The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:
Which is more likely to push the UK into a 'Hard Brexit'?
Political grandstanding and threats from EU leaders - 54%
The inevitable UK backlash thereto - 42%
Other, please specify - 5%
Which is pretty conclusive. As Tusk and others have said, the UK must pay a price and be seen to pay a price for Brexit pour encourager les autres. So if we end up with Hard Brexit, that was their decision, not ours.
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The question is, what will that "price" be?
Merkel keeps insisting that Britain can't get full single market access with free movement concessions. I'd be a hypocrite to oppose to the freedom of EU citizens to move within the EU to work and I can't say it bothers me greatly (although it bothers a lot of others, fair enough I accept that).
There has also been some mumbling that the UK would have to pay a market access fee, estimated at £5 billion a year, half our current contributions and under the circumstances, a price worth paying if it's for the benefit of the whole economy. For some reason, the pol's are obsessed with UK-based banks having access to the single market, in which case it's not a price worth paying and the banks can pay it themselves out of a bank asset tax or something. Either way, it appears that the EU is not insisting that we continue being the second largest net contributor.
So that's this week's Fun Online Poll, if it were a simple choice (which it won't be), which "price" would you rather we pay to retain tariff and quota free access to the EU single market? Or indeed neither?
Vote HERE or use the widget in the sidebar.
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