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Later this morning the Alternative Arrangements Commission will present their final report and we will see how they responded to criticism of the interim report e.g. below. There's a fundamental distrust problem though which we need to discuss... 1/ britishirishchamber.com/brexit-views-5…
Essentially the #AACommission exists because of the largely unstated view among Brexiteers that the UK Government and / or the EU failed to find obvious solutions to Brexit and the Northern Ireland border because of malice, deviousness, or incompetence. We can do this better 2/
The core technical team working on alternative arrangements were the same group that had been putting out various ERG-sponsored reports for 3 years to say the problem can be solved. These have been consistently criticised and rejected 3/
A particular feature of such reports and we believe the one today, has been to produce their own legal text and say, look this can be done. As if the EU and UK don't have lawyers that can produce text. It's just a political game, not a serious proposal 4/
So the Alternative Arrangements Commission actually makes the UK look even less serious about negotiations - because they're a splinter group who believe they can do better against all previous evidence, aligned with a particular faction though trying now to go wider 5/
Ironically in their interim report the #AACommission failed to find a solution on SPS (animal and plant health) beyond the whole of Ireland being in the same single market, and the rest was mostly trusted trader schemes which aren't a comprehensive solution. Nothing new here 6/
No doubt there has been more engagement this time - in Ireland, with sceptics like me - for which half a cheer. But there was always going to be the fundamental problem - they wanted to say there was an easy solution, and there really isn't. 7/
If you seriously want to reconcile Brexit and the Irish border, if this isn't mostly just about the Conservative Party, you're not going to do it this way. You're going to acknowledge the challenges not least the one below. That this is going to be a long haul 8/ 
The negotiators didn't ignore easy solutions to the Irish border. There are no easy solutions. That's the uncomfortable message that the #AACommission won't want to say, but governments cannot ignore. Until this is admitted we can't easily make progress 9/
Ultimately the next UK government may choose a no-deal Brexit because they can't face the difficult decisions needed to avoid this. Johnson and Hunt already draw comfort from the #AACommission report, wrongly until today, and I doubt after today as well 10/ end
So we're now hearing the #AACommission report described by Shanker Singham. And frantically reading at the same time. The detail still doesn't provide a 'solution' as this on the VAT plans makes clear
In a nutshell this is why you need whole teams of officials working over several years to fix such a complex problem as Brexit and Ireland, you can't just say we'll do this, there will be all manner of consequences to think about...
Nick Morgan says the Government should have done this work, all evidence says they did, and there were too many problems. Perhaps they could have published more, but false to say work wasn't done.
First question, @SamuelMarcLowe, what about non consent from the community? Morgan, counterfactual is no deal... But that can sound rather like blackmail to the Irish...
Next, @tnewtondunn with some pretty searching questions on threats to single market, cost to traders, response of DUP on Ireland wide SPS, and more... defensive responses to a degree...
On SPS all Ireland, don't need to solve now... so wait till DUP not in coalition?
Greg Hands says don't worry about SPS divergence as Liam Fox and Michael Gove say no. So why are we talking with the US? We are being tied in more and more knots by this report, and that is why this was not solved before
And more on the cost. Not our job says Nicky Morgan. There's a lot of dumping on the civil service going on here. Could it be they looked and there were too many problems? The answer to that by the way is yes.
Questions on reconciling statements that the backstop is dead with this work to basically define it further. "These are discussions" "This process is very difficult"
I ask about VAT and ECJ, no answer. And that civil service has done the work, blame then shifts to Ministers, some of whom were surely also on the #AACommission
We're coming towards a close here, the verdict is that the Alternative Arrangements Commission has run into the same problems as all previous efforts to find solutions, that this is a ferociously complex problem not easily solved. Sorry @BorderIrish...
Great question from @awstojanovic, no Northern Ireland executive could survive a decision on whether to align with GB or Ireland on SPS, need to resolve now.
"The point about the report is setting out options" - Nicky Morgan - here's me thinking leadership candidates said it was the answer. Turns out it wasn't simple after all...
