It falls into the very British trap of thinking that finding a compromise within the UK = reaching a deal. It doesn’t. It has to be negotiable with 27 other democracies. twitter.com/plegrain/statu…
How do you ensure that a CA can find a *negotiable* position? You can frame the discussions tightly but participants might justifiably feel they were being railroaded.
You can facilitate in such a way that any 🦄 are shot on sight, but participants might justifiably say “how do you know what’s negotiable?”, particularly after two years of being told the UK holds all the cards.
You can let things run and see what happens, but it’s quite likely that the answer looks like “we have all the trade but set our own rules and stop the immigrants” because that is a great deal for the British political view. Just not for the 27.
Then what happens is the whole CA process is ignored, democratic resentment is stoked further and things are only made worse not better.
A CA in 2015, sure. In 2019, very bad idea. Damages the brand of an important democratic innovation, and moves the UK nowhere at best.
Originally posted as a thread of 6 tweets on Twitter on 3 March 2019. View the original thread.