1/Brexit is a romantic fiction. It is this romance of the High Seas which appealed to many intelligent Leavers. In a world of interdependence it was always a colosssly stupid idea.
2/The romance will be buried under a ton of red tape & administrative processes. Romantic Leavers never understood that Brexit had to be a long ADMINISTRATIVE process as well as a political endeavour. This is the reason it will fail. "Breaking the shackles" in a big leap to "
3/"freedom" was appealing. It was also false.We were free & powerful. As shown by what is now happening for financial services, we are now considerably less powerful & less free. And at the end of the process we will be back in the SM in fact if not in name
4/ but not necessarily in the EU ( do with far less say) as this would require a new referendum that few politicians will have any appetite for. A colossal waste of time. Let's hope it has at least some educational value. The UK will remain firmly anchored to the Continent
5/On foreign affairs it will "strike out on its own" initially but the law of gravity & EU pressures will lead it to join the EU on big strategic issues. As a committed European, I am much reassured. Remainers, do not despair. We will be back. In fact we are not even leaving.

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More from @mafevema

30 Dec
Yesterday I spent time (&far too many tweets) trying to defend @Keir_Starmer 's position in a Guardian article which angered & disappointed many who, like me, are passionate pro-Europeans. I will try to explain why (thread)
Starmer is like me a lawyer, not a trade specialist but he obviously took advice. He is also a committed pro-European. As a lawyer when looking at the TCA, I saw all the predicted negatives but also enormous potential for a pro-EU government which results from the
institutional structure of the deal. The TCA sets up 19 specialised committees (including on Customs Cooperation, SPS, Technical Barriers to Trade) dominated by an all powerful 50/50 Partnership Council (PC) which takes binding decisions with immediate direct effect by agreement.
Read 14 tweets
30 Dec
An excellent thread from an expert of the ecosystem for the UK car industry. I have been doing many cotporate deals in the automotive & engineering sectors of the Midlands
Every word in the thread is true. Note: it was analysed & predicted by excellent reports notably from the UK Trade Observatory. Yet many of those prosperous aging mid size companies owners of the Midlands voted Leave. I emailed the reports to clients to try to warn them.
They shrugged. I hope the ecosystem can withstand the impact of this deal until a Labour government wins power. Many issues can be improved on in this deal without dramas or Parliamentary votes.
Read 4 tweets
30 Dec
Many wise fishermen in Brixham. Surprisingly realistic & far from the cliches
theguardian.com/politics/2020/…
“I thought it was a bit harsh to try to cut the rest of Europe off from our fish completely,” he said. “To be honest we don’t have the fleet to catch all the fish. If they suddenly said: ‘All the fish is yours’, actually we don’t have anything to catch it with.”
There’s never been much help for the fishing industry in the UK compared to other countries where their governments back them, give them grants for new boats,” he said. “That’s why our fleet is second-hand Dutch and Belgian boats."
Read 6 tweets
29 Dec
I am so fed up with this repeated Brexiters' lie that "the EU sent Cameron packing" that I did this thread to bookmark for future reference This is what Cameron secured:
1. Sovereignty:
- commitment to exempt Britain from "ever closer union" to be written into the treaties, a very big deal for the EU
-inclusion of a new "red-card" mechanism. If 55% of national parliaments agreed, they could effectively block or veto a commission proposal.
2. Migrants & Welfare
-four-year "emergency brake" on in-work benefits
- child benefit amount linked to the cost of living in the countries where the children live.
-EU migrants are banned from claiming jobseeker's allowance for three months.
Read 6 tweets
29 Dec
FGS @UKLabour stop the childish quarrels Behave like responsible adults. @labourlewis @BenBradshaw, @RichardGCorbett If is hardly a surprise that the TCA is sub-standard. It was know it was taking us out of FoM, the SL & CU. Why act surprised? (thread)
2/This meant necessarily only basic provisions for services& minimal facilitation for trade in goods. Within those constraints, there is a lot to build upon in this deal. The EU had tied the UK into multiple processes which will force collaboration (as on the NI Committee)
Read 8 tweets
28 Dec
Right-wingers claimed only 377 persons under the age of 60 & without a pre-existing condition died of Covid. Guess what: it was a lie 👇
In fact the real number is above 7000.The difference is explained by how "pre- existing condition" is defined for the purpose of the statistics. And here it is.
A broken arm, psoriasis, migraine, depressive episode, are all treated as "pre-existing conditions . This is a shocking perversion of statistics which should be trustworthy
Read 4 tweets

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