if that were to happen EasyJet (EU) Ltd would appear overnight based in the cheapest possible backwater of Europe to do exactly the same thing it did 24hrs earlier without restriction. Trade works both ways and so does tit-for-tatting. In the scenario you suggest what makes you think the EU loco's would get an easier ride in the UK than easyJet would in Europe?
Isn’t that a horribly self-defeating and miserablist argument in favour Brexit?
If you are an EJ employee, why on earth would you reason in favour of Brexit by thinking ‘no worries, EJ can shut down its UK operation, set up in Eastern Europe instead, pay its taxes to the treasury of whichever country it re-establishes itself in, possibly base me there instead (on local wages), all in the name of regaining UK sovereignty’.
I understand why people think that somehow Brexit will be a return to long-lost, mostly imagined glory days, but the argument put forward by the ‘Gove-Johnson’ school of Brexit will decrease the UK’s sovereignty, not increase it, and is probably not practically possible anyway.
Whatever your heart says, the only thing an EJ employee (or anyone else in aviation)’s head can really tell them is to vote to remain, imperfect though that is. There’s a very simple argument that seems to be missing here; that the airline industry (and thus the livelihood of anyone working in it) depends on the free movement of people. The more people are able to travel freely, the more they will travel, and the more they travel, the more secure your salary is. Brexit will inevitably involve putting up some barriers; less immigration to the UK, fewer students from Europe, fewer British people going to retire in Spain etc.
When confronted with these arguments, people either revert to the ‘Gove-Johnson’ argument, above, or they say ‘we’ll trade with India and China instead’. Well the latter is no better, because – if you work in aviation – this will benefit middle east carriers, not UK locos.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, remaining in the EU is the worst option, except for all the others that are available.