Handy guide for Dominic Raab and other Brexiteers, and for anyone keen to replace our EU trade with trade with the rest of the world on WTO terms...

Here we go. The final Brexit debate begins. The final splash of petrol on the dumpster fire before the match is lit at 11pm tomorrow night.

Boris Johnson deliberately mocks the SNP by calling them the Scottish Nationalist Party, despite being admonished by the Speaker. There speaks a man who doesn't give an itty bitty toss.

Boris Johnson: "Just as we've avoided trade barriers"

What? Ah, it's because he carefully defined them as "tariffs and quotas" just before lying about them.

There will be massive, massive non-tariff barries.

He's dodging the question about fishing and Northern Ireland, wriggling like one of those eels the EU won't be buying any more.

Boris Johnson is bigging up the speed with which the UK managed to reach a trade deal.

But a trade deal that favours the interests of your counterpart while securing almost none of your own *should* be a quick process. Biting your hand off takes no time at all!

THREAD: Here are the essential points from the EU's time-limited, limited effect no-deal Brexit mitigation offer.

(Most concessions are unilateral measures it will implement. Some require UK cooperation - not clear what happens if we refuse to do

Air travel
"Unless there is a contingency measure in place on air transport at the end of the transition period, air traffic between the EU and the United Kingdom will be interrupted."

The EU is proposing 6 months of reciprocal concessions to keep (most) planes flying.

However, they're not offering any concessions on airline ownership requirements, so BA for one may come unstuck here (depending on how its restructured shareholding is going). Its message: you already had plenty of time to prepare, including a grace period.

Road transport

A) Haulage
With no agreement, hauliers would have to use ECMT permits to provide any freight transport between the UK and the EU. But there aren't nearly enough of those to go around. So they're giving a basic grace period of 6 months, as long as we reciprocate.

B) Bus services
"Furthermore, in the absence of an agreement on a future partnership between the EU and the United Kingdom by 1 January 2021, regular bus services to and from the United
Kingdom would have to be interrupted"

Here too, offer is 6 months of continued connectivity.

Here's how the UK's situation will change after the transition period ends, compared to our former EU membership...

(Come back to this thread. It will keep growing!)

- UK can negotiate its own trade deals
- No more automatic participation in new trade deals reached by the EU

- UK gets to keep fish equivalent to 25% of the catch EU boats previously caught in UK waters, staggered over 5.5 years
- Costly export health certificates for fishery products
- Inbound and outbound customs and regulatory checks (UK side will defer some of these temporarily)

- Stringent rules of origin and local content requirements
- Loss of freedom of movement for UK citizens in the EU and EU citizens in the UK (Ireland excepted)
- No Erasmus programme
- No equivalence decision for financial services

- A border down the Irish sea between NI & GB
- No access to the Galileo military
- Temporary agreement on data, which expires in 6 months
- 2 parallel trademark systems, requiring firms to file twice in the UK and the EU

- 2 parallel product conformity assessment systems (CE and UKCA), requiring firms to file twice in the UK and the EU. One year grace period (with exceptions).
- 2 parallel chemical regulatory systems (REACH and UK REACH), requiring firms to register twice in the UK and the EU

A few thoughts in advance of seeing the Brexit deal, assuming it's not scuppered at the last.

1. It will save industries, in the short term. For all the problems it *won't* solve, there is at least that. Tariffs would have finished off some sectors like switching off a light.

2. Expect a lot of confusion (through ignorance, and deliberate obfuscation by certain segments of the media) between free trade and frictionless trade. Trade that is free can still come with plenty of friction. Those extra £billions in customs paperwork won't go away.

3. There may be a standstill or implementation period. If there is, that will be helpful because it will let us get further down the road of vaccinating against the coronavirus, and resolving one crisis before plunging into the rest.

4. Any standstill will trigger a huge wave of "you told us scary things would happen, but they didn't." If you're counting along, it will be the 3rd such wave. First was during the negotiations while we were still EU members. Second during transition when EU rules still applied.

5. Those are just words. But the damage to the economy is real. So a standstill remains preferable, though teeth may have to remain gritted a while longer as a result.

6. Expect a few positive surprises. (Not compared to EU membership, but to what would otherwise have been.)

UK Government just released 70 pages of case studies today, showing how the borders will operate after 1 January 2021.

They're essentially hardcore porn for red tape fetishists.

Doomed, we are. Doomed.

(e.g. exporting fish; exporting mechanical goods)
https://t.co/zWpkdGJeim

This is exactly what should have been presented years ago so that firms could prepare.

Or, arguably, before the Brexit referendum. Just the 70 pages of case studies released TODAY could have tipped the result the other way. Not everyone is blinded by sovrinty & hating forrins.

Going back to the examples...

The person in France buying (say) UK mechanical goods will take one look at the procedures involved, and Google an alternative supplier inside the EU instead.

As for the fish, they could probably swim to their intended destination faster of their own accord than following the new process, if only they had water in between to traverse.

The purchasers will smell them coming a mile away.

Auto parts. I am practically weeping at my keyboard.

Some quick thoughts on Sam Gyimah's resignation after conversations with various Conservative MPs: 1) the chances of a second referendum are a lot higher than I thought:

2) At this point, if you are a young and ambitious Tory MP it is now so overwhelmingly in your interest to vote against the withdrawal agreement. V v hard to see how Julian Smith can cap rebellion at under 100:

3) Really just to reiterate 1) Gyimah is the kind of "No, never gonna rebel" vaguely pro-EU Tory you'd need to get on side to outweigh Labour Leavers and Real Concerners.

I want to tell you a short story about a man named Joshua Abraham Norton. Born in 1818 and a resident of the city of San Francisco, CA. Joshua Norton in 1859, declared himself "Norton I, Emperor of the United States.

In 1819 he sent out a letter to many newspapers, which several of them printed. It read:

> At the peremptory request and desire of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton... declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these United States.

He held no formally recognized powers, he decreed that elected officials assemble at a music hall to "remedy the evil." He wanted to clear Congress and abolish it as it stood for "fraud and corruption prevent a fair and proper expression of the public voice."

He spent time inspecting the streets of San Francisco in an elaborate uniform, given to him by officers of the United States Army. He doted the city, examining the condition of the sidewalks and cable cars and the state of public affairs.

When a man sent his private security guards to arrest him, the citizens were outraged. Scaring editorials were written in the newspapers defending him, proposing he was more defensible than the other men of his time.

The official police issued a formal apology.

This is what this means to me: as most of you know, I am British, and always will be. But, in February 2017, we became US citizens, after nearly 18 years here. For me it was bittersweet, I just could not get into it, it all felt wrong; I felt I was selling part of my soul. 1/6

When we came out after the ceremony, there was a cardboard cut-out of President Obama and Michelle Obama by the Democratic party booth, and I had my photo taken next to them as I registered to vote. 2/6

For the next 3.9 years I watched this country get suffocated by a president with no interest in the common good: dividing us all; inciting hate against anyone white, straight and able; totally disregarding science. Literally he assaulted every single one of my values. 3/6

And it really and deeply affected me. And I don't think I realised. But I believed that we could all work together to turn it around. That is why I got so involved with the election, as you've all seen on my timeline over the past few weeks, because everything was at stake. 4/6

Today, 7th November 2020, I now feel proud to be a US citizen, proud to have a president who will do his best to unite the people and heal us, allow us to move forward and make progress in solving many vital issues such as social & racial justice & climate change. 5/6

Rs made gains in state legislatures in 2020. Even where manual audits are conducted, they rarely include state races. 😢

“Ds spent big to take control of state legislatures but lost their key targets. Now they’ll be on the sidelines as new maps are drawn”

I reported on the sorry state of election auditing laws in the US in this pre-election piece for @NYRDaily. This must change. #RobustManualAuditsNOW
1/

2/ “Earlier this year, ... Republicans blocked federal legislation, the SAFE Act, which would have required such [manual] audits for most federal races.”

3/ “America’s preeminent election-auditing expert, Philip Stark, a professor of statistics at...UCB, told me a few weeks ago that “only a few jurisdictions currently audit elections in a way that has a good chance of catching and correcting wrong reported outcomes.” @philipbstark

4/ “That requires a trustworthy paper trail—primarily hand-marked paper ballots kept demonstrably secure throughout the election and the audit—and [what is known as] a risk-limiting audit using that paper trail.” #HandMarkedPaperBallots

1. @JonathanTurley
Trump has only been out of office and, therefore, no longer (purportedly) immunized from criminal prosecution for ~1 month. Also, because of R delay, Garland is still awaiting confirmation. Once Garland is AG, expect a thorough



2. investigation of Trump for inciting insurrection in violation of 18 U.S.C. 2383, together with other federal crimes. Once that investigation is completed, based on the information that is currently public, there is a good chance that Trump will be prosecuted for violating

3. 18 U.S.C. 2383, together with other federal crimes. Not absolutely guaranteed. But a very good chance. The only element of inciting insurrection that is open to credible dispute is Trump’s intent. Is there sufficient evidence that he intended his speech to incite imminent

4. lawlessness? As you know (or should know), criminal intent is invariably established by circumstantial evidence. That means prosecutors must analyze everything Trump did and said (and didn't do or say) before, during and after his incendiary speech.

5. That investigation takes time. Sometimes a lot of time to empanel a grand jury and begin issuing subpoenas and seeking warrants. The fact that Trump's previous crimes, including the 10 felonies outlined in Vol. II of Mueller's report, haven't been prosecuted is irrelevant.