🚨We’re going to court!

The EU Settled Status scheme deadline is looming. Tens of thousands of vulnerable people face being criminalised overnight.

The Home Office must #ScrapTheDeadline & ensure no one loses status. Please chip in https://t.co/0FydGTuDHx

Our case [thread]

IT’S HERE The new bumper @ukandeu report that tells you all you need to know – or at least all the questions you need to ask – about the UK after Brexit. https://t.co/S1lHP6TBJ1 1/27

A disclaimer. What follows is a selection of randomly selected highlights, nothing more nothing less. There’s far, far more in this report than I can possibly cover here. And the cricket got exciting so I ran out of steam. 2/27

It is made up of 70-odd pieces (I counted twice and came up with diff numbers) by an eye watering collection of eminent social scientists . Explaining the big issues from housing to dealing with China, from prospects for the economy to the prospects for the Labour Party 3/27

It’s intended as a guide to the key questions that will confront us over the years to come. Each contributor ponders,where we’ve come from, where we are now and where we’re headed. And because we’re really kind, we’ve divided things up into a number of sections. First: 4/ 27

And oh, my Lord do we have a stellar line up of people, including inter alia, @_Paul_Tobin_ @tcstvns @watsonjim2 @CharlieBEU @drsarah_hall @BD_Stew @AntovaIvanka @PRT1969 @IvanRajicUK @cartelsman
Download it, tell your boss your wifi has crashed, and have a read. 5/27

1. It surprises me that on the whole pro Europeans on Twitter view themselves as pragmatists, who rely on evidence to form their opinion.
In fact a long running joke in our 'group' is that Brexit will be a roaring success, if we all just believe hard it will be a roaring success.

2. The last couple of weeks have made it clearer than ever that blind belief that is impervious to evidence and facts is not a leave/remain thing. It's a human thing

3. I was accused of lying and hounding a 'vulnerable' person off Twitter. When the victims of that 'vulnerable' got the same treatment, it became necessary to take action.

4. So I gathered evidence (not all, but enough) and wrote a blog with contributions from several others. Then the blog was checked by experts to ensure that it was neither libellous (to protect authors) or a risk to any possible legal action (to protect victims).

5. I naively thought that would put an end to the false accusations and trolling.
Since publishing I've been accused of having called the "vulnerable' person and threatened members of their family, forcing them to confess to the police

Been a lot of discussion recently around services trade in the deal between the UK and EU. Having read through the agreement over the past couple of days, my impressions👇

First off, services is definitely included. Question for service providers, is will it be enough?

1/N

My overall impression is that the EU has offered among the best in class for its FTAs similar to Canada and Japan.

But this access is a far cry from access to the Single Market and how is constructed as part of a trade agreement for the EU reflects that.

2/n

Unlike for goods trade, once you've got a product through all the customs and regulatory procedures into the EU, it can be sold anywhere in the EU, or its "entered circulation".

For services trade, that isn't the case. Its still done on a member state by member state level.

3/n

This is even true in the trade agreement itself where although the provisions set out in the Services and Investment chapter sounds awfully good - lots of principles about the freedom to establish and allowing the cross-border trade in services.

It's only when...

4/n

You get to the annexes and you realise both the EU and individual member states have put entry conditions across huge areas of different services sectors both now (existing measures) & in the future. Don't worry too much about the future reservations, it's the existing ones.

5/n

Small business in particular struggling with new Brexit red tape. Entirely predictable, and a function of a world trade system distorted against smaller traders. Stay with me a short while as Brexit threadmeister and story author @pmdfoster may say... 1/

The nub of the issue is the extra costs for most exports, whether this is paperwork or meeting different regulatory requirements. A fixed cost per exported load inevitably adds a higher percentage cost to small than larger business... and they may lack expertise. 2/

You'll note that in the EU, with virtually no paperwork or differing regulations, the costs of exports are similar for smaller and large companies - though even there there is a big company bias, because who can afford to lobby for friendly regulations? 3/

The same unfortunately typically applies to trade deals. If you are Nissan and threaten to leave the country without the right deal you have more clout than a small cheesemaker. As we see. But is it just the EU that is over-bureaucratic? Sadly not... 4/

One of the best UK business groups on trade policy @BritAmBusiness (and yes you can quote me @EmanueAdam) has a new report out on a UK-US trade deal and SMEs. It shows opportunities. But unfortunately problems unlikely to be solved. 5/