Leave party Promising you can have your cake and eat it too

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ‘SINGLE MARKET’

One major sticking point is whether the UK will still have access to the European Union’s “single market” of 500 million people.

Essentially, the UK wants the best of both worlds. It wants to be a sovereign nation that controls its own borders, yet retain the economic benefits of accessing Europe’s huge “single market” — created to remove trade barriers on the sale of goods and services, stimulate trade and improve efficiency.

The prospect of the UK losing access to the single market was one of the reasons the pound dropped to its lowest level since 1985 on Friday.

Possibly the biggest indicator of the importance of the “single market” was actually provided by one of the leaders of the Leave campaign and possible future prime minister Boris Johnson, who committed to keeping access.

“There will continue to be free trade, and access to the single market,” Johnson wrote in a regular column for the UK’s Daily Telegraphnewspaper on Sunday.

Despite the Leave campaign listing benefits of Brexit as including savings of £350 million a week, being in charge of borders and controlling immigration, Mr Johnson has now backed away from migration as a driving issue.

THERE’S ONE MAJOR CATCH

But as Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told ITV television, if the UK wants to keep access to the single market, it may have to accept continued “freedom of movement”.

The right of people to move live, work and retire anywhere in Europe was a major sticking point driving the Leave campaign with many wanting more restrictions on immigration. But it’s something that may not be possible if the UK wants to maintain access to the single market.

“Key Leave campaigners made contradictory promises to the British people,” Mr Hammon said.

“That will be hugely disappointing to many people in this country who voted Leave, but how those trade-offs are made is the key question now for the prosperity of our country.”

Mr Hammond said Leave campaigners may not be able to deliver on “mutually incompatible” promises and will have to explain how they will balance the trade-off.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn also warned Britain may have to accept freedom of movement, while acknowledging the need for an open and honest debate about immigration.

“If we were part of the single market in future, then clearly that would be accompanied by the continuing free movement of people,” he said.

Others have suggested it’s possible to maintain access to the single market while not being part of the EU. Countries that do this include Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.

But the one thing that’s often overlooked, is the fact that these countries have adopted EU rules including freedom of movement. So the situation is not any different, except these countries have less control over what the EU rules are.

Norway’s former foreign minister Espen Barth Eide said in an opinion piece ahead of the Brexit vote, “our subscription to freedom of movement and our membership of the Schengen area means that Norway has even higher per capita immigration than Britain”.

The UK is actually not a member of the Schengen area and has stricter immigration rules compared to other EU countries, which allow its members to travel freely between countries.

The UK checks passport details of anyone who enters the country from a non-EU country, even if that person enters the UK from another EU country like France.