Thread by @Usherwood

A couple of thoughts on 'alternative arrangements'

1/

https://twitter.com/adampayne26/status/1092188526123384832

The ambiguity of 'AA' is both its strength and its weakness

2/

On the one hand, the Commons has a broad sense that it doesn't like the backstop, so 'AA' looks like a winner, whether you have a specific & precise problem with it, or just a vague sense that 'this can't be the best option out there'

3/

'AA' is thus strong because it captures all the discontent around the backstop

Hence the narrow majority it won last week

4/

However - a bit like Leave in #EUref - 'AA' is also weak, for exactly the same reason.

Wanting something else isn't the same as knowing what that might be or agreeing with other 'AA'ers

5/

Is it a matter of time-limits, or unilateral exit powers, or scope, or geographic reach, or its entire existence?

Is it even the biggest objection one has to the Withdrawal Agt?

6/

Even Brady himself got in hot water last week for talking about legal framing rather than substance, so the problem runs right to the core of it all

7/

As a working proposition, policies built around rejections are intrinsically unstable, because they run on the ambiguity of the motivation for the rejection

8/

Thus the 'AA' working group will find it hard to locate an internal consensus on what's needed, harder still to sell that to CON/Commons, and yet harder again to pitch to the EU

9/

All of this highlights the problem of making policy by exclusion: cutting off options because you don't like them might feel intuitive, but it risks depriving you of Pareto-optimal outcomes

10/

Thus May's gvt has pursued Brexit primarily through Things It Doesn't Like (FoM, ECJ jurisdiction, cutting financial contributions, etc.) rather than Things It Does (eg the values underpinning a new relationship)

11/

That means its very hard to build a coherent future state of relations, because you're motivated how things used to be

12/

Just like going out with someone who keeps on going on about their ex, it's not a good look, nor conducive to a healthy relationship

13/

As a third country, the UK will necessarily have a fundamentally different relationship with the EU to that it had as a member, so time to move on and find what it values about what's here and now

14/

Pace Orwell and the past controlling the future, the unwillingness/inability to build a new constructive consensus about what the UK is aiming for remains its biggest barrier to getting through the current situation

/end