Teresa May, Resolute.

[Khandro]

I'm not exactly her #1 fan, but I have to say, she lays her cards on the table here. Interestingly yesterday's Sky News' reporting of this 9 minute interview was reduced to just a few seconds of the interviewer saying how it would be better if you stay (to applause), another example of biased reporting by omission?

[Khandro]

Kromo; (To all others, this is completely off topic, apologies, - but it is my thread :0)
Regarding https://www.oandf.co.uk/ I spoke to my daughter last night they are still surviving thanks to a bequest and she had spent the entire weekend cleaning a kestrel which had been brought in covered in glue! It seems there is some horrible method of killing rats this way which it had got onto itself.
She found a solvent in the form of an oil, then having removed the glue had to get rid of the oil which took many shampoos. It is now clean and recovering and will be released into the wild later in the week. Just thought I'd let you know.

[Old_Geezer]

"You cannot have the full benefits of membership in a trading bloc without being a member of it."

The whole point of negotiations is to create a new agreement. No reason one couldn't agree that the existing mutually beneficial trading arrangements remain without the unnecessary four impositions; which is more to do with federalism than trade. It's down to the EU dropping the power grab and concentrating on trade. What are the odds, eh ?

[Old_Geezer]

One must beware of swallowing the EU claims. They have an agenda.

[Kromovaracun]

Yes, their agenda is preservation of the single market. That is obviously not going to consistent with granting the benefits of SM membership to countries outside of it. If they did, it would undermine the SM because every other member country would want special treatment.

It's also not a question of "accepting EU claims", it's a question of trying to work out what their goals and incentives are. That is not hard to do. None of this is new information,OG.

[Old_Geezer]

And so they should get similar treatment. Single market should be trade agreement oriented not single government oriented. No, the claim that it's incompatible isn't especially new, neither is it true despite the claim.

[Kromovaracun]

Prove it! I've just laid out for you exactly why they are incompatible. Asserting something doesn't mean it is the case. And what does "give them similar treatment" mean? Similar to what? How?

[vetuste_ennemi]

//Yes, their agenda is preservation of the single market. That is obviously not going to consistent with granting the benefits of SM membership to countries outside of it. If they did, it would undermine the SM because every other member country would want special treatment.//

Single market? Benefits of? Undermine?

Please explain what all this means, and what it would mean in terms of trade if we decided not (as I thought we had) to carry on enjoying the benefits of the "Single Market"?

[Kromovaracun]

If you still don't know what the single market is, I don't see why it is my responsibility to explain it to you.

The benefits (or characteristics, if you're going to insist on a more neutral term) are free movement of goods, capital, services and labour between member states. The line of the UK government is that we want access to some of those things (i.e. all except labour) without access to the SM. This is like saying you want to be wet and dry at the same time, because it is not possible.

Why? Because it's completely counter to the interests of the other side. Granting the UK special 'a la carte' access will immediately cause other member states to seek the same treatment - which would pretty comprehensively undermine the single market. If the priority of Brussels is to preserve the single market, then it is not possible for them to grant this to us. And, by the way, they are the people who control access to the SM, so their word is final.

[Kromovaracun]

In terms of what it would mean for trade not to be in the SM, in the short term it would mean approximately half of all our trade suddenly became more expensive and more cumbersome to carry out. Longer-term is harder to predict - would depend entirely on UK's ability to arrange new trade deals to replace trade with the continent. Given that most other countries in the world are members of trading blocs as well (and those that aren't tend to outweigh us in economic power), there's not a lot of reason to suppose these would go well for us. But miracles do happen sometimes.