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Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
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9 Oct, 4 tweets, 2 min read
The TCA already mirror images the Rahmenabkommen the EU wants the Swiss to implement. They come from the same template. But the only way the UK ever gets concessions on the ECJ over NI is if the UK government is viewed as trustworthy by the EU. Frost and Johnson nuked that trust
This gets the problem backwards. A UK government that presented itself as unthreatening and trustworthy would have gotten quite a lot of flexibility to shut it up. The current UK government's confrontational bullshit made EU flexibility impossible to get
If you want flexibility you need trust. Over 5 years a succession of UK governments have blown away trust. Instead of shouting, UK governments could tone down rhetoric and set out what assistance and trust-building measures they could provide the EU if the EU shows flexibility
Make the offer on building shared European strategic autonomy as a fallback in case the US ends up in serious trouble that May should have made 5 years ago

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Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
11 Oct
If you're a government that thinks blaming global trends for a crisis you've exacerbated by your own decisions gets you out of trouble then you need to present voters with a set of policy solutions that protects their quality of life from the impact of those global trends
This is the hole in the logic presented by those who have internalised the myth of Boris among those who adore or despise him.

If he blames something else to deflect from Brexit, then voters will demand he protect them from that something else
Erdogan rose promising stability and prosperity to a base that felt it had been cut out from the gains of Turkish economic development. He can deflect as much as he likes, but if he runs out of resources to provide patronage to his base he is in trouble.
Read 4 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
11 Oct
A lot of people in English-language twitter need to clock that faced with the internal rule of law crisis, energy prices, Sahel/Med stability and really worrying signals from the Chinese economy, Brexit is not the main event for anyone in the EU apart from Ireland and France
Neighbouring states are effectively files handled by those EU states who are most affected by them. With Libya for example it is France and Italy (often with many rows between the two). Turkey involves conflicting interests between Greece, France, Italy, Germany and Bulgaria.
The UK file is primarily in the hands of Ireland, with a lot of interest from France and then involvement over specific issues from Netherlands, Belgium and Spain. If the UK wants stable relations with the EU, it needs Dublin's goodwill.
Read 5 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
10 Oct
Again, a closer look at demographic and income data from EU East European states from 2010 onwards signalled that this recruitment pool for the NHS as with all sectors was going to shrink anyway. Especially since East Europeans didn't just go to the UK. Brexit just accelerated it
Brexit needlessly exacerbated labour market shifts that could have been handled with less of a sudden shock. But by the late 2020s UK state and business would still have faced a world where labour market gaps would have to be filled with non-EU workers
So whether Freedom of Movement stayed in place or not, the UK would still have needed something like the new NHS accelerated visa scheme for healthcare workers to get non-EU migrants it needed as EU migrant numbers declined. It's a structural problem the UK shares with EU states
Read 4 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
9 Oct
The notion that after resigning Kurz can from the background easily keep all kinds of competing factions in the ÖVP in check that tolerated his delusions of grandeur because he won them elections seems a bit ropey
Kurz built his entire power structure in the ÖVP on the promise that he could make it the dominant force in Austrian politics and finally give party grandees the dominant role in controlling state patronage in a more lasting way than Schüssel ever managed.
But Austria is a federal political system, and in each Land every party, especially the ÖVP, has its own distinct power structure with party barons that need to be kept happy. If Kurz can't reliably provide electoral gains and patronage for them, he is toast
Read 5 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
9 Oct
Again, Lebanon is through the sea border with Cyprus a neighbouring state of the EU. A crisis there has immediate knock on effects on the EU system. Beyond humanitarian concerns it is in the EU's self-interest to focus on humanitarian relief there
On top of established MFF commitments the EU provides €32 million in response to the Beirut blast and a more recent extra €50 million for Syria crisis response and refugee aid as well as substantial COVID assistance.
But now things are so bad in Lebanon that this may need much higher level EUCO and Commission attention for a more wide-ranging humanitarian mission. Forcing the kind of reforms proposed at the CEDRE conference may have to be a matter for after the worst has been averted
Read 4 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
7 Oct
"They didn't have as much immigration as we did to begin with" and this is where I find how history of European migration in UK debate is portrayed as only starting with CEE FoM in 2004 distorts analysis. Germany had big waves of Eastern European migration from 1989 onwards
The reason Germany and quite a few other West European EU states opted for the 7 year full FoM delay after CEE accession in 2004 was exactly because they had absorbed so much East European migration in the 1990s and early 00s even without Freedom of Movement
The great East European wave of migration including Ukraine, Serbia, Albania and other non-EU states started in the late 1980s before Poland and other CEE states joined the EU. And because of demographic and income trends it started to ebb even as the UK voted to leave the EU
Read 7 tweets

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