@sturdyalex.bsky.social don’t say you were not warned about London

Labour has probably become irredeemable unless they oust Keir Starmer as leader before the next election

Our 13 year old has heart valve disease but is very happy because she is getting so many different pills all covered in peanut butter

Britain is already living under a lino government (Labour in name only)

Will the SPS agreement make the Stormont Brake and Applicability Motion unnecessary only for SPS related EU law applying in NI but not for any other EU law?

The EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement’s NI Protocol having been written a year before the TCA and hardly changed by the Windsor Framework could have major parts of its Articles 5-10 made redundant by a well written TCA amendment integrating the SPS Agreement.

@profjacob.bsky.social this Lords Committee discussion on EU relations should be interesting. Good to see the UK parliament committees now on Bluesky.

@dphinnemore.bsky.social Baroness O’Loan was worried that both Cooperation Ireland and NICVA told LordsNISCom they rely on Katy Hayward to voluntarily involve them in Windsor Framework consultation because neither the UK or NI governments have anybody in NI managing the impact on the community

I was referring to the sector specific standardisation bodies like ETSI for telecoms and ESA for aviation which the UK had ceded authority to

How Sinn Fein convinced themselves the UK would allow an NI border poll before 2030 is incomprehensible because Starmer before winning the election had been about as pro NI in the UK as any Tory and would clearly not allow a poll at least in his first term even if SF had formed the Irish government

EU will accept mutual recognition of UK standards on condition the UK accepts dynamic alignment to EU standards

UK asking EU to treat its regulatory and compliance checking system as an equal is not realistic. UK as a member ceded its national system to EU bodies and since Brexit has not recreated a system with the credibility to equal the EU’s. UK now wants to align more so will not build a national system.

NI Assembly has with a typo in the link to your report moved you all from UC London to UC Dublin

China could stop buying US Treasury bonds until Trump backs down and make the US unable to raise enough debt because this “financial war” is not just about tariffs

@colinmurray.bsky.social “Political Change across Britain and Ireland: Identities, Institutions and Futures launched by Minister Lawless
www.ucd.ie/research/new...

Hegseth is looking for savings in the Dept of Defense so he might just fire all the troops based in Europe like Musk fired all the USAID staff posted to foreign countries and left them to work out how to get home.

Windsor Framework Reviewer Lord Murphy says resolution of its issues is difficult but not impossible
www.itv.com/news/utv/202...

@annajerzewska.bsky.social Windsor Framework Review - Lord Murphy former Northern Ireland Secretary tasked with reviewing how the Windsor Framework operates has said getting a resolution to the trading arrangements “will be easier said than done” but “not impossible”.
www.itv.com/news/utv/202...

Lords NI Scrutiny Committee on NI Voice in the Windsor Framework raised lots of good points needing more study but the biggest issue is lack of clarity on UK government level responsibility for managing and resolving issues with the WF for NI businesses and consumers and for the Joint Working Group

Lords Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee first ever evidence session is on the Windsor Framework with @georgeperetzkc.bsky.social @clarerice.bsky.social and Roderick Crawford

@aslak.bsky.social adds that for the UK to finalise negotiation of its EU trade reset within 12 months the UK would have to know going in exactly what it wants and convince the EU any new arrangements agreed would survive under the next UK government

@samuelmarclowe.bsky.social asked at the Lord EU committee how long the UK’s desired trade reset could take to negotiate says it could be done in 12 months if there is the political will

To give Labour a way out of the hole they have dug for themselves. Keir Starmer seems to afraid of the right wing press to ever admit he had accepted a TCA revision that broke his red lines so he needs to be given a solution that can be presented as not having broken the lines.

Best of Britain proposal is probably an idea for a UK-EU arrangement on goods standards which Starmer could present as complying with his red lines although it probably would not comply with his more extreme presentations of those red lines so they do not want people going into detail on its rules

UK-EU Defence cooperation will presumably involve the European Defence Agency which has agreements with Norway and Switzerland not to mention requiring coordination with NATO and the US so the EU bureaucracy will probably handle it completely separately from Brexit/TCA
eda.europa.eu/news-and-eve...

Labour ministers have recently been expanding the “Brexit Reset” adding “pillars” of cooperation with EU on Defence & Border Security which fall outside the TCA. Is this because they expect their original Brexit reset items to get pushed into the TCA review of implementation and go on into 2026?

UK Labour are also covering up lack of progress in resolving Brexit border problems by taking advantage of EU expanding into defence area to defend Ukraine and prepare for US weakening of support for NATO

Nick Thomas Symonds: This government has been clear we are not hitting rewind. We are not undoing Brexit and not rejoining the Single Market or the Customs Union. But we are looking to make Brexit work in a ruthlessly pragmatic way. That is the spirit we are taking into the discussions with the EU.

@antonspisak.bsky.social tells Lords EU the UK red lines on the EU reset might fit inside the new EU-Swiss agreement reached in December (subject to Swiss Parliament ratification and possibly a referendum)

@profjacob.bsky.social Lords EU Committee inquiry into the UK-EU reset tomorrow has very knowledgable experts providing testimony including @cbarnard.bsky.social