How long will it take for the anger directed at those who warned of the impact of a hard Brexit to be directed instead at those who conned people into voting for it in the first place?
No amount of “believing more in Britain” is going to change the future economic reality. What will change that reality is for those of us who once argued for a rethink on Brexit now to provide an actual option people can vote for.
That option needs to be clear, inspirational and ultimately lead to Britain rejoining the EU. #RejoinEU
There aren’t any half-measures here. Being part of the EU single market/customs union and unable to influence its rules would be rightly unacceptable to the British people. Being out of the EU entirely means missing out on a lot for dubious gain, as we’re starting to see...
We need to offer a path ahead that everyone can get behind - both remain voters and the growing number of people who are realising they were had by Tory Vote Leave lies
I can’t help but think we’re like Leeds Utd here - a great club, once a power in European football. Despite two painful relegations, its committed fans never stopped believing in the club whilst it overcame significant internal challenges & slowly worked its way back to success.
Leeds Utd, a club with a rich history, has managed to turn around its situation & become a top team again. Europe might beckon once more. That’s what I now want for Britain - to get back to the Champions League! I just hope in the case of Britain it doesn’t take 20 years to do so
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This is a bad #Brexit deal done by bad people in a bad way. It doesn’t have the public’s explicit informed consent. It bears little relation to Vote Leave’s promises in 2016. I couldn’t vote for it
Of course we must now move forward as a country and, like many, I am fed up with the Brexit process. But that makes it all the more important to call out what has happened: Britons have been misled by bad people into making the greatest strategic error in our modern history
We must learn. The public was had and elected people whose mismanagement of #COVID19 led to the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands; who screwed our country for a generation; & cornered us with lies, manipulation, bullying & brinkmanship. Such people shouldn’t be in power
This is pure revisionism, untrue and a dangerous, divisive reinvention of recent history that will stop our country from recovering. I was intimately involved in these events and will try to explain....
Let’s put aside for a moment the rights and wrongs of a ‘soft’ Brexit. (Wrong mainly because no one voted for it in the 2016 referendum; it literally wasn’t on the ballot paper.)
There was a fleeting opportunity for a soft Brexit in 2016 *if* the-then PM had chosen to make delivering Brexit a cross-party endeavour. This is what she should have done on an issue of such strategic national importance, and I told her so at the time.
POST-BREXIT: Kupchan (Biden Foreign Policy Adviser) - “The bottom line is that Brexit is an act of self-isolation. Britain (is) no longer the bridge to Europe it (has) been. The UK is going to have to figure out how to make itself relevant at a time when it is inwardly focussed”.
POST-SUEZ: Acheson (US Sec of State) - Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role. The attempt to play a separate power role — that is, a role apart from Europe, a role based on a ‘special relationship’ with the United States, a role based on being head of a...
....’commonwealth’ which has no political structure, or unity, or strength — this role is about played out.” A senior adviser to the President-Elect of our closest ally indicates we’re no further forward in 2020 in determining an effective role in the world than we were in 1962.
This Govt is appallingly, consistently inept. By not taking obvious decisions in Jan/Feb it has already unnecessarily killed tens of thousands & is destroying our economy...now we’ve got this idiotic #StayAlert message. It is hard to stress enough: IT DIDN’T HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS
No one with half a brain could read about #ExerciseCygnus (based on a relatively mild ‘flu for which a vaccine would have been available quickly) & *not* conclude that we were hideously unprepared for the more virulent and not-yet-treatable #COVID19theguardian.com/world/2020/may…
In these circumstances, ANY half decently-motivated Government that was reasonably balanced would put measures in place early to contain the virus and protect people, particularly those most at risk, while working for a global solution (we won’t be safe unless everyone is).
This isn’t accurate. In January, what were our ventilator and testing capacities? When did @MattHancock first read the Exercise Cygnus report from 2016? How can he claim we were one of the best prepared? Compared to who? We knew of #COVID19 threat in January. Why decision delays?
And here are a few other questions which should be asked at the #COVID19 briefing this afternoon - and repeatedly until we get honest and satisfactory answers.....
Why did the Govt at the time of Exercise Cygnus choose not to publish the final report, or at least share it with key partners? How could highlighting the ventilator shortage in the NHS acute sector not be in the national interest? It would have given us time to prepare
We could have been ready for #COVID19. That’s what makes me so angry about this Government’s mishandling of this pandemic....1/
In late 2016, I took part in a government exercise to test how we’d deal with a pandemic when I was at @MoJGovUK. It was called Ex Cygnus. @cabinetofficeuk was in charge of running it and acting on the conclusions @NickFerrariLBClbc.co.uk/radio/presente… ...2/
This was a well-developed 3-day exercise. Ministers had to decide what to do as the overwhelming scale of the pandemic became apparent. (NB in contrast to #COVID19, there was a treatment for, and vaccine against, this virus; yet the realities & outcomes were still sobering) 3/