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🇺🇦 John Robie 🇪🇺🔶🇪🇺 #FBPA #FBPPR Profile picture
🇺🇦 John Robie 🇪🇺🔶🇪🇺 #FBPA #FBPPR
@FanaticRealist
Member of the #Twitterverse, supporter of the #Twitterati.
Sep 24, 2018 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Where's the punishment?

• UK government choses to remove itself from EU SM and CU.
• UK gov chooses to minimise/denigrate importance of EU SM and CU in UK trade
• A bemused EU allows the UK to test its assumptions against reality

goo.gl/rVkWQK The Leavers have spent the last 30+ months saying that the EU's Single Market, Customs Union and Common Commercial Policy effectively hold back British competitiveness and innovation.➡️
Sep 23, 2018 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
@Arron_banks And now for the second part of your remedial education for today, pointless as it may be. NATO was established to guarantee the integrity of western Europe's borders against the potential for invasion by the Warsaw Pact, primarily the Soviet Union and East Germany. ➡️ @Arron_banks The establishment of the EU's predecessors - the EEC and the ECSC - was designed to prevent internal conflict in western Europe based on economic disagreements which had been the pretext for many of Europe's conflicts over the centuries. ➡️
Sep 19, 2018 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
OK, @SJKR8, let's look at this methodically.

Firstly, your statement implies that the ability to influence any given course of action is equally shared across all stakeholders and history demonstrate that is rarely (if ever) the case. ➡️ Secondly, even an equitable distribution of influence would still require a coherent and cohesive strategic plan with negotiating objectives that are acceptable to all stakeholders (UK, EU, EU-27 member nations, European Parliament) and compatible with EU law. ➡️
Sep 16, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
There are three areas of concern in Gove's statement to Marr that the Chequers 'plan' (?) wouldn't be the settled end state of the UK's relationship with the EU-17 and be subject to change at the whim of some future PM or Conservative faction. ➡️ First, the obvious one: Why should the EU and the member nations take any element of Chequers or any variant seriously? If you're already trailing the possibility that a UK government would disavow its commitments (again), that seems unlikely to encourage trust. ➡️
Sep 13, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
If some of my fellow British Jews are preparing to leave the UK in case Corbyn becomes Prime Minister whilst the current ruling Conservative government votes to support Orban's deeply anti-Semitic (and racist) Fidesz regime, they're only looking at one side. ➡️ The thing that's re-enabling anti-Semitism in this country is the resurgence of right-wing nationalism in the wake of Brexit. Labour may not be doing anything substantive to counter this, but the Conservatives are actually encouraging it because they are in power. ➡️
Sep 12, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
So, yesterday's Brexiteers want to be able to diverge away from the rules of the Single Market (or the 'common rulebook' as Chequers calls it) because that's stifling UK economic growth and the UK must be allowed to put sawdust in sausages. ➡️ But today, the risks/effects of products that are not SM-compliant crossing over the border into the Republic and (and subsequently the remaining members of the EU-27 and the EEA) are minimal and there doesn't need to be a hard customs border in between NI and the Republic. ➡️
Aug 28, 2018 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Not going to bother with countering this bilge from @BBCr4today and @hbaldwin. It's already been covered to death in the responses. Here's a thing though: This is not the first time that this nonsense has come up nor is it the first time that it's been dismantled by experts. ➡️ Last week, @JasonJHunter said - following his appearance on @BBCRADIOKENT that Remain supporters shouldn't refer to Leavers as 'liars' because they could genuinely just be under-informed. And that's a fair position to take…the first time. ➡️
Aug 19, 2018 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Well this has aged like the finest turnip brandy… Operation Brock is basically a rebranded Operation Stack with some bells and whistles. Well, some whistles. OK, actually it's a kazoo.

kentlive.news/news/kent-news…
Aug 19, 2018 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Bridgen is literally voting to ruin the economy of his constituency and most of Leicestershire and a bit of Derbyshire because - as it's pretty much the geographic centroid of the mainland UK - it's as near as damnit Ground Zero of the logistics and distribution industry. ➡️ That's why DHL and UPS use East Midlands Airport (in Bridgen's constituency) as their UK hub. EMA is also a support site for Royal Mail and TNT and - just for good measure - it's also an EU-listed Border Inspection Post for animal products. ➡️
Aug 18, 2018 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
No, it will happen because you and your band of feckless doctrinaire ideologues will suddenly return the UK to the regulatory environment of 1972 when the UK's trade as % of GDP was only 40.5% as opposed to what it is now which is 62.5%. ➡️ If you want to know when that massive increase occurred and assuming you can understand simple graphs, here's a pretty picture for you.

What do you think happened in 1973 that caused that sudden increase, @bernardjenkin ? ➡️
Aug 9, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Well, it's either not going to end well for Johnson or it's not going to end well for the body of the Conservatives and its current leadership.

But here's the thing: Given the Conservatives' current disregard for anything approaching the national interest, I don't care.➡️ Obviously, it bothers Julia because her interests are relatively narrow, ideological and - to be blunt - self-serving. An argument over Johnson would probably provoke a schism within the conservative movement that would damage Julia's personal and professional prospects. ➡️
Aug 2, 2018 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Liam Fox doing what Liam Fox does best. Which is kind of misrepresenting reality.

Should the Rest Of The World take more UK exports than the EU-27? Yes. Of course. Because the EU-27 was only 19.91% of world GDP in 2017. ➡️ So the fact that the EU-27 took a mere 44.5% (or around 2.25x its fair share) of UK exports should be a cause to look on it as a loyal and, quite frankly, stunningly easy customer. But that wouldn't fit into the Disgraced Former Defence Secretary's narrative. ➡️
Jul 31, 2018 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I don't even know where to begin with this… Here's when Chloe was in a job that didn't require years of study or a Phd…
Jul 28, 2018 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
It's not a punitive exit agreement. It's the exit agreement that ensures that the UK meets its international obligations firstly with regards to financial liabilities for programmes, many of which it sponsored, promoted or otherwise supported … ➡️ … and in respect of other dependencies such as the Belfast Agreement (Good Friday Agreement) which not only has issues regarding the border, but also the usage of CJEU as the ultimate court for both Irish citizens and citizens of the UK resident in Northern Ireland. ➡️
Jul 25, 2018 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
And what will constitute evidence? Is Nigel Lawson to be tried in absentia for preferring to live in France? Is anybody continuing to work as an employee for the EU guilty of 'treason'? What if I claim to be domiciled in France for tax purposes? ➡️

uk.businessinsider.com/conservative-m… Does @MatthewParris have to be careful of how he writes his columns to agree with @DCBMEP's perception of 'loyalty' to the state? David obviously wants to do away with the 'freedom of the press' that his party allegedly supports. ➡️
Jul 20, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
So Brexit is going to be like being in a global existential conflict, but without any of the fatalities and injuries. And because the UK survived in the previous two global existential conflicts - with the not inconsiderable help of its allies - we can 'prevail' over Brexit. ➡️ In 1938, the UK had a 7% share of global GDP and the UK colonies a further 7% and the dominions (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa) had another 2.9%. And we barely came out of WW II with the shirts on our backs. ➡️
Jul 16, 2018 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Let's analyse paragraph 3.

@Channel4News didn't cover CA/VL/AIQ as technology story. They covered it for what it was. A story affecting politics in this country, not a tech story in another country. ➡️ My recollection is that BBC1 news programmes ran their meagre coverage of the CA story about 20 minutes into the Six O'Clock bulletin maybe a day or two after the first Channel 4 story. Furthermore it was purely a tech story and focussed more on Facebook than CA. ➡️
Jul 15, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
On Saturday morning, after a set of completely peaceful demonstrations, @LiamFox described anti-Trump protestors as embarrassing. On the same day, pro-Trump/EDL/Robinson mob demoed in London and had altercations with police and violently assaulted a railway union official. ➡️ Following that outrage, which also included assaulting police service animals and blockading Trafalgar Sq, the government says nothing about the incident.

Why? Are they more scared of ultra right-wing thugs than they are of law-abiding citizens? ➡️
Jul 13, 2018 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
So the EU now forecasts that UK GDP growth in 2018 will be 1.3%.

In November 2015, growth for 2018 was forecast (OBR) to be 2.4%. Then the EU referendum happened. In 11/16, that figure dropped to 1.7%. Then, in 11/17, the OBR said 1.4% whilst the OECD said 1.2%. ➡️ In truth, even 1.3% is likely to be a stretch requiring no economic hiccoughs for the rest of the year. Three consecutive quarters of growth in excess of 0.41% would do it, but that hasn't happened since Q2-Q4 2015. ➡️
Jul 12, 2018 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The problem with all these articles is that they rarely tell you the baseline from which they are measuring to get to their conclusion or their headline. Are you starting from 2015? Well, the answer to that is no!

2019? 2021? ➡️ My particular starting point is where UK growth started to diverge both from its own trend and that of its peers, which is to use 2015 as the last baseline for 'normal' trend growth given what we know about Osborne's last forecast and everything that has happened since. ➡️
Jul 9, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
ICYMI, Tim here is one of those Leaver coves that believes that Germany and 'Brussels' (whatever the f••k that is) run the EU and ride roughshod over the other member nations (like poor Greece and Italy, but presumably including the UK) for Germany's benefit. ➡️ But what he's saying here is that Germany and the EU should ride roughshod over the rest of the EU in order to give the UK what it wants • now it's leaving • which is stuff that they never let the UK have when it was a member of the EU. 🤦‍♂️ ➡️