Quote:
Originally Posted by Damien
The single market lets you treat the entire area it encompasses as one big economic area rather than an external one with which you trade. The difference between someone in London trading with Liverpool as opposed to New York. Liverpool is internal and transactions are simple but New York, even with a trade agreement, can require more paperwork, different regulations and maybe costs depending on the terms of any trade deal.
A company based in London at the moment has pan-European access with the only barrier being language. They can sell just as easily to Berlin as they can to Manchester. Buy/Sell/Recruit/open an office, it's all as if it were the same nation. Many major companies have the same company working across Europe. They may have a HR department in Poland, a legal department in London and a marking department in Berlin all under one legal incorporation and one form of regulation. Their registration anywhere within the 27 (actually the EEA too IIRC) opens up all of Europe to them.
It's very different to a trade deal and many on here still see business as the physical buying or selling of finished goods when in reality a lot of it is economic activity happening across boards which are hard to quantity in import/export figures. This is especially true of services which is our biggest industry, i.e how do you put a hard figure on a legal firm in London consulting for a company in Italy in such figures?
This is why Vodafone , Visa and banks are looking to move jobs out of Britain if we exit the single market.
Maybe it's worth leaving the single market to free ourselves of EU laws and to control immigration but we shouldn't dismiss the fact we will be losing something tangible and beneficial to the economy by leaving the single market. There has been a frequent misunderstanding of what the single market is during this referendum and many people who seem to think it's only about tariff-free trade for physical goods. |
Interesting, Damien, thanks for that.
Maybe giving up the single market in favour of the private deals suggested by Big Brian is the way to go especially if we can do it without trade tariffs.
Also gives us the opportunity to explore bigger and better deals with the Commonwealth, China, Australia, India etc. Maybe some deals with countries outside the EU may be better and we won't be so reliant on the EU.
I still wonder what the EU will do about either the non-payment or reduced payment of the UK contribution.