[robertony]

Some "leavers" just want to trade with the rest of the world with flexibility and not be bound to the EU. It's a hard argument to make that the EU is better when "leavers" compare the economic growth of the EU, which employs protectionism to prevent easy trading with outside of the EU when comparing the potential trade deals with the rest of world outside of the EU, without the need for VAT etc.

[gpvos]

Do you know about specific kinds of trade that the UK would want different deals for than the EU? You might be able to optimize that somewhat, but I doubt it would weigh up against the leverage you have as (part of) the huge EU trading bloc, plus the loss of access to the internal market.

[hkt]

"Flexibility" - the EU has more free trade deals than the UK will ever negotiate on its own. Not to mention the immense value of the single market itself.

Protectionism is what we like to think of as standards. It improves lives in Europe.

[robertony]

> the EU has more free trade deals than the UK will ever negotiate on its own.

It doesn't really matter how many trade deals or what the trade deals are when VAT, import fees are applied in such a way to equalize the costs of external trade, to the point there isn't much benefit of trading with outside the EU unless they're some how able to significantly reduce costs or pioneer an industry that doesn't exist in the EU.

Even with just the UK utiliziling only the WTO (which the UK has no control over in the EU), the UK could stand to get better trading with the rest of the world than it can within the EU. But, this is not just because it can set the WTO rates.

The UK is not obligated to apply VAT and other fees after it leaves the EU on any imports and it doesn't have to be concerned about applying protectionism in industries that don't even exist in the UK.

> Protectionism is what we like to think of as standards. It improves lives in Europe.

I'm not really sure about which standards you're talking about, but I'll take a couple of the earliest and longest implemented standards that the EU requires, something that Greenland left over in the beginning.

The standards of the common agriculture policy and the common fisheries policies that the UK farming and fishing industires have been lobbying to fix for multiple decades has only lead to the destruction of environments, forcing farmers on quotas who then can't sell their products being forced to then depend on EU subsidies and grants to operate, it has lead to the destruction of much of the industry in the UK which in turn has made in particular, numerous farming and fishing towns become welfare dependent... It's been over 20 years of consistent failing to address these issues.

The worst part of this all is that these issues were completely avoidable, the EU and UK could have actually solved these problems and not let the situation deteriorate to the point that people have become that unhappy that they just want out. I am interested though to hear an opposing view how this improved lives in Europe.

[pjc50]

The idea that the UK might somehow abolish VAT on leaving the EU sounds like wishful thinking to me. Where's the money for that hole in the budget going to come from?

The CFP is a mess, but without something to replace it I suspect fish stocks would simply have been extracted below replacement level.

[hkt]

CFP would have been well loved if it had been set up in such a way as to designate quotas to small fishers etc. As it stands most of the quotas are owned by a few huge players. That's the real reason why there's so much consternation among fishers - because of the people who have accrued fishing rights to squeeze out small producers.

[pjc50]

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/five-wealth... ? Does the cfp mandate that quota be tradeable?

[AstralStorm]

"Flexibility" such as small negotiating position of weakness and having to negotiate trade and tariffs with every important trade partner directly from such position.

Small is not beautiful in global trade.