Derrick Berthelsen Profile picture
Sep 16, 2020 22 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Thread on the Internal Market (IM) bill and Brexit.
For what it’s worth I think Boris is right with the IM bill. We can argue whether it breaks international law or not, or whether it only breaks international law if enacted (or not).
We can argue that enacting IM will prevent the UK breaking other international treaties and which then should take precedent. We can find lawyers backing all arguments.
We can point to other examples where countries have broken international treaties (including the EU and many members of the EU unilaterally). We can argue whether the UK should be better than every other country in the world (in this regard).
But ultimately, I think there are two big issues to consider as a result of the bill’s existence.

First, does it make it more or less likely that we end up with a sustainable FTA with the EU.

Second, does the bill threaten the UK’s reputation with the ROW.
On the first, I have absolutely no doubt that the bill makes the chances of a sustainable deal more likely. The EU was using the NI protocol to force the UK to sign up to remaining under the EU orbit/control.
Not only do I believe Boris could never agree such a deal (political suicide), but I also believe that even if he did, such a deal would not have been sustainable.
Ultimately the British people will not accept EU control without representation. The alternative – handing control of NI to the EU - would also ultimately be unacceptable to the people of the UK.
History is littered with international treaties that failed to last the test of time & often the authors themselves recognised the problems as they were written. Lloyd George, for example, famously warned the seeds of another world war were embedded in the Treaty of Versailles.
The EU, however, does not believe this. It believes that like every UK PM for the past 50+ years (with one notable exception) Boris is talking tough to the home crowd whilst looking for a way to give the EU what it wants but be able to present it as something different at home.
What Boris has done with the IM bill is show EU that this is not the case. Yes, he wants a deal, but if EU is unwilling to agree a Canada style FTA (i.e. accepting the costs of being outside the SM & CU but nothing more) he will accept No Deal – and not at the price of losing NI.
The EU has still to make the same choice it has always had. A rapid or gradual divergence from the UK. I still believe that they will ultimately choose the latter and that the IM bill makes this more likely.
But what about our international reputation? Whilst I do not believe it is a good idea to routinely break international treaties and that doing so does confer some reputational/trust loss, I do not believe that the IM bill falls into this category.
Why? Because whilst the ROW may not know the minutiae of the UK/EU negotiations, it does know what the big picture is. It knows that this is (exactly what it is) a choice between the UK remaining under EU control or re-entering the world.
Rather than see the IM bill as a sign of weakness in this regard, the ROW sees it as a sign of strength.
It sees a UK preparing to leave EU control. And contrary to Remainer arguments, the ROW really wants to see the UK back on the world stage.
Asia & Lat Am aren’t busy trying to get the UK into the CPATPP simply to target some of the EU’s trade surplus. Rather it is because this partnership is viewed by its members not just as a trade deal but as a bulwark against Chinese expansionism and aggression.
In that regard members view an independent and sovereign UK as an important military, intelligence, diplomatic and yes economic partner in the alliance.
In Asia the UK leaving the EU is seen as another Falklands moment.
Up until the Falklands war Asia viewed the UK as a weak, bankrupt low self-esteem nation in perpetual decline. The Falklands transformed their opinion and demonstrated that the UK was prepared to stand up for itself.
It is the same lens through which they view Brexit and the IM bill.
Not a repudiation of international law, but as part of a process of regaining its independence from the EU.
I believe the IM bill both makes a sustainable deal with the EU more likely & strengthens the worlds perception of the UK. I commend the IM bill to the House and to the country.

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More from @DerrickBerthel1

Aug 20
For those who still think the Starmer Government will take stock of very clear & real public concerns about rapid mass immigration & change course this should be a wake up moment. 1)
It's a lie that Britain has always been a country of mass immigration. What we have witnessed in recent decades is entirely unprecedented. 20% of total UK population only arrived in past 10 yrs. 40% of all foreign born here only arrived in past 10 yrs.
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Over 2.3m people arrived in the UK in the past two years alone. That is the equivalent of 10 Milton Keynes. 8 Belfast's. 6 Manchester's. In just two years.
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Read 11 tweets
Aug 12
Immigration is still the elephant in the room.
Violence is appalling, yet we have to understand the conditions from which it emerged
thecritic.co.uk/immigration-is…
As political protests against mass immigration turned to violence all over the UK, Prime Minister Starmer was quick to label them as nothing more than “far-right thuggery” organised and populated by a small number of organised and possibly foreign funded far right racists.
Gvnt announced more prisoners would be released early from prison (including killers) to free up space for immediate incarceration of - not just those who had taken part in violent protests - but those who were deemed to have encouraged, supported or even simply shared videos
Read 26 tweets
Jun 28
Just two weeks after the 8th anniversary of the vote to leave the EU (yet barely four years since we left) polling suggests that the self-confessed europhile Keir Starmer - who tried everything to force a second referendum and prevent Brexit happening –
news.sky.com/story/labours-…
- will enter Downing Street as Prime Minister with the largest Labour majority in history. Whilst Starmer currently claims that he no longer wants to re-join the EU or even the SM or CU wishing instead to only secure a “closer relationship” with Europe...
news.sky.com/story/keir-sta…
..many (of all political persuasions) believe the direction of travel is clear and that Labour (despite the current protestations) will move to bring the UK back into the EU fold one way or another.
Read 25 tweets
Jun 22
There is a lot of this about today. The success of @Nigel_Farage & @reformparty_uk in the polls has the metropolitan "progressive" elite seriously frit. But it is complete and unadulterated spherical objects. As @iainmartin1 really should know.
A quick thread on why
@iainmartin1 states that @Nigel_Farage argument that the West has pushed Russia into a corner giving Putin the excuse for action (action @Nigel_Farage is clear is wrong) is both a niche view and incorrect. But it isn't a niche view at all. And it has been long argued
In June 1997, 50 prominent foreign policy experts signed an open letter to Clinton, saying, “We believe that the current U.S. led effort to expand NATO … is a policy error of historic proportions” that would “unsettle European stability.”
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May 3
On Wednesday @KemiBadenoch made a speech to Parliament on the UK’s trade performance in which she stated the data:
“Definitively disprove the claims of those who prophesied a catastrophic economic collapse when we left the EU to become a sovereign nation.”
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@KemiBadenoch went on to say that the data confirms that:
“The strategy the public voted for on 23 June 2016 is delivering. Leaving the European Union was a vote of confidence in the project of the United Kingdom, and we are seeing results.
As you can imagine, the response form the anti-brexit brigade which has spent the last 8 years trying hard to present Brexit as an economic disaster and an entirely irredeemable event was angry and vitriolic.
For example this thread by @EdConwaySky
Read 46 tweets
Feb 20
Excellent by @NJ_Timothy.

I just wanted to highlight a few points from the article

Through 1980s & 1990s Britain generally had the third most competitive industrial electricity costs of G7. But since then we have performed far worse. In the 5 yrs before Tony Blair became PM, our industrial electricity costs were around 9 % higher than avg of advanced economies
By 2010, they were nearly 23 per cent higher, and for the past 5 years have risen to 52% higher.

Our industrial electricity prices are three times higher than in America and Canada.

They are more than twice as high as in Korea and New Zealand.
Read 12 tweets

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