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Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
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30 Oct, 4 tweets, 1 min read
Because the UK government still does not have personnel and infrastructure in place to run a functioning trade border regime with the EU, the UK does not have the means to reciprocally retaliate against French moves to slowroll goods checks on UK exporters
If you don't invest in the personnel and infrastructure to run anything beyond the lightest touch border system, you don't have the means to retaliate against businesses exporting to you from states that use their heavier touch border systems to pressure your exporters
It's like not investing in modern surface to air or anti-ship missiles and then being surprised when a rival state can flatten your positions from a carrier cruising just off your shoreline
🤷‍♂️

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More from @APHClarkson

Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
31 Oct
What UK observers need to take into account is if Paris assumes that coercion is the only way to get UK governments to stick to treaty commitments than the fish issue is a much lower cost dispute for France than it is for the UK.

It's not French supply chains being squeezed here
The UK really does not want to end up in a situation where as with Turkey the French hardline view that a neighbouring state of the EU cannot be trusted and will only stick to commitments if coerced spreads to other EU states that may have been more likely to help the UK out
Using the Northern Ireland Protocol to hit the EU ends up pushing in Ireland a state that could have been the UK's greatest friend in the EU towards France's hawkish approach to handling neighbouring states of the EU.
Read 6 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
28 Oct
Is there a supply backlog or shortage of spare parts and components for key infrastructure equipment in energy, water, transport and tech sectors? If so, how would such supply chain issues affect maintenance, system resilience and reliability of provision to states and customers?
At what point do all those containers piling up in ports, ships backed up unable to unload, production facilities slowing down affect supply chains that are essential for maintenance of power plants, rail systems, internet infrastructure, water systems and so on?
@SamuelMarcLowe @michaeltanchum ?
Read 4 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
27 Oct
US-based economists and economic historians that decry the EU for not emulating US stimulus packages that to a large extent replicate what EU states have been doing for decades
We still get op/eds in American newspapers predicting the decline and fall of the EU because it won't emulate the cash US governments throw at stimulus packages even as the current US government can't even get paid leave legislation through the US Senate.
Read 4 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
27 Oct
There is a pandemic as a socio-political crisis and there is a pandemic as an epidemiological process.

Sometimes the former is perceived by voters and politicians to have ended long before the latter actually plays itself out.
Public and state risk calculus can shift pretty quickly in ways that can severely disorient practitioners and social groups still anchored in crisis discourses
Economists and specific milieus with the Eurozone crisis or the military world and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan come to mind when it comes to being caught out by the speed with which risk calculus and political consensus can shift
Read 7 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
16 Oct
The entire pitch for Brexit in 2016 was that the sovereignty gains in leaving the EU would make the UK more economically prosperous and more politically stable than the EU.

That's the Leave Campaign's benchmark for establishing success or failure.
The way greater sovereignty from the EU became inextricably linked in the Leave Campaign's pitch with greater prosperity in comparison to the EU is one of the reasons why Soft Brexit as a balanced compromise to ensure UK stability became squeezed out of contention after 2016
Also interesting to look back at the Vote Leave manifesto and see what is still highlighted now and what isn't mentioned. A new European institutional architecture assumes a lot about the UK's power and leverage over the EU as well as about EU weakness
voteleavetakecontrol.org/briefing_newde…
Read 8 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
15 Oct
We'll be getting the @BritainPodcast back running soon, but in the meantime 3 episodes that now seem timely in the wake of debate over Britain's foreign and defence policy:

1. With @ToniHaastrup 'How Global is Britain' on UK foreign policy beyond Europe
buzzsprout.com/1611550/881390…
2. With @warmatters aka Matthew Ford on 'The Quest for Global Britain' on the future of Britain's military in the wake of Brexit, Debates over Scotland's future and the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars
buzzsprout.com/1611550/862318…
3. And with @bleddb aka Bleddyn Bowen on 'Global Strategy amidst Uncertain Unity' on the crisis of the British state and the UK government's Integrated Review in foreign and defence policy in geopolitical context
buzzsprout.com/1611550/841368…
Read 6 tweets

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