Thread by @pmdfoster

@MikeAnson @BorderIrish @NickyMorgan01 @GregHands @ManufacturingNI @MichaelAodhan @Freight_NI It's a fair question....arguably too partisan/pejorative....but a Unicorn is a make-believe animal that doesn't exist. I was one of the original users/coiners of the phrase in order to try and make this a fact-based conversation not something based on wishful thinking. 1/

@MikeAnson @BorderIrish @NickyMorgan01 @GregHands @ManufacturingNI @MichaelAodhan @Freight_NI But remember, this is not some new problem.

Before the joint report in Dec 2017 there was a massive scoping exercise involving EU/UK and Irish officials that totally came up against reality on the border question.

I have done multiple threads on this /2

@MikeAnson @BorderIrish @NickyMorgan01 @GregHands @ManufacturingNI @MichaelAodhan @Freight_NI Threads which, based on my visits to NI and interviews with NI businesses and officials in both Whitehall and Brussels who are actively engaged in trying to find solutions, reach the conclusion that there isn't a tech solution to the border. /3

@MikeAnson @BorderIrish @NickyMorgan01 @GregHands @ManufacturingNI @MichaelAodhan @Freight_NI Recall that the original 'MaxFac' solution to the border required 80 per cent (80!!!!) of trade to be exempted. That tells you more than a little about how unrealistic the scheme was.

It points to a key thing that UK politics fails to understand about EU thinking on border. /4

@MikeAnson @BorderIrish @NickyMorgan01 @GregHands @ManufacturingNI @MichaelAodhan @Freight_NI The EU side DOES care about NI being a lacuna in Single Market.

When I've seen readout of EU ambos discussions on this, they care about SM integrity - really they do, much more than about Good Friday Agreement if we're honest. /5

@MikeAnson @BorderIrish @NickyMorgan01 @GregHands @ManufacturingNI @MichaelAodhan @Freight_NI Recall one of those readouts where one senior EU ambo was joking about opening a business in Northern Ireland, if that was the plan. /6

@MikeAnson @BorderIrish @NickyMorgan01 @GregHands @ManufacturingNI @MichaelAodhan @Freight_NI Perhaps I shouldn't use 'unicorn' label, but I have - frankly - lost patience with the Brexiteers absolute failure to grapple with the reality of the border.

Why wouldn't @OwenPaterson and the Malthouse Crew accept the invites of @ManufacturingNI @Freight_NI and others? /7

@MikeAnson @BorderIrish @NickyMorgan01 @GregHands @ManufacturingNI @MichaelAodhan @Freight_NI @OwenPaterson Why will they never give serious answers as to how their 'solutions' (which exist nowhere in the world) deal with illegal trade? Sure they might work for big biz, but what about smugglers - and the border would be a smugglers paradise. /8

@MikeAnson @BorderIrish @NickyMorgan01 @GregHands @ManufacturingNI @MichaelAodhan @Freight_NI @OwenPaterson And where you have smuggling, you have enforcement. And snitches.

Where is that enforcement taking place? Who is stopping vans and trucks and where? And what happens to the snitches...when their legs get broken? Remember all that? /9

@MikeAnson @BorderIrish @NickyMorgan01 @GregHands @ManufacturingNI @MichaelAodhan @Freight_NI @OwenPaterson How do you deal with something like the pork dioxin scandal? How and where are SPS checks (and enforcement) taking place in that border economy, if not at the NI ports?

These are NOT new questions....we've been at this for TWO YEARS now /10

@MikeAnson @BorderIrish @NickyMorgan01 @GregHands @ManufacturingNI @MichaelAodhan @Freight_NI @OwenPaterson The Brexiteer thinking is so lazy and wilfully ignorant.

Look at the Sajid Javid plan I reported on earlier this month. /11

https://twitter.com/pmdfoster/status/1118463745779470336

@MikeAnson @BorderIrish @NickyMorgan01 @GregHands @ManufacturingNI @MichaelAodhan @Freight_NI @OwenPaterson Even in the benign environment of Dover Calais (did I mention that all NI border constituencies are Sinn Fein controlled and, well, um remember an unhappy time no so long ago when the Brits did man that border?) the tech solution isn't ready til 2030. /12

@MikeAnson @BorderIrish @NickyMorgan01 @GregHands @ManufacturingNI @MichaelAodhan @Freight_NI @OwenPaterson That's a decade away, and the plan admits, the govt's record of delivering this kind of project is extremely shaky.

So on a technical level, I just haven't seen serious proposals from the Brexiteers. They are indeed 'unicorns'. Not even horses with shells on their foreheads. /13

@MikeAnson @BorderIrish @NickyMorgan01 @GregHands @ManufacturingNI @MichaelAodhan @Freight_NI @OwenPaterson These people need to go the border and ask themsleves why this customs park in Newry shut down in 1992 when the Single European Act came in...and if we needed it before the single market, why wouldn't we need it again after we've left? /14

https://twitter.com/pmdfoster/status/1110599324168318977

@MikeAnson @BorderIrish @NickyMorgan01 @GregHands @ManufacturingNI @MichaelAodhan @Freight_NI @OwenPaterson The maddest part of all, however, is that even the Brexiteers' political thinking seems to me half-baked.

The dream, as I understand it, is to oust @theresa_may and install a true-believer to force 'alternative arrangements' into the Withdrawal Agreement bill as an ultimatum /15

@MikeAnson @BorderIrish @NickyMorgan01 @GregHands @ManufacturingNI @MichaelAodhan @Freight_NI @OwenPaterson @theresa_may Essentially challenge the EU to accept Brady or have the UK walk away in a 'no deal'....

Except that the one thing that Parliament seems agreed on is that 'no deal' isn't an option the House can accept. It won't happen. The EU knows it, has known all along. /16

@MikeAnson @BorderIrish @NickyMorgan01 @GregHands @ManufacturingNI @MichaelAodhan @Freight_NI @OwenPaterson @theresa_may And if even it did (and now I'm starting to shout my self hoarse, I know) where does a 'no deal' lead to?

At that point there is no transition deal, no legal roof over our heads to build a new relationship; ugly politics, massive asymmetries of leverage.../17

@MikeAnson @BorderIrish @NickyMorgan01 @GregHands @ManufacturingNI @MichaelAodhan @Freight_NI @OwenPaterson @theresa_may ...which leads to, a deal. The UK cannot exist in splendid isolation.

The conflation of the sovereignty and trade pieces of Brexit has fuelled harmful delusions among UK political class about the actual choices we have. /18

@MikeAnson @BorderIrish @NickyMorgan01 @GregHands @ManufacturingNI @MichaelAodhan @Freight_NI @OwenPaterson @theresa_may FWIW I don't, contrary to much Brexiteer opinion, shill for the EU.

If it's useful background, I spent 12 years reporting from Asia (India, then China) and Washington DC, where I learned the truth about Britain's actual place in the world. /19

@MikeAnson @BorderIrish @NickyMorgan01 @GregHands @ManufacturingNI @MichaelAodhan @Freight_NI @OwenPaterson @theresa_may Perhaps that's why I lose patience with some of the more deluded nostalgia-nationalism which I do not believe is serving the interests of me (as a citizen and voter) or my children, who are going to need jobs quite soon. /20

@MikeAnson @BorderIrish @NickyMorgan01 @GregHands @ManufacturingNI @MichaelAodhan @Freight_NI @OwenPaterson @theresa_may But I've never advocated reversing #Brexit - unless there a clear shift of public opinion. But polling doesn't bear that out.

So do the deal (May's 48-52 Brexit) and move on. But it might be too late for that now. If so, more fool the Brexiteers for chasing unicorns :)

21/ENDS