A Conservative MP who campaigned for the Leave camp before the EU referendum has dismissed the concept of Britain remaining in the single market as a “misnomer” despite Boris Johnson saying he is confident a deal can be struck.

Speaking in New York for a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, the new Foreign Secretary was quoted as saying he had “absolutely no doubt that a balance can be struck” between access to the tariff-free market and the four freedoms that underpin the EU project.

However, Bill Cash, Conservative MP for Stone, told The Independent that Britain cannot remain inside the market, stating “If you’re out, you’re out,” and comparing the UK’s relationship to the EU with that of Japan and the US.

“You cannot remain… the 1972 Act has to be repealed as the only constitutional political act, which follows from the vote to leave the European Union,” he said. “There is no other way open to anyone. If you’re out, you’re out… therefore you can’t engage in an integrated process. You are thereby outside like America is, like Japan is – it’s no big deal, it’s perfectly simple,” he said.

UK officials have been trying to reach an outline agreement with European leaders on the sequence of Brexit talks, including a discussion about whether the terms of Britain leaving the EU can be negotiated at the same time as talks about the future trade relationship.

Theresa May and her Brexit departments in Whitehall do not want to concede any ground on triggering article 50, the clause that starts the two-year negotiating process, until this can be clarified. The sequence question is an essential in the opening phase in the tactical battle, with the UK being in a weaker position if the negotiations are rigidly organised.

There is a danger that the UK would leave the EU only to find itself in a legal limbo in which the status of critical trade, security and environmental laws have not been clarified. That applies not just to access to the EU single market, but a variety of other critical functions, ranging from the European arrest warrant to data sharing and climate change laws.

Under the article 50 procedure, member states must first negotiate the terms of their departure before negotiating a future deal with the EU.

The Brexit shock has given the economy "a good kicking" according to a special set of surveys of businesses taken in the wake of the European Union referendum vote, which suggest the UK economy is now contracting at its steepest pace since the last recession in early 2009.

The “dramatic deterioration” will significantly increase the odds of a major monetary stimulus from the Bank of England next month to support the economy.

Markit/CIPS surveys of firms' purchasing managers conducted in recent days suggests activity in both the UK’s services and manufacturing sectors have slipped into contraction in the wake of the 23 June vote.

Howard Archer of IHS Global Insight described it as "a truly horrible survey" which suggests the Brexit vote is giving the economy "a good kicking".

Britain's economy shrinking at fastest rate since 2009, says survey

The UK economy shrank at its fastest rate since the peak of the financial crisis seven years ago, after the vote to leave the European Union, according to a survey of business activity.


In the first survey of business confidence since the referendum on 23 June, the services sector was particularly hard hit, showing its biggest drop on record.

With manufacturing dropping to its lowest level since February 2013, the survey suggests UK GDP could shrink by 0.4% in the third quarter, according to Markit, which compiles the data in its purchasing managers’ index (PMI).

In Brexit Britain the elites will run amok

A week on from the referendum that was going to take back democracy from the elites, and we still don’t know exactly who will be taking back democracy for us. But it will be one representative of the elites or another. At the moment, it looks like Michael Gove or Theresa May will be their political face. Unless someone else in the Tory party offers them a better deal between now and September.

The elites have already been reassured that there will be public money to squander on disentangling Britain from international consensus and getting the elites the trade deals that they want.

Conservative promises to step away from the deficit obsession are about this, not ending austerity.

Instead, we will be continuing as we have been for decades, pandering to the elites we’re supposed to be escaping. The elites decide how much they are prepared to contribute in tax towards the social and physical infrastructure they operate in. They’d rather do it privately, bleeding interest for their chiselling loans out of the public sector. They will always have free movement for themselves, and the threat that they will make use of it. It’s so easy for them to get their way.

They will always manage to bring in cheap staff from abroad, when and if they want it, safe in the knowledge that it’s the cheap staff, not them, who will bear the brunt of the anger of the people they refuse to employ because they want fair wages and decent conditions. People will learn the hard way how much Nigel Farage cares about their lives, how much Rupert Murdoch frets about their poor pay.

These men want ordinary people to be angry, because angry people make errors of judgment, blaming each other instead of the elites that plunder ideas about equality, fairness, freedom and democracy for their own ends. Britain. You voted for this. Now, once again, get ready to be told that There Is No Alternative.........................................


No one can predict what sort of outcome might emerge from his capricious gamble, and it doesn’t look like we’ll even get to vote again until all of that is done and dusted. Europe doesn’t crush our democracy. It protects what’s left of it. Now that protection is gone and our limited, gestural, dysfunctional democracy is all we have.