Free movement of people is regulated just as much as goods and capital, the most pertinent example bring that you treat foreign nationals equally under the law as natives, so minimum wage laws apply.
You can't blame the EU for national governments not policing the minimum wage. Your fire is aimed at the wrong people.
That's a bit more complicated when there are endless chains of subcontracters and employment agencies from Eastern Europe are involved. It's also more complicated when the employer is also the one that provides the housing. It's more complicated when the employees don't know the local law and don't speak the language. And when a national government is trying to counter that, it gets complicated with the EU because they don't care about the local employees and jobless at all and are extremely strict on policies that might interfere with those subcontracters or employment agencies operating in foreign countries.
So yes, I can blame and do blame the EU.
As for the march east, I am in favour of it. There is little evidence that wages have been compressed by their addition to the EU, further I see how they do bring prosperity to this nations. Lots of new eastern european owned business, often set up in the poorer end of town, bringing new life to run down areas.
This is a great irony, EU money and EU migrants more often spend cash and time in the run down areas of Britain than the masters who ran the vote leave campaign.
I also think that we've done a great deed by helping eastern european nations grow, they were shit holes after communism, as they become first world economies, the people who live there won't need to move to live a decent life.
It's not for the EU to decide to take money from Western European countries and move it Eastern European countries. They weren't shitholes, they were just poor. Now the poor there are more poor, and a lot the people who lived there don't really live there anymore but in a caravan park in Western Europe.
I'm happy those countries joined, I don't mind helping them. I didn't mind Western European companies moving a part of production there or investing in existing factories there. I don't mind Eastern Europeans working in the West. I do mind their low cost of living disrupting the lives of workers there and the job market here. That wasn't necessary at all, joining the EU would have boosted their economies anyway, but they would have developped on a slightly slower pace but in lot better way. Now Eastern European companies have to compete with Western European wages, so those are screwed too and that's probably worse for their economies in the long run.
But the EU doesn't care, they aren't organizing this race to the bottom for the sake of the Eastern Europeans or Western Europeans. Why should they? It's not like we can vote them out.
Prior to the UK joining the EU it was the sick person of Europe who was begging its way into Europe. The UK is leaving the EU, this time as a financial powerhouse. You really can't complain that the EU had treated you badly can you?
The UK never joined the EU. The UK joined the EEC, that was a very different organization. After that there was the EC, followed by the EU, and after that there was the new EU with the constitution/Lissabon treaty. A lot has changed. The current EU has been a disaster, that's why it's claiming the successes of the ECSC, the EEC and the EC for itself, together with the successes of all these different social democracies it is destroying. The EU is even claiming Europe, but this continent was already there way before the EU and the richest countries aren't even a member of the EU. People might even get the idea there's no other possible way of European cooperation than this EU.
If the UK was such a financial powerhouse the Brexit wouldn't be a problem, the problem is that the UK is a financial sector powerhouse and a financial sector lives off other sectors, and living off it a bit too well. The City can't live off just the British economy anyway, but it's time for the UK to start beeing productive again.
Nearly everybody in the Western world is working harder for less. That's due to globalization and the redistribution of weath. We're competing with countries whom up to 10-20 years old were out of the picture but had now become financial powerhouses. Every Western economy is suffering because of it including countries like the US whose not in the EU.
No, it's due to political choice. In the US the big corporations have an electoral system where they can preselect the candidates by financing the expensive campaigns to make the political choices in favour of them. In Europe the big corporations have the EU to bypass those nasty social democracies with demands about working hours, vacations, wages and stuff that's only very good in the long term for all of the people, but really suck at getting unfair advantages and a lot of quick bucks for the biggest companies. In the UK the big corporations have the Tories and New Labour, they don't need the EU for that, but the City needs the whole EU economy to feed off.
If you close doors to Europe then rest assured that Europe will shut doors to the UK. If you want more access to someone's market then rest assured that they would want more access to their people coming to work in the UK. You cant expect UK companies to have unrestricted access to someone's market and then say 'we don't want your people around'. India and even the US were pretty clear on that regard
If the EU was reasonable about it, they would just negotiate on base of reciprocity, that's how trade agreements work. But they won't be reasonalbe about it. They will ram free movement of labour through every member state's throat by presenting as inseperable from trading goods, which is nonsense of course, but the EU knows very well who's interests to serve. The EU will rather harm all the other member state's economies than offer the UK a fair deal, they will make sure every remaining member state is scared to leave the EU. That's why they send Verhofstadt as the head negotiater, Verhofstadt is to European integration what Al-Baghdadi is to islam. Good luck with that, but at least you will be free of those fundamentalist antidemocrats like that in two years, the rest of the EU citizens will be plagued by them for much longer.
