Oh, I think it was very real - one of the great things about the EU is the fact that it doesn't matter whether I buy from or sell to france, austria, germany, portugal or hungary. No customs fees, delays or complicated export documents and a common return policy. As someone who knows both sides, this ease of access is great for sellers and buyers alike.

Frankly, I'd love to do the same with goods to and from the US, but since it comes with a lot of barriers, I simply don't buy from there. And at work we don't sell our physical goods to non-EU countries. So, yes, it's makes a difference.

no, its immigration, and the lack of jobs for "locals"

much has been made of "bureaucracy" but in fact, most of that is hidden from the UK.

The basic fact is that large parts of the UK have been left to rot, suffering terribly from the lack of decent jobs to replace the decline of manufacturing. This has been blamed on immigration, correctly or not. That is why large swathes of the country voted to leave.

Now we won't have that excuse any more.

But brexit isn't going to make life any better for those areas. Most likely it will be worse as the country as a whole will be probably poorer and less able to support deprived areas. But I expect they will still put the blame for this on someone else rather than the total failure of successive UK governments to spread wealth around the country.

Just to be clear, are you doubting the existence of a single market for EU members? Because if you are, reality is very persuasive.

there is certainly a single market for goods, services is far from complete

it makes the statement "four freedoms are indivisible" somewhat hollow, because there has never been full freedom of services

I ~~have been~~ was a consultant in the EU for about 3 years w/ clients in 7 different countries. All I (additionally) had to do was mark a checkbox on my income tax statements.

If that checkbox was all that held me from "full freedom", then I concede your point.

Can confirm on that the single market for services is far from reality.

Today, if I'm a consultant and have a consultancy company registered in EU country X, if I come to EU country Y to provide my services there, it's pretty likely that I will have to set up a separate company in Y or Y's tax people will be after me (that's currently the situation in UK for example).

I cannot confirm that. I found the tax agreements within the EU to be relatively easy in the EU & UK. Of course you deal with two authorities, so there is an additional benefit, but recognizing taxes paid in the UK with another country was not that hard.

Yes, there is no double taxation - but you essentially need to involve yourself with the tax authority of every country you are doing business in.

In a real single integrated market, I'd have company registered in country X, serve customers across entire Europe, but file taxes on the entire income in X only. I'm thinking they don't allow that because it would open doors to all kinds of tax optimization for the little people - ex. say UK workers would register themselves as companies in countries with very low taxes, and continue to work ("provide services") in UK. This kinds of schemes are allowed for the megacorps, but not for us regular folk.

"involve yourself" in this case is present the tax income declaration to the tax authority in the 2nd (3rd, etc.) country.

Hardly a cumbersome experience.

In practice, you need to learn the tax code to find most suitable form of conducting business. For example, in the UK if you know what you're doing, you'll pay ~20% tax on your income as a contractor. If you don't, you can easily end up paying something like 30+%.

Also, there are perpetual costs of having a company registered (such as monthly payments to an accounting company which handles paperwork, health care contributions etc.), so if you move around regularly between a couple different countries, you'll probably need to maintain a legal presence in each one, and thus have these costs multiplied.

> In practice, you need to learn the tax code to find most suitable form of conducting business.

That has not been my experience.

Not yet, anyway. There's still a lot of talk about it. I'm particularly interested in the ongoing talk about a single market for digital goods.

You can agree with the existence of a single market but find most of that quote flowery political rhetoric.

> Should we agree with the quote or find it wrong in hindsight?

What Thatcher was talking about was literally a single market i.e. where one could buy and sell goods without tariff and other protectionist restrictions.

What we have now with the EU is most definitely not that. We have free movement of people, a much expanded EU with qualified majority voting, significant social (as against economic) legislation, and the Euro.

None of these were really evident in '88 and Thatcher was dead against all of them. Fundamentally, she was a supporter of a wide ranging trade agreement and not very much else.

If you read May's bullets, she has non-tariff market access as one of priorities. She is effectively using the term Single Market to a much wider scope than Thatcher but still attempting to keep the basis of what was originally envisioned, at least in the UK, on the table.

Can't imagine the EU agreeing to this as it's moved well passed that stage but you never know.

>We have free movement of people,

A single market includes the free movement of labour, as well as goods and services. Hence, restricting immigration is equivalent to leaving the single market. If we're to have tarriff-free trade with the EU but barriers on migration, that's surely a "protectionist restriction" on British jobs.

EU has free movement of labour and goods but does it have free movement of services I didn't think it did (that's a genuine rather than rhetorical question)

Pretty sure it does, it's one of the "four freedoms": http://ec.europa.eu/growth/single-market/

I got the link from the Wikipedia article, more info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Single_Market

No way. Brexit was primarily caused by xenophobia in combination with lack of education about how the EU works. Most people don't even know how many unanimous votes of all member states were necessary to get to the contemporary EU in the first place.

Had there been a simple test of 10 questions about how the EU works, drawn from 100 previously published questions, that needed to be answered in order to qualify as a voter, then the Brexit would never have happened. Likewise, if there hadn't coincidentally been a bloody civil war in Syria with many refugees looking for a new future at the time of the Brexit, then the Brexit would also never had happened.

Coincidence and lack of knowledge have determined the fate of the UK and Europe as a whole for the next fifty to hundred years or so. But you could say the same about many other historic decisions and events.

In the end it was all about immigration. Without immigration, people wouldn't have voted against the EU. Other reasons (judges in Luxembourg, EU regulation) are used as placeholders so that others won't think you're xenophobic. But most discussions with Brexit voters sooner or later end up being about immigration (esp. from Eastern Europe).

Actually you don't know at all how Brexit was 'primarily caused' if indeed there was a primary cause. Plenty of cosmopolitan EU-savvy intellectuals supported 'Leave' with excellent arguments. An opinion is one thing; the pretense of having a penetrating analysis to the extent of proving it with a virtual quiz plus results (wow - it agrees with your prediction!) is another.

Okay, your opinion. I still know that it was primarily caused by these two factors, and even know that I know it.

I also have not heard a single excellent argument for Brexit so far - not a single one, and as a well-informed and educated person I've heard many if not all of them. "Plenty of" is too vague to be of any value as a statement, but I also wouldn't agree that there were "plenty of" EU-savvy intellectuals who supported 'Leave', unless you're willing to count people like Boris Johnson to this group. You and the rest of the 'Leave' is being dishonest or simply deluded / misinformed.

Please don't bother discussing this topic with me (or Trump supporters or climate change denial, for what it's worth). I'm sick of it and the UK. What I would like to ask you and your kind is to urge your politicians to exit the EU swiftly and then shut up and never blame the EU for anything that happens to the UK again. Bye!