Neville's Breakfast
Well-known member
Membership of, or access to, both involve allowing free movement of people as well. In the full interview you kindly provided, Dan Hannan mentions Iceland, Norway and Switzerland.
For absolute clarity, access to, does not mean selling and buying on WTO terms, or any other negotiated set of tariffs, it means having no customs clearance, no import or export duties and no blocks of any kind on our exports or imports with the EU. If you think otherwise then it is you that fails to understand what Dan Hannan was saying.
If you accept that access to the single market will require free movement of people as well, can you now see that access is very much threatened by those insisting that leaving the EU must give us control of immigration?
Access to the single market doesn't mean anything of the sort. You are describing membership. The rest of the world has access to the single market in assorted (negotiated) terms without accepting the conditions
you describe.
I also do not accept that access means the free movement of people. Merkel has already set the scene for discussions on this subject.
There is a deal to be done here and it will likely keep most people happy whilst disappointing both those on one side who wish to end immigration completely and also those on the other who believe that EU rules are fixed in time forever with no negotiating room. Quite simply the debate has moved on from simply quoting current EU rules and claiming a flexible deal is impossible.