Thread by @atatimelikethis

An Open Letter to the Prime Minister, The Right Honourable Boris Johnson MP, on the clarity or lack of #Brexit advice within or supporting his latest campaign.

Subject: The difficulties to overcome for many of us to prepare are insurmountable.

Advertising may be premature.

https://twitter.com/atatimelikethis/status/1317953730755559425

🇬🇧1
@BorisJohnson
Prime Minister,
As a matter of public record, we must point out for you the difference between telling people that they are unprepared and telling them for what they are to prepare.

The latter is usually a prerequisite for the former.
Examples follow:

🇬🇧2
You or your assistants have run three advertising campaigns instructing us to prepare for #Brexit and to take advantage of its opportunities.

If I may, let me deal with both, just in case the details have been "skipped over."

1. PREPARE
2. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF OPPORTUNITIES

🇬🇧3. PREPARE
A. Canada

PM for me and many others preparing even for Canada is Impossible. I'll explain:

Your current projected outcome is somewhere between a Canada deal and an Australia deal.

If you check your website, you'll find nothing which defines either. We must guess.

🇬🇧4.
Canada is far from a clear concept. But let me assume that you duplicate it precisely.

Even if you do there are huge ambiguities.

For example are you duplicating tarrif arrangements as they are now, on the same timetable or as they will be at transition end in 2025?

🇬🇧5. Canada has checks on all borders, which include regulatory alignment.

You're unclear on both, especially in Northern Ireland.

In the service market are you duplicating the 100s of sectors excluded in the Canada deal? If so, why? Our service profile is entirely different.

🇬🇧6
Knowing which you plan is the difference between viable and impossible to operate for many of us.

In case you think I'm exaggerating Prime Minister, do you know that Canadian Financial Services access to Europe is severely limited?

Should we copy that in our vast FS sector?

🇬🇧7
Canada understood the difficulties in adopting so many changes. It gave businesses 7 years to transition.

That was 7 years from the point at which the deal was clarified.

Our deal is still not clarified and all transition time has been exhausted by political discussions.

🇬🇧8
With so much ambiguity, we will have many disputes. Sadly I will be unable to resolve any of them under the terms of the Canada deal.

Instead, I'll need to guess which your Government will resolve with the EU.
Will they be successful?

That alone is a viability decision.

🇬🇧9.
You'll appreciate Mr Johnson, that I scratched only the surface of the issues.

If you were set on a Canada Deal, I'd already been highly concerned.

Except there's more.

I also need to prepare for an "Australian Deal".

Somehow I must prepare for both outcomes!

Hard.

🇬🇧10.

Australia Deal/No Deal

Please don't interpret my next tweets as criticism. Maybe file them under learnings.

If your Government intends to enable preparation, then clarity and definition help.

The term Australian Deal has existed, we think ~ 3 weeks. Is that correct?

🇬🇧11. I'm simply the bearer of bad news as I'm sure this was not your intent. Sadly significant amounts of time were devoted to this topic which we now realise were wasted.

The initial theory was by Australian Deal you meant the current EU constructs in negotiation.

🇬🇧12 That was exciting Mr Johnson since many of us remembered Mr L Fox returning empty-handed and guessed Mr D Frost had pulled off a miracle and got us included in the EU Deal despite our exit. Now that would be better than Canada!

🇬🇧13 With the recent deteriorating negotiations, it became clear that interpretation was overly optimistic.

So instead speculation moved to an idea that the UK was planning to replicate the various EU trade facilitation treaties.

These are, as you know relatively small fry.

🇬🇧14. But as a rule, we business folk don't look gift horses in the eye so that evaluation began next.

Yes, I know, I'm also upset that time was wasted on that needlessly, but it was.

It was only this morning that we realised what is meant by Australia Deal is No Deal. Alarm.

🇬🇧15. You have many things on your plate, don't think I'm suggesting you should concern yourself with time wasted by millions of export and import business. I'm sure there was a good reason for this semantic misrepresentation.

I'd ask in future only that the website be clear.

🇬🇧16.
Sixteen tweets in and having now established that Australia Deal means no deal, I must return to the concept of preparation.

You'll recall that the ambiguities with Canada were huge.

No Deal are sadly worse.

I'm somewhat reluctant even to open the can of worms in public.

🇬🇧17 I fear listing all the potential issues surrounding a "No Deal" could, by some, be regarded as a little defeatist, maybe even "Remainery". Since I'd like your support Prime Minister and truly wish you to understand what we face, I will avoid doing that

🇬🇧18 Since Canada and No Deal are the two options on the table, then maybe our time is best spent comparing the two to find solutions for businesses attempting to straddle both with the objective of preparing. Does that sound fair?

🇬🇧19 Following the same process as Canada, Gov UK doesn't actually define No Deal, so we must guess. Many people have said to me things like "No Deal is No Deal", but as I'm certain you're aware nothing could be less true. The concept of No Deal covers roughly 759 treaties

🇬🇧20 Of those, depending on how we read your site, we think about 9-15 are confirmed. If I may note, Mr Fox used to publish a list of Transitional Trade Agreements so we could assess your progress. If that still exists, navigating to it has become very difficult

🇬🇧21 Instead, your site seems to have been taken over by what I can only describe as propaganda, and scary stuff at that. Gone are the days we could use it to find information. Now, all it does is counts down a clock and provides a long-form adding to administration costs.

🇬🇧22 While I am noting this PM, may I ask you to intervene and question what your assistants have actually put into the public domain? This is the largest change any of us can remember going through, yet as I've pointed out, nothing is clarified

"🇬🇧23 Back to the 759 treaties. To understanding No Deal, we actually need to speculate on two main areas.
1. What will be the terms of EU Trade
2. What will be the terms of Non-EU Trade where agreements no longer are in force
"

🇬🇧24 PM it isn’t just trade. We have to anticipate, how your Government will resolve, outside the EU, the agreements on Trade, Regulatory alignment, customs, farming, fisheries and transport. For some people in pharma, research or medicine, even Nuclear terms are unclear

🇬🇧25 And then, we repeat, except this time with the EU.
I know WTO terms sounded beautifully simple. And the EU sounded like just one body.
But that's because no one knew, or bothered to check, just how much WAS NOT trade and how many non-EU arrangements we were losing

🇬🇧26 Suffice as to say Prime Minister, none of the Canada assumptions - even those that are not ambiguous - are replicated by the No Deal Assumptions. It is impossible to square those two circles, at best a business viable under Canada, is probably gone under No Deal

🇬🇧27 And a business that Canada did not help with, may or may not be viable under No Deal depending on which additional non-EU deals you secure. Your website no longer has any list against which we can refer. It's almost as if PM, someone has deliberately removed these things.

🇬🇧28 This is why I have written such a lengthy note, Mr Johnson. I fear your assistants are hiding the reality from you because I simply can't believe you would send British business into battle so woefully unprepared - the tax implications of getting this wrong are enormous.

🇬🇧29 There is one final area to speak about, and as I approach the 30th tweet, of this short and curtailed summary, I ask that you consider this too. In 2016 many of us trusted you to deliver what I believe has been called a Quid Pro Quo.

🇬🇧30 The Quid was an agreement from us to you, to leave the European Union.
The Pro Quo was some upside in order to do so.
None of us thought all the promises from 2016 would be kept
But we banked on something, anything as an upside.
We still are.

🇬🇧31 It's embarrassing to say this, in public, but I'm now committed to honesty, which I know you'll agree is a rare thing.
There is no upside to be found.
When we dig the statements from people who say unhelpful things like ""no one knows"", there isn't any conceivable upside

🇬🇧32 The first thing we need to contend with is business going away. Again we don't expect you to be across this, it's some of the numbskulls working for you who simply are not being honest with you.
Because of how they have negotiated - we don't get to bank on the transition

🇬🇧33 That means we get a massive downside on not only our EU trade but our trade with the rest of the world.
Any future upside would have to be enormous to pay that off. Imagining that isn't a leap of faith it's an impossible spreadsheet, as Phil might once have said

🇬🇧34 The second thing to do is figure out where the upside comes from. This we can at least constrain - we don't have to imagine new industries, we only need to look at what we had with the EU versus what we could have outside of it

🇬🇧35 What we won't get is better trade deals, despite the claims of some of your colleagues. A relatively small amount of countries outside the EU account for almost all our trade, and they have already confirmed trade deals will be identical or worse than the EU

🇬🇧36 Then someone seems to have forgotten that there are no new countries, so the only net new deals we could get would be countries that the EU has yet to sign a deal with. They've all said no quite firmly PM - remember Mr Fox leaving Australia (oh the irony).

🇬🇧37 For a while, there was a hope we could do something quick and fast with China. In fact, by some estimates, that was 90% of any upside of Brexit that anyone ever calculated. Sadly with recent, shall we say "grumbles", in the relationship that is also off the table

🇬🇧38 This leaves us PM in the invidious position of having guaranteed downsides versus our prior position with the EU, and no opportunities for upside when we compare like for like trade. And trust me, sir, we wish for that to be otherwise. We really do.'

🇬🇧39 In closing a few things in case they were misunderstood. PM. You are regarded as a man with the capacity for hard work, the ability for erudite argument, who has a unique take on the amount of honesty needed for office. You are not comparable with any predecessor.

🇬🇧40 We have concluded that there must be a deception going on. Are your assistants simply dishonest with you? It must just look like YOU are misleading us - but since that would be inconceivable of any other British Prime Minister on a subject of such importance, it is them.

🇬🇧41 For that reason, before it is too late before we find ourselves with many millions of businesses who are unable to be prepared despite advertising claims, we request three simple things.
1. Clarity of Deal Terms
2. Opportunities
3. Time to make the transition

🇬🇧42 We know the risk of any communication on the subject of Brexit is that it is politicised, claimed to be made by one side not for its veracity, but for its politics. This is why we have been scrupulously honest and fact-based. We know you'll agree.

🇬🇧43 In closing Mr Johnson, we'd simply like to thank you.
For all the hard work you do for the nation
For all the planning and strategic thinking on our behalf
And for all the times you placed country over personal ambition
Thank you, sir.