Nick🇬🇧🇪🇺 Profile picture
Anglo-European. Optimistic Arsenal fan, Agatha Christie head & whisky drinker. Purveyor of general englishness from a time before world lost its marbles
🇬🇧Renton🐸🇺🇸⭐⭐⭐#ClearFlynn✝️🇧🇷🇮🇹⌛️🥓🤣🐶 Profile picture 1 subscribed
Sep 13, 2018 11 tweets 4 min read
Small thread to confidently predict the #Brexit end game. Quite simply there is no other plausible scenario then this..

1/ increasingly clear what will happen with #Brexit. The EU will take the #Chequers deal, tweak it, likely beyond recognition, so it fits them. 2/ ..as there is now no time left for negotiations, May will have little resistance to EU. It will be a Canada+ deal with as many optional extras that prompt payment of £39bn can buy - probably not that much. NIreland will be fudged.

Then the great House of Commons showdown...
Aug 21, 2018 7 tweets 3 min read
1/ a short thread on “my family are nice & voted Brexit”.

“.....Or what we remainers failed to understand by the Leave vote...” 2/ remainers talk about the racist or gammon leave voter. But a minority of voters are racist & while you do see angry middle aged men on @bbcquestiontime they’re a small subset.

So my leave voting family - they are nice - why did they vote brexit?

The answer may surprise you..
Jul 28, 2018 6 tweets 2 min read
1/
Thread to explain why, strange as this sounds, (& many still don't get this!) - there are no hard Brexit MPs. Even Mogg & Johnson are kind of soft brexiters. Both wanted frictionless trade with EU & no real economic change.

So what happened? 2/
What Mogg, Johnson & rest wanted was a "soft Brexit on UK Terms". They were so sure this would happen that they barely considered what wld happen if there "hard Brexit talk" didn't result in a "soft Brexit on UK terms".

Thus the fight is not btwn hard & soft Brexit but btwn..
Jun 2, 2018 13 tweets 3 min read
1. There seems to be a lot of talk (both from the right & left) that Italy should/must/will leave the Euro.

Here's a little thread explaining why in any sane world this wont happen. 2. When Italy joined Euro its Govt debt service costs dropped from 12% to 5% of GDP and inflation fell. This is massive

Unlikely as the fact may strike you Italy benefitted greatly from this.

So why is there a problem & why the talk of leaving the euro?

theguardian.com/business/2018/…
Apr 26, 2018 10 tweets 4 min read
This *may* be of interest. My own personal German based Liam Fox anecdote.

Frankfurt based since 2001 I was invited to a (I’ll keep it unnamed) Anglo-German business meeting in 2017 in which Fox was the guest of honour.
The subject was „the post #brexit UK-German relationship“. 2/ ..should have been home ground for Fox. The majority of attendees were more FDP than CDU (FDP is nearest thing Ger has to a euro-critical low tax Tory party).

Its Frankfurt-all Germans speak English, they may not like #brexit but they distrust „Brussels“ & want a EU-UK deal..
Apr 24, 2018 16 tweets 6 min read
1/ A small thread on why BOTH many Remainers & Leavers still havent "got" that #Brexit has already failed...
....even if it goes ahead.
& why its often "media noise" rather than "actual lies" is obscuring this & the fact that Brexit wont happen as we thought it would 2 years ago. 2/ Basic Leave idea pre #Brexit vote was that a prosperous UK with large trade deficit eager to retain many European standards wld not really offer a threat to EU was not completely implausible as many remainers assumed.
But it depended on....
Mar 31, 2018 11 tweets 4 min read
Thread:
1/
So I risk upsetting some fellow remainers here but I have to admit I have some sympathy for the “will of the people” argument.

Yes I get all the advisory referendum, #CambridgeAnalytica tainted, red bus of lies arguments - they’re correct but it’s simply not enough.. 2/

..but I think remainers dont get that theres enough people who don’t get these arguments to make simply cancelling or a referendum rerun even if technically possible, politically toxic.

It can happen but will lead to a serious crisis. Problem is #brexit will anyway lead to..
Mar 22, 2018 14 tweets 5 min read
1/ Very small thread on why #Brexit is actualy leading to the end of the UK or atleast the UK of the post war period as we understand it & its much, much more than *just* Irish & the Scots. Its as much about the English and its polity...... 2/ Firstly tho Irish unification & Scottish independence - the 1st is likely to be accelerated once the inevitable demographic reality tips in (around 2030). Scottish Indy less predictable but in any case #Brexit vote confirmed a break - one that's even riven the Scottish Tories.
Mar 21, 2018 14 tweets 5 min read
1/ Small thread on Fish - hot topic of the day & cause of so many angy replies on my Timeline.
The big question: How can it be that an industry that has less full time employees than a village - circa 8 500 people - be so controversial?
How can this be driving our #Brexit future? 2/ first some context - not only does fishing (traditionally understood) employ barely a village - but this is not new.

UKs fishermen great decline happened post WWII but pre EEC.

In economic terms fishing is barely 0.1% of UK GDP!
gov.uk/government/sta… chap 1, table 1.2
Mar 5, 2018 14 tweets 3 min read
A v small thread on Italy & it’s likelihood of leaving the EU-a scenario that has excited a lot of UK chatter after yesterday election 1/ 2/ many people seem to be comparing Italy with UK as if Italy would or even could be the ‘next domino” to fall. But the two nations couldn’t be more different.
Feb 26, 2018 12 tweets 4 min read
1/ Very small thread on why many people (including me) have been getting #Brexit wrong. We've been blinded by the theatre & complex issues of the "EU negotiations" - but in fact its much simpler than that....indeed..... 2/ #Brexit "EU negotiations" are not in any significant way actually taking place, & to the extent that that they are at a minor level even these are largely irrelevant. Once I grasped this everything else of the last 12 months made sense.....
Nov 7, 2017 13 tweets 2 min read
As someone who used to work for FCO a thread on why ppl need to understand that Priti Patels "mistake" far far worse than Boris' "gaffe" /1 2/ Boris gaffe was stupid but affects just one family & hopefully won't have repercussions & can be remedied. (Why he is FM another matter)