Are you arguing for Scottish independence?
I absolutely do not, and I appreciate the efforts of those trying to help me. I don’t mean to ignore your other points.
I was present on the first day of Econ 101 in college and learned the guns and butter analogy, free trade is good, and speciality. I understand the need for government oversight and quality inspection for goods.
In any international inspection regime, there are going to be standards A, B, and C (and more) descending in order from the most harsh to the most lax. My contention is that in first world nations with reasonably education populations, simply because you have chosen A or even B, why can your citizens not be free to choose C or D?
Why would that be a disaster? Again, C, D, and E are from first world nations that have reasonably similar inspection regimes. It is not Somalia or Honduras. People in those countries are not flopping over in restaurants from poison or rat shit. Why not give your own educated citizens the free choice, as a part of free trade, the option of using those products after labeling laws and the chance to decide for themselves?
The point is that intra-EU trade has vastly grown since the Single Market was introduced. Producers have benefited because they can market freely and compete effectively throughtout the EU, and they don’t have to spend money promoting the virtues of their own national standards over others, or suffer from the fact that such money is not being spent, and they don’t suffer competition from producers subject to lower standards. Consumers benefit because they can rely on quality assurance without having to make complicated investigations of different national standards and make judgments between them for which they are often ill-equipped. Price competition is stronger, and goods cost less as a result. And taxpayers benefit because, obviously, one regulatory body to establish and police product standards costs a lot less than twenty-eight. GDP in the EU is estimated to be between 4% and 6% higher than it would be, but for the Single Market. So it’s obviously efficient, and it’s obviously economically beneficial.
And, while one country wants to leave the EU, nobody wants to leave because of the Single Market. In fact, for well over a year after the referendum, Brexiters were moaning that exclusion from the Single Market was a punishment that the nasty EU was inflicting on the UK because of its choice to leave.
That’s not why most Leavers want to leave. It’s immigration.
International trade is not a neighbourhood fête. It doesn’t happen with a smile and a handshake.
There’s your problem.
Common sense is deeply overrated.
People are told the EU is heavy-handed, but can never give an example of how. People fail to realise the EU isn’t some alien overlord governing Europe. It’s Europe coordinating Europe, with officials, politicians and ministers from every country having a hand in it.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Up to a third of firms are now looking to quit Britain for the EU now. Sure sounds like a ‘heavy-handed’ behemoth.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Debatable- I think why most leavers want to leave is some vague sense that things aren’t as good as they should be, and the constant use of ‘The EU’ as a political bugbear that can be blamed for anything and everything.
Out of the people I personally know who voted leave, the reasons given to me were: ‘Turkey’s gonna join and we’ll be overrun with Turkish men’; ‘Oh, you know, I’m just sick of the whole thing’; ‘There’s just too many regulations’; ‘Them French fishermen are stealing all our fish, and I’m sick of it’ and my personal favourite ‘I thought everyone else was voting leave 
’
For a lot of people, it was simply the first time they felt they had a change to vote for any kind of meaningful change. They might not have really thought about what that change would be, but I think what many people really voted for wasn’t ‘in’ or ‘out’, it was ‘shake it all about’.
it is only to be hoped that a lawyer there is not being given the “common sense” advice to clients about the contracts.
The idea 'neighborly attitudes whatever this means is of any relevance to the international trade and the international legal frameworks is very strange - this is not a question of two people in some rural back town…
The successful coordination of a Common Market requires that a common set of standards be set to reduce and eliminate the tendancies that arise for unfair local product versus non local product discrimination.
This is not theory, this is well established needs based on the experience of multiple interations since the first GATT that preceded the WTO in 1948… developed and promoted by the Americans it is to be added, not some strange foreigners - European invention…
it is the worst, most grossest kind of naivete to base an understanding of the operation of common markets on an idea of small-town exchanges as it seems to be the case…
the rule of law requires indeed law, not ad hoc relationships.
**There is on such thing as an international inspection regime **.
This is some strange fiction you are inventing out of ignorance and mistaken ideas on how the trade in international goods occurs. There are either the national or in the case of a Common Market - the most free of the free trade zone possibilities - a common Market Standard.
These regimes are either the domestic goods or the incoming imports - it is irrational and unreasonable to think that the consumers of 25+ countries can understand and track 25+ different rule sets and standards and arbitrate between them
Such a situaiton is not a common market it is the opposite of one and the elimination or reduction to the minimum of these differences is at the core of the successful establishment of the most e
Since you do not even seem to understand the standards between the USA and Canada, how on earth do you expect that individual consumers can follow and understand the different standards between 20+ countries?
This is simply a friction and a potential barrier to the goods trade and an incentive to the games playing due to the lack of the transparency.
Because it makes literally no sense and has no relationship to how international goods trade works in Real World and is not informed by the real world lessons of 70+ years of trade agreements.
… asserted in confidence when you have not been able to understand the fundamentals of different regimes.
Not really. The two biggest predictors of Leave voters are an anti-immigration stance and a lower education level.
The support for a no-deal Brexit really upends some basic presumptions about the role of business in politics.
It’s baffling to watch right-wing politicians working against the concerns of the business establishment.
And it’s baffling to watch a significant fraction of the business establishment opposing its own bottom-line interests.
It’s certainly a major factor for a lot of people, but the areas with the highest EU immigration levels (data’s hard to find- but I reckon those who identify as ‘non-British white’ is a reasonable proxy) were noticeably more likely to vote remain. It’s the idea of EU immigrants rather than the reality.
Well, yes, actually living with immigrants tends to reduce concern about them, this isn’t a counter. It’s places with low immigration levels (like the sticks) where fear of the immigrant is going to play best. This supports my point.
Also, it’s not just white EU immigrants that are a concern to some leavers, but also the other immigrants other EU countries might take in, that would then have free access to the UK.
There’s certainly a lot of racism and xenophobia, for sure- but it wouldn’t be anywhere near as bad if things weren’t a bit shit anyway. People wouldn’t blame immigrants for the lack of jobs anywhere near as much if were plenty of good jobs. It’s a complicated mess, and boiling it down to ‘anti-immigrant’ seems a bit simplistic.
I currently live in one of the counties that voted leave. Complaints here seem to largely be about the lack of work- which is ironic really, given that the main income for the area is clearly tourism, which is likely to get hit badly… People want the fishing, farming and the mining back (I swear some of them are sitting waiting for the tin to grow back). The resentment at immigrants seems to be the idea that they’re making the problem worse, and that’s obviously nonsense, but there is a real problem behind it.
There seems to be the major concern and resentments about the Eastern European white immigrants… even to extent from my hearing preferring the Caribbeans or other old-Empire immigrants… ironic given the barely hidden “you won’t have needs for controls if you trade with white people” discourse to be seen in this discussion.
I’m not denying it’s complicated, I’m not saying it’s as simple as just not wanting immigrants, but there’s no denying immigration is the major factor - like you say, it even shows up as part of other given reasons.
I’m not saying it’s all racism, BTW. I think a lot of it is just Little England thinking.
My sister says my dad told her he voted Leave because he didn’t want an EU army.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
The Institute for Government prepared a report on how well preparations are going for a No Deal exit: the answer is extremely poorly:
US firms wants changes to UK beef standards. Yay hormones.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Look on the bright side. Some wealthy people can become even wealthier!
There are great profits to be made by selling food produced cheaply, with lower standards, for the same price as before. 
And if it increases cancer risk and lowers life expectancy, then it will reduce the surplus population, so it’s a win-win.
It turns out the government is doing planning in some areas that may come as a surprise: