Thread by @DmitryOpines

1/ "No-Deal to end the uncertainty" is nonsense.

The pilot announcing you're crash landing on an uninhabited island may end the uncertainty over whether to adopt the brace position, but it doesn't make planning for the future any easier.

A thread for @AllieRenison's sanity.

2/ The uncertainty of Schrodinger's No-Deal is unquestionably causing problems for business.

How much does one spend preparing for the third deadline of what the presumptive PM calls a 'one in a million chance' but experts keep warning is likelier than ever?

3/ A definitive decision to exit with No-Deal on a fixed date would answer the 'should businesses prepare' conundrum definitively, but yield hundreds more unanswered questions.

4/ There is an assumption underlying a lot of Brexit discussions that a trade agreement with the EU is EVENTUALLY inevitable. It's an assumption I hold too, for whatever that's worth.

Yet for businesses trying to plan for the medium term, 'eventually' is bloody unhelpful.

5/ Some of the same issues currently preventing a deal have been flagged by both sides as requiring resolution as a precursor to post-No-Deal FTA talks even starting.

How long will that take? A week? A year? Four years?

6/ There are influential voices calling for the UK's first port of call in a No-Deal to be Washington D.C, not Brussels.

While it is certainly possible to have an FTA with both, negotiating them at the same time is a recipe for chaos. So will the EU have to wait? How long?

7/ Those UK businesses sourcing EU goods or inputs may have been relieved to learn much of what they bring in will be tariff exempt, but are faced with fresh uncertainty as they await the results of 'consultations' on the 'temporary' UK tariff regime.

8/ This is all setting aside that many of the currently announced customs arrangements for No-Deal are either temporary, poorly understood or as the RHA keeps jumping up and down about, simply not fit for purpose.

9/ Services firms aren't much better off, staring into the abyss as the few unilateral measures the EU has offered to adopt to ease No-Deal drift toward lapsing.

Will these measures be extended? Made permanent? Abolished? Will they come back in a future FTA? To what extent?

10/ Then there's FTA rollovers.

A hideously complicated mess where one takes what is already a fragmented system of overlapping obligations (the FTAs) and add in another layer of complexity (their partial rollover) with a sprinkle of uncertainty (all the TBD bits).

11/ There are more issues:
- how will VAT work?
- which EU Member States will do what in areas where they have competency (like driver's license recognition)?
- how will EU regulations evolve when they no longer have UK in the room or UK interests to consider?

12/ Jeremy Hunt has indicated he'll want to help affected sectors. Will Mr Johnson do the same?

If so then for whom, how and for how long?

It is one thing to bridge a year of No-Deal before a full EU FTA. It is quite another to prop up a wounded sector for over a decade.

13/ The UK is currently teetering on the brink of a No-Deal abyss. Jumping will end the uncertainty over whether it will fall, but shed little light on the depth of the chasm, what lies in its depths, or the jagged rocks hiding along the trajectory.

/end