From all I know and have heard about @GavinBarwell he is a decent and honourable person, so I'm casting no aspersions on his integrity at all, but I really struggle to understand this analysis. Short thread: 1/7 https://twitter.com/GavinBarwell/status/1380219458883555337

If TM's deal had passed with Labour support in the teeth of ferocious ERG & DUP opposition, what Govt could actually have enacted it? May would surely have been deposed within days by a VONC (Opposition parties + ERG, DUP) and a GNU under Corbyn was a non-starter. 2/7

So, presumably, a GE with Tories led by who? May on the manifesto of her deal that half her MPs had rejected? Johnson (if, somehow, there'd been time to get a new leader) on a renegotiate platform? Where does that go in terms of May's deal? 3/7

And, anyway, May's WA didn't avoid a sea border, that's the whole reason why the DUP opposed it. Gavin B says elsewhere that she'd committed to common rule book, but that could only be agreed in the future terms deal, not the WA, and ... 4/7

... ERG would never have allowed that, even if TM survived. So, really, and those who know my work will know I chronicled all the twists and turns, I think this emergent idea that in 2018 there was a way out of TM's 2017 red lines and ERG extremism ... 5/7

... if only Lab/ remainers had acted differently doesn't fit the record. The chance for compromise, if it existed, was in the first weeks of May's premiership in 2016 to construct a national consultation. It might have failed, but it wasn't tried, and by 2018 it was too late 6/7

I think - naturally - that my explanation of these events is better: https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/brexit-unfolded 7/7