Thread by @WomaninHavana

“It was pretty clear we had to be complicit in the fallacy that these things could just work, or risk losing any influence we might have.”

This line, from a CEO, sums up the last 4+ years of May & Johnson’s Brexit.

This brilliant #longread undoes it all. on.ft.com/3c0vhPX

Imagine any CEO or company board reaction to news that financial analysis had not been carried out for fear of what it might reveal.

Then transpose to a govt, acting against the economic interests of its own people to maintain the fiction that if we just believe hard enough...

Johnson led Brexit, he chose its parameters, he defined them by the obsessive ideology of sovereignty over all else, and he chose not to extend time to at least try to improve on the inevitable terms dictated by his choices.

The cries of freedom will ring very hollow.

As one Brexit cliché has replaced another, #GlobalBritain pursued a risible “madman” strategy to break international law. Remember that?

The effects will linger, the exceptionalist but short-sighted instincts now playing out again in a pointless row over EU diplomatic status.

For all this harm - not just to the economy, but to our cultural life, ease of movement,choices, reputation, to actual lives - one might expect Johnson, Gove & co to have an actual plan. A lucid, food-on-the-table, real life plan for what to do with all this sovereignty.

Shrugs.

Thanks to the ever-brilliant @pmdfoster, alongside @GeorgeWParker & Sam Fleming and @FTMag for this excellent and insightful #longread.