Candidates are expected to commit to joining the currency union, but the timescale is deliberately vague - the EU doesn't want countries which aren't economically ready to do so to adopt the euro as it would risk destabilizing that country's economy and the currency as a whole. There are a number of examples of member states which have signed up to such a commitment and have delayed the process by many years, even indefinitely. There are no penalties for doing that. Schengen might be a barrier, but given its obvious advantages for countries that have agreed to it, one would hope the debate about immigration might have become less heated that far down the road so it might be a non-issue.
I'm at a loss to try to figure out what you're trying to say at all. In one post you say, "The most obvious is to move closer to the EU, starting with full EU standards realignment and then to do what it takes to somehow re-enter the Single Market", then you're backtracking from that impossible scenario and kicking the ball down the road and saying "it will likely be in as much as a couple of decades time". By that time, I'll probably be dead and our remaining national utilities will have been long traded away.
None of what you've written is germane to the argument of the OP, in fact it seems like you're floundering for a counter-argument to an argument that hasn't been put forward.
Muriel and a few others of us have pointed out how Labour's wilfully painted itself into a corner, and you seem to agree. Its lack of choices is a result of political decisions, and those are the same decisions many of us are alarmed at because we went down that road in the Blair years and following them, and it looks like we may be facing that scenario writ large because Labour hasn't needed to seriously account for itself during this election because the Tories are such basket cases and Labour is set on much the same route. That stance by Blair and Brown in turn led to a backlash that landed us with another extended term of Tory rule, continuing the ratcheting effect that sees the UK's politics tend ever rightward and our public services degraded to the point where it's possible to sell privatization as the only possible course of action.
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