Migration is complicated. Don’t pretend it’s not

I expect you’ve already noticed it, but in case you’ve been living in a cave or an economics faculty for the past ten years, I’ll repeat it. Goods are not like people. Goods only move wherever they are needed. They don’t come laden with an attachment to a homeland or a social network. Your Bosch dishwasher doesn’t pine for its washing-machine mates back in Stuttgart. Your Ikea sofa doesn’t claim benefits. If you buy a Mercedes, you don’t suddenly find two Audis and a Volkswagen turning up on your drive claiming to be close relatives and demanding to live in your garage.

So, looked at dispassionately, the principle that the free movement of goods is somehow linked with the free movement of people is quite an odd idea. Goods don’t mind emigrating; people often do. (Even in the US, where you can travel 1,000 miles in a straight line and find yourself in a town pretty much indistinguishable from the one you left, most people lead their entire lives in the state where they were born).