Quote:
Originally Posted by 1andrew1
There's nothing to evidence that FullFact only Googled "customs union" so your subsequent criticism of FullFact is on shaky ground.
Pierre said "It was made Crystal clear prior to the referendum, that leaving the EU meant leaving the Single Market, Customs Union and ECJ jurisdiction. That was repeated over and over again and was in the famous leaflet delivered to each household. That is a fact and is unquestionable."
It certainly was not in the leaflet and certainly was not crystal clear.
---------- Post added at 21:35 ---------- Previous post was at 21:34 ----------
You could be correct but your post doesn't help anyone to understand why.
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There’s nothing wrong with my post, nor with Pierre’s contention.
“Leave the customs union” and “strike independent trade deals” are tightly bound together. The former is required in order to achieve the latter.
All that has changed since 2016 is that we have moved on from discussing policy aims to understanding and discussing the measures required in order to enact them.
It is hardly surprising that people are now more familiar with some of the EU’s technical ways of working. Had anyone discussed “leaving the customs union” at length prior to the vote, then that discussion would have immediately required the explanation “that’s what we need to do in order to pursue an independent trade policy”, and that in itself would have been no more controversial than explaining that going to the shops involves driving the car.
This argument rests on the absurd idea that if you had said, prior to the vote, “pursuing an independent trade policy necessitates leaving the customs union” then people would’ve said, “oh well hang on there, we can’t do that, the customs union is the customs union, we’d better not mess with it”.
For the purposes of debate, there was nothing disingenuous about discussing trade policy rather than the measures necessary to achieve it and for the purposes of deciding whether the debate was illuminating, there is nothing disingenuous about claiming that the customs union issue was properly discussed.