And the abuse of statistics continues. This report discredits itself even before its release by publishing a 500 bn windfall that is based on what? (short thread) dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1…
Sophisticated modelling? Daring plans?
No. Calculating what UK exports would be if exports/person in the UK would match Germany's.
It's difficult to express where to start with how silly this is. Of course, Germany's access to the internal market stands out - but even if this report were a rejoin advocacy report the comparison would be silly.
What astonishes me is that those who felt the need to leave the EU because it was not pragmatic enough have abandoned all pragmatism in favour of 100% ideology. /1
Rejecting all simplifications because they require some form of regulatory alignment - even in areas where it is unlikely the population actually wants to change the rules. /2
And so we will have beef hormone debates, chlorine chicken debates, workers‘ rights debates, environmental standards debate, animal rights debates etc etc etc /3
The attitude towards "immigration" seems to be worse than the attitude towards "allowing schoolkids to come" "allowing Romanian fruit-pickers to work" "allowing foreign butchers to work" "allowing truck drivers from abroad to work" /2
The problem thus is an image problem. The imaginary average immigrant is quite different from the real average immigrant.
As it‘s getting a bit convoluted: the Protocol as the approach of the two parties to find a special solution for NI provides for two provisions that people are currently referring to quite a bit (short thread)
First of all Art. 16. Art. 16 provides for safeguards under certain conditions, requiring a specific procedure (Annex 7). Art. 16 has not been invoked here (and of course the procedures for invocation have not been followed). Also: Mr. Poots would not be the right person to do so
The WA is a treaty between the UK and the EU, the invocation of Art. 16 is a matter for the UK.
HMG‘s view on the powers of NI is truly interesting. The lesson for foreign partners: you have to negotiate with devolved executives, not Westminster, if you want your agreement to be complied with.
Not sure that‘s the message HMG wants to send.
Foreign affairs powers of constituent states are not entirely unknown. US state - though they largely lack them in theory - negotiate forms of agreements all the time. So do German Länder.
It‘s incredibly ironic that the logical consequence of a step taken to bring NI closer to GB would be to start treating NI as entirely separate from Westminster.
And I would add another component here: while I do not think the US was treated unfairly, that also does not quite matter. The thing is that the US thought of trade remedies as their weapon of choice. And the need for that weapon has grown rather than declined.
So while it encountered legal limits for its tool of choice it at the same time regarded it as ever more necessary, requiring an ever larger (and problematic) scale.