With the Brexit debate returning to Parliament today, let's go back to basics and explore the facts, key issues, and questions that should be raised in the coming days. Thread... 1/
Most important point, which cannot be emphasised enough - the Withdrawal Agreement is primarily concerned with the terms of the divorce, e.g. financial, citizenship, and not the future (though the Irish backstop complicates this) 2/
Thus any statement a Minister makes about the future relationship being secured (such as that below from the Gov's 40 reasons to back the Brexit deal) is false. The political declaration setting out the future relationship is not binding. 3/ 
The backstop confuses the issue of the future relationship, as it sets out a minimum level of future relationship, with a UK-wide Customs Union, and Northern Ireland in the EU single market. Although technically temporary, the backstop is permanent in reality 4/
The backstop only comes into force if a new trade agreement cannot be reached by 2022. It is unlikely the UK and EU will reach a new agreement by then based on EU precedent and the difficulty of maintaining frictionless trade while being able to make our own trade agreements 5/
The backstop is not fully defined, this is supposed to happen by 2020, and it is not at all clear how it will work, or whether in fact it can work. Thus if the deal is agreed it is likely relations with the EU continue to dominate politics 6/
The EU have said negotiations on the Withdrawal Agreement are over, but what they really mean is that they are bored with UK indecision, and we can't continue to prevaricate. Also that the principle of a backstop cannot be reopened. 7/
The EU would probably be prepared to make limited changes to the agreement if this could guarantee it passed through Parliament, but the UK government does not know what these might be. My suggestions of areas to look at... 8/ telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/…
Threatening no-deal does not make it more likely we will a good deal, as the EU has never believed we would do this. Being able to show a Parliamentary majority is far more important, and the PM's biggest failing as a negotiator 9/
A negotiator's position is much stronger if they can reasonably claim that their Parliament would never agree to x or y. If the deal is passed the next stage of talks will be equally bad unless the UK government changes their approach to Parliament 10/
A new referendum or election would require an extension of Article 50, which can only be granted by agreement of all Member States. In reality the Commission would be the key players - would they want this to happen or not? 11/
An extension of Article 50 beyond July would be complicated by the upcoming European elections, but if the EU thought the UK might reverse course they would probably give an extension. They probably wouldn't just because of UK prevarication 12/
The UK is running out of time to pass all the legislation required for Brexit. At least 7 bills need to pass Parliament, plus hundreds of pieces of secondary legislation. It isn't clear this can be done in time. 13/
The UK Government also needs to prepare for being outside of the EU, which means that resolving issues like this will take an increasing amount of time. We have yet to hear any awareness of this from Government 14/ ft.com/content/35ff12…
In terms of existing EU trade agreements, 2 (Switzerland and Southern Africa) are announced as being ready in case of no-deal, others are close, but we have no detailed information on which may not be, and whether any changes have been made 15/
If the UK has a deal with the EU then the Commission writes to third countries saying we are still covered by EU deals, it is not clear whether any will object. However UK business issues will no longer be raised in the committees overseeing the agreements 16/
Back to the UK-EU deal, it is worth reminding ourselves that this fundamental question has yet to be answered - and we cannot have a trade agreement until it is, or technology allows for other solutions (thought by most to be at least 10 years away) 17/
The PM's deal is not in theory incompatible with either future membership of the EEA (Norway) or a Free Trade Agreement (Canada) or Customs Union (Turkey). In that sense little progress has been made in the UK in the last three years 18/
So, to finish, questions could be how the future relationship will actually be determined, how Parliament will be involved, can the backstop actually be implemented, will defining it distract from the future relationship, and how will Gov operate outside of the EU 19/ end
Forgot to mention the obvious point - at the moment by law we leave the EU with no deal at the end of March. So if it isn't this deal it has to be something else. Have a feeling it might turn out to be this deal or similar, but let's see...
