.@DavidGHFrost appeared before @TomTugendhat & @CommonsForeign yesterday, together with one of his most senior civil servants, the Director-General of the EU Secretariat in the Cabinet Office. You don’t need a body-language expert in order to understand how it went. /1.
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P.S. Anyone who thinks these are uncharacteristic of the session of a whole is welcome to watch it in full, here👇
President Biden’s visit, & the newspaper front pages which accompany it (next tweet), bring into sharp focus the realities of current geopolitical power 👇
The Chancellor, PM & even the Bank Governor can, if they wish, propagate the fiction that UK govt deficit spending in GB£ creates “debt” which needs to be “paid back”; that they’re not in complete control of the interest rate; that a necessary requirement for controlling …/1.
… inflation is interest rate rises; & that huge, non-inflationary deficit spending is not only entirely available to them but also essential, if we’re to look after the well-being & prosperity of the UK population.
They can pretend all that. /2.
But they’d be dissembling. Or just plain wrong. Take your pick.
That in turn throws into question whether the current legal & constitutional arrangements represent the settled “will of the people” in Scotland.
And, if they don’t, whether they’re sustainable. /2.
Brexit, the subsequent shift toward greater support for Scottish independence, the Scottish parliamentary majority achieved ob 6 May for an independence referendum, & the local rebellion against Home Office officials in Glasgow, all suggest not. /3.
Belarus today used its security agencies and a military fighter jet forcibly to seize an EU civilian airliner flying between two EU/ NATO capitals & abduct one of the passengers. /1.
The threat of devastating, fatal military force against the airliner is obvious & undeniable. (If you don’t believe me, ask any civilian pilot what the calculus is when faced with such a situation). /2.
The abducted passenger is threatened with extrajudicial execution. (Belarus has no credible judicial process). /3.
There are many & varied, often highly debatable, claims as to what Brexit’s “about”.
One point, at least, is beyond any reasonable challenge.
Brexit is & always has been necessarily, unavoidably about Ireland. /2.
The legal & political realities are clear. The only workable, sustainable Brexit for the UK of Great Britain & Northern Ireland is one in which it remains in (or now rejoins) the EU customs union & single market. Or substantially identical arrangements. All else is hot air. /3.