Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #planaplus
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The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the Adam Smith Institute, Policy Exchange and the Legatum Institute have all received financial support from US backers via this route. They are corporate lobbyists - not think tanks.
#Brexit
theguardian.com/politics/2018/…
#Brexit
theguardian.com/politics/2018/…
2. They are exploiting a weakness in UK politics in that the parties, so utterly bereft of talent as they are, outsource their thinking to those entities all gussied up to look like part of their tribe. There is no scrutiny not least because MPs are complicit.
3. With the assistance of a largely complicit media they can very easily get party activists doing their bidding. Many of the low grade rags running at a loss are part of the nexus. This is why we see this garbage published uncritically.
Right then, with the warning that this is going to be a long thread, I'm going to try to distill the key points from the IEA #PlanAPlus report - which is typical of their work - lots of trade terms used questionably 1/ iea.org.uk/wp-content/upl…
So this is upfront, in the Executive Summary. Zero tariffs on agriculture we do not produce. It is unlikely to make a huge difference to prices, but could make a big difference to developing countries who currently have zero tariffs 2/ 
I interpret this to mean we should replace the 21 month transition period with a basic Free Trade Agreement with the EU. Zero tariffs would require us to determine optimal rules of origin for all products in 6 months. Not happening 3/
Ok, there are so many questionable / incorrect assertions in this IEA report it is hard to keep track. I'm going to summarise it as "more wishful thinking" for the time being iea.org.uk/wp-content/upl…
Well this is embarrassing. The IEA report calls for food standards to be lowered to join TPP and have a US trade deal. Liam Fox last week said this wouldn't happen...
Oh and another one, the report specifically proposes reducing the advantages given to developing countries, by reducing tariffs to zero for all countries (I'll do a detailed thread later, these are headlines)
