The UK should remain a member of the Customs Union

I will start off by summarising your main points, to make sure that I am not debating a straw man. Feel free to correct me on any or all points. You believe that since the referendum was simply on whether or not Britain should leave the customs union, it is therefore incorrect to assume that the public also wants to leave the single market and customs union. You believe that this is further compounded by the fact that the margin of vote was small, and therefore you think it is likely that more votes would land on remaining within the customs union than leaving it. You believe that since much of the debate depended on immigration, leaving the single market is justified, but leaving the customs union would be an unnecessary burden on the British economy. Again please let me know if I have misinterpreted any of your point, although I find that hard to believe given your well written opening argument. I will start off my rebuttal by discussing how valid leaving the customs union and single market simply based on the referendum is. First of all, I agree that we cannot determine what voters would have voted for if the referendum had been on whether or not we should leave the single market, however assuming that they would have voted to remain in the single market is just as flawed as assuming the opposite. In fact I think that the opposite is actually more likely, that if now we had a referendum on how the United Kingdom should leave the EU, leaving entirely or remaining in the single market and customs union, they would vote to leave entirely. I believe this is true by looking at the affected groups on both side. On the remain side, one huge point is that, outside of the EU Britain would lose nearly all of its influence on the world stage, becoming a political backwater. It is clear then that leaving the EU, and therefore removing the UK voting rights, and yet remaining in the single market, may not sit well with them, since now they no longer have political influence over the EU, and yet still must obey its laws. On the leave side, the only large group that I could think of that would benefit more from remaining in the single market rather than the EU are fishermen, since they get many exemptions in EU law in Norway for example, in return for wavering their voting rights. However, as you correctly mentioned, one of the biggest issues in the Brexit debate was immigration, which would be completely nullified if we were to remain in the single market. As such, and since not all UK fishermen will have been swayed simply by fishing exemptions, I agree with you that Britain should leave the single market as well. However, I do not think that remaining in the customs union, in order to prevent damage to the British economy, is a very satisfactory solution. This is because it is essentially the worst of both worlds. We do not gain the ability to set our own tariffs, and are prevented from pursuing free trade with the rest of the world due to the common external tariffs policy, yet we still lose access to the single market, which means loss of 39% of our exports to the EU in the form of services. This means that whilst we do retain relativity frictionless trade with the EU, we lose any ability to make any real trade agreements with the rest of the world. This would be far worse for the UK economy than raising the expense of EU imports to UK by a marginal amount due to customs checks on products. Let us not forget the fact that the one thing that all economists agree on are the benefits of free trade between nations. By remaining within the customs union, we are essentially tying ourselves to a trade block, that really operates as a large protectionist nation. At this point in time, the entire EU has a smaller GDP than the United States, and yet protectionist tariffs and regulation passed by the EU are forgotten about. Do we really want to tie ourselves to a trade block which encompasses a mere 17% of the global GDP and is declining in relative influence every day and shun our other allies and the rest of the world in order to retain just a mere fraction of the market access that we have now? I think not. In conclusion, whilst I agree with you that the UK must leave the single market in order to comply with what the voters likely intended, I think that remaining in the customs union would not be ideal, since it does not keep us with the same EU access that we have now, and yet it removes any potential for free trade with the rest of the world. I look forward to your rebuttal.