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Kevin Hjortshøj O'Rourke @kevinhorourke
, 6 tweets, 1 min read Read on Twitter
Mrs May: "The message is government has agreed that we will have an independent trade policy...We will be free to negotiate those trade deals around the rest of the world."
rte.ie/news/brexit/20…
She said she could not agree to any EU move to create a trade border between Britain and Northern Ireland, stating: "That's not right. That's not acceptable."
Put those two statements together and she is saying that the EU will have to accept a hard border on the island of Ireland.
That is unacceptable.
And if she says that of course she doesn't want a hard border on the island of Ireland, but sticks to her two statements cited above, then that is also unacceptable since it is dishonest.
(Unless she meant that the UK would be free to negotiate services-only trade deals around the world...)
At this late stage in the process, it is time for HMG to grow up and start making the choices that the situation requires.
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@MichelBarnier , @WeyandSabine , and everyone else involved, including on the UK side, deserves huge credit for getting the process to this stage: many congratulations. Given how many red lines had to be navigated it is a massive achievement.
Attention in the UK will focus on the imperfections of the deal but those are merely the reflection of the political red lines - leave the EU, leave the SM, no customs border between NI and GB - that negotiators had to work with.
What Barnier and colleagues have achieved is to construct a pathway towards an orderly Brexit, something that has not always seemed likely. And if a future HMG changes their red lines, the future relationship could be very close indeed.
Read 4 tweets
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@davidallengreen is of course right: if HMG reneges on the backstop it previously agreed this may well lead to a no deal Brexit, considerable economic damage to Member States including Ireland, and the very hard border the backstop was designed to avoid.
ft.com/content/0df643…
Does it follow that the EU was wrong to push the backstop? I don't think so. Avoiding a hard border was identified as one of the 3 key divorce issues and understandably so given the stakes. And HMG displayed bad faith on the issue throughout.
They clearly intended to use the Irish border issue to force the EU to accept no border controls anywhere, despite HMG being free to do trade deals with others, diverging in terms of regulations and all the rest of it. They were incredibly cynical.
Read 7 tweets
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Just a quick reminder. On the backstop, HMG has not only signed up to the December Joint Report, it also agreed in March that...
"a legally operative version of the “backstop” solution for the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, in line with paragraph 49 of the Joint Report, should be agreed as part of the legal text of the Withdrawal Agreement, to apply unless and until another solution is found"
In line with Paragraph 49, NOT in line with Paragraphs 49 and 50.

And NOT temporary: it is to apply unless and until another solution is found.

This concession in March is too often ignored. The source is here:

ec.europa.eu/commission/sit…
Read 4 tweets

Related threads

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“All the reasons I am now getting involved in campaigning for a vote on the #Brexit deal with the hope to stop Brexit.” @fiocca1983 in @PMPmagToday. @RemainerNow #PeoplesVote @PeoplesVote_UK vip.politicsmeanspolitics.com/2018/08/21/i-v…
“Growing up, my family were always going on about how #immigrants are to blame for many things wrong in this country. I took on those views, I was conditioned to think them” @fiocca1983 says in @PMPmagToday @RemainerNow #Brexit #PeoplesVote @PeoplesVote_UK vip.politicsmeanspolitics.com/2018/08/21/i-v…
In 2016 @fiocca1983 thought “We don’t need #EU to trade, we can do deals with the rest of the world instead. 2 weeks to get #Doctor’s appointment! Less #immigrants would make that faster for sure!” He tells @PMPmagToday @RemainerNow #Brexit @PeoplesVote_UK vip.politicsmeanspolitics.com/2018/08/21/i-v…
Read 11 tweets
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1. So why are the ultra #Brexit morons up in arms about May's ill fated proposal? In a nutshell it comes down to the inability to diverge on standards which then puts limitations on what we can offer by way of trade deals with the rest of the world. In theory that is.
2. But the point they miss, is that the foundation of EU rules comprises of global standards and these same standards form the backbone of any FTA the EU has with a third country. It is now in a space race to complete similar deals with Aus/NZ/Japan/Korea/Mexico and India.
3. The trend for some time has been toward convergence on the global standards, and with every deal the EU signs, the fewer opportunities there are for divergence. The EU is ahead of the game because it is a more lucrative market than the UK.
Read 16 tweets
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1. So today we are likely to see Tories getting their panties in a bunch over the revelation that regulatory alignment with the EU will limit the scope of a US trade deal. That should be a surprise to no-one who has been paying attention.
(#Brexit thread)
2. This apparently is justification enough to leave the single market. There is something of a problem with this thinking however. Firstly the US does not depend imports. Trade for the US is a foreign policy tool. For them trade is about power.
3. And when it comes to the USA, where trade is concerned runs an America First policy. It did so under Obama and will do so under Trump. They make no exceptions for allies. There are two country categories...
1. America.
2. Not America
Read 25 tweets
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Another boring #Brexit thread.

1. People are right to observe that the EU does flex its own rules but very often when it does it is invoking emergency measures or articles inside a particular legal framework. That, though, cannot extend to #Brexit.
2. When the UK leaves it will become a third country. Standard third country treatment will apply. That new relationship could evolve to include further customs cooperation but it would have to be part of a formal agreement.
3. What the EU is not going to do is enter any agreement that compromises its own legal order. Any agreement allowing the free(ish) movement of goods would mean that any UK regulatory divergence would have to be supervised and mutually agreed.
Read 22 tweets
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1/ I've been pretty sarcastic and negative about the prospects for the #MaySpeech #RoadToBrexit later today. The "5 tests" (that aren't tests) that she will mention are horribly bad for example: huffingtonpost.co.uk/amp/entry/ther…
2/ But one thing caught my eye. "Theresa May to use her Brexit speech to say 'we can't have everything', Grayling says" is the title of The Guardian's live blog by @AndrewSparrow.
3/ The relevant entry is this one: theguardian.com/politics/blog/… Apparently the BBC's Laura Kuennsberg thinks the PM will be honest with the public and deliver hard truths.
Read 13 tweets
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1. So with #Brexit, we now have a provisional whole UK political agreement that we will have regulatory alignment with a view to maintaining free movement of goods. The future trade agreement will have to respect those conditions.
2. That is a long winded way of say that so far as goods are concerned, we are staying in the single market. That though does not take into account services, air travel and the many other areas covered by the EEA agreement. That is still for negotiation.
3. When it comes down to that, it is likely that the UK will wish to preserve as much access to the EU aviation market as possible with the same or similar rights to the EEA. We have, as yet, no concrete position on what the UK will ask for in terms of services.
Read 25 tweets

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