Alex Balfour
@adbalfour
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Independent Financier. Grew up on Continent. Know its deep flaws. Exasperated by naive Brits who think it’s maaahvellous & EU has Britain’s interests at heart
London, England
Joined September 2009
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Just watched Michel Barnier on French TV. The arrogance of EU is breathtaking. He literally said that Europe would not accept the UK reducing taxes and becoming more competitive. Then says he can’t see any advantages to Brexit. What planet do these people live on? It’s not ours!
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It’s official - UK exports to the EU are now above pre-Brexit levels. Let that sink in - despite all the shenanigans EU had lobbed at us in terms of friction, UK exports have held up remarkably
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Just heard fascinating stat - UK is < 1% of world pop but has 4% of world scientists, produces 10% of scientific citations and 15% of the very top scientific breakthroughs. But apparently we’re too small to cope on our own!
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Just sinking in...if the EU did indeed threaten to block the movement of food from GB to NI (within a sovereign nation), they deserve absolutely everything they get. The arrogance is just stupefying. Do they think they’ve annexed NI?
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If the EU hadn’t overreached in Northern Ireland and had introduced light touch checks on East-West goods, they would still have ECJ oversight and control over VAT and competition. But because they got greedy, they’ll end up with almost nothing. Always the way with the EU
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Macron appears to have fallen into the biggest elephant trap. According to him, Northern Ireland isn’t part of the United Kingdom! It’s crystal clear now - the EU has lost this battle hook, line & sinker
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As of today, EU has spent $50 bn on Russian oil&gas since war began. And it’s now become apparent that France &Germany sold Putin $270bn of modern weaponry SINCE THE ANNEXATION OF UKRAINE. Apparently there was a loophole in the EU ban. So much for EU respecting international law
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My old boss, who told me in 1989 that Japanese stockmarket would fall 95%, told me last night ‘I cannot foresee any conditions, any at all, in which the Euro still exists in 5 years’ time!’ He’s occasionally wrong but not often. Got all major moves in past 40 years correct!
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@benandjerrysUK
I will never buy Ben&Jerrys again. A pity as my family and I love it. But you’re food manufacturers, not politicians.
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French press completely at odds with reality Ukraine. Saying poor old UK is isolated & alone in face of Russian aggression. Reality is opposite. Just ask Ukrainian leadership and population. UK is leading anti-Russian efforts with the US. EU continues to buy gas (€660M per day)
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One has to marvel at the EU PR machine - it portrays itself as a leader in this fight against Russia yet has systemically shied away from defence spending for decades and is STILL handing over € 3/4 billion PER DAY to Russia for oil and gas. Talk about hypocrisy
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Lord Frost apparently wore Union flag socks to G7. This man is brilliant!
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Varadkar calls us untrustworthy. Yet we have been doing deals with all sorts of countries all over the world that have gone very well and where there is great mutual trust. There is only ONE counterpart with whom things are strained. Doesn’t this say much more about EU than us!?
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@brexitblog_info
Iain Dale is a lovely, considered, moderate man. This says everything about his fellow guests and little about him
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It’s now 100% clear to me - Northern Ireland is quite clearly the price the EU wants us to pay for Brexit. For them it is essential that there be a cost. They will not succeed. Poland and now France are pushing back on EU bullying
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Andrew Adonis says the EU cured us when we were the sick man of Europe. Even though he’s my age, he seems to have forgotten that we got much, much sicker in our first 10 years of membership and that it was the painful reforms of Thatcher’s first term that transformed the UK
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Pfizer has had roughly the same incidence of clotting as Astra Zeneca. So why have various EU countries suspended the latter but not the former? When in a hole start digging deeper and faster. Well, in Euroland at least!
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To prophets of doom, UK now has one of G7’s lowest debt to GDP. Despite Covid and Brexit, we’re at 88% (83% next year). Germany at 71% is a bit lower but Canada 102%, France 113%, US 126%, Italy 152% and Japan 262%. AND duration of our debt is 15 years. We are in strong position
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Some Remourners are trying to tell us that trade with EU has collapsed. This is simply NOT true. Yes - imports from the EU have fallen sharply but exports to EU have held up well even if smaller traders have given up exporting. But our trade with rest of world is booming
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To all those who incessantly take the side of any country but ours and call BJ a clown - this time your luck has run out. The clown is Macron who called AusPM a liar and who left COP26 a day early. Not even for photo! Our PM has been level-headed and professional in this instance
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@guyverhofstadt
And ALL those reforms will make the EU worse. What you need to do is to allow more flexibility (multi-speed) and return some sovereignty. You will never succeed in making a monolith. You never learn. There will be more Brexits
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It is apparently now easier to export haggis to Canada than it is to the EU. When will the Remourners understand that EU trade protocols just aren’t normal. They are locked into the 1950s and the rest of the world has moved on
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Macron urges Boris to be more serious about the migrant crisis. From where I stand, Boris wrote a constructive, almost flattering letter; Macron cancelled a meeting. Who is serious?
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So the Irish are setting up border checks (yes, that border that apparently must remain non-existent) to stop the potential movement of ‘solid fuel’ over the Irish border! Hang on, I thought violence would break out if there were any kind of checks?
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Have been digesting Swiss media on breakdown of CH-EU talks. Extraordinary! They talk of EU’s ‘colonial’ attitude towards Switzerland, the only other European country with Britain to have a democracy older than 2.5 minutes. Will the EU ever learn??
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Almost fell off my chair. EU forces member states to sign up to the European Court of Human Rights but hasn’t itself agreed to sign up. Yet it’s been trying to force Britain to remain a signatory. The hypocrisy of these people is beyond belief
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@crimlawuk
He’s actually one of the hardest-working people I’ve ever met. As a fund manager, he always showed up very well prepared, extremely well informed and worked his socks off. Why do you make statements like this with zero evidence??
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Hilarious - all-white European Commission holds debate on racism in the EU. Not a SINGLE non-white face. The most diverse thing about the EU until 31st January 2020 were the Brexit Party MEPs who single-handedly made the EU Parliament 10x more diverse. Now it’s reverted to type!
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It is this picture that perfectly encapsulates why I am increasingly ashamed of being a Scot! The snarling, clenched-jawed hatred of this man is something you rarely see in England. There is something almost Neanderthal about the ScotNats who are everything they accuse England of
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It’s now official - twice as many checks are instituted at the Irish Sea border as are at the entire port of Rotterdam. Does the EU take us for fools?
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I keep tweeting about EU overreach. They’ve done it again! This time it’s terminal. They’ve lost the argument with a comment too far. Utterly outrageous. But they’ve lost now!
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The EU has pledged the same number of vaccines to the third world as Britain. And yet its population is 6x higher. And yet the EU drones on with its virtue signalling
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@crimlawuk
Let’s assume you were right - there was massive fraud in 2016. Why wouldn’t the British people voted against Theresa May in 2017, against Tories in European elections in 2019 and again against the Tories in 2019? There were four separate polls at which, every time, we voted out
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To me it is utterly incomprehensible that entity that has £100bn trade surplus in goods would want to start a trade war with party that buys its goods, especially when its structural unemployment is so high as to threaten stability. But if they do, so be it. UK will buy elsewhere
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Turing/Erasmus is a great metaphor of Brexit. T costs £110mn (vs £200mn for E), will educate twice as many British students and is global. Reason this was so egregious is we have by far the best universities in Europe and E paid for 35,000 EU students to come to UK universities
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@simon_euro
@Conservatives
Illegal???? It was a manifesto pledge and we then had a general election in 2015. How on Earth do you make that ‘illegal’??
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What’s hilarious about European nations is the more they subsume themselves into EU, the less relevant they become. An independent France would have much more influence outside the bloc yet it assumes that by corralling 26 others to its values, it carries more weight. It doesn’t!
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@Anna_Soubry
I’m not sure you should be telling other politicians they’re embarrassing. You formed a tiny canal called Change and then did everything you could to stop us leaving a 1950s trade club despite us voting four times to leave it. Change then collapsed. Now THAT’S embarrassing
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France and they EU only have themselves to blame for fishing licences and impending Article 16 suspension of NIP. They negotiated so hard that there’s virtually no downside for UK. We may even scrap TCA and payments - now politically possible. As always, EU overreaches and loses
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@LucyABaxter
Your banner says London/Belfast. You’re clearly in the United Kingdom. The Queen is our head of state. Sorry.
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@RupaHuq
Gracious of you. But might you also apologise to the vast majority of us who see this country as truly multi-ethnic and multi-cultural and wouldn’t DREAM of stereotyping people according to their race. Comments like yours sow division.
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Seems to be huge disconnect between real life in UK and what EU fanatics are persuading themselves. Apparently one can’t buy petrol, supermarkets are empty and we’ve all contracted ghonorrea. I’ve just been to Tesco’s (shelves full), put petrol in the car (no wait), sun shining
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Macron has said that it would not be appropriate to have UK patrols on French beaches and waters. But what about all these EU officials in Northern Ireland checking goods going from one part of UK to another. The hypocrisy!
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@garrettdonnelly
@CatharineHoey
The only people who wanted a border were the EU. We’ve had a common travel area for 100 years and the trade from NI to RoI is so piddly that this is a typical EU blow-out-of-all-proportions. Just a stick for EU to beat us with
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@SholaMos1
@TheVoiceNews
The trouble with your absurd comments is they invite normal, civilised people NOT to take racism seriously (which would be a tragedy). If you point to racism at every second in every context you normalise it. Great pity
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@MarkGilham2
@Mike_Fabricant
An independent survey, not commissioned by UK government, the Brexit party or any other anti-EU body. But the truth hurts. Britain’s standing in the world has, if anything, improved. And you lot can’t bear it
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Real significance of AUKUS hit me this week-end. EU thinks it can build its own defence capability. It won’t. The UK has understood this and realises that the only real protection from China comes from the US. As ever, Macron and France have backed the wrong horse, hence the fury
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Many Eurofanatics on Twitter have been trying to convince me that I misunderstood Barnier quote about NI border (apparently Barnier’s ONLY concern is PEACE. I found the quote...what do you all think!!?
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@guyverhofstadt
Never been a fan of yours but this really is true leadership. I salute you. Perhaps now you will be a bit kinder to the UK which really is doing its best to help Ukraine
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@tarkapayne
I find these naive comments so depressing. HOW you think F can afford this? Electricity cap Aline is costing €50 billion - will be paid for by increased tax in Oct. French debt already 116% of GDP. And State (+quasi) is 71% of economy. About to fall into debt spiral. Good luck!
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@TerryReintke
@ProEuropa_GB
@euromove
@MarchForRejoin
@RichardGCorbett
Who do you think you are? How would you feel if Brits travelled to Germany to assist AfD in their campaigning??? They’d be asked to get out - pronto.
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@MarieIllinois
@GordonBrown
Have you conveniently forgotten that he left utterly empty coffers after running our economy for 13 years? Yet he inherited public sector met repayment from Kenneth Clark. I wouldn’t be crying if I were you
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What is so shocking about the Remourn reaction to the Castex letter is one realises that their love of EU is totally unquestionable. This cult-like devotion is so extreme as to be almost deranged. The more unreasonable the EU, the more they worship it. Quite unhinged!
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Not ONE Unionist MLA supports the Northern Ireland Protocol. Peace in NI was built on mutual consent, NOT on winner takes all. It is therefore as clear as mud that NIP has to go. When is EU going to wake up. They are endangering Belfast Agreement.
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Still amazed that Remourn keep telling us Brexit has been a ‘catastrophe’. If this were even vaguely true, we’d be performing much worse than Germany or France. Yet we’re still doing rather better. At worst, Brexit has had little impact
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@JujuliaGrace
The NHS gets more money than the French or German systems yet is considerably inferior on almost every possible matrix. The sad truth is we could double expenditure and it would still be crap. Needs reform
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@DanielaNadj
Something tells me we should chase you out; you sound like a rather nasty, twisted piece of work. Every single one of your tweets is negative and you seem to loathe this country
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Seems extraordinary that someone in SW1 floated a Swiss-style arrangements with the EU. UK exports to EU have never been higher and we can now import much more cheaply from outside EU, hence EU share dwindling. How would we benefit from rapprochement???
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@campbellclaret
@MattHancock
@BorisJohnson
You should be careful - you’ve got far more blood on your hands than Hancock
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@BeckettUnite
Vast majority of us won’t vote for any of this. Can I make a suggestion for you - move to North Korea. It’s not quite the panacea you describe but it’s as close as you’ll get
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@NicholasTyrone
@andyfarnell07
How short term you are and also a bit blinkered. Most of us who favoured Brexit have been stunned at how quickly it has been digested. UK is still fastest growing G7 and first to recover pre-Covid. Employment, productivity etc all up. So not sure why EU think disaster!?!
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@FabianZuleeg
This tweet expresses everything that’s wrong with EU. You seem to think that an in-built £100bn trade surplus with UK is somehow a privilege for the UK. It isn’t. It’s about to start melting
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Šefčovič: ‘retaliation [for UK still allowing sausage supplies to NI] would be so crushing it would ensure UK abides by its international obligations’. Are these our ‘friends & partners’? The optics on sausages! EU is increasingly losing battle for UK public opinion.
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My grapevine tells me that the government is NOT going to given in to Brussels this time and that consequently a full-blown trade war is likely.
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@RupaHuq
Might I also say you picked on the wrong person; Kwasi is a lovely, kind, thoughtful human being who deserves our respect. He’s taken on a very tough job at a crucial time
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@FrancieMolloy
Let’s not talk about what things ‘used to’ mean when you’re from Sinn Fein! I think you’d do well to keep quiet on this score… Whatever the Conservatives have done in the past doesn’t come close to what your party supported!
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@philliphodson
@Martin_Durkin
Or if he thinks that having a ‘modern’ ersatz republic like France or Germany, he’d better go and buy a couple of history hooks and learn why our system has delivered so much stability
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@kegster12002
It’s extremely rational. She was v popular to begin with. Then she insisted on being political. Then she lectured us while doing opposite, mistreated staff appallingly and made it all about her. This doesn’t sit well with constitutional monarchy. Race has NOTHING to do with it
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The EU’s insistence on keeping the ECJ in the protocol tells us everything we need to know about the EU. The idea that they can’t even understand that have a foreign court determining law in a sovereign territory is bizarre. Again, as always, they are likely to overreach
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Just watched great talk on CEPA (UK-J trade agreement) given by Graham Zebedee (our negotiator). Knew it was better than EU-J one but not extent of improvements. Reckoned to boost our exports by 50%. Data, services & financial servs chapters all hugely improved. Transformational
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So Shell HQ is moving 100% to UK & will drop the ‘Royal Dutch’ from its name. DESPITE Brexit! Good for UK jobs and good for HM Treasury. When will our Continental ‘friends and partners’ (I lose the terms loosely) finally realise that, far from being a negative, Brexit will boom?
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Rumours EU ready to cancel TCA. Hilarious. TCA is so lopsided and the consequences of this would be so minimal for Britain that the cost of such a cancellation would fall 90% on EU. Average tariff is 2.7%. Sterling would adjust by more than this and UK co’s now used to paperwork
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@Baddiel
You are a funny man. Maybe stick to the comedy! Germany has just downgraded its growth for next year from -0.2% to -2.3%. This is much, much worse than us. Why would we want to attach ourselves to a corpse? Because it makes you feel better about yourself in North London?
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@Jos07294939
@Danjsalt
@eucopresident
@PresidencyGR
@kmitsotakis
You utterly miss the point. If Greece hadn’t been conned into joining the Micky Mouse €, it would have restructured and would now be thriving. Instead it is effectively living in a semi-comatose limbo just to keep German and French banks afloat. It’s a form of Versailles Treaty
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@GeorgeG07611616
@vonderburchard
Bingo. The EU is constantly over-reaching. But they never, ever learn from their failures. The relationship will just get worse as it has been with the UK. Countries don’t like to be bullied and the EU has decreasing amounts of clout. The Swiss know this
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@paulapplewood1
Jealousy. Jews have assimilated beautifully in the vast majority of countries that they have emigrated to. In Britain we are truly blessed with a 300,000 strong community. We must remind them constantly we will never forget what happened 80 years ago and that they are part of us!
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@JonJonesSnr
Oh God here we go. Read a headline and assume it’s like free Christmas. French price rises were limited to 5% as a Macron bribe to get re-elected. The policy cost €50 bn and will be paid for with tax rises in October. What do you think that’ll do to growth??? The naivety!
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@BillEdmunds4
…and you are 100% wrong about him being arrogant. He is a charming, thoughtful individual, has plenty of friends and really believes in public service
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@BarristersHorse
I think your parents sound bloody marvellous. I do, however, have a very different take on Femi. He seems to think that life in Britain should be auctioned off based on merit. I disagree. It’s our birthright. Our ancestors like your parents have gifted us this wonderful nation
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20 per cent of the checks conducted across the whole of the perimeter of the EU are now done in Northern Ireland, three times as many as happen in Rotterdam!
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@Chrispgce
Except that whoever made that statement has no clue what they’re talking about. The £ is higher against the € than when we left the Single Market! Meanwhile € is below parity with the Greenback
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@LucyMPowell
@ManchesterPride
I don’t know much about you but from having heard you on the radio a few times, my instincts said you were above this kind of tribal schoolgirl stuff. Just pathetic and says so much more about you, your party and playground politics than about any Tory. Not fit to govern!
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Have just read Šefčovič’s open letter regarding NIP. It is worst sanctimonious bollocks I have read for years. His brief is clearly to bully UK into aligning with EU SPS. It just not going to work. And the idea that Boris will contradict Frost’s tough stance is for the birds
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@lutonlocky
@crimlawuk
Actually he’s really not. His father was a self-made newspaperman and his mother is/was the daughter of a crofter. Yes he went to Eton but was very much first generation. He made his fortune himself and did so through very hard graft. Criticise him all you like but he’s earned it
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This is something the British Remainers have never understood. They think we’re just another average European nation. We aren’t. Never have been. Nothing to do with Empire 2.0 or any of that out of date nonsense; we remain the premier military power in Europe + premier soft power
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The EU’s ambassador to UK says that when you play football you need a referee, in this case the ECJ. But he is asking one of the teams playing to produce their own referee. Is he stupid or tired?
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@ClareDalyMEP
What a silly, rather offensive tweet. The track record of republics is lamentable. You imply monarchies are somehow less than yet they have historically been much more stable. Just look around you in Europe
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If Britain were to trigger Article 16, this WOULD comply with international law. If France were to retaliate by blocking access to ports and going ‘slow’ on paperwork, that would break every bit of international laws conceivable - the TCA and WTO for starters.
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@simoncoveney
You keep bleating the same thing. Why not talk to your masters in Brussels and tell them that putting 20% of EU’s entire checks at Belfast, more than entire Eastern border is wholly unreasonable
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Trade between the two parts of the UK is equivalent to 0.0008 per cent of the EU’s GDP. Yet Brussels conducts around 20 per cent of all the checks on goods entering its territory on this nugatory volume.
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@RoryStewartUK
There was once a tradition in the Conservative Party which was that they respected a decision of the British people.
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@SteveJHarris
@afneil
The UK is an extraordinary democracy. One that has developed &evolved gradually over 800 years. Unlike anything on the Continent. It is FBPE muppets who are trying to make us a banana republic like France that has a major upheaval every 50 years. Oh yes 1968 + 50 = Gillets Jaunes
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Still amazed EU & Ireland have been trying to lobby US to put pressure on UK re NI protocol. US will immediately realise a) EU is being super petty with checks (20% of all EU checks); b) only threat to GFA comes from EU & Ireland as they have clearly taken Nat side over Unionist
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@AngelaRayner
Er, wasn’t it Ed Milliband who started the process of making our energy among the most expensive in Europe?
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@kehinde_andrews
@politico
How very silly. We could bang on about the Germans and the Japanese. We don’t.
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@CatharineHoey
@GoodwinMJ
@Fox_Claire
Too right. I get very upset when people say no one in England cares about NI. I for one care passionately. It is an integral part of the UK.
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