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Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡 Profile picture
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21 Sep, 11 tweets, 5 min read
September 2021: "'I want a good deal not a quick deal': Boris Johnson dampens hope of signing US trade agreement any time soon saying he barely knows Joe Biden and American negotiators are 'ruthless'"
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1…

How did we arrive at this sorry pass? Let's see...
It's a tale of empty promises and two world-class bloviators blowing hot air at each other.

(You can follow the whole story in this thread.)

We begin with a ludicrous brag...

January 2017: "Brexit: UK first in line for US trade deal, says Boris Johnson"
scotsman.com/news/politics/…
July 2019: "Boris Johnson aims to strike US trade deal as first act after becoming PM in bid to mend bridges with Trump"
thesun.co.uk/news/9508614/b…

August 2019: "Trump meets with [Boris Johnson], promises 'very big trade deal' between US, UK after Brexit"
foxnews.com/politics/trump…
September 2019: "Boris Johnson and Donald Trump agree to strike UK-US trade deal by July 2020"
thesun.co.uk/news/9981611/j…

December 2019: "Donald Trump says US will strike massive new trade deal with Britain after Brexit"
thesun.co.uk/news/10543524/…
January 2020: "Trump's 'massive' U.S.-UK trade deal faces big hurdles"
reuters.com/article/us-usa…

March 2020: "About That Much Vaunted U.S.-U.K. Trade Deal? Maybe Not Now"
nytimes.com/2020/03/02/wor…
July 2020: "Post-Brexit talks latest: UK abandons hope of US trade deal by end of year"
inews.co.uk/news/brexit/po…

October 2020: "Britain’s hopes of a US trade deal will be shattered if Joe Biden becomes president, MPs warn"
thesun.co.uk/news/12899583/…
November 2020: "Boris Johnson admits trade deal with US under Biden will not be a 'pushover'"
independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…

January 2021: "Britain's hopes of a quick trade deal with US fade"
ft.com/content/c26c55…
February 2021: "US dashes Boris Johnson's hopes of quick post-Brexit trade deal by announcing 'review' of talks"
independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…

March 2021: "U.K.-U.S. Trade Deal Is Likely Years Away as Biden Shifts Focus"
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
July 2021: "Liz Truss reportedly thinks UK-US trade deal before 2023 is unlikely"
cityam.com/liz-truss-repo…

August 2021: "Brexit nightmare: Joe Biden risks 'derailing' US trade deal talks in blow to Boris Johnson"
express.co.uk/news/uk/148296…
And there you have it. A deal was never going to happen, and certainly not in the timeframe Boris Johnson had suggested it would (you'll notice the deadlines slipped... a lot).

So today's comment that it's unlike to happen soon is nothing more than a statement of the obvious.
In other words, all the tabloid headlines about "hopes of a quick trade deal are fading" are pure guff.

There were never such hopes. Not in our reality. The US deal has been dead-parrot-dead for years, despite anonymous Government sources whispering to their media chums.

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More from @uk_domain_names

Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡 Profile picture
22 Sep
Liz Truss picks a photo of an unmasked Boris Johnson to distribute.

Strange sort of choice to deliberately highlight the selfishness of your boss at the very highest diplomatic levels, unless you're after his job.

Mind you, from a different angle, it's much, much worse... ImageImage
And then there's this... Image
And then there's this...
Read 4 tweets
Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡 Profile picture
21 Sep
The US, Canada and Mexico have a trade agreement, the USMCA, in place since mid-2020.

Some jokers in Government think it would be a clever wheeze to piggyback on it, even though it covers 3 adjacent nations and we're thousands of miles away, on the far side of an ocean.
Context:

The US's biggest and second biggest trading partners are Mexico and Canada. The UK is 7th (appropriate, since we do less than 1/6th of the trade either Mexico or Canada do with the US).
census.gov/foreign-trade/…
It's also worth looking through the reams of conditions baked into the USMCA deal. There are countless issues on which the UK stands to lose out, if we were to enter the deal on the same terms.

The webpage below helpfully breaks them down by area.
ustr.gov/trade-agreemen…
Read 4 tweets
Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡 Profile picture
20 Sep
THREAD...

Keir Starmer should say this:

"Brexit isn't working. The evidence is all around us.

[Include 6-7 examples here.]

I acknowledge that Labour voted for the Tories' oven-ready deal. At the time it was the only option when faced with the unthinkable horror of no deal."
"So it was with enormous reluctance that the Labour party supported the deal on the table to avert even greater disaster.

At the time, we said we would hold Boris Johnson accountable for the deal he negotiated. We have monitored events since Brexit closely as they unfolded."
That reckoning is now due. We can no longer sit by and watch damage from Brexit continue to accumulate and worsen, with no prospect of an end in sight.

So long as Brexit endures, things won't - they can't - get better.

Our lived experience of the last 9 months shows us that."
Read 4 tweets
Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡 Profile picture
20 Sep
"British ‘baby shortage’ could lead to economic decline, says thinktank

Social Market Foundation suggests measures including better childcare provision to increase birthrate"

Logic is not enough young people to support old people. But if more are born... theguardian.com/money/2021/sep…
Pensions have always been a kind of ponzi scheme, with the later arrivals doing less well.

Perhaps inevitably, given that, when they were first introduced, the initial recipients couldn't have built up an entitlement.

But over time they've meant the young paying for the old.
One solution is to keep signing more people up to the scheme, aka "having children". But those children will need pensions in turn, and so on forever.

A different solution would be to improve the productivity of work, such that it takes fewer people of working age per pension.
Read 4 tweets
Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡 Profile picture
19 Sep
Here's what Keir Starmer should say (in more polished form):

"The Tories had 9 months to get Brexit done. Instead we have food shortages, crops rotting in fields, the highest energy prices in Europe, gaps on shelves and the hospitality sector on its knees. Brexit isn't working."
If he lists enough specific examples of stuff that Brexit broke, it should be obvious to wavering voters and to those not yet irredeemably lost to the Tories that he's adjusting Labour's position on Brexit BECAUSE it has been proven not to work.

Pragmatism not betrayal.
Something changed recently...

Many large, household name firms are now willing to explicitly name Brexit as the cause of their problems - something they've been reluctant to do until now because it antagonises a portion of their customer base.

Labour could amplify their voices.
Read 4 tweets
Edwin Hayward 🦄 🗡 Profile picture
16 Sep
Did you know that the new Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan is a keen climate change denier? Dangerous, given the key importance of environmental issues in trade deals.

She's posted quite an eye-opening series of tweets over the years. Let's step through them all in order...
Ok, we're up to 2012. Let's keep going...
Now we've reached 2013. She's not run out of steam yet...
Read 12 tweets

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