BC BREXIT
Saved by @Alex1Powell

1. Brexit. Like Christmas with Covid or dunking your head in a bucket of ice cold water or running your toes over with a lawnmower. What fun we did not have. But here we all are. Forced to play the worst ever drunken party game.

THREAD

 2. So as we while away our time, whooping it up from lockdown, wondering at the next national crisis, let us ponder this week’s existential question: how can a Brexit deal be so close and yet so far away?
3. Is it close? Is it far away? Are we doomed or saved? And even if we’re saved are we in fact doomed?

It’s all too much. Like playing zenga with no twig things or scrabble with no letters. My head is spinning. Pass me the whisky and egg my nog.
4. To generalize (why not, everyone else does) Brexit commentary tends to fall into two illustrious camps both full of the wisest of sages.
5. The first reflects upon Mr Johnson’s character and political track record, the many hard as you like pronouncements emanating from various government orifices and the most peculiar composition of the Conservative Party, to arrive at an understandably unhappy conclusion.
6. The other camp (in which I have pitched my measly bedroll) tends to put more weight on what might be loosely described as the fundamentals. Put simply, only an absolute lunatic would risk the consequences of no deal for a few more fish.
7. The good news - and I say this from my very lofty vantage point - is that both views are right! Happy days! There are both deal positive and negative elements in play.
8. The bad news is that both views are wrong? Why? Exactly the same reason! There are both deal positive and negative components in play.

In other words, there is a complicated and shifting balance in place.

I’m sorry but this is life.
9. Now before you fling your tweeting devices away in frustration, I shall get to the good part and explain why after many trials and tribulations I think deal will prevail versus no deal.
10. And, I shall lead with the punchline. Perversely, I think deal will win out because political considerations will triumph or rather conjoin temporarily with the fundamentals.

(NB I am often wrong)
11. We can, I think, discount some arguments on both sides. I don’t think Team Brexit cares much about LONG TERM (deliberate caps) economic projections. I think Team Brexit cares v much about the Union but I also suspect key Team members think this is a problem for another day.
12. Finally, taking a rhetorical feather from my good friend the sage @trekonomics I am going to say something very controversial.
13. I don’t think the ERG matters as much as people think. Because I don’t think they will have the numbers and I really don’t think they are especially relevant to the Johnson political strategy going forward.
14. So what are we left with?

The political cost of compromise for the Iron Maiden of Brexit versus the political cost of two unequivocal NEAR TERM fundamentals if there is no deal: huger traffic jams and even lower growth and higher unemployment in the first part of next year.
15. My view is that the political cost of the latter is higher than the former. My view is also that various other factors, including the pandemic, the Biden election, the sackings of Cummings and Cain, have pushed the situation further in the deal direction.
16. On a more subjective note, I sometimes like to think about this very complicated situation as if I was a pound shop pundit writing a column for a national newspaper.
17. The column would be called the Great British Brexit Deal & it would be about leadership in the national interest, about a new dawn for a proud nation, about statesmanlike compromise, about balls coming loose from scrums & winning goals, about sunlit uplands not vales of tears
18. As a wise man never said,

‘If you write it they will come.’

And this Brexit deal writes itself. 

/ends

More from Objective Columnist

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Objective Columnist
@Sime0nStylites
I find it very strange that the same sort of people who look back on the financial crisis and austerity as catalysts for great change now seem to see Brexit and Covid as catalysts for great stability.

Partisanship is one helluva drug. Financial crisis = bad crisis. Brexit = good crisis. Even Covid, unequivocally a bad crisis, is characterised in parts as a good crisis (world beating vaccine etc).

A different reading (which spans Labour, Coalition and Conservative governments) is that 2008-2021 has been one continuous period of crisis punctuated by shorter periods of calm.

Crises aren’t the exception. Scottish independence and the future status of NI look ahead. They are the rule. More specifically, whether the crises are endogenous or exogenous the state has proven woefully ineffective at dealing with them.

We are meant to try to learn from this. And do our best not to apply partisan blinkers. The problems are deeply rooted. And, very obviously, Brexit isn’t the fix. It’s an attempt at a cure but in the same way as a radical therapy that solves some problems but creates others.
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Objective Columnist
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@Sime0nStylites
I have a memory of @anandMenon1 et al writing about a TM deal being greeted with a surge of ‘it’s a deal’ goodwill (it wasn’t) but the argument seems to hold true for the current deal.

Some of it is relief that we have all avoided no deal although I’d argue that much of the no deal furore was prestidigitation (as it has always been).

Some of it is exhaustion. Everyone (apart from enthusiasts and lunatics) is very tired indeed, especially after this annus horrificis.

Everyone wants to move on. Labour is a great example. That they were going to vote for the deal was visible from space. If Labour can banish the twin albatrosses of Corbyn and Brexit then, hey presto, it becomes competitive again.

So almost overnight a new consensus seems to form. The Christmas gift isn’t just a deal it’s a new beginning, again.
POLITICS
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Objective Columnist
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@Sime0nStylites
Along the way I wrote about considering Johnson’s Brexit decision as a choice between clichéd narratives. What would read / play best? Well...


It is absolutely no surprise to me that he ended up choosing the ending that would most easily portray him as the hero who saved the day.

The tricky part of this narrative is convincing re the ‘not giving in’ part. Hence all the bluster about standing tough and being happy to walk away.

And yet.

I’m old enough to remember when we wouldn’t accept any LPF provisions, any state aid constraints and we wanted all our fish back right now. Otherwise it’s an ‘Australia’ style Brexit.
BREXIT
Yet Another Columnist
Yet Another Columnist
@Sime0nStylites
One wonders how long Lord Frost will retain his new position. The personnel decisions made by the PM are nothing if not frequent, ruthless and mercurial.

The whole affair is very curious. While I am sure that Lord Frost’s elevation owes much to his relationship with the PM and the perceived success of the Brexit negotiation, it is very curious indeed that allegedly it took a threat to resign to secure this new role.

A role which is needed (although might have been structured differently) but was to a large effect previously undertaken (with reasonable success) by Michael Gove who one might imagine may not be entirely happy with this diminishment of his responsibilities.

What might have happened to have resulted in this dramatic and to some extent destructive move (which appears to have been played out in the context of a wider struggle that saw Oliver Lewis (previously Lord Frost’s (LF) negotiation deputy)?

The original sin, of course, is the agreement to the Northern Ireland Protocol. Who knows who did what to who or thought what about what but my speculation is the PM either did not understand the consequences of the Protocol or was assured they could be successfully addressed.
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Yet Another Columnist
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@Sime0nStylites
Typically excellent piece from @dsquareddigest The exponential insight is especially neat. Think of it a little like fishing...today you can’t export oysters to the EU (because you simply aren’t allowed to), tomorrow you don’t have a fish exporting business (to the EU).


The extremely small minority of people who known anything about this who think that Brexit will be good for the City make a number of arguments which I shall address in turn...

1. They need us more than we need them. This is a variant of the German carmakers argument. And we know how that went...Business will follow the profit opportunity and if that has moved then so will the business...

And what do we mean by us / we. We’re not talking about massed ranks of Euro investing / trading etc blue blooded British institutions.

Au contraire. We’re talking about the London based subs of US, Asian and indeed European capital markets players...As soon as they think the profit opportunity has moved then so will they...it’s a market innit...
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IT’S HERE The new bumper @ukandeu report that tells you all you need to know – or at least all the questions you need to ask – about the UK after Brexit. https://t.co/S1lHP6TBJ1 1/27


A disclaimer. What follows is a selection of randomly selected highlights, nothing more nothing less. There’s far, far more in this report than I can possibly cover here. And the cricket got exciting so I ran out of steam. 2/27

It is made up of 70-odd pieces (I counted twice and came up with diff numbers) by an eye watering collection of eminent social scientists . Explaining the big issues from housing to dealing with China, from prospects for the economy to the prospects for the Labour Party 3/27


It’s intended as a guide to the key questions that will confront us over the years to come. Each contributor ponders,where we’ve come from, where we are now and where we’re headed. And because we’re really kind, we’ve divided things up into a number of sections. First: 4/ 27


And oh, my Lord do we have a stellar line up of people, including inter alia, @_Paul_Tobin_ @tcstvns @watsonjim2 @CharlieBEU @drsarah_hall @BD_Stew @AntovaIvanka @PRT1969 @IvanRajicUK @cartelsman
Download it, tell your boss your wifi has crashed, and have a read. 5/27
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David Henig
David Henig
@DavidHenigUK
Brexit. UK-EU talks. Let's try to explain why we're in such a state, of increased risk of no deal, moving away from the fish and playing fields which are the detail but not the answer, to differing philosophies and divorce parallels that might just help... 1/

First, with apologies to those concerned, we need to go beyond those saying this is the inevitable path to deal / no-deal. Half of them will be right and I'll definitely be wrong (don't worry, I'm hedged in wine bets), but it wasn't inevitable, typical, or necessary. 2/

I'll also ignore the content of any deal, which has been clear for months, the UK compromises on level playing field, the EU on fish. Something so obvious really isn't the fundamental issue. Could, as some not noted for their perspicacity have said, be done in an afternoon. 3/

Some truth in the idea that flounces and playing the tough cop are a part of trade negotiations. But equally as we're in about the 5th pass of these, I think it has ceased to be helpful. Either side could already have cut the deal having shown their toughness. 4/

Some fundamentals then, that we've forgotten. First, the trade deal that will lead to much less free trade than before. The incentive structures, the ability to create a win-win, are inevitably going to be different to a normal deal. 5/
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Antonello Guerrera
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@antoguerrera
EXCLUSIVE. "We want a Brexit deal with the UK. But the EU is ready for No Deal"

I interviewed Joao @ValedeAlmeidaEU, EU’s first ambassador to the UK. He expressed many interesting comments on the ongoing #Brexit negotiations

THREAD with some

1. Ambassador Vale de Almeida:

the aim is a "fruitful, ambitious, forward-looking relationship between the EU and the UK after Brexit". BUT "it is very important to make sure that the Withdrawal Agreement is fully and completely implemented".

#Brexit

2. Then he said:

Another challenge is "to engage with the British authorities, [...] Whitehall, No10, FCDO and beyond, but also with the DEVOLVED UK nations. This country is a union. It's not only the government in London, BUT ALSO the governments in the 3 devolved nations".

3. But we'll talk later about this.

Then the Ambassador said that #Brexit "is a moment of sadness because we're losing one member of the family, but also we [the EU] need to reflect, draw lessons from it" and "to be humble as well about Europe and the project itself".

4. Which lessons?

Amb: "We [EU] need to connect better with people, understand better what are people's concerns, accept that there are national situations that need to be given full attention. We need to be humble and question ourselves: "Are we doing the right thing"

#Brexit
BREXIT
Dr Anna Jerzewska
Dr Anna Jerzewska
@AnnaJerzewska
Been waiting for 👇 🚨

Important story on what a “tariff-free” deal means in practice and why it’s not enough for two economies as closely integrated.

Tariffs are removed on goods that meet rules of origin. This is a complex and nuanced area of customs.

/1


Important to remember that trade deals (FTAs) weren't designed with such a high degree of economic integration in mind.

So some of the standard RoO provisions will seem incredibly restrictive under the UK-EU deal.

/2

Minimal operations or insufficient processing is a standard part of an FTA. Most, if not all FTAs, include a provision on minimal processing – processing not considered sufficient to confer originating status even if rules of origin have been met.

/3

It is standard procedure not to apply cumulation when goods have only been subject to minimal processing.

To be able to cumulate origin and consider the final product of UK origin, the processing carried out in the UK needs to exceed minimal operations.

/4

The level of integration between the UK and the EU means that this will have significant consequences for a number of industries.

For example, in supply chains where goods are brought into the UK from the EU and reassembled, sorted or repackaged and re-exported to ROI.

/5
BREXIT
Shane Brennan
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@ColdChainShane
As @michaelgove admitted yesterday we are expecting significant disruption in our #trade flows with the EU in coming days. The fact he is willing to say this confirms what most of us feel, that problems are building. This thread is a summary of what I have learnt in the past week

DISCLAIMER I run a trade body and spent the week in my back bedroom on the phone to members, reading the media and on zoom calls. I’m not on the ground and I am not in the operation rooms. So my info is second hand and partial. No one has a complete view. IT IS HIDEOUSLY COMPLEX

The first obvious problem is the number of different actors involved. On the commercial side - within 1 exporter there are multiple depts. There is also the buying company and the logistics company. They all have to sync. 1 load of goods involves multiple commercial actors.

On the government side its even more complex. In UK there are dozens of departments and agencies involved, and the same if not more in every member state of the EU. there are hundreds of thousands of decision makers involved.

They all have the same rule book though - YES true but its 1200 pages long and it's 15 days old - also - here's the thing with red tape, it's open to interpretation. (It's why lawyers tend to drive nice cars) and so being BORDER READY means different things to different actors.
BREXIT

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