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Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡

7 Dec, 10 tweets, 4 min read

I honestly thought John Redwood was deliberately lying about tariffs all the time to further his agenda.

But it's become clear he doesn't understand how they work at all. This is the contribution he made *in Parliament* on 12 October 2016.
hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2016-1… #hansard

In case you're confused: tariffs are paid by IMPORTERS not exporters.

So if we're talking about food coming from the EU, the tariffs would be paid by Tesco, Asda, Sainsburys etc.

But of course they will turn right around and get that extra cost back from the British public.

Could such ignorance be excused in 2016?

Not really, no. Not if you're a prominent MP always ready to give your opinion to the waiting media. But let's be incredibly charitable, and say "maybe".

Can such ignorance still be excused in 2020? Not on your life!

But hold on a minute, couldn't his 2016 comment just be a one-off brainfart?

Hmm... Good question. Here he is in March 2017.
hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2017-0… #hansard

Gets worse. By September 2017, he seemed to understand that tariffs are a stealth tax, and his argument became more and more about taking that money off UK consumers then somehow giving it straight back to them again (something the WTO doesn't allow).
hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2017-0…

(Worth pointing out that, even if the rules allowed the money collected from tariffs to be handed back to the people, there's always massive drag in tax collection.

In other words, when you collect £1 of tax and distribute it, there's far less than £1 available to distribute.)

By 2019, he was fully on board with the holed-below-the-waterline "loadsa tariffs mean buckets of juicy money to spend" narrative. (No highlights, because the whole thing is a tragic gem.)
hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2019-0… #hansard

In all that time (and in more recent statements on Twitter and elsewhere) he's never quite 'fessed up to the whole truth, because that would involve stating that "Brexit will make UK consumers poorer" which of course would never do. But he's skirting closer to not not saying it!

Finally, scroll back up a bit. Take your time. See where he admits tariffs will cost UK consumers £12 billion a year (not in exactly those words, but easy to interpret what he did say). 🥁

But EU membership only cost £9 billion, and came with a bucketload of benefits.

Huh. 🤔

Incidentally, I mocked him a while ago, saying he really should have read my book "Slaying Brexit Unicorns".

But after excavating Hansard, I realise that wasn't a joke at all. He really *should* read it. The quality of discourse would go up dramatically.
amazon.co.uk/Slaying-Brexit…

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More from @uk_domain_names

Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡

@uk_domain_names

9 Dec

Brexit stockpile ✅ (thanks to an elusive delivery slot from Tesco).

It won't be gourmet fare - no Come Dine With Me - or particularly healthy, but we won't have to shop for food at the very least during January, if chaos hits.

(It's all long-life stuff we would use anyway...)

Lots of pasta, tinned tomatoes and corn, frozen bags of vegetables, various sauces, etc. Think bland, but liveable...

If there are no issues, we can whittle stocks down over the course of 2021 around regular shops.

And if food prices go up sharply, we've saved money - even if there are no shortages in the end.

Win-win.

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Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡

@uk_domain_names

8 Dec

For all their wild boasts about the stellar future that awaits the UK outside of the EU, Brexiters have gone very, very quiet about the opportunity to reduce red tape (which was a key strand of the argument at referendum time).

Red tape grows under Brexit like Japanese knotweed!

In fact, about the only Tory MP I could find still tooting the red tape pipe in recent months was Liz Truss, and even then only in the context of trade agreements, not Brexit itself.

Ok, ok, there are also a few *idiots* exalting Brexit as a red tape destroyer...

Step a few months further back in time, and the issue of red tape becomes pretty much a one woman show. And that woman is Liz Truss...

Rarely has a country been so poorly served by their global representative, even in a VERY crowded field.

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Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡

@uk_domain_names

8 Dec

Seems a good time to bring up something I've talked about before:

- I want Brexit to succeed.
- I fully expect Brexit to fail.

Those two statements are NOT incompatible. Everything I have learned about Brexit tells me it WILL be a disaster.

But of course I *want* it not to be!

Why would I not? I live in the UK. Many of my friends and family do too. Others live in the EU. We're all going to get hurt by Brexit, just like you will.

Only an idiot would put sticking one in the eye of Leavers so far up the priority list they'd cheer on a Brexit disaster.

That's not the same as staying silent. Not by a country mile.

Each failure of Brexit should be highlighted, as loudly as possible. Those who brought about this disaster must own it. Nobody should be under any illusion about what happened.

Next time, experts may have a chance.

Read 4 tweets

Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡

@uk_domain_names

8 Dec

The EU have just said they're willing to continue Brexit negotiations in 2021 on their existing negotiating mandate, even after the no-deal situation comes into force.

(From their POV this is the most logical move. They know no-deal makes the UK's weak hand much, much weaker.)

Tories might see the prospect positively:
1. All but the most headbangery know that *eventually* there has to be a deal
2. No-deal delivers the diamond-hard Brexit chum the right-wing sharks are desperate for
3. Every small gain in a deal is a "win" because starting from NOTHING

Of course it crashes the economy and the pound, throws businesses further under a heavier bus, and forces firms to activate every worst-case contingency plan.

But all that may be seen as secondary to the chance to give the troublesome wing of the Tory party the no-deal it lusts.

Read 4 tweets

Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡

@uk_domain_names

8 Dec

Analysis of the impossible Brexit choice facing Labour [THREAD]

Labour's dilemma stems from its past stances on the matter, and was already set in stone when Keir Starmer took over.

Jeremy Corbyn was leader every second from before the referendum until after the UK left the EU.

Boris Johnson's deal will be damaging for the UK. No doubt about it. It will fail to meet Labour's 6 tests. It will harm the life chances of the entire population and impoverish millions.

But no-deal is indisputably even worse.

So what happens if there's a vote on a deal?

There will only ever be two options. Limited time and political maths mean there won't ever be a *different* deal instead.

So the choices are:
- vote for the deal: no matter what excuses or qualifiers are uttered beforehand, the Tories & RW media will make Labour co-own Brexit.

Read 8 tweets

Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡

@uk_domain_names

8 Dec

Here's the most 2020 way the next few days can play out...
1. Boris Johnson goes to Brussels and "beats" the EU. He returns clutching the (thin) deal that couldn't be done. "Hail the conquering hero" adulation from RW press.
2. Labour whips in favour of a deal and co-owns Brexit.

First doses of the vaccine distributed (genuine good news story) and the impossible Brexit deal secured, all in the space of 48 hours or so.

There won't be space in these isles for Boris Johnson's ego after that, especially when the pet media are finished with him.

🤦‍♂️🤮

Come 1 January most people will have moved on, distracted by Christmas bubbling and arrangements for celebrating or not celebrating the New Year.

So when Brexit problems hit, they will be shrugged off with a "temporary teething troubles". And enough people will buy that lie.

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