Originally Posted by 1andrew1

The EU's not stopping us from embracing those opportunities. Quite the opposite. We're generally an outward-looking country so there's no areas in the world we aren't trying to sell to.
But losing access to the EU market would harm us as trade deals don't include services and 80% of our exports are services.
EU countries are out-performing the UK. That's hardly failing. The UK's Co-operative Bank was recently bailed out by private equity again and the UK's largest bank RBS remains state-owned and impossible to sell. Like other EU countries, we therefore have bank issues too.
It's easy to think when thumbing through our favourite tabloids that it's a bed of roses here and a bed of nails in Europe. The reality is we're not that much different at the moment but the declining pound is a real concern.