was always the permanent membership. If the proposal was like the PL where every participating club gets a vote and historically participating members get some solidarity payments if they don't qualify once in a while, it wouldn't gotten anywhere near the backlash it did.
That would be a tactical issue. Imagine you were to start up an elite league say like the Champion's League when it first started decades ago -- when only and literally
only league champions were invited? You would need to build the prestige of any competition by making it exclusive at the start. That would just whet the appetite for tier 2 clubs to enter -- not to say that Spurs or Arsenal were ever Tier 1 European clubs.
The ESP founders all know that to make even more money, they need to expand the competition. But you don't start by having 32 teams at the start, not that they could sign up that many clubs at the initial stage as many would take a 'wait & see' approach -- just like United was the European league pathfinder for British clubs.
UEFA has been expanding the competitions both for political expediency and financial incentives for decades. As a result, players are being overplayed and competitions are no longer very elite esp with this new abomination called the Europa Championship League.
The choice here will be, do we want the European competitions controlled or managed by faceless UEFA officials or the chairman of the clubs.