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from the somebody-didn't-think-this-all-the-way-through dept.
At least one UK businessman is attaching a condition to his continued support of the ruling Conservative Party:
A major Tory donor has threatened to stop funding the party if Theresa May plans to remove the UK from the "critical" single market after Brexit. Sir Andrew Cook, who has given more than £1.2m to the party, told BBC Radio 4 that ending single market access was "chronic and dangerous" to the economy. The engineering firm chairman said at least one of his factories was almost "entirely dependent" on access to it.
Sir Andrew backed the Remain campaign in the EU referendum. "There are barriers to entry without the single market, there are tariffs," said Sir Andrew, who chairs William Cook, his family's firm which makes components for the rail, energy and defence industries. "One of my factories has 200 people employed making engineering parts that go to France, Germany and Italy," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
Also at Reuters. Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has offered to take a Scottish independence referendum off the table in exchange for a "soft Brexit" involving access to the single market.
The BBC reports that while the EU's presence in London is likely to shrink, organizations like the European Banking Authority (EBA) might stick around if the UK remains in the single market.
Finally, have you applied for your Irish passport yet?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by theluggage on Monday January 09 2017, @12:31PM
"Popular vote is wrong"
No, "Popular vote asks for the impossible".
"Popular vote" as promoted by the totally irresponsible and unaccountable Leave campaigns, was to leave the EU, stop immigration, get rid of all the EU regulations, stop paying our EU subscription and give it to the health service and somehow keep all of the economic advantages of the single market.
Just to translate that: if the EU offered that option to the UK, half of the other countries in the EU would immediately say "hey, yeah, we'll take a bit of that action, too" which would mark the end of the EU. Since the leave deal has to be passed by all the EU countries, that just isn't going to happen, the 2 year deadline will expire and we'll have the hardest of hard Brexits whether we want it or not.
That's why simplistic referendums on complex issues are stupid: if you offer the general public the moon on a stick of course they'll take it. The reason the government is dithering now is that they're desperately looking for some fudge to make it look like they can make a stick long enough to reach the moon.
Summary: Cameron screwed the pooch by calling a referendum and assuming that he'd win.