Re: Brexit
Polling around the months after the referendum suggested that a compromise on EEA membership might have got over 60% support. That is when people were polled on choices between freedom of movement and economic integration, that seemed to be the sweet spot from the polling. Though probably a lot fewer people understood the issues then, and I doubt many grasp them now.
Some leavers weren't concerned about immigration/freedom of movement. Although many remainers are - they just thought leaving was too high a risk/price to pay to restrict it.
However that would still require some fudging on customs (as Norway do) - or the UK staying in the customs union and losing most of the power to make independent trade deals - the reason Turkey is possibly about to leave its customs agreement with the EU).
For some reason May settled on trying to have as close a customs integration as possible, either because of business lobbying or Civil Service advice - and decided that freedom of movement was too high a price for being in the Single Market.
From the decisions the Commission have made, I'm not sure going the Norway route would have significantly changed things, due to their stance on Northern Ireland. As apparently having a customs barrier between the two halves of Ireland breaks the Good Friday agreement, but somehow magically having a border between NI and the rest of the UK doesn't. So I suspect we might still have ended up in substantially the same place, but maybe positions wouldn't have hardened in the same way, so maybe not.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
