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Chris Grey 🇺🇦 Profile picture
Chris Grey 🇺🇦
@chrisgreybrexit
Emeritus Prof of Organization Studies @RoyalHolloway, ex-Prof @Cambridge_Uni & @Warwickuni. Mainly analysis of Brexit (& related). @chrisgrey on BSky
9 subscribers
Jun 29 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
I'm glad you've read my stuff, thanks. But just a couple of things I'd like to clarify. My blog's purpose has never been the one you impute to it (still less to "return to 2015"), but to analyse Brexit's consqequences, as per paragraph of the very first post, 8 years ago. 1/4

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Image I've *never* ignored the key point you mention here. In fact, it's almost the guiding theme of the entire blog. Just in the latest post I actually highlight it as central to the entire Brexit story. 2/4
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Jan 30 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
It would be great for NI if the NIA gets running. But I can't make any sense of what Donaldson is saying here (& elsewhere: ). He seems to think there have been "legal changes to the Windsor Framework". But how could that be without EU agreement? 1/6 theguardian.com/politics/live/…
In particular, he is quoted as saying that "the green lane will go" but, again, how could that be unless the EU have agreed (which seems impossible, as there have been no negotiations, unless they have been kept secret)? So there seem to be three possibilities. 2/6
Oct 6, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
There's a lot of confusion about this, and it's complicated to explain, but the 'Not for sale in the EU' marking doesn't mean that product does not meet EU standards. It very likely does. It just isn't registered for sale in the EU. 1/9 This goes to the heart of the difference between being 'aligned' with single market standards without being a member of the SM, and being a member of the SM. As a member you can sell your goods anywhere in the SM. As a non-member you can't, even if the product is the same 2/9
Sep 27, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This is total nonsense. It's another of the non-binding MoUs which will have little or no impact on UK trade, and to measure their value in terms of the size of the US States involved is either dishonest or meaningless. 1/5 But such nonsense is revealing in showing that Brexit is so devoid of benefits that they have to be invented, and in giving the lie to the persistent line that it was never about economic benefit, just 'sovereignty' or 'democracy' (hence the need to invent economic benefits). 2/5
Aug 31, 2023 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
These 10 'successes' of Brexit have all been debunked endless times, but in brief .... 1/11 1. This is just a reprise of the old 'Turkey is joining the EU' nonsense. And ending FOM has caused labour shortages in the UK, extra hassles for travel, hasn't seen immigration overall reduce, & has nothing to do with the 'small boats'. 2/11
Aug 27, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Perhaps a good day to recall how, as late as January 2018, Nadine Dorries, ERG member & vociferous 'hard Brexiter' - amid hurling accusations of 'treachery' at those who disagreed - didn't know actually what the Customs Union was: . 1/5buzzfeed.com/alexspence/her… Embedded in this report is a detail, now long-forgotten, about the outrage of Dorries (& fellow ERGers) when Tory rebel MPs passed Amendment 7 to the EU Withdrawal Bill in Dec 17, writing: "They should be deselected and never allowed to stand as a Tory MP, ever again". 2/5
Aug 2, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The obvious response to this is that nothing remainers did was against the law. But there's a deeper myth on display here in the idea that parliament tried to overturn Brexit. It has become entrenched, but the facts don't support it. 1/4 The 2016-19 Parliament(s) voted to trigger Article 50 and never voted to overturn the Ref, or for 'soft Brexit', or even to hold another Ref. It did vote down May's deal 3 x, but many of those doing so were *Brexiters* who said it wasn't true Brexit. 2/4
Jul 28, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Though this attack on 'woke capitalism' isn't new, and is riding on the back of the Farage-Coutts thing, it's gaining traction because of the failure of the Brexit promises. Brexit, remember, was going to boost the UK economically & in every way by unshackling it from the EU. 1/4 Except to the unpersuadable diehards, that's now been shown to be nonsense, and even the unpersuadables know they're no longer persuasive. So now they're singing the same old song to new words: without 'wokeness', yes, there'd be a new era of freedom and prosperity. 2/4
Jun 25, 2023 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
There's plenty of nonsense in this article, as well as a few grains of truth. But the most striking thing is that, even now, the ideas about how "Brexit could still transform Britain" are still so vague and ambiguous. The sole proposals in this long article are these: 1/11 https://t.co/lSjsiDpKzH
Because they are so vague, it is hard to be sure what they mean. But (depending perhaps what "robust" means), those I've marked in yellow don't require & aren't enabled by Brexit. Of those, the taxation one is maybe the most complex to unravel. 2/11
May 28, 2023 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
This article by @julianHjessop is getting a lot of attention as a supposed 'gotcha' of 'remainers', along with many others comparing German & UK economic performance so as to draw conclusions about Brexit: telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/2… 1/10 Let me first say that, tho' I've never met him. @julianHjessop is my favourite & most respected pro-Brexit economist. He has a good sense of humour, for one thing, and unlike most of his fellows he does actually engage with his critics. So nothing here is personal. 2/10
Mar 5, 2023 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
I assume that what @LeeAndersonMP_ is getting at is that people (maybe especially men?) shouldn't be seeking asylum, and there's something inherently suspect in military-age men doing so. It's quite a widespread idea, so worth responding to. 1/8 Where asylum seekers are fleeing war zones, they're unlikely to be in the situation of @LeeAndersonMP_ 's grandad (who was not unusual - most British people have ancestors who fought in WW2 - it doesn't bestow a special virtue) where their homeland was under external attack. 2/8
Mar 3, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I'm rarely rude on Twitter, but this article is total drivel, serving only to show that Brexiters *still* don't understand why their project has gone so horribly wrong, especially over the NI issue. 1/4 It is instructive, though, that the pivotal importance of the 2017 'row of the summer' is recognized, even if the reasons it was lost/ didn't happen are ignored. Because that was indeed the moment Brexiter fantasies were first destroyed by reality. 2/4
Mar 3, 2023 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
This may not be registering as a 'Brexit story', but the entire saga of ARM is intimately tied up with Brexit, with this listing issue being only the latest installment. It also goes to the heart of the incoherence of UK post-Brexit industrial and economic strategy. 1/7 On the listing: “Overseas investors lost interest in the trading venue as soon as the UK voted in favour of Brexit, and valuations have got even cheaper. That’s hardly a good sales pitch to attract more big companies to the UK market.”
theguardian.com/business/2023/… 2/7
Dec 27, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Predictably dishonest from Farage. He derides Johnson for proclaiming the 'oven ready deal' as 'the best trade deal ever signed' but he knows that the oven ready deal wasn't the trade deal. 1/5 It's true Johnson implied it was (so we're in the territory of Farage telling lies about Johnson's lies), but Farage knew it wasn't & yet stood down Brexit Party candidates in Tory seats in GE2019 & at the time claimed he did so on the promise of a *future* 'Canada style FTA' 2/5
Dec 16, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Just in this short 2 minute clip, there is so much revealed or illustrated about Brexit. Most obviously, Rees-Mogg, from a position of total ignorance, loftily trying to school an actual expert, rather than listening & learning. 1/5 And also, of course, Rees-Mogg's repetition of the lie that the NHS has received the promised Brexit bonus (and before Brexit even happened!), as debunked by @PeterStefanovi2 & many others: . But, maybe less obvious, there's more. 2/5
Dec 5, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Some interesting points on this @Usherwood thread, to which I'd add some thoughts. It's true that for large, global businesses, creating new adaptation costs by rejoining the SM isn't that attractive. They've already adapted, by relocations, supply chain adjustments etc. 1/6 But the situation is very different for UK SMEs, which mainly can't do that, and so have been much more badly affected. Which is an irony, because the Brexiters claimed the exact opposite. They said global big business was anti-Brexit, but UK small business wanted it. 2/6
Nov 19, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
There's certainly an argument that the version of Brexit as "low-tax, low-regulation, free-wheeling economic environment" died this week, if not earlier. If so, those who wanted it need to understand why and take responsibility for it. 1/7 First, because this was never presented as THE meaning of Brexit in 2016. Instead many different kinds of Brexit were talked of, but none was explicitly the subject of the vote. If it had been proposed in this meaning, it almost certainly wouldn't have won a majority. 2/7
Nov 4, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I don't want to milk this, but the extraordinarily large reaction to this thread (far more than to anything I've ever tweeted before) makes me want to add something else. 1/5 If you've read the thread, you will realise that people in Paris in, say, 1952 might have encountered a young, importunate street photographer, no doubt dirty & dishevelled, and speaking broken French. 2/5
Nov 3, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Since this thread has garnered such interest, I'm going to expand on this aspect as it has much current resonance. At this point my F-i-L was in a 'safe place', the US-run camp in Trieste (with many other 'Displaced Persons'). So why not stay there and wait to be 'processed'? 1/8 First, though I described it as "quite humane", that is relative to what he had escaped from. Even so, it was overcrowded, dirty, the food was poor, there was a lot of illness, and there were many fights. Plus, he would potentially be stuck there for years. 2/8
Nov 2, 2022 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
When did it become a thing that there's something inherently unlikely about a young, single man being an asylum seeker? I can think of many reasons why they would be. I very rarely write about personal stuff on Twitter, but here is the brief story of my late father-in-law. 1/15 He fled Communist Bulgaria in the 1950s, having been a medical student who was a dissident against the regime. He had been repeatedly tortured to try to make him act as an informer on his fellow student dissidents. 2/15
Oct 28, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Given that we're 6 years on from the referendum, almost everything in this clip is deeply depressing, most obviously @timloughton's suggestion that the EU are 'making it difficult' for us to trade with them because they are 'sore', when the new barriers were chosen by the UK. 1/7 It's surely way beyond time for Brexiters like @timloughton to take responsibility for the consequences of the policy they advocated, and the Brexit trade deal they supported, and not pretend they were somehow foisted on us by the EU. 2/7