With 10 days to go, there are three main outcomes of the #Brexit talks:
1) no deal
2) the two sides are still talking but run out of time - qu if can find other ways to buy more time
3) a deal is reached which the UK ratifies & EU provisionally applies

I’m going to reproduce @3days3nights posts here for backup and to do a full unroll afterwards. All credit goes to him! - P1

Today's UK-EU trade deal reflection - what is rarely stated in discussions about the deal's shortcomings is that they reflect UK government policy choices - in particular that control of immigration and a US trade deal are a higher priority than an EU deal.

Thus, why was it not a UK government priority to secure for UK musicians the rights to tour the EU? Because that would probably have required a reciprocal right to be given to those in the EU, which we didn't want to give. Choice.

Meanwhile why did the UK government not seek or secure a reduction in food inspections for GB products going to the EU? Because that would probably have required fixing food regulations in a way that might have been an obstacle to a US trade deal.

Works the other way as well. Why did the EU refuse UK requests on mutual recognition of industrial testing? In part at least because of UK lack of commitment on maintaining the previous EU system of standards and conformity assessment which might be a problem in a US deal.

One of the strangest opinions in the London politics bubble is that the UK government isn't that bothered about a US trade deal, as it so obviously goes against the evidence. There might be domestic opposition, but this was to be Brexit Dividend Number 1.

"The tangible benefits of #Brexit." A thread.

For the EU, the tangible benefits of Brexit have been immense. Not just in the way it has galvanised support for the EU across the bloc, but in the way that the UK has made itself...

/1

...the least competitive advanced economy in the world. Don't forget -- we're no longer a trading partner of the EU, but its main trading rival, and considering both their population and economy is 7x bigger than ours, we don't stand a chance.

/2

(Remember Boris Johnson's famous mutterings about business...? Something that could only have been said by a man born into fabulous wealth and privilege...)

/3

But the big win for the EU has been in the sheer, gob-smacking, eye-watering amount of assets that have been stripped from the UK and moved to banks and financial institutions in Dublin, Paris, Frankfurt etc.

$1.6 trillion as of October this year.

That is an INSANE amount.

/4

I'll try to put it into perspective: $1.6 trillion is over half our entire GDP. It's 1/64th of the WORLD'S entire GDP. If you stacked it up in $100 bills, it would reach FOUR TIMES the height of the International Space Station.

/5

👨🏾‍💻 OK. So the @Independent is such a rare thing these days. There are a couple of things to highlight in this article.

Firstly, Rules of Origin generally are a WTO concept not EU concept. The Single Market recognised the UK as equivalent #Thread

Most of the provision of the UK-EU Partnership Agreement undoes EU rules to 'regress' to WTO rules, before then applying the Free Trade Agreement elements between the two parties. That's the nature of going from Single Market & Customs Union, to a [mere] free trade agreement /2

The affected industry bodies seem to think they can just pick up the trade deal & start negotiations from scratch again. No, that's not how it works. The EU are now not part of the regulatory chain the UK can access, since the UK gave up on the shared competency of membership /3

Unlike UK Parliamentary law, which works on the principle of not binding future electorates, this is a principle that can only apply in the UK. The EU (or anyone else we ever end a deal with) not only doesn't recognise it, but can't! /4

Previously, in the UK, you could just write to your MP, who could raise questions with the shared l competency, through the European Council. You could also write to your MEP, who could raise questions to the European Parliament. Now, neither of these apply /5

The fuel injected Brexiter comments on the EU's vaccine problems miss many points.

1) no-one wanted to get out of the EU or the single market to protect ourselves better against a pandemic. See Brexit Tory controlled government policy 2016-2020 regarding the NHS and pandemic preparedness.

2) we could have, and, perhaps thanks to the need to genuflect to nationalists, or out of pragmatic needs, chosen to go our own way on procurement even within the EU.

3) none of this explains why it's good to be outside the single market, restricting our trade and making us poorer.

4) the implicit celebration of the vaccine nationalist cause, seemingly [but not actually] permitted by Brexit, ignores how this game plays out, namely: