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David Henig 🇺🇦 Profile picture
@DavidHenigUK
May 22, 2019 • 6 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
Tomorrow (or rather Sunday when the votes are counted) will mostly demonstrate once again that the country is completely split on Brexit, but the vote on one side will be concentrated, on the other split several ways. Not only that...
These are the Conservative MPs who can't even think of any kind of compromise Brexit, and this can obviously be supplemented by others in Government, though not necessarily the tory leadership candidates who may say one thing and mean another... buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/to…
Then there are the Labour, Lib Dem, Change UK, Green, SNP MPs who are realistically not going to vote for any Brexit unless there's a referendum. Not a majority on their own, but put them together with the no-compromise folk...?
There's realistically only two directions of travel available to the next PM. Either a no-deal v remain referendum (justified on account of no-deal not being the official position of leave at the last one), or a soft Brexit Norway or Turkey style.
A new PM could try an election to win a Parliamentary majority for a no-deal Brexit, but there's little suggestion from polls that they could succeed. And frankly we're just delaying the pain further that way.
No Brexit unicorns are coming to rescue us. This PM eventually vaguely met reality, but in such a way as to mean she couldn't get a majority. Key question is how soon the next PM meets reality, and how they build support for their choice once they do / end

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More from @DavidHenigUK

David Henig 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Oct 3
What you seem unlikely to read elsewhere - yesterday's Starmer - von der Leyen meeting was successful, and had the right outcome - a commitment to regular ongoing summits, and joint working to prepare them.

No flounces, no talk of special deals. Normality theguardian.com/politics/2024/…
To those complaining about the UK's lack of detail - a lazy, uninformed complaint. The EU doesn't (yet) have a mandate, the UK doesn't (yet) need to have all the asks. Both need to come in time. That will be the test of the next few months, now was not the time. As was agreed.
Those saying this is going nowhere until the UK implements everything in full, that message was received and @NickTorfaen explicitly said this at an EU reception at Labour Conference. Labour's messaging hasn't been perfect to date, it has though been good enough.
Read 10 tweets
David Henig 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Jun 20
Three days in Brussels mostly talking UK-EU relations after the elections with various folk on all sides, but also hard to get away from US-EU-China talk, or concerns about the direction of travel for the EU. So what were my top 10 findings? Settle down for a thread 🧵
1 - though far from top priority, the EU will happily engage with the UK. There's interest in what a new government will do. But they also expect their own interests - recently youth mobility, and fishing - to be taken seriously. Where there's overlap - security - expect progress
2 - the UK has to prepare for a really tough ongoing engagement with the EU. This will not be a single negotiation but a series of small encounters, mini-deals, cooperations etc. Unless Labour red lines change. A new narrative for the relationship - but only in part.
Read 15 tweets
David Henig 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Jun 12
There are some very good reasons not to talk about Brexit in the election.

It happened. It was traumatic. It didn't go very well. It isn't easily changed.

Rejoiners tend to forget the 2nd and 4th, Brexiters the 3rd.

theguardian.com/politics/artic…
Like it or not, we are stuck for a while in the technocratic realities of international relations when it comes to UK-EU relations. I'd expect there to be a time when that changes, when there's a rejuvenated campaign for rejoining, but not for a while.
Why are the technocratic realities of international relations not a hot topic in the General Election?

Asked nobody, for good reason. Not that UK-EU relations won't be important to various policy issues. But hardly top-ticket politics.
Read 9 tweets
David Henig 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Jun 12
Today's big trade news - that the EU will apply additional tariffs of around 25% on Chinese made Electric Vehicles, on the basis that they have benefitted from illegal subsidies. This comes as a result of furious lobbying for higher or lower figures. ft.com/content/0545ed…
The US has imposed higher Chinese EV tariffs, without specific justification, and it was suggested 50% was needed in the EU to remove cost advantage. But some or more of this is natural competitive advantage from far earlier investment. The EU was looking as ever for a balance.
My suspicion has long been that China was broadly aware that politically the EU had to act, and that a 15-20% tariff on EV they were prepared to bear though with some retaliation because that's what happens in such cases. The furious lobbying came against much higher figures.
Read 11 tweets
David Henig 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Apr 25
In we go... and just a few pages in, the relief is that there are none of the obvious errors than so often undermine UK accounts of Brexit - at likely cost to the sanity of @ShippersUnbound he appears on top of the subject...

Next UK negotiator perhaps...? Image
10 pages in and the level of haplessness described within the UK government system with regard to negotiations in 2017 is off the scale. I know we've improved since then. But equally, I doubt enough lessons have been learnt.
60 pages of systemic failure. There are probably many lessons to learn, but the two most obvious would be, listen to people who understand the EU, and know your objectives. Are either widely acknowledged in the UK as yet?
Read 16 tweets
David Henig 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Apr 18
Increasingly thinking that Labour is going to need some clever way to handle the EU issue otherwise there is going to be a lot of difficulty and frustration spilling into government. And judging by my inbox, affecting negotiations. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Problem with these "we can't talk about it but we always talk about it" issues is that they don't go away, and particularly when they involve international talks with a player like the EU, you simply add levels of complexity potentially making it unmanageable.
Worse with UK-EU is the sheer number of players and subjects involved, and that both sides have unfinished emotional business. More on the EU side to come, but the fact every UK story generates reaction tells you this isn't all forgotten...
Read 20 tweets

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