If brexit is the answer, WTF was the question? #NotMovingOn
Plague Island
Joined May 2015
- Tweets53.4K
- Following10.5K
- Followers11.3K
- Likes55.5K
Pinned Tweet
The bells of Notre Dame recently restored to their former glory gives me an excuse to post this masterful rendition of the iconic song from the movie The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
youtu.be/Qo_N9_ZFBhs
Hugh Sainsbury #FBPE @hughdorset.bsky.social retweeted
Derrick, the barriers arose because Britain chose to leave the Single Market and become a third country.
Mutual recognition is not a magic wand that removes veterinary certificates, border checks and SPS controls.
We already had frictionless trade, common standards AND a vote in making the rules.
Brexit threw all three away.
You cannot blame the EU for the consequences of the Brexit settlement Britain chose.
Hugh Sainsbury #FBPE @hughdorset.bsky.social retweeted
I’m fed up with certain politicians saying we need to “respect” the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum.
A decision by a narrow majority 10yrs ago that turned out to be a disaster does not have to be respected.
If a democracy cannot change its mind it ceases to be a democracy.
Hugh Sainsbury #FBPE @hughdorset.bsky.social retweeted
It’s my view - and I don’t feel the slightest pessimism about it. I’m deeply optimistic about Europe as a whole and as a team.
The morose framing is your own. I’ve never subscribed to this notion that being a member of the EU is some sort of victimhood. Especially for a hugely influential country like ours. For many countries, joining the EU was their liberation from tyranny- and now east to west we’re seeing over two dozen countries work together day in day out on shared issues - with their citizens and small business empowered by extra freedoms to work, trade, live across borders with ease.
As a scientist I’ve seen the shared European structures at their best - liberating scientists all over the continent (and world now) to work together… and pooling resource to support science at vast scale to crack problems that need scale.
Brexit was framed as a liberation from oppression. It has been anything but. In the vain search for a purist form of “liberty” from the straw man monster of our neighbourhood friends, we have ripped liberties and powers away from our own citizens and businesses- hemming them in and telling them to themselves find the benefits of blowing off our foot. That’s no freedom.
Look, I’m a scientist so I can’t begrudge experimentation. What I do object to is this new religion of reflexively slagging off everything European… and so a determination to do our own continent down in the vain hope that this will validate restrictions we imposed on ourselves. Without reassessing where we are. With the US, Russia & China in aggressive flux, I see huge opportunities for the UK and Europe and CANZUK all together as a team. A lot is going to happen over the next decade(s) and I want us with the right team (Europe & Commonwealth) at the juncture of it all. Despite all the dangers lurking in the world at this time, my view is fundamentally very, very optimistic of what we can be.
Believing Britain's future lies within the European Union is a hugely pessimistic view.
It's a view that says Britain can't hack it setting its own tariffs, regulating its own goods and services, setting its own taxes, controlling its own border, and eventually managing its own currency.
It's a miserable acceptance that Britain is defeated - and consequently must be subsumed into a larger political entity, under a higher political authority.
Hugh Sainsbury #FBPE @hughdorset.bsky.social retweeted
#bbcqt
Freedom of Movement is NOT an unconditional right under EU law: it is conditional on finding a job or being self-sufficient i.e. not being a burden on taxpayers. Otherwise there is no right to stay.
Hugh Sainsbury #FBPE @hughdorset.bsky.social retweeted
Oh boy, are the Right excited by this graph recently published by The Economist!
And of course none of them has bothered to read the article itself (TBF, it is behind a paywall!).
So as always, let's add a little context and explain why these kinds of comparisons are so problematic
🧵1/25
ALT Graph showing conviction rates for sexual offences in England and Wales by nationality, compared with the British population.
Hugh Sainsbury #FBPE @hughdorset.bsky.social retweeted
🧵
Wow - this article is bordering on unhinged!
Apparently the BBC is akin to a “North Korean re-education camp” for teaching children about net-zero and covering both the pros AND cons of immigration
Join me for a masterclass in cherry-picking and context stripping to brainwash your own readers👍🏻
ALT Daily Mail front page headline: "School children brainwashed by left-wing BBC." Monk debunked stamp on top.
Hugh Sainsbury #FBPE @hughdorset.bsky.social retweeted
The new crime survey is out - the "Lawless Britain" picture in full
- Violence at lowest since records began in 1981
- Corroborated by hospital figures for knife wounds
- Robbery: record low
- Overall crime 78% below 1995 peak.
- Shoplifting up
More:-
comment.press/lawless
Hugh Sainsbury #FBPE @hughdorset.bsky.social retweeted
Pensioner poverty has halved in the past 30 years, as the shadow work and pensions secretary @Helen_Whately claimed. But how much of this was down to the Conservatives?
Almost all the fall she’s talking about happened under Labour.
fullfact.org/economy/helen-w…
Hugh Sainsbury #FBPE @hughdorset.bsky.social retweeted
It all just keeps coming back to the simple idea that failed, that UK politics could treat the EU as a third-order issue. Some combination of imperial and little englander fantasy.
Whether in or out, EU relations will always be a huge part of UK politics. politico.eu/article/michel-b…
Hugh Sainsbury #FBPE @hughdorset.bsky.social retweeted
I don't understand what you @JustLEAVEeu guys want.
You wanted a "Canada Style FTA" . You got one. But this means regulatory & customs borders between now different legally regulated & customs territories. These borders are the hardest of barriers to trade. The more divergent the even harder they become. Harder borders mean they are (funnily enough) harder to trade & move across. What greater "flexibility" were you expecting from what you wanted & got?
unavailable
Hugh Sainsbury #FBPE @hughdorset.bsky.social retweeted
I am so tired of Brexit morons trotting out this lie. It’s pure crap, and has been shown to be such for years by countless experts. It’s embarrassing to be so ignorant, and publicise the fact.
Left: Conservative Mims Davies claims we got the covid vaccine because we left the EU
Right: Dr June Raine says UK vaccine program ran while the UK was still legally within the EU and under EU law
My view: Every time a Brexit politician claims Britain got the Covid vaccine first because we left the EU, they run into the same inconvenient fact: we were still bound by EU law when the vaccine was approved.
The UK authorised the Pfizer vaccine on 2 December 2020. The first vaccinations followed on 8 December.
The Brexit transition period did not end until 31 December, so EU law still applied.
And MHRA chief executive Dr June Raine said the approval used Regulation 174, a provision under European law that remained available until 1 January.
The UK had left the EU politically in January, but that did not mean it had escaped EU rules by December. The early approval came through a regulatory route available under those rules.
Brexit politicians are taking credit for a decision made while those rules still governed us, and the regulator was explaining exactly that.
That is what makes this claim so shameless.
They take a genuine achievement by scientists, regulators and the NHS, erase the legal timeline, and sell it as proof Brexit delivered something it did not.
It wasn’t Brexit that made the vaccine possible.
The official responsible for authorising it said the legal basis was European law.
Hugh Sainsbury #FBPE @hughdorset.bsky.social retweeted
So they're at it again 🙄
Torturing valid HMRC data to create wildly misleading headlines, designed to invoke fear and anger about immigrants.
Same old, same old...
(and you'll see just how old shortly!)
🧵1/28
ALT Daily Mail Front Page headline: 4 out of 5 new jobs went to foreigners in the past decade. Monk debunks Stamp over the headlne
Hugh Sainsbury #FBPE @hughdorset.bsky.social retweeted
Okay, I'm breaking character here. This is not a satire post. My 2-year-old son is in a wheelchair that we can't fit into our car. We are not eligible to apply for a wheelchair accessible vehicle until he is three--and even then we would have to pay about £13,000 towards it (which we don't have).
The idea that disabled people get given free cars willy-nilly is bullshit. My son has to attend regular appointments at various locations. He has a team of specialists dedicated to helping him with an extremely rare neurological condition that means he needs around the clock supervision.
He can't even hold his own head up so a regular car seat is out of the question. He was using a baby seat, but he's outgrown that. It's really tough for us to get around because misinformation from pricks like Nigel influences public opinion. Does this seem right?
Hugh Sainsbury #FBPE @hughdorset.bsky.social retweeted
Old school Little Englander nonsense about regulations. The reason the UK didn't massively deregulate after Brexit was 1/ because regulations and standards are international norms, and 2/ the people and more importantly politicians even businesses of the UK want them.
Hugh Sainsbury #FBPE @hughdorset.bsky.social retweeted
Boris Johnson's grandparents were Turkish, French, German and Russian/American Jewish, you "Muppet".
This quoted post is unavailable.
Hugh Sainsbury #FBPE @hughdorset.bsky.social retweeted
Less 'plan' more the latest publicity seeking brain fart of someone who has already shown he has no understanding of the world whatsoever.
Yeah, tariffs on Afghanistan, that'll show them, except there's barely any trade.
Hugh Sainsbury #FBPE @hughdorset.bsky.social retweeted
If a white person born in Australia can be Australian without Aboriginal ancestry, and a white person born in America can be American without Native American ancestry, why can't a Black person born in England be English without Anglo-Saxon ancestry?
Hugh Sainsbury #FBPE @hughdorset.bsky.social retweeted
One of the worst things to have sustained itself after the Brexit vote is pompous right wing “journalists” still constantly invited into public discourse to provide hot takes on why the country is still shit but take zero responsibility for their influence in making it so
#bbcqt
Hugh Sainsbury #FBPE @hughdorset.bsky.social retweeted
So it appears this nonsense is doing the rounds again. 🙄
Basically:
No it’s not
Absolutely nothing to do with Starmer
No “huge rises” - same rises as everyone else
Again, not illegal
Yes - two-tier benefits - where 2nd wives get half of what they would get if they were not a second wife
Nothing to do with this government
Oh - and there are fewer than 10 families in the entire country this applies to
So calm down - and stop being so easily rage baited😘
Full debunk and explanation👇🏼
xitter.cf/monkemma/status/205463…
Hugh Sainsbury #FBPE @hughdorset.bsky.social retweeted
🧵
Matt Goodwin demanded to be fact-checked live on air when he claimed the UK spent "£100 million PER YEAR on family planning and condoms in Pakistan".
He then 'corrected' himself to £74.3 million, saying it was based on a "major news story from October 2025"
He was, of course, still wrong...
1/30
ALT Screenshot of LBC tweet: How much has the UK actually spent on condoms in Pakistan? Henry Riley is sceptical about Matt Goodwin's numbers so the reform politician calls himself to be fact-checked live on air.