👨🏾‍💻 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

Amid all the announcements today, it's easy to overlook that the OBR has updated its scenario on a no-deal Brexit. It exposes an undeniably hard reality for the Govt that claims that the UK would "prosper mightily" under no-deal next year.

(Short thread)

1. Key chart: a no-deal/WTO/Australia-style Brexit would delay the point at which econ output regains its pre-virus peak by "almost a year to the third quarter of 2023."

In the upside scenario, this cross-over point could be at the start of 2022; in the downside, in 2025. Grim.

2. Next year, a no deal Brexit would reduce real GDP by around a further 2% - as a result of immediate disruption to the border and uncertainty facing businesses. That's on top of the Covid-related contraction.

3. While there's some short-term border disruption, most of the costs come in the medium term: from lost employment; productivity losses; lower business investment.

Exactly the opposite of what the Chancellor said to @AndrewMarr9 on Sunday.

4. Underneath these numbers, output would fall *below* the Covid levels for several key sectors: Manufacturing, professional services, financial services, retail, energy.

All trade intensive sectors that have been spared the same drop in output as the non-tradables this year.

Your regular reminder that Brexit is going badly because the UK has still to decide what the purpose of leaving the EU is

1/

#EUref came about as piece of party mgt by Cameron, rather than as culmination of considered and structured debate about UK's place in the world

2/

Yes, we talked a lot (A LOT) about 'Europe' and the EU, but primarily as a function of lots of other things

A touchstone of dissent, if you will (h/t @PaulAdamTaggart)

3/

Referendum campaigns on both sides were simply about getting people to vote their way, not efforts to set out settled plans of What Comes Next

"Vote for us and everything will be dandy" is not a plan

4/

That might have been alright if post-vote there had been a national discussion on how to proceed in an inclusive manner, but instead the political logic pointed to trying to capture the meaning of it all to serve particular agendas

All very majoritarian, as per

5/

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. It surprises me that on the whole pro Europeans on Twitter view themselves as pragmatists, who rely on evidence to form their opinion.
In fact a long running joke in our 'group' is that Brexit will be a roaring success, if we all just believe hard it will be a roaring success.

2. The last couple of weeks have made it clearer than ever that blind belief that is impervious to evidence and facts is not a leave/remain thing. It's a human thing

3. I was accused of lying and hounding a 'vulnerable' person off Twitter. When the victims of that 'vulnerable' got the same treatment, it became necessary to take action.

4. So I gathered evidence (not all, but enough) and wrote a blog with contributions from several others. Then the blog was checked by experts to ensure that it was neither libellous (to protect authors) or a risk to any possible legal action (to protect victims).

5. I naively thought that would put an end to the false accusations and trolling.
Since publishing I've been accused of having called the "vulnerable' person and threatened members of their family, forcing them to confess to the police

I really can’t see how, after the last four and half years, the breakup of the UK can be avoided. What a historical irony that a Brexit intended to make Britain ‘great again’ actually brings about the demise of ‘Great’ Britain.

I actually don’t see this as a bad thing. After all, the aggressive chauvinistic nationalism, hubris, and exceptionalism that made Brexit possible is predominantly an English phenomenon. Part of the historical paradox whereby Englishness expresses itself through Britishness,

without explicitly recognising that this nationalism is primarily embedded in England rather than the Celtic periphery. A United Ireland is long overdue. Scotland - regardless of the debates about the economic viability of independence- has reached the point when a decisive

breach now seems inevitable. If this happens, Wales may well follow. Then, finally, England will have to decide what it wants to be, and look at the flaws and failings - political, economic, and constitutional - that it has put off dealing with, or blamed on others

Not arguing that Brexit was therefore a progressive development btw - far from it - but a country that was willing to do something so fundamentally harmful, and so stupid, and which allowed itself to be taken over by political forces of the kind we’ve seen, is an ill country