Thread by @Usherwood

Back last autumn, @UKandEU produced a report on transition, including the problems with it

ukandeu.ac.uk/wp-content/upl…

Maybe a good time to go over these once more

1/

With the likely new PM talking about extending transition as a way of not having a backstop arrangement, it's important to understand how transition works

2/

The model is essentially 'membership minus', because the UK would do everything a member state does, but without voting or representation

3/

As I argued at the time, that raises three big challenges

ukandeu.ac.uk/the-challenges…

4/

The first is legitimacy.

In purely democratic terms, is it acceptable to have all the obligations, but not all the rights, including the right to a voice and a vote?

5/

The second will be balancing the on-going transition & its requirements with the negotiations to reach a new relationship.

Developments in one will have an impact in the other, and potentially quite far-reaching ones

6/

And thirdly, there's a time issue.

When we wrote the report it wasn't clear if transition would have a fixed duration or not, but in the current version it does have a hard end, after one extension

7/

Time matters in two ways
- if the intention is to replace the backstop with a longer transition, then what's the mechanism for ending it? Fixed by time, or by mutual consent (a la backstop)? Spot the problem
- the longer transition runs, the worse the 2 previous problems

8/

That's even before we get into the new MFF cycle and the legal base problems (see the report for more on those)

9/

In short, switching out the backstop for a longer transition isn't a cost-free exercise at all.

/end

(and yes, you can watch the video again too: )