If May's goal on #Marr was to sell the #WhitePaper as 'Mansion House tweaked', it was not a successful outing to the BBC. The divergence from original Brexit promises has now been exposed completely.
First, a few points of clarity. May's claim that UK has to stick to "EU rulebook" to trade is simply not the case. "Mutual recognition" could allow for trade in goods to continue & give UK real autonomy (look out for new IEA research tomorrow: telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/…) #Marr
Second, May is right that UK would want to keep a bunch of regulatory standards set by the EU. But there are plenty that are bureaucratic and harmful that UK would want to scrap too! (See IEA blog series here: iea.org.uk/anti-competiti…) #Marr
#Marr really nailed FTA questioning. May was simply unable to say that free trade agreements are as likely to be struck - because staying aligned to EU rulebook will make it nearly impossible to compromise and work with other countries.
May repeated on #Marr 'no deal is better than a bad deal' - but the #WhitePaper already cedes major benefits of Brexit - and it's the starting point for negotiations! As talks move forward, it is becoming less and less clear what the PM would consider a bad deal to be.
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Most people realize ‘think tank engages in fundraising’ is not a credible story. Nonetheless, here’s a (long) #thread on their attempt to avoid engaging in the battle of ideas.
My colleagues and I have been facing an increasing number of accusations (mostly from social media), that we’re paid to say what we say. That our commitments to free-markets and liberty are simply bought-and-sold sound bites. This could not be further from the truth.
But let's pretend for a second...
The IEA’s turnover is roughly £2m per year. There are 32 people on our staff page. Divide that up, and that’s £62.5k each per year, to allegedly shill out for ‘big X’, to say things we don’t believe.
Summary: The government’s new pay gap reporting measures fail to provide any meaningful insight into equal or fair pay for men and women in the workplace.
Not only are the measurements useless; they are also problematic. Incentives created include hiring fewer women into junior or lower paid roles – regardless of their qualifications – to achieve the closest calculation a company can get to a 0% #paygap. iea.org.uk/publications/t…
On the one semi-informative #paygap measurement (proportion of men and women getting a bonus payment), our calculation of FTSE 100 companies to report so far shows 36 companies gave bonuses to a higher percentage of their female staff, v 31 for male staff. iea.org.uk/publications/t…