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Topic History of: The single market - am I being thick?
Max. showing the last 5 posts - (Last post first)
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Jo |
Reality Check: Who has access to the single market?
That Boris Johnson quote seems to give the lie to the post-referendum claim from the Brexit camp (e.g. Gisela Stuart on Question Time a few weeks ago) that everybody knew when they voted to leave that leaving the EU meant leaving the single market.
It seems that Norway has access to the single market through the EEA agreement, which the UK is not party to, and Switzerland through a series of bilateral treaties. So the UK presumably would be out on its own and outside the single market if it didn't manage to negotiate new access arrangements within two years. Perhaps that explains Theresa May's apparent support for a hard Brexit and the idea that this is the patriotic choice of a country forging its new way in the world: a face-saving measure in the knowledge that new access arrangements may not be negotiated within that time.
I'm sure that many of those who voted Leave hadn't given much thought to the EU before the referendum, let alone to the idea that it was harming their lives, or to the single market, assuming they even knew what it was, so the argument that everyone knew they were voting to take their country out of the world's biggest free trade bloc is just more hot air. |
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JK2006 |
Isn't the definition of the single market like the old common market - freedom of trade and other movement between EU countries? If so, how could the UK remain in it - and out of the EU? |
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