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Comment by lucozade | Hacker News Reader

The only conceivable way that a UK government can ignore this result is if the EU comes back with a substantial offer of change including a significant compromise on free movement. That could be used as a reason to trigger a second referendum.

I can't see that happening though and all the rhetoric from the EU and EU nations has been "goodbye and thanks for all the fish".

I expect the government to drag its heels for a while before it invokes Article 50 while it sorts itself out but industry will be clamouring for clarity so it won't drag on indefinitely.

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> if the EU comes back with a substantial offer of change including a significant compromise on free movement

That's not going to happen - not because of the "gooodbye" rhetoric, but rather because freedom of movement has been embodied as one of the core principles of the EU. Free movement of goods and people are inseparable. This is even laid down in the bilateral agreements with Switzerland and Norway. The Swiss just tested the waters with the latest referendum on curbing EU-immigration but they haven't followed through. The EU has drawn a line in the sand here and I seriously don't expect them to concede this point.

>Free movement of goods and people are inseparable.

Only when talking about people as goods, i.e. as human resources. When talking about people as humans, the borders inside EU are closed real quick when there's a G8 summit et.al. and politicians want to keep protestors from other countries out.

I don't agree that free movement of goods and people are necessarily inseparable but I completely agree that this is the line in the sand that the EU won't cross under any circumstances.

The flip side is that it's the main reason for the exit vote so I can't see how we could join EFTA, for example.

That sounds like an idea, alright, but the swing issue (despite the focus of the press on UKIP, etc.) was very probably the EU Tobacco Products Directive and the impact that had on the UK's ability to set its own public health agenda based on actual science and harm reduction. Xenophobes and jingoists will always be there, and their numbers will wax and wane by times, but if you give millions of people a single, huge, seemingly time-critical issue on which to base a vote, they'll vote the single issue.

Setting such a precedent would be terrible for the EU though. Before too long every country will threaten to "leave".

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