> Did the UK have a legal obligation to allow EU citizens to live and work freely in the UK while in the EU? Yes. As long as they're not a burden on the stat

> Did the UK have a legal obligation to allow EU citizens to live and work freely in the UK while in the EU? Yes. As long as they're not a burden on the state*. The "4 freedoms". > Did the UK have the legal right to alter trading regulations? For example, could the UK decide to import chlorine washed chicken from US while in the EU? No. Trade is an EU power (competence). > Did the UK have a legal right to discriminate against labours from the EU who applied for jobs in the UK? No > I'll also note, we've massively reduced the number of migrants coming from Eastern Europe, this is something that we literally could not legally do while in the EU. While massively increasing "legal immigration" from outside the EU by instituting a bunch of incompetent policies. i.e. "point based" but with no caps on numbers. Basically we reclaimed a bunch of political powers (the non EU immigration not being one of those), and now only have ourselves to blame for how we exercise those powers. * There are 90 day rules about being present and not able to support oneself. However for political reasons, the UK was never able to use those. We don't have population registers, so can not track where folks are. The prior Labour "ID card" scheme which would have allowed such was scrapped after every other party promised to scrap it in the next GE, and a different party got in.