Thread by @DmitryOpines

1/ The UK Government looks set to pledge to step in and buy slaughtered sheep at a fixed price in the event No-Deal causes a collapse in demand as UK farmers are locked out of the EU by tariffs.

I have some thoughts...

thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/n…

2/ So first, let me say that as an emergency measure and setting aside the broader wisdom of No-Deal as a project, this is reasonable.

Farmers can't take the loss of these flocks on the chin. They need help. Government should provide it.

3/ Yet my question is... and then what?

What is the short to medium term vision the government has for these farmers, and others in the economy who find themselves suddenly noncompetitive in EU markets they previously relied on to make their businesses solvent?

4/ Is the hope that market access to the EU will come back?

There's only one way that happens after a No-Deal, and that's through a trade agreement.

Those take time. In this case, perhaps a lot.

Is the government planning to bridge businesses for however long it takes?

5/ Is the hope that farmers will find other markets, foreign or domestic?

If so, which ones? How?

If a UK business wasn't competitive in a foreign market on October 29th, nothing on October 31st is going to make them competitive.

It'll be hard and not all will make it.

6/ Is the idea that instead the industries and sectors which find themselves non-competitive will simply wind down, eliminated by market forces?

If so, what is the government going to do for those who work in them and the communities that rely on them?

7/ The government has every incentive to throw open the to mitigate the immediate effects of No-Deal, after all they'll be seen by many as the ones inflicting them on the country.

Yet in the absence of a vision for the future, the UK frog will boil instead of burning. /end