UK Labour's Trade Spokesman @BarryGardiner, after dismissing the May plan as being an unworkable fudge (which it is) proposes a "Mercosur" style co-decision making approach to trade agreements and regulartory alignment. /1 #SundayPolitics
This in the context of earlier saying that not having a decision seat in the EU, and a policy taker would make the UK a "vassal state" (which it would). This is just a different version of the same fudge that he earlier said was unworkable. /2 #SundayPolitics
The official @UKLabour and @Conservatives #Brexit solutions are now practically speaking identical. Having cake that you are given. And this solution is unworkable for the reasons being advanced by @Jacob_Rees_Mogg, however loathsome it is to agree with anything he says. /3
Then @BarryGardiner follows as he must by holding to the @jeremycorbyn party line on not supporting a @peoplesvote_uk on the final outcome. And it is clear now that Jez is itching to get back out on the campaign trail again. /4
The underlying problem in all of this is that the UK has a size-able minority (and perhaps a majority in Parliament) who remain entranced with the magical thinking that the UK can somehow be inside the EU and outside it at the same time. /6 #SundayPolitics
The only person who is happy today is @michaelgove, who has the wit to read between the lines of the magical thinking, which if implemented as it says on the packet (which it won't be) reserves the right of the UK Parliament to casually leave later, whenever it wishes. /7
Officially May's explanation provides that there will be regulatory alignment but the ability to negotiate external trading agreements and giving Parliament the explicit power to selectively drop EU alignment, recognising that doing so will have "consequences". /8
This is like getting married but reserving the right to solicit new lovers, recognising doing so will have "consequences". Practically it has have the effect of providing a self-destruct switch in the UK's constitution to be targeted by internal & external enemies of the EU. /9
This in built self-destruct mechanism will not be acceptable to the EU for obvious reasons, but it does explain why @michaelgove is keeping his powder drive for now. /10
Meanwhile Gove's flying buddy @BorisJohnson may claim reporting of his "Turd" remarks at Chequers wasn't his doing. But he always says that, and its speed and efficiency of transmission suggests this is a falsehood. standard.co.uk/news/politics/… /11
That all being said the consensus view of non involved #SundayPolitics observers this morning seems to be that this proposal (although better than previous fudges) is already stillborn with Brexiteers Remainers and the EU. /12
The #Brexit referendum was a debacle from day one, an uninformed electorate voted on an ill-defined question whilst being fed lies, the biggest one being the idea that the UK could have its cake and eat it. It never could. And the EU made that clear before the vote. /13
For the past two years both major parties have maintained the fiction that the UK could if it negotiated hard enough achieve this. It never could, but with politics being in the state that it is, admitting this has simply never been on the cards. /14
The Chequers proposal is a break through insofar as it at begins to move the public debate towards an understanding of the central question. Does the UK want to sacrifice its economic prosperity for the sake of sovereignty or not? /15
There is no half in half out possible here. There is being in the Customs Union or nor and being in the Single Market or not. Both are remarkably still on the table. But the price for either is freedom of movement (of some kind), regulatory alignment and CEJ arbitration. /16
Effectively this means the UK still being in the EU, albeit with the pretense of sovereignty having been attained in some areas of activity and decision making at the cost of no longer having a seat at the table to make the central decisions about its future. /17
The alternative is not being in either the Customs Union or the Single Market means the UK going it alone and taking what crumbs the EU is willing to provide in order to continue to have access to the UK market. /18
Rule Britannia back on its lonesome out in an increasingly hostile Atlantic, battling against the flight of its industrial and services sector to the continent, the blowing up the Good Friday Agreement, and the possible loss of Scotland. /19
And the thing is this was ever the case. Almost on the day of the referendum many of us knew exactly what had happened, and that there was no way out. This video starring @BorisJohnson posted on June 26th 20176 still perfectly sums it up. /20
The #Brexit referendum was in short a monumental fuck up. Binding referendums often are. But they seldom have such far ranging consequences for a nation's history. /21
IMO there is only one sane way forward now. Only one sane way out of this nightmare. May has her electoral, Parliamentary and Cabinet mandate to negotiate. So she and Davis and negotiate and secure the best deal possible. /22
And that having been done the people, whose votes got us into this mess should be allowed to look at what is on the table, with all its implications, and decide whether they want to go through with it or not. /23
In the meantime please, everybody in the UK, stop with the magical thinking, stop thinking that Imperial Britain can return through cleverness and hard work. It is cleverness that brought about this clusterfuck, one that was never expected to happen by the clever class. /24
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