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Faisal Islam Profile picture
@faisalislam
Aug 5, 2019 • 9 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
Matters looking rather ropey in the Brexit negotiations. There’s apparently now nothing substantive planned until Biarritz G7 meeting at end of month. You’d expect the sort of briefings emerging from Brussels tonight, and a pinch of salt required etc BUT...
... sending the message that they have interpreted the new negotiator Frost’s meetings as consistent only with leaving with No Deal and calling a GE.. “they can’t climb down from this”...
They recognise that the UK Government is now trying to isolate and put personal pressure on Irish leader Leo Varadkar. So they purposely sent a message of full support for the Irish at the EU Council debrief... and for the backstop etc.
Understand some key officials rearranged their holidays in anticipation of some sort of proper talks in August - but nothing substantive happening till G7 at least. That’s pretty much 5/14 weeks before Brexit deadline under Johnson administration gone.
No 10 say: “PM wants to meet EU leaders & negotiate a new deal – one that abolishes the anti-democratic backstop. We will throw ourselves into negotiations with the greatest energy & spirit of friendship and we hope EU will rethink its current refusal to make any changes to WA”..
No 10 continued... “The fact is the Withdrawal Agreement has rejected by Parliament three times and will not pass in its current form so – if the EU wants a deal – it needs to change its stance. Until then, we will continue to prepare to leave the EU on 31 October”...
There’s more to say here - but it’s late and I’ll blog about it for tomorrow on the website - so watch this space.
Here is the blog reflecting what I’ve heard on Brexit stand-off...

more than the backstop - diminishing chance of UK level playing field guarantees - social, regulatory, environmental, also undercutting path to a tariff free UK-EU trade deal, they say.

bbc.co.uk/news/business-…
EU side saying that the much-cherished offer of a tariff free, quota free UK-EU trade deal in March 2018 was always conditional on “sufficient guarantees for a level playing field”. That is now in real doubt, after initial conversations with new administration here

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More from @faisalislam

Faisal Islam Profile picture
Oct 18
NEW

Treasury effectively confirms debt rule loosening, by announcing its new “guardrails” to channel capital spending goes to a 10 year pipeline of major projects that generate economic returns that will help “depoliticise infrastructure”

bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…
Their view is independent accountable bodies, either new or given new powers will set & implement a 10 year infrastructure strategy integrated with 2 year spending reviews, and audit this, and assess value for money ensuring capital investment generates clear long term returns…
Ministers now openly call the impact of the Sunak debt rule “a mistake”, that it constrained some much needed public infrastructure investment, while not stopping bad investment in failing projects… capital needs to be properly quality controlled not arbitrarily constrained
Read 10 tweets
Faisal Islam Profile picture
Sep 2
“One monopolist serves as a gatekeeper for the delivery of nearly all live music in America today”

- US Govt’s attempt to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster announced in May in a court filing is quite a document… “platinum” pricing is mentioned 5 times … #Ticketonomics Image
Live Nation itself said this year that platinum pricing was in its 5th innings in the US but “in its first” in Europe and their intention to apply it “all along the way” until the concert “gates open up” is a “multi year opportunity to grow our top line/ bottom line”…
CEO Michael Rapino said earlier this year ”it’s just pricing smarter” & “it’s a skill” where LN/ Ticketmasters in-house team “works with artists, agents, managers” to “price the fronts better so the back sells out”… “rolling this around world” is “the great growth opportunity” Image
Read 5 tweets
Faisal Islam Profile picture
Jul 23
NAO confirms that HS2 without phase 2 will result in trains with less space between Manchester and Birmingham than current west Coast services, and might require demand management to dissuade passengers… bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…
Non-consensus view, but having sunk the costs of phase 1, and then committed to the hybrid bill for HS2 north… the cost benefit ratio of completing the bit between Manchester airport and Birmingham will be very high… would require political consensus to be re-established though
Who can forget the Perm Sec’s amazing document from last year.. the strategic case on rebalancing Britain “no longer applies”
Read 20 tweets
Faisal Islam Profile picture
Jul 21
Shadow Chancellor Jeremy Hunt acknowledges to @bbclaurak when asked if Conservatives had won whether there would have been tax cuts in Autumn that “we wouldn’t have been able to do it immediately, no”
…
most notable thing re: Chancellor interview with Laura is this unusual Treasury analysis due in next fortnight which will “look at the state of the public services, the state of the public finances…public spending pressures we are under”

Q: why isnt the OBR doing this?
While fiscally eventful, it is not going to be a “fiscal event”… when first announced by Chancellor on her first Monday in office it sounded more like an audit of stalled spending and impact on public services, than an audit of the public finances…
Read 6 tweets
Faisal Islam Profile picture
Jul 9
Reassuringly, @demishassabis tells Blair at the @InstituteGC conference that Artificial Intelligence is only at the IQ level of a cat right now.. [although that is changing rapidly - surely will exceed humans in many tasks in this Parliament] 🐈‍⬛
Interesting to think Blair as PM famously never used his computer, or rarely did so…

Also has the scars, as it were, from that failed NHS IT contract… if only that had succeeded…

Interesting to know if this Govt is conscious of the ghosts of that and of botched PFI deals.
Chancellor’s Mais lecture did have sense of learning from some setbacks during the Blair era … havent seen a good analysis tho of where eg record on PFI and the NHS IT contract [perhaps Horizon too] forms part of this govt’s memory.

Nothing is entirely new in politics, ever.
Read 16 tweets
Faisal Islam Profile picture
Jun 5
Coutinho co-opting the Treasury Permanent Secretary into backing idea that Labour will raise taxes by thousands…

All this arises because the OBR (unlike its equivalent in Ireland, Australia the US, the CBO) is prevented from doing comparable truly independent costings…
This whole “debate” is, for now, rather absurd, as next week we will get the actual policies in manifestos, the parties’ own assumptions and separate truly independent numbers on the implications for tax, spend & borrowing from the likes of the IFS & Niesr.
The Treasury Permanent Secretary who Coutinho deployed this morning to defend the £38bn/ £2k claim wrote to the Opposition to say it “should not be presented as having been produced by civil service”… this could be problematic…
Read 6 tweets

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