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Stewart Wood
@StewartWood
, 4 tweets, 2 min read Read on Twitter
This "Alternative Arrangements Working Group" looks suspiciously like a selected bunch of backbench Conservative MPs being provided with support by civil servants. Which of course is not allowed.

I'm sure no.10 will clarify to remove suspicion. #Brexit

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politi…
Civil service code says civil servants must not “act in a way that is determined by party political considerations, or use official resources for party political purposes”. A group consisting only of Tory backbenchers getting served by civil servants surely violates this rule.
The Cabinet Manual, 7.2: “Ministers are required to uphold the political impartiality of the Civil Service and not ask civil servants to act in any way that would conflict with the Civil Service Code”. Again, the Alternative Arrangements Group, with ONLY Tories, breaks this rule.
And the next para is also unambiguous: “Civil servants should not be asked to engage in activities likely to call into question their political impartiality or give rise to the criticism that resources paid from public funds are being used for party political purposes”. They are.
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Stewart Wood
@StewartWood
One underappreciated effect of today's announcement by 7 MPs that they are leaving Labour: I think it has significantly raised the chances of a snap election being called in the next couple of weeks.
Theresa May's #Brexit renegotiation is going precisely nowhere. She has no plan, has made no progress, & in the absence of any revised offer she is resorting to asking her MPs to back her out of loyalty. A humiliating repeat defeat awaits. Unless an election can save her...
An election in the face of alleged intransigence by the EU, Labour & Parliament gives her an opening to go to the country on a platform of saving Brexit from suffocation by the Establishment. It offers a chance to unite the Tory Party behind a thin veneer of unity one last time.
Read 4 tweets
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Stewart Wood
@StewartWood
Catching up with the BBC’s excellent history of Britain & the EU since 2010, “Inside Europe: 10 Years of Turmoil”, I spotted what I should politely call a memory lapse from Nick Clegg - on how Europe was not an issue at the founding of the Coalition. This just isn’t the case. 1/5
Clegg says in episode 1: “I said to David...that Europe should not hijack our government as it had previous governments, and he said "Absolutely”... So of all the issues we had to discuss, Europe was at that stage the most straightforward.” But he forgot about May 11, 2010. 2/5
On May 11, 2010, day 5 of the post-election interregnum, Nick Clegg had one final phone call with then-PM Gordon Brown, in which Gordon told Nick he was going to the Palace to resign as PM. Clegg pleaded with Gordon not to go, to hang on for just a little while longer. Why? 3/5
Read 5 tweets
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Stewart Wood
@StewartWood
Throughout the #Brexit negotiations, Brexiteers & Theresa May’s Government have consistently misunderstood the EU-27: their politics & their EU theology. Yesterday they doubled down on that misunderstanding.

Here are some of the ways in which the UK just doesn’t get the EU.

1/6
1. We think Germany is the only country that matters in Europe. We fetishise Berlin. We’re blind to the daily horsetrading & lowest common denominator politics of the EU. And underestimate the immense difficulty of turning the EU supertanker around on any collective position. 2/6
2. We chose Brexit, even though it will make us worse off, because we understand some things matter more than money. Yet when it comes to understanding the EU’s motives for a deal, we simply assert they need one to avoid economic damage. Perhaps contradictory, perhaps stupid. 3/6
Read 6 tweets

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Alex Wickham
@alexwickham
AAWG ERG ARGH: Alternative Arrangements Working Group descends into acrimony over cancelled Northern Ireland trip as ERG splits on the Malthouse Compromise

buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/aa…
AAWG was meant to visit Northern Ireland today to meet businesses, security officials and visit the border.

But three sources say the trip was called off after ERG feared a “Project O’Fear” No10 stitch up

Big new fallout between Brexiteers and ministers: buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/aa…
🚨Now a serious ERG split on Malthouse

One faction has hardened its position. It used to support a time-limit, now says that's not enough. Was thought to number about two dozen MPs. Now double that

Another faction thinks ERG has to compromise to avoid CU buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/aa…
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Nick Gutteridge
@nick_gutteridge
Juncker-Varadkar presser starting now.
Juncker: ‘We’re in total agreement when it comes to all the questions relating to Brexit. Ireland won’t be left alone. We can’t reopen the discussion on the backstop. [May] knows the Commission is not prepared to reopen the issue.’
Varadkar says Ireland is ‘increasingly prepared’ for no deal but stresses it’s not a threat the EU or Ireland are making. He says: ‘It’s open to the UK to request an extension or revoke Article 50.’
Read 5 tweets
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Simon Usherwood
@Usherwood
A quick reminder of the hurdles the Alternative Arrangements working group have to clear:

1/
Agreement within the group itself about one or more courses of action to replace the backstop

2/
Agreement by CON (including May, Cabinet and backbench) on those courses

3/
Read 10 tweets
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Steve Bullock
@GuitarMoog
Finally found the time to read Ivan Rogers’ speech properly. Everybody who hasn’t should.

There’s a near endless supply of important points in it, but I think this one, on the “betrayal myth”, may be the most important in the long-run. 1/

news.liverpool.ac.uk/2018/12/13/ful…
I’ve been harping on about this for a while, and, of course, it is now being directed firmly at the mythical “remainer elite” in Westminster and Whitehall.
But this is really a much wider group that is being targeted as being to blame. It is civil servants, judges, lawyers companies, trade associations, experts, academics, economists etc, along with foreigners in general and remainers in general. 3/

Read 18 tweets
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Sa'id Dansadau
@iam_dansadau
Look, This narrative has always been pissing me off. It’s not just a Twitter thing. It’s a shared opinion across most Nigerians from Southern Geo-political Zones

Issa Thread
Most Southerners think of US as being ignorant, backward and Uncivilized

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Academicians below the Niger and Benue think the Northern Drs and Profs aren’t qualified and they got those awards just because of their ethnicity.

Media Practitioners believe their Northern counterparts are the ones practicing unethical and unprofessional journalism
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Repso
@RepsoResearch
Which party has the oldest average age of MPs? THREAD
First off, we must thank-you all. We launched a poll on Monday expecting maybe 500 responses maximum. Instead we had a whopping three-thousand-two-hundred-and-thirty votes on our Twitter poll.

That’s ridiculous.
We asked you which party you thought had the oldest average age of MPs.

Most of you, 66%, thought it was the @Conservatives, then the @LibDems (15%), then @UKLabour (14%), with the @theSNP coming in last with (5%).

I bet the SNP are feeling fairly youthful right about now.
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