A year ago we left the EU, but the real impact of leaving will only be felt from tomorrow.

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The important difference between AstraZeneca's relationship with the UK and with the EU, and the reason it has fallen behind schedule on 50m vaccine doses promised to the EU, is that the UK agreed the deal with AZ a full three months before the EU did - which gave...

AZ an extra three months to sort out manufacturing and supply problems relating to the UK contract (there were plenty of problems). Here is the important timeline. In May AZ reached agreement with Oxford and the UK government to make and supply the vaccine. In fact Oxford...

had already started work on the supply chain. The following month AZ reached a preliminary agreement with Germany, the Netherlands, France and Italy, a group known as the Inclusive Vaccine Alliance, based on the agreement with the UK. The announcement was 13 June. BUT the EU...

insisted that the Inclusive Vaccine Alliance could not formalise the deal. The European Commission insisted it should take over the contract negotiations on behalf of the whole EU. So were another two months of talks and the contract was not signed till the end of August...

What is frustrating for AZ is that the extra talks with the European Commission led to no material changes to the contract, but wasted time on making arrangements to make the vaccine with partner sites. The yield at these partner sites has been lower than expected. The problem...

I am in the market for positive, optimistic articles about Brexit - it may not be how I’m feeling but I’m sure I’ve missed things + want to avoid confirmation bias so I’m opening my mind, + this seemed like a good place to

Elliott argues that ‘the UK has deep, structural economic problems’ - true, but correlation is not causation: we look in vain for an argument that these problems are caused by EU membership and/or that membership is preventing them being tackled

The argument would be stronger if Elliott could show that other countries in the EU faced similar structural problems, but he doesn’t + I don’t think he could - the EU manages to incorporate a wide range of economic models, + regional inequalities vary hugely between EU countries

He does not attempt to acknowledge + explain the boom in inward investment in UK manufacturing in the last few decades, one of the few economic positives for ‘left behind areas’, though that may have been hard without referring to single market membership + European supply chains

‘Brexit means that those farmers who want their fruit harvested will now have to...pay higher wages or invest in new machinery.’ Maybe they will (but I’m not convinced) but this would have unintended consequences eg higher prices for healthy food

1/ Lots of good analysis out there on why the EU-China CAI is a bad decision in the context of Xinjiang, transatlantic partnerships, etc. But I also think that even the trade/econ benefits of the CAI look quite limited. Thread:

2/ It highlights, as a win, that China’s preservation of existing liberalizations. That’s positive, but not really a big problem; the bigger issue is stagnation, where reform pledges have failed to materialize after years/decades of promises. Great example is in the FDI openings,

3/ which are highlighted to include cloud, auto, fin services etc—all areas of EU/MNC interest. Thing is, these openings aren’t new. China has begun opening auto/finance since 2018/19, while the 50% cap on cloud services has remained unchanged since 2015 (or before if we consider

4/ WTO ascension commitments vs the 2015 Telecom Catalogue, but that’s for another day). So these are existing openings that are repackaged as “wins.” More critical issue beyond FDI caps is around licensing issuance, which still big problem. Arguably some more significance in

5/ R&D and health? Not an expert, but the FDI conditions (eg hospitals only in certain cities) are limiting, while R&D could be complicated by data/info controls. It’s also unclear how existing tech transfer prohibitions exceed existing protections in the foreign investment law,

I've been tweeting a lot about UK #OverseasTerritories not being part of the #Brexit deal and a bit more has emerged ...

#Falklands MLA @teslynbark has answered a q about #Brexit and the #Falklands on fb - highlights:

1 Original UK EU mandate didn't include OTs except for Gibraltar.

2 In May, EU said they didn't have a mandate to negotiate for their OTs and wouldn't negotiate on UK OT issues.

(2 possibly explains what @BorisJohnson said about EU "intransigence" in his Christmas message to the #Falklands, but wasn't mentioned when he replied to a pmq from @DerekTwiggMP earlier in the month)

3 @teslynbark says that @falklandsgov held that the new spirit of negotiations that evolved through the year gave space for #Falklands interests to be raised in #BrexitDeal talks and asking for detail on how they were raised by UK Government ...

4 @teslynbark says future negotiations with the EU aren't held to the same mandate as before so @falklandsgov to keep pushing to have #Falklands trade concerns raised

Many bearish sentiments across the mortgage sector because they believe companies won't succeed as much when rate finally go back up (3 maybe 4 years from now). Which makes sense except for $GHIV and here's why. In 2016 Brexit came & rates went down which lead to huge success...

in mortgages. Business was great for many companies but then in ‘17 and ‘18, rates went up. What happened you might ask? A lot of people got compressed, margins got compressed, rates went down, & people struggled in the mortgage market...

Well UWM ( $GHIV ) compound annual growth rate, from ‘16 to ’18, was 28%. Companies that focused on refi struggled, so obviously a very successful company like Rocket or Quicken, they went down 14% in compound annual growth rate in those years...

$GHIV actually grew, and so did their profits, so the opportunity to continue to grow in all cycles is a big differentiator for UWM, and the broker channel versus a lot of our competitors. When rates rise, it's actually even better for $GHIV (UWM)..

If rates stay low, great UWM will continue to crush but when the rates rise, they will continue to steal even more market share because of how they operate in the mortgage sector. People also talk about the speed in closing a loan & that other competitors are faster...