Dominic Cummings blog. The policy is to leave the Single Market and the Customs Union. Yet no preparation has been done or will be done to implement this policy or manage its consequences. Only conclusion to be drawn is this policy cannot be carried out. dominiccummings.com/2018/05/23/on-… 
What a botched job. Government has, so far, rejected the EEA, rejected the idea of an Association Agreement, and insists on removing itself from all apparatus of economic integration.
Having rejected several viable options & come up with no others, it is being forced into a scenario worse than any of those options. First the customs union, then a regulatory union attached - the transition status is thus permanent. Stupid.
If we negotiated a deep trade agreement as part of an association agreement we'd be building a far better partnership. It would begin with regulatory alignment & could include consultative bodies & committees to help shape the rules.
It would be managed by an institutional framework, with regulatory divergence overseen by market surveillance authority & disputes settled in joint Anglo-Euro court.
A customs agreement could in effect be a partial customs union covering all necessary areas, if in time the technology develops to further facilitate customs & advances are made to digitise customs (as is direction of travel) we could adapt the agreement.
Further attachments include a comprehensive security agreement (including Galileo), cooperation across science & academia and all the rest - deep and special partnership.
Immigration a sticking point perhaps, depends if EU insists on free movement of people or whether it will accept a liberal migration regime that falls short of this (and will this come with penalties)
EU does compromise when it needs to in special cases, and the importance of the EU-UK relationship & the difficult issue of Northern Ireland, is very special case.
unroll @threadreaderapp
