Talk me through the implications of leaving the Single Market

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I am a bewildered Remain voter. It seems to me that the majority want control of our borders, sovereignty, and not to pay £x million to the EU. So as Gove said (I think), that means we will leave the Single Market - that's what Brexit means, right? So there will be tariffs both ways, although the weak pound might help with that. We will have opportunities to trade with emerging markets - what will they want to buy off us and vice versa? I am not very clever at all this but as I have to lump it, apparently, I would like to understand more.

If we want to see to the EU, we will need to implement whatever market and product regulation they require. Ask Norway. And, if we aren't happy with that market and product regulation we can go fuck ourselves

Agreed lurking - i was going to post the same thing but just catching up on the thread. WE have to follow their rules so wheres the savings apart from possibly in the UK market but that is harmonised with EU at the moment anyway.

I don't see why. What have India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, SA, Tanzania, Kenya, Canada or anyone else got to gain from encouraging anybody to leave their countries to work over here? They want to keep both their key workers and their factory-fodder at home producing wealth surely?

Humans will often do whats best for themselves or family, if there is the opportunity to come to the UK people would as there is the perception of it being the land of milk and honey. I have worked a bit in Aid and you can train someone to maintain the local water pump and because they have skills are just as likely to just head to city to get a job, impoverishing the village.

I have chatted to people who want to come to the UK as there are adverts in local press, they see the wage and it looks like amazing, but once you tell them how much accomodation, food, rent bills etc they get second thoughts. People can get here already, they could relax the visa requirements more as the need for general staff but we are adding to their brain drain.

Guys who have married African women who once coming to the UK are shocked that we have poverty, homeless people etc.

On the South African side we seem to have a lot in all kinds of roles in both care and medicine.

BBC News article www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36783185 about Theresa May's advisors: 'special Advisor' Nick Timothy to "advise her in Number 10...He is a firm believer in ending the UK economy's reliance on financial services and promoting a wider range of industries." A long term plan perhaps emerging of taking us away from single market by reducing financial services. In the meantime we join EEA.

LurkingHusband
They all already have FoM provided they are paid over £150k (which has been reduced from the prebrexit US$225k to $200k), fast track work permit, no quota and no labour market test.

Really interesting and thanks all for replying. The immigration question is also baffling me. We have 5% unemployment - i.e. very very low. Yet we have immigration targets so we can't want any more to come. We talk about points systems yet many immigrants are in very low skilled work that British people apparently don't want to do. Surely the number of immigrants is controlled to a degree by the amount of work available? Our population is ageing - big contrast to 1973 when men died in their 60s - we must need young workers to support this (this must be the real strain on the NHS). Are we really planning to issue Visas to fruit pickers? Won't we need free movement to support our new global industries? If, as suggested above, our graduates are being forced abroad to work, should we stop encouraging the young to go to uni so they can stay here and work on farms so that we can export food to Africa without us being troubled by foreign labour? (So many questions ...)

I have no issue with immigration - as long as it is fair.

As the granddaughter of immigrants and an immigrant myself, I'd be pretty hypocritical to all out reject immigration.

But how is it fair to only allow certain nationalities over others?

I'm one of those graduates who moved abroad - at 27, I've never worked full-time in the UK. Graduating into a recession, there simply were no jobs for me. And anyway, my non-EU DH wasn't able to get in, so we went elsewhere.

We also need skilled immigrants for jobs that UK can't fill.

For example, there are currently around 30,000 vacancies in the car industry according to figures published in the Telegraph, and we don't have enough trained native workers.

You'd think that would be a reason for investment in a big training programme, but apparently not.

I guess it's cheaper for the government and the car industry to hire them from abroad rather than train them up here.

Wages need to go back up to a sensible level, so that jobs are more appealing to people here. Decent employers, even for unskilled work, don't just pay peanuts anyway, so why should others be able to? And I agree Manon, about investing in training.

so why should others be able to? And I agree Manon, about investing in training.
Because all recent governments have been happy to let the situation continue. Being 'flexible' you see.

Gettungtrimmer that makes sense as a long term plan but the growth of alternative industries will happen very slowly so we can't just ditch single market and with that, financial services until we have alternatives off the ground. I don't know what these alternatives will be, what are our natural resources? Our resources are people, hence the thriving services sector.

But Itinerary how can wages increase if we are in a global market competing with and selling to Africa/India etc - surely they can only go down unless our exports are to become too expensive to sell?

Great British industry was happy to outsource all its training cost to the taxpayer via universities, and then complain about the results.

"So out of the SM, France is allowed to impose whatever tariff it likes on UK grain. If that makes UK grain more expensive than grain from an EU country, then c'est la vie."

That's not quite true because both the eu and the U.K. would be members of the world trade organisation. Tariffs are far lower than the seventies.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/19/what-would-brexit-mean-for-british-trade/

"These WTO tariffs range from 32 per cent on wine, to 4.1 per cent on liquefied natural gas, with items like cars (9.8 per cent) and wheat products (12.8 per cent) somewhere in between.

John Springford, an economist with the Centre for European Reform, the total cost of those tariffs would be large, ranging from a 2.2 per cent of GDP (£40 billion) to 9 per cent."

We would make money by charging on eu imports, but the eu would make money by charging British imports.

The U.K. is looking likely to make trade agreements with other countries outside the European Union. We might end up paying less for coffee and electronics but more on wine. German car manufacturers and French wine produces sell a lot to the uk. It's in everyone's interest to have some kind of trade deal.

It's too early to say if the uk will win or lose.

According to Roberto Azevedo, the director-general of the WTO, “pretty much all of the UK’s trade” would have to be renegotiated with the WTO’s other 161 members if Britain left the EU; the challenges of the “unprecedented” negotiations should not be underestimated

next.ft.com/content/745d0ea2-222d-11e6-9d4d-c11776a5124d

That’s why the whole process of renegotiating Britain’s trade relationships outside the EU could take as long as 10 years.

We are lucky that friends like New Zealand are offering us their trade negotiators.

Some kind of freedom of movement of people deal of between Australia or New Zealand would be more attractive than fom and Romania. Plenty of British people would like to live down under and Aussies and Kiwis are mostly educated to a high standard in English.

Canada wants to trade with us.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3692085/Canada-keen-Britain-piggyback-trade-deal-EU-cut-ties-Brussels-fresh-boost-Brexit.html

An expression of interest is a long way from a signed and sealed Trade agreement. I note that the DM article says that Canada has 300 Trade negotiators on its side. So, we just need to find another 260 and get them up to speed PDQ.

It makes sense to trade with those geographically closest to us, as in cost of transportation and to the environment but the Leavers don't seem to consider this at all.

Why buy something form Mew Zealand when it would be a lot cheaper to buy it from France

Excuse typos!

Some kind of freedom of movement of people deal of between Australia or New Zealand would be more attractive than fom and Romania.

Freedom of movement seems to be a "good thing" if we can guarantee that the people wanting to come a) speak English as a first language b) have white skin. Better not risk a trade deal with India then. [tongue in cheek]

Would Australians and New Zealanders want to come all that way for less than minimum wage fruit picking jobs?

We are lucky that friends like New Zealand are offering us their trade negotiators.

Why aren't we "training up our own people" isn't that supposed to be one of the Brexit benefits, to stop importing expertise & give more jobs to the native born? Never mind we supposedly don't want to import more people, because of all the "extra strain" they put on NHS, schools, etc. Double whammy negative, if we import most the trade negotiators. Don't NZ still need them for ongoing deals, anyway?

We are lucky that friends like New Zealand are offering us their trade negotiators.

Trade negotiations are very technical & outside the EU only involve the trade in goods, not services. If we want to trade in services outside the EU negotiators from NZ are unlikely to have the necessary experience.

"Freedom of movement seems to be a "good thing" if we can guarantee that the people wanting to come a) speak English as a first language b) have white skin. Better not risk a trade deal with India then. [tongue in cheek]"

Its nothing to do with colour of skin. FYI most Polish people and Romanians have white skin. In fact most EU migrants have white skin.

Its not unreasonable give preferential treatment to migrants who speak English well. I feel that economic migrants should be able to speak English before working here. (In fact most do)

The problem with the EU freedom of movement deal is that migration was mostly one way. The number of poles or Romanians (who most have white skin!) coming to the UK was higher than the number of British people who wanted to move to either Romania or Poland. Romania and Poland have very little in the way of opportunities to attract people.

Freedom of movement works between two similar countries with a similar level of wealth and development . I imagine that if there was freedom of movement between New Zealand and the UK that the number of New Zealanders moving to the UK and British people moving to New Zealand would be balanced.

When the EU was only nine countries FOM was less of an issue. Immigration and emigration was balanced.

Its nothing to do with colour of skin.
I think you knew exactly what I was getting at: a lot of people would be happy with freedom of movement if it only entailed Canadians, New Zealanders and Australians. The people objecting to Romanians would equally object to Bangladeshis, Pakistanis etc.

if you have freedom of movement between a developed country and a developing country then the movement of people is one way. One country gets all the advantages.

Lots of poles, Romanians etc coming to the uk and sending home money to their native countries benefits the developing country. It drives down the cost of unskilled labour in the developed countries. It is not good for the developed country to have money being sent to Poland rather than spent in the Uk.

The reality is that countries like Poland, Romania, India etc do not have exciting job opportunities to offer British citizens. They are less attractive countries to live in. The U.K. has nothing to gain with uncontrolled freedom of movement with these countries. A fom agreement would not be mutually beneficial. Controlled immigration of skilled people is beneficial. Skilled migrants do not require social housing, child tax credits or any other in work benefit.

The Polish government is anti migrants. Why is it a shock that some people in the uk do not want uncontrolled eu migration.

It may already have been said further up the thread, but as I understand it one of the most serious implications of leaving the single market would be the effect on inward investment from outside the eu, as a lot of investment in the uk is based on access to the single market (see here - apparently three quarters of foreign investors cited access to single market as key reason for investment in Britain next.ft.com/content/ee68e25e-1ce5-11e6-b286-cddde55ca122 )