Thread by @uk_domain_names

Occasionally, the Express has something useful to say about Brexit (even if it puts massive spin on it)...

Here's a key story that hasn't gained attention anywhere else: the UK Government have made over 100,000 changes to imported EU laws.

express.co.uk/news/politics/…

That will presumably have been done, in most cases, without Parliament's knowledge or consent, because the "transcription" mechanism only requires oversight if the changes are deemed significant.

But that's how-long-is-a-piece-of-string territory.

As well as burying all sorts of nasty changes waiting to trip people up (a few examples in the article) this opaque and secretive process makes it harder to unpick the effects of Brexit, because nobody in the world will have any idea of what all those 100,000 changes are.

Incidentally, this is where a lot of the £6.4 billion allocated to Brexit preparations will have been eaten up (certainly didn't go on port infrastructure!)

At the peak, the Civil Service had 20,000+ people working specifically on Brexit.

There is another more long-term consequence to all these changes: if the UK were ever to rejoin the EU, every single one of these changes would have to be unpicked with surgical precision.

So it's effectively sowing the ground with salt.