The Retained EU Law Bill is being championed by the same people who argued for a 'no deal' Brexit, who said that leaving would be 'simple', that negotiations would be easy & we held all the cards.

They continue to be wrong with great confidence and arrogance. Utterly reckless. These same people pushed to make the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement as thin as possible - the result being reduced trade and investment, a smaller and poorer economy. The @CER_EU estimates that UK GDP is 5.5% smaller because of how Brexit has been implemented.

I imagine a lot of people who say this would be more than happy to, say, bow to someone in Japan out of respect, because it’s not their own culture and therefore they don’t instinctively loathe it To veryone making the same point:

Maybe Japan is an imperfect example then, you could easily take deferential customs from any country instead to make the same point, and I think it would stand. It's mostly a manifestation of the instinct to criticse their own country.

So there has been no significant progress in UK/EU Brexit negotiations.

SHOCK.

Senior politicians & civil servants all focused on the global pandemic. People are dying. Economies are collapsing.

Here's why we MUST extend the #Brexit transition period.

THREAD BREXIT WAS DONE ON THE 31ST JANUARY. IT’S OVER. Stop fighting the old war now & think about the health and economic security of the nation amidst this pandemic. BREXIT. IS. DONE.

Why did I support and vote for Brexit?

THREAD.

RT

#Brexit #BrexitVote I supported Leave for a variety of reasons. I didn't think the UK fit well into the EU. Didn't think our membership was sustainable. Believed it blighted our political debate. Thought consistent public scepticism & apathy to EU elections was part of this. These issues remain.

CONFESSIONS OF A "LIBERAL BREXITEER"

If the UK doesn't leave the EU I don't personally care anymore.

I don't really consider myself a "Brexiteer" now.

I used to have passion for Brexit. Though it was an enthusiasm for a certain vision of it. That died ages ago.

THREAD This isn’t sudden. My friend & long-term ally @rolandmcs withdrew his support 07/18. We discussed it beforehand. I held off & continued to call for constructive & sensible solutions & trying to convince other Leavers.

But the crisis continues to deepen

https://twitter.com/rolandmcs/status/1018800271013613568

The governments report on the implications of a no deal Brexit also basically says that its own policy of leaving the Single Market is economically detrimental. Remarkable.

80% of our economy benefiting from free movement of people & the Single Market. This goes to the heart of the constitutional crisis created by the Leave vote. The government is enacting policies it doesn't agree with and knows will be economically harmful. It didn't have to choose this route, but Theresa May is obsessed with free movement.

Support for ‘no deal’ Brexit is the pinnacle of Leave's descent into zealotry. The end result of refusing to plan

Like Trump, 'no deal' advocates have flooded the debate with “alternative facts”
It won't end well

THREAD! PLEASE RETWEET!

#Brexit #WTOBrexit #NoDealBrexit #SOS The increased support for a ‘no deal’ Brexit is the ultimate failure of the Leave movement. It’s the inevitable consequence of the refusal to grasp details, come to terms with complexity & coalesce around a plan. Compromise can be frustrating. So instead they will have a tantrum.

THIS @ClarkeMicah is spot on

A passionate eurosceptic for years who understands that being 'half in/half out' by remaining in the Single Market was the sensible option.

Yet people who never used to be bothered or advocated soft Brexit have become hardliners.

THREAD All of them, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Owen Paterson, Liam Fox, even Arron Banks, Nadine Dorries and Nigel Farage have previously either held this position or argued for its merits! Now it's betrayal and BRINO!

https://twitter.com/rolandmcs/status/1097476626814853121

Hard brexiteers don't care there is no majority in parlaiment for 'no deal'. They don't care that there is no majority in the country for 'no deal'. Nonetheless, they are ideologically committed to it and will pursue that aim relentlessly now. They can't be appeased. Lost plenty of Brexiteer followers for my criticism of the 'no deal' or 'WTO option', but it isn't a recent development. I've been warning that this would be a terrible scenario since before the ref. The research I based these stark warnings on was unequivocal about it.

THREAD.

Reasons that the UK should pursue a policy of full legalisation of Cannabis. Full disclosure. I smoked Cannabis nearly daily for around ten years. I like it. However, I quit it because it was badly aggravating my poor mental health, causing mood swings & exarcabated my natural laziness & demotivated me. I do not take this subject lightly, nor should you.

Lots of articles supporting "Norway" option recently. I've advocated EEA as the best Brexit option since 2015. My belief that we would take that route seems very naive in hindsight & chance of us taking that route now seem very remote.

THREAD How does the EEA option come about from this point? Perhaps we step away from the 'no deal' cliff edge at the last minute, extend article 50 and end up landing on the EEA as a compromise? Maybe, probably not, but anything is possible in these unstable political times I suppose.

Our EU membership is due to end on March 2019. Calling for 'no deal' preparations to kick in immediately as if anything signficant can be done to mitigage the worse consequences is misguided. It's far too late now. Planning for 'no deal' would've meant implementing Charlie Elphicke's proposals in “Ready on Day 1”, inc/ investment in the road network approaching Dover, widening the M20, building the new Lower Thames crossing & giving the green light to the cancelled lorry park off the M20

It's still strange to reflect on the near total death of the decades old Eurosceptic belief that though the "political union" was bad, the "common market" was good. Now the idea of the Single Market & regulatroy harmonisation is a betrayal apparently. reaction.life/arch-brexiteer… Liam Fox telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/…

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.

This article is stupid and ignorant to an unforgivable degree brexitcentral.com/no-deal-brexit… A transition is sensible on its own terms, but we have agreed to this because of the lack of viable solutions we have so far offered. Certainly none have come from the parliament Leavers who, in rejecting the EEA & demanding regulatory divergence, have compounded the problem

As a tender writer myself, I can only tell you that the manufacture of the British passports went out to tender (according to EU & WTO procurement rules) and Gemalto submitted the Most Economically Advantageous Tender... the end If the British company, De La Rue, had submitted a better tender, deemed to be the Most Economically Advantageous Tender, they would have won the contract. They did not. That's all.

Parliament needs to wake up. A "Canada style" FTA is nothing like Single Market participation, it does not replace it, it's a huge downgrade of our trading relationship & automatically means trade barriers between UK & EU. Legal fact/reality

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This is not the EU punishing us. We could well end up with the very best and extensive FTA the EU has ever negotiated, but it will only be a bit better than the second best. FTA's are limited, it's not the same as creating a "free trade area"

There are people on the Leave side, like me, who find economic integration acceptable but oppose political union. We didn't used to be so isolated. ‘Common market good, political union bad’, this is the classic Eurosceptic mantra that has been doing the rounds for years. This has of course been rejected post-ref by the most prominent Leavers who have become radicalised and obsessed about EU regulation. Seemingly blind to the fact that trade is facilitated by regulatory convergence, and it makes sense to converge with closest trade partners