Am prompted to do this šŸ§µ following @BEERG sharing of Gove 19 Aprilā€™16 speech, @kevinhorourke observation on interests & ideas & @CER_Grant observation that historians will ponder the weakness of economic interests in Brexit negs at @InstituteGC yesterday @BrigidLaffan

1. Seems to me that @BorisJohnson has delivered on the @michaelgove 2016 speech in one important sense-not the sunny uplands of Brexit but the working out of what Brexit was to this clique who drove the Leave campaign @BrigidLaffan
2. That was a total rejection of the #EU model of internationalisation, its governance regimes, institutions, regulatory frameworks, its ideals & the political, economic & legal order it represents. @BrigidLaffan
3. This was evident in tone of Brexit negs, for example @DavidGHFrost dismissal of EU as ā€˜your organisationā€™ @MichelBarnier & refusal to recognise nature of EU re. Diplomatic states. Treating it an as IO despite the fact that there were U.K. MEPs in @Europarl_EN @BrigidLaffan
4. Evident also in refusal of a chapter on foreign & security policy & the preference for bilateral relations particularly the key capitals post Brexit. @BrigidLaffan
5. #UK negotiating strategy was driven by anything but the EU aka @pmdfoster wonderful long read on the negs. Core principle was to prove you can do a deal with EU without its laws. Not smart-of@course you can but it will be a thin thin deal @BrigidLaffan
6. The desire to by pass & diminish EU as a polity will not serve @BorisJohnson or U.K. in the short or medium term. EU is both the member states & the collective. You canā€™t have one without the other. @BrigidLaffan
7. There will be no strategic relationship unless London comes to terms with the EU & begins to understand what it means to its near neighbours. Not just Brussels or bureaucracy but the way this part of the world handles the challenges of 21st century @BrigidLaffan
8. Brexiteers might prefer it were other but #EU is going nowhere & London needs a strategy for dealing with it as it is-a hybrid political system with market power. It will prove easier for Irish business to go around U.K. than it will for U.K. to avoid coming to terms with EU

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@danielashby @AdamWJT @Greens4HS2 @TheGreenParty @GarethDennis @XRebellionUK @Hs2RebelRebel @HS2ltd I'll bite. Let's try to keep it factual. There's a reasonable basis to some aspects of this question, that it might be possible to agree on. Then there are other, more variable, elements which depend on external factors such as transport and energy policy. /1

@AdamWJT @Greens4HS2 @TheGreenParty @GarethDennis @XRebellionUK @Hs2RebelRebel @HS2ltd First up, we know reasonably well how much energy it takes to propel a high-speed train along the HS2 route. We can translate that into effective CO2 generated by making some assumptions about how green the electricity grid is. /2

@AdamWJT @Greens4HS2 @TheGreenParty @GarethDennis @XRebellionUK @Hs2RebelRebel @HS2ltd Secondly, we have a reasonable grasp of how much CO2 is going to be generated by building HS2 - there are standard methods of working this out, based on the amount of steel, concrete, earthmoving, machine-fuelling etc required. /3

@AdamWJT @Greens4HS2 @TheGreenParty @GarethDennis @XRebellionUK @Hs2RebelRebel @HS2ltd Thirdly, we can estimate how much CO2 is generated by cutting down trees, and how much is captured by planting new trees. We can also estimate how much CO2 is needed to keep the railway running and generated by maintaining the track /4

@AdamWJT @Greens4HS2 @TheGreenParty @GarethDennis @XRebellionUK @Hs2RebelRebel @HS2ltd We know how much CO2 is saved by moving goods by freight train on the lines freed up by moving the express trains on to HS2, rather than by truck. /5

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