"Mark Goodge" wrote in message
house.net...
I also think that there would be a strong preference for EFTA membership
even among Leave voters. In many respects, EFTA is what a lot of Leavers
think the EEC should have remained - a simple free trade bloc that doesn't
involve any form of political union - rather than mutating into the EU.
There's a not entirely fanciful belief that, with the UK taking a strong
lead (we would easily be the most populous and richest EFTA member), EFTA
could attract some other EU countries to jump ship and join us, leaving
the
rump EU as the future United States of Europe surrounded by a set of other
independent countries of which the UK would be the most significant.

Yes. I passionately believe that the UK should remain part of Europe and
should continue to sell to and buy from them. But I also passionately
believe that the EU, in the form into which it has now mutated, is
dictatorial and looks after its own aims to become a United States of Europe
instead of democratically looking after the interests of its member states.
It also should have remained a union of Western European countries and
should not have allowed in the poorer Eastern European countries who are now
at the centre of the "economic migration to the UK" problems.

I want us to be able to trade with our European neighbours. But I also want
us to have absolute control of our borders so we can limit the numbers of
non-UK people that we allow in and can also stipulate where they come from
and what skills they have.

I would love to see the situation you suggest: many EU countries leaving the
EU to join the trade-but-without-political-union EFTA, causing the EU to
disappear up its own orifice.