When Jacob Rees Mogg threw dead fish into the Thames at WETminster, I thought, like most of you, he was making a point on behalf of the Fishing INDUSTRY.

It was only yesterday that we all learned he was acting on behalf of the FISH.

Fish happiness, not Brexit, was the goal!

🇬🇧🇪🇺 Who caused Hard Brexit? Some thoughts from the perspective of a social scientist. In the last few days we have seen an interminable debate on whether Remainers, Soft Brexiters, or Hard Brexiters are responsible for Hard Brexit. And it’s a false debate. Why? 1/n

People are confusing 'causes of effects' with 'effects of causes'. What this means is that we are all interested in - the former - why Hard Brexit happened - but using arguments about how one actor did something - the latter - as our explanation. These are different! 2/n

It is completely possible that Remainers not accepting a customs union increased the probability of Hard Brexit - that's an effect of a cause. But that does not imply responsibility. Because there are lots of other causes producing the same effect. 3/n

When most of us think about 'responsibility' we have clear lines of cause and effect. This one person did this one thing thus they are responsible. But with Brexit we have lots and lots of actors doing lots of things and we have ended up at this one historical moment. 4/n

So Boris choosing one of his letters; May wanting to end free movement; SNP/Lib Dems/ChangeUK (remember them?) not voting for customs union; they all contributed to a higher probability of Hard Brexit. But it's all so fantastically contingent that we can't pick out one. 5/n

Bloody hell some ones built a hall of shame for the SNP.

https://t.co/qxyMnUS4iX

1. Derek Mackay sending text messages to a sixteen-year-old boy telling him he was really cute.

2. Mhairi Black bringing a drag queen called Flowjob to a primary school

3. Derek Mackay spending £230 million on ferries that were not built

4. John Swinney overseeing an exam fiasco leading to marks being inflated

5. John Swinney being responsible for teaching primary school children about anal sex, rimming and pornography.

6. Natalie McGarry resigned the SNP whip because of fraud offences relating to the Women for Independence group. She pleaded guilty was convicted and jailed, but later had the conviction quashed. She still faces trial for embezzlement.

7. SNP coverup over the Covid outbreak connected with Nike in Edinburgh

8. SNP Government involved in clinical waste storage scandal

9. SNP MPs Chris Law, Ian Blackford and Brendan O’Hara had expenses claims totally £760,000 from the UK Parliament. They were the three with the

Over the past 15 days I have not only been running my company as normal but I have been faced with largest threat to its future since it began in 1992. This is #Brexit & here is my thread on just how bad things are getting. 1/26

Six months ago my business started to prepare for Brexit. We obtained the following licences and accreditations JUST to maintain the status quo. EORI number, RORO badge for Chief, GBRC number, GBWK number, we already had ARWS and DAN accounts. 2/26

All of this took nearly five months a lot of form filling but on the 9th December this was all in place. So I would say whilst we knew Brexit would be a car crash we did not know it was going to be a multiple pile up in the fog with fatalities. 3/26

On January 4th I returned to work being wise enough to have stockpiled just enough so that if we had a bumpy ride in January we would have enough stock to last until February. 4/26

I should add this took a considerable amount of cash flow and management to do this during a lockdown/ pandemic combined with Xmas sales. But we managed. 5/26

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

The fuel injected Brexiter comments on the EU's vaccine problems miss many points.

1) no-one wanted to get out of the EU or the single market to protect ourselves better against a pandemic. See Brexit Tory controlled government policy 2016-2020 regarding the NHS and pandemic preparedness.

2) we could have, and, perhaps thanks to the need to genuflect to nationalists, or out of pragmatic needs, chosen to go our own way on procurement even within the EU.

3) none of this explains why it's good to be outside the single market, restricting our trade and making us poorer.

4) the implicit celebration of the vaccine nationalist cause, seemingly [but not actually] permitted by Brexit, ignores how this game plays out, namely: