'The reset with the EU must be ambitious if we are to meet our economic, security and other objectives' - LabourList

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

56% : Migration from the EU was always a smaller number and is now considerably so.
56% : When we were in the EU, Britain could use the internal EU agreement that asylum-seekers should be processed by the EU country in which they first arrived.
53% : And here, we are talking about a reciprocal right, with millions of Brits living in other EU countries (indeed Brits were the EU's biggest beneficiaries of the right to settle anywhere in the EU, with more British people living in other EU countries than any other nationality).
51% : Above all, if the tracker opinion polls show that public opinion continues its gradual but relentless shift in favour of rejoining the EU, then surely these smaller steps, at least, should be easier.
48% : This is because, outside the customs union, even with zero tariffs, goods crossing the border are, under WTO rules, subject to checks on their origin (are they really British and eligible for tariff-free entry, or are they or their main components in fact from somewhere else?), and outside the single market (an area where common standards of consumer protection, workers' rights, environmental protections and fair competition rules have been painstakingly agreed) further checks on whether they comply with these rules.
48% : In any case, far from enabling Britain to "take back control" of its borders, Brexit has removed key tools for controlling that border.
46% : But in fact, most migration to Britain is from outside the EU, which is (and was, even when we were a member of the EU) a matter for national regulation.
46% : Nor was EU freedom of movement a cost to the exchequer, as EU citizens in Britain paid one third in more in taxes than they received in benefits and services combined.
44% : And, with world trade severely disrupted by Trump, Britain, as a trading nation, has a vital choice to make about its priority trading partners: the EU, where agreements are made, kept, reciprocal, based on international norms, with disputes settled by a court, or the USA, where agreements are made, broken, changed and broken again at a whim, without any recourse when the law is ignored.
44% : In short, EU freedom of movement was not really the problem it was made out to be.
44% : Brexit was shooting ourselves in the foot in terms of "taking back control" of our borders.
43% : Yet the lost tax revenue to the exchequer arising from Brexit (mostly from being outside the single market and customs union) is, according to OBR figures, £40 billion every year.
43% : If economic reality forces the Labour government to go further, and to at least rejoin the single market and the customs union, and even if that were to include conditional free movement with EU countries, it will find that this does not throw up as many problems as it fears.

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