Handy guide for Dominic Raab and other Brexiteers, and for anyone keen to replace our EU trade with trade with the rest of the world on WTO terms...

A few thoughts in advance of seeing the Brexit deal, assuming it's not scuppered at the last.

1. It will save industries, in the short term. For all the problems it *won't* solve, there is at least that. Tariffs would have finished off some sectors like switching off a light.

2. Expect a lot of confusion (through ignorance, and deliberate obfuscation by certain segments of the media) between free trade and frictionless trade. Trade that is free can still come with plenty of friction. Those extra £billions in customs paperwork won't go away.

3. There may be a standstill or implementation period. If there is, that will be helpful because it will let us get further down the road of vaccinating against the coronavirus, and resolving one crisis before plunging into the rest.

4. Any standstill will trigger a huge wave of "you told us scary things would happen, but they didn't." If you're counting along, it will be the 3rd such wave. First was during the negotiations while we were still EU members. Second during transition when EU rules still applied.

5. Those are just words. But the damage to the economy is real. So a standstill remains preferable, though teeth may have to remain gritted a while longer as a result.

6. Expect a few positive surprises. (Not compared to EU membership, but to what would otherwise have been.)

Here's how the UK's situation will change after the transition period ends, compared to our former EU membership...

(Come back to this thread. It will keep growing!)

- UK can negotiate its own trade deals
- No more automatic participation in new trade deals reached by the EU

- UK gets to keep fish equivalent to 25% of the catch EU boats previously caught in UK waters, staggered over 5.5 years
- Costly export health certificates for fishery products
- Inbound and outbound customs and regulatory checks (UK side will defer some of these temporarily)

- Stringent rules of origin and local content requirements
- Loss of freedom of movement for UK citizens in the EU and EU citizens in the UK (Ireland excepted)
- No Erasmus programme
- No equivalence decision for financial services

- A border down the Irish sea between NI & GB
- No access to the Galileo military
- Temporary agreement on data, which expires in 6 months
- 2 parallel trademark systems, requiring firms to file twice in the UK and the EU

- 2 parallel product conformity assessment systems (CE and UKCA), requiring firms to file twice in the UK and the EU. One year grace period (with exceptions).
- 2 parallel chemical regulatory systems (REACH and UK REACH), requiring firms to register twice in the UK and the EU

UK Government just released 70 pages of case studies today, showing how the borders will operate after 1 January 2021.

They're essentially hardcore porn for red tape fetishists.

Doomed, we are. Doomed.

(e.g. exporting fish; exporting mechanical goods)
https://t.co/zWpkdGJeim

This is exactly what should have been presented years ago so that firms could prepare.

Or, arguably, before the Brexit referendum. Just the 70 pages of case studies released TODAY could have tipped the result the other way. Not everyone is blinded by sovrinty & hating forrins.

Going back to the examples...

The person in France buying (say) UK mechanical goods will take one look at the procedures involved, and Google an alternative supplier inside the EU instead.

As for the fish, they could probably swim to their intended destination faster of their own accord than following the new process, if only they had water in between to traverse.

The purchasers will smell them coming a mile away.

Auto parts. I am practically weeping at my keyboard.

Ok, it's high time to look at the REAL effects of Brexit. As the Tories implode & Labour sits on its hands, companies are executing contingency plans, shifting jobs & assets, slashing investments, or redomiciling (accounting exercise). Happening NOW, not in a fantasy future. 1/95

Barden Corporation is closing down its Plymouth factory after 51 years, putting 400 jobs at risk, as its parent company Schaeffler shifts production to various sites outside the UK due to Brexit.

8 health providers have warned of medicine shortages in the event of a no-deal Brexit: "we do not believe that the current medicine supply plans will suffice, and we will have widespread shortages if we do not respond urgently."

Pfizer - $100 million on Brexit prep: "Pfizer’s preparations are well advanced to make the changes necessary to meet EU legal requirements after the U.K. is no longer a member state, especially in the regulatory, manufacturing and supply chain areas."

The Government has spent £4.2 billion pounds on Brexit preparations (£2.2 billion in previous Budgets, plus an additional £2 billion in the most recent Budget.)

THREAD: Here are the essential points from the EU's time-limited, limited effect no-deal Brexit mitigation offer.

(Most concessions are unilateral measures it will implement. Some require UK cooperation - not clear what happens if we refuse to do

Air travel
"Unless there is a contingency measure in place on air transport at the end of the transition period, air traffic between the EU and the United Kingdom will be interrupted."

The EU is proposing 6 months of reciprocal concessions to keep (most) planes flying.

However, they're not offering any concessions on airline ownership requirements, so BA for one may come unstuck here (depending on how its restructured shareholding is going). Its message: you already had plenty of time to prepare, including a grace period.

Road transport

A) Haulage
With no agreement, hauliers would have to use ECMT permits to provide any freight transport between the UK and the EU. But there aren't nearly enough of those to go around. So they're giving a basic grace period of 6 months, as long as we reciprocate.

B) Bus services
"Furthermore, in the absence of an agreement on a future partnership between the EU and the United Kingdom by 1 January 2021, regular bus services to and from the United
Kingdom would have to be interrupted"

Here too, offer is 6 months of continued connectivity.

NEW: @SidneyPowell1 radio interview w/ @toddeherman "The new report has a truckload of evidence of foreign interference in the election in it. That's what people seem to want to deny, even though the FBI & CISA ... issued an advisory and alert back on Oct. 30th & updated on

2/ Nov. 3rd, so for them to deny that now is absolutely absurd. Plus, we have an affidavit from an expert cyber-warfare [individual] who even shows the diagram of all the attacks coming in. We know that the VPN ... the Dominion people left those open and unencrypted on the night

3/ of the election, so that anybody could get in. We know that the packets of information went to Serbia [note: over 100 Dominion employees scrubbed there LinkedIn profiles of any affiliation with the company after the election, many of whom were in Serbia], Liechtenstein,

4/ Spain, Venezuela, Hunan, China & Hong Kong. There was traffic all over into our election system that is supposed to be self-contained, not accessible by the internet at all. We have witnesses who document that it was connected to the internet. We have a study out of

5/ [the Dominion voting system in Antrim] MI, they know that it was connected to the internet. They erased their audit files & their adjudication files, where they dumped over 68% of their ballots into a bin that they call "adjudication" [that would've been thousands + thousands

1. For people mad at Dems. Can we try to understand how politics (not justice) works? Here are some things: the Dems simply wanted the phone call information to be added to the record. They threatened to call witnesses as a negotiation tactic - thus getting the Republicans to

2. do what the Dems originally wanted - enter the phone call on the record. If witnesses were called - the trial would have gone on for weeks - in the middle of a pandemic when relief HAS to be sent out now. And Merrick Garland has to be confirmed so the DOJ can get to work.

3. However, I WANT WITNESSES CALLED. I want them to have such explosive testimony that the whole world once again knows what it knows - that Trump is guilty. I want more Republican Senators to change their mind and vote to convict. The problem is? We would NEVER GET 17 to do so.

4. It fucking SUCKS. It SUCKS that the Democrats can't just call witnesses and make the Republican Senators appear to the world even more cowardly than they were - hearing that testimony and STILL voting to acquit. BUT that's the fantasy version where the media doesn't once again

5. start blaming Dems during this fantasy-witness-calling-trial for not getting Covid relief out, etc. The issue here is that NO MATTER WHAT - if Trump himself with Jesus back from the dead as his witness says, "I did it" the Republicans will acquit. The issue is that the GOP

Andy Ngo thinks Antifa are on a level with the Nazis in terms of wanton violence. Furthermore, he says that 'even the Nazis knew to cover their tracks' and that we didn't know about the Holocaust until afterwards.

Wrong, and offensive on almost every level.

Violence had been building for years prior to the Nazis assuming power, and much of it was instigated by the SA.

In 1932 for example, 105 people died in clashes between SA and opposing groups in Prussia alone - that's one region.

SA activity - marching through 'red' neighbourhoods and fighting those who opposed them was a deliberate strategy. The spectacle of violence and the implied 'restoral of order' was the point.

Just think of how Horst Wessel was remembered following his death in 1930. He was turned into a martyr who fell 'bravely in battle' against the Bolsheviks. Violence was inherent to the message - a clash between forces for the future of Germany.

During his time as SA leader in Berlin, Goebbels worked on a strategy of provocation that almost always ended in violence, a form of trolling that would always provide the opportunity for a brawl and the implication that a menace had been dealt with.