they would hire british people that could previously get £8.50/h because of all the economic opportunities that immigrants create but without immigrant workers can only get jobs cleaning toilets for £7.20/h.

seriously, ive answered it all here already
your question is dumb and you should feel bad.

It absolutely shouldn't be undersold how terrible it is for the poor to pull out of Europe.

Great, now the cleaners don't have to compete with Polish workers but the business closed down and those jobs don't exist any more.

Leaving the single market will be a ****ing disaster. Exports will instantly struggle and companies will start evaluating their position. Companies who do lots of business in Europe will instantly start evaluating whether it's cheaper to eat a new tariff to export there or to relocate.

The great recession will feel like a treasured childhood memory if the dominoes start to fall and companies start to move to Germany or France.

This.

No single market access for UK after Brexit, Wolfgang Schäuble says

Just to hammer home the point.

If Britain leaves, the determination to see the EU project continue without more countries leaving would probably compel the EU to punish Britain by refusing it access to the single market.

Do you think that when companies look at the EU, they see it as some kind of economic utopia and will immediately up sticks and leave?

There are both positives and negatives to the EU. Most businesses - and bear in mind 99.9% of companies in the UK are small or medium - will stand pat for at least several years and see how things develop. As Martin Lewis said on "This Week", leaving the EU just increases variance, it doesn't necessary mean it's going to have a negative impact.

And this just won't happen. Germany and France are not going to cripple their own economy to prove a point of principle. I'd love to be in the room when Germany tells it's car manufacturers they are no long allowed to sell to the UK as a punishment for leaving the EU.

Some of the statements ITT are just parroting the kind of empty rhetoric peddled by both sides in the EU debate, rather than trying to add to the debate.

I keep hearing this argument from the Brexit campaign and I don't believe it for one second, it's got nothing to do with parroting arguments either.

At it's core the EU is a political project, not an economic one. Some very powerful people have a huge amount of political capital invested in its success. To let the UK just swan off and secure an easy trade deal would to be to encourage other countries, Portugal, the Danes, to consider leaving. Not gonna happen.

Exports to the UK only represent 3% of EU GDP. Significant, sure, but something that the EU can afford to lose some of in order to teach us a lesson.

Ultimately the people at the top don't care about anything but power, look what they've done to the Greek and Spanish economies. A whole generation thrown on the employment scrapheap in pursuit of a single currency and stabilising reckless German banks.

In many ways I'd be glad to leave such a corrupt and undemocratic institution, but I'm convinced that we would suffer real economic harm and that we are actually a force for change within that institution. Change that we will be powerless to effect outside it.

Largely agree with the political point but pressure isn't all one way. Keeping the UK in the club may be politically necessary to combat increasing anti-EU sentiment.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7069766.html

If we vote to leave then the option to fight (not literally) rather than try to keep the UK in the club peacefully could tear the EU apart, especially if it's accompanied by economic problems which is likely if there's a fight.

Sorry but this is just an absurd distortion of how the Single Market works. Obviously governments can't stop companies from exporting goods into a non-EU UK. But not being part of the Single Market means that duties would by become payable on the import/export of goods. There would also be additional compliance burdens for UK and EU exporters.

Of course Brexit and loss of access to the single market doesn't mean an end to trade with the EU. It will mean that the cost of trade increases.

Wat?

It has nothing to do with that, the EU is a market, a big one, lots of people in it to buy your stuff. A much bigger market than the UK.

There are some businesses in the UK who make goods cars is a good example, the large majority of which get sold in the EU.

Why are they going to stay in the UK if the whole point of being here is to access the EU market?

If we leave the EU selling to that market gets a lot harder, probably the only way it stays near the same as now is if we negotiate a deal which still leaves us beholden to most of the rules we are now including immigration with no power over those rules, that would be really well played.

It works nothing like this.

Trade is not some binary on/off switch. Its a question of degrees.

Also you are confusing UK exporting and EU importing.

Germany wont ever tell its cars makers it cant sell to UK, it will tell UK manufacturers that they are now going to have to jump through hoops of ball ache and pay X in fees to sell to the EU. Trade wont be on/off it will be lessened to some linear degree.

It will then be up to the UK to try and reduce the penalties by playing tit for tat. Anyone who thinks we end up ahead in such a process is deluded, to avoid such a trade war is the very reason if we leave we are likely to end up in a new trade deal beholden to all the same rules as now but with no say over them. Again, that would be really well played.

So what happened in the past 24 hours to move the market from 3/1 to 9/4 for leave, that's surely liquid enough that it's not Scotland putting a few quid on to fund their second independence referendum if it happens, right?

I think it's probably a reaction to the Thursday night debate.

"If Britain leaves, the determination to see the EU project continue without more countries leaving would probably compel the EU to punish Britain by refusing it access to the single market."

You clearly don't understand what the single market is and the dangers of leaving it.

Germany et al would be free to impose whatever tariffs they wanted on UK exports (while continuing to export their own products to the UK obviously).

We're only having this referendum because some jumped up twerp of a failed banker's xenophobic little party somehow managed to make enough noise that the Government agreed to it, which was a huge mistake because people like you can't even grasp the basics of what the EU is about.

Yea the "Germany wont just stop selling us their cars" thing is one of the worst and tilting repeated parroted phrases in this debate. Have heard that one so many times.

How democratic.....

Pragmatic though, if your goal is to make an example of us to preserve the political union.

But we're not talking about removing *all* immigration here; we're talking about removing *low-skilled* immigration.

You can't just say "er...well...yeah but immigrants create jobs so whoever already earns £8.50 per hour would be out of a job!...

...er...

...And they THEY'D have to work for £7.20 per hour! ha!"

Lets try once more

What would happen to the bank that hires low-skilled EU cleaners on £7.20 per hour if a) British workers won't clean toilets for £7.20 per hour and b) we were able to control EU migration?

would the bank

1) ask the risk management team and derivatives desk to clean their own toilets?

2) Go bust because they couldn't possible maintain their business if it cost £8.50 per hour to hire cleaners.

3) Pony up and simply pay whatever it took to hire British low-skilled workers?

You can't answer the question can you?

Yeah. They're all in a mad rush to move from 20% corporation tax Britain to 30-33% France & Germany.

The entirety of the English hooligans in France have been chanting in unison

"We're all voting out! We're all voting out! **** off Europe! We're all voting out".

There was also another poll

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/...ep-up-campaign

Brexit down to 2/1 with most bookies.

Isn't that also how wars start?

they would hire british people that could previously get £8.50/h because of all the economic opportunities that low-skilled immigrants create but without low-skilled immigrant workers can only get jobs cleaning toilets for £7.20/h.

maybe i should have been clearer that it all applies to low-skilled immigrants too, but this is still the answer to everything
there's no reason to think that low-skilled immigration meaningfully lowers the wages for any native wage group. your question is dumb and you should feel bad.

Ireland's where they'll go.

You might regard it as unfair but it's not undemocratic, because the UK will no longer be part of the EU.

And yes, this is how wars have started in the past, which is another good reason to stay in the mutually beneficial alliance with our European trading partners.

based on what banks are doing around my part, it'd usually be 4) none of the above, close, then leave it to whoever's running the hairdressers/restaurant that it then becomes

Full access to the EEA means accepting free movement of persons, goods, services and capital. If you allow precedent where countries get to cherry pick then this single market is going to fall apart very quickly. That has nothing to do with "punishment" for voting out, just staying true to the core ideas of the single market.

I don't think Schäuble's position is unreasonable in this case. If the UK votes out of EU because it wants to get rid of the free movement of workers, it doesn't make any sense for the UK to join the single market immediately afterwards.

Trade will continue anyway obviously, that is in everyone's interest.