Thread by @DmitryOpines

Every week it gets harder to achieve the zen state required to separate legitimate underlying trade issues in something like the Northern Ireland Protocol from the nonsense politicians say, and have said, about them every time political points could be scored.

The NIP isn't flawless, and there are genuine grounds for complaint and concern...

... but fuck me is it hard to hear that from the people who declared it to be the single greatest negotiating accomplishment in human history, delivered by Johnson in spite of expert naysayers.

Experts: "The border has to go somewhere, and there are trade offs in terms of friction if you want to leave the EU SM/CU and not have a border on the island."

May's Team: "Yup."

Johnson's Team Then: "Fuck you nerds, no there aren't."

Now: "Oh noes. Le frictions! But how?!"

This is my article on it from October 24th 2019.

October. 2019.

I don't even claim to be a Superforecaster, and I didn't retroactively edit this blog yesterday.

explaintrade.com/articles/2019/…

This is paragraph one of the Prime Minister's letter at the start of the new NIP Command Paper.

Literally the second sentence is a brag about how everyone said it couldn't be done.

The. Second. Sentence.

Anyway, that's my rant.

If you want to watch me briefly finding that zen state, I talked about at the top long enough to discuss how the protocol works now, and what the Command Paper proposes, the video is here: