This evening in Germany, David Davis has demonstrated a frankly humiliating misunderstanding of even the basics of the EU.
A quick thread.
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A quick thread.
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Firstly, even if somehow Angela Merkel were scared that the German economy could be crippled by, er, not being able to export freely to a smaller country like the UK, she cannot intervene to offer the UK a special deal. No one can.
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Let us repeat: the EU is the Single Market and the Single Market is the EU.
Let us also repeat: the Single Market is a market of *rules*. This is the fundamental point David Davis has still failed to grasp.
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Let us also repeat: the Single Market is a market of *rules*. This is the fundamental point David Davis has still failed to grasp.
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For that reason, participation in the Single Market by any non-EU State is determined by which rules that State is willing to adopt.
And that the end of it.
(Norway adopts nearly all of them, for example; Moldova just a few.)
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And that the end of it.
(Norway adopts nearly all of them, for example; Moldova just a few.)
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David Davis therefore still hasn’t grasped that this negotiation is not “We give a bit, you give a bit”.
It is essentially “Here are the rules of the Single Market; tell us which ones you no longer wish to apply and that will determine your level of participation in it.”
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It is essentially “Here are the rules of the Single Market; tell us which ones you no longer wish to apply and that will determine your level of participation in it.”
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This really should be obvious. How otherwise could a 27/28-member bloc function if it did not have *rules*? And those rules cannot be amended other than with the support of the whole bloc.
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This is all to leave quite aside that David Davis vastly overstates the UK’s economic importance. Germany sells many multiples more cars in China and the US, for example. That is a basic matter of fact.
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UK really should have worked out by now, more than halfway between Referendum Day and Brexit Day, that this whole “They’ll bend to our will” stuff is a *myth*.
It can’t happen - and wouldn’t, even if it could.
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It can’t happen - and wouldn’t, even if it could.
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And for any UK Minister to go anywhere else and tell the locals not to put “politics before prosperity” is, right now, to set a new world record in gross hypocrisy.
For that is precisely and embarrassingly what the UK alone is doing with #Brexit.
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For that is precisely and embarrassingly what the UK alone is doing with #Brexit.
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David Davis’ call for co-operation in the interests of mutual prosperity was met with an obvious first question from a German journalist.
“If that is what you want, why are you leaving?”
Quite.
10/10
“If that is what you want, why are you leaving?”
Quite.
10/10
