Quote Originally Posted by Aimless View Post
Can you be more specific?
How about those bemoaning a fall in the sterling, a fall in house prices etc? Bring it on.
Look, even if you might want to go down to the river you might not want to get there by being pushed off of a cliff onto a waterfall.
OTOH if you want to go down river and you've already gone over the edge and landed back in the stream underneath without crashing then bemoaning that you are heading down river seems odd.
The current discussion is about whether or not the journey is going to go well from this point onwards. In other words, regardless of whether or not you were sober when you got into the car, your safety may be compromised now or in the future, for example due to things that are beyond your control.
Absolutely there may be issues in the future out of our control, but that doesn't make trying to manage what is in our control to our advantage is not unreasonable.
Freedom of movement is valued highly also by Western European citizens and esp. by businesses, not to mention the EU itself. Moreover, if the UK restricts movement, it means more Eastern Europeans may turn to other countries, perhaps to everyone's detriment or at least their frustration.

It is both an economical, political and social objective. There are also no purely economical reasons to link free trade with eg. human rights, labor protection laws, environmental laws etc.
It may be highly valued but if its not on the table then there's no reason to cut off your nose and deny free trade just because free movement isn't available. The EU has recognised that people aren't the same as widgets when it has organised trade deals that aren't linked to free movement. Turkey is in the EU's customs union (which we won't be) and doesn't have free movement. Funny how that works.