Leaving the EU is not a completely insane thing to do.
The UK (and many other countries) have legitimate grievances about some things the EU is foisting on them (immigration for example) and the EU is giving them the cold shoulder and fining them if they don't comply. Labelling people who are against that as "insane" isn't going to help anybody.
EU freedom of movement isn't unconditional. You can only move to a different EU country if you have a job or can support yourself.
You have three months to make it work, and then if you can't make it work, you can be asked to leave.
The UK deliberately opted out of this requirement. Until recently, the UK was one of the most generous and open states for EU immigration.
The UK also made the most noise about allowing the former Soviet Bloc countries to join the EU - coincidentally, the countries which have sourced a lot of supposedly objectionable immigration.
This is because the UK likes to play a game. First it imports cheap foreign labour to keep wages down. Then the same political group which quietly promotes this makes a big show of saying "Oh no! Look at all the immigrants! How terrible! We should do something!" in public.
And this reliably wins elections. It's been winning them for well over a century now.
You can be absolutely sure that if Brexit happens this game will be played again - most likely with cheap labour from the former commonwealth countries.
> ...
> It's a package deal.
how do you explain the existence of the EU-Canada deal where Canada has essentially complete tariff free access to the EU's Single Market without freedom of movement?
here's the commission's factsheet on it: http://ec.europa.eu/trade/images/infographics/ceta-explained...
If you have a Canada-style deal, you need customs controls, which could be built at Dover, but the sticking point is, and probably always will be, the Northern Ireland border. Put the checks on the border, and you're imperiling the peace process. Put them in the sea, and you're splitting the UK into two regulatory zones. It's an impossible problem.
this is correct, but not at all relevant to your original point:
> If you want access to the single market, you have to sign up to freedom of movement.
this statement is objectively not true, as is proven by the existence of CETA
> But if you want into the customs union (and therefore being allowed to just walk things across the border to the EU, no checks) you have to sign up to pretty much all the EU regulations. And that's the point that the four freedoms kick in, and you have to take freedom of movement.
this statement is also not true: Turkey forms a customs union with the EU: goods travel freely between the EU and Turkey without customs checks, and the EU does not have freedom of movement with Turkey
https://www.ft.com/content/b4458652-f42d-11e6-8758-687615182...
> The EU has agreed open-access road transport deals only with a handful of neighbouring countries. This includes members of the European Economic Area, which Britain has said it will not join, and Switzerland, which has a special bilateral agreement.
> Crucially, all the transport deals are premised on participation in the EU’s free movement of people area, which Britain also hopes to leave. In other words, even if Britain mirrors the EU rules on haulage, it may not be enough to secure free access for trucks to the EU market...
> The goal, said a Turkish official, was to complete as much paperwork as possible before actually reaching the border. On the other end, Bulgarian border officers examine each truck, going over the paperwork and doing random drug and migrant checks. Refrigerated trucks are x-rayed as are 5 per cent of other trucks, at random, according to Mr Ereke. “For the UK, I wish them good luck,” he said, pointing to the lines behind him. “It is not going to be easy.”
Maybe those should be uncoupled, but the EU isn't about to do it to stop a member state from leaving.
Leaving is not insane in itself. Leaving with a favorable deal with questionable leverage is irrational. Not sure if insane, but at least it's borderline fantasyland
From the start, it was insane.
On balance, the UK is better in Europe, despite its human-made failings. Trying to achieve some impossible ideal, without understanding or acknowledging the realities, might not be insane but it's not the way the world works.
What?