As a young man I voted in the 1975 referendum on staying in the European Community. I read the Treaty of Rome which bound us and realised it set out a long journey to European Union. The main political parties told me to vote to stay in something they called the Common market. This lovely myth was a free market, with no damage to our ability to make our own laws and spend our own money. I did not believe them and voted to leave. I found it difficult to grasp how they could so misinterpret the Treaty we had signed.            It was a blow when I heard the result. As a good democrat I congratulated the winners and did my best to get behind their winning vision. I had no wish to undermine their action which I had opposed. I resolved to help the winners implement their vision of keeping the European Community to just a common market, or more likely helping opt us out of all the obvious other integration tasks it was inevitable the EEC/EU would wish to advance. The Yes campaign had strenuously denied the European foreign policies and military task forces, European migration and crime policies, European taxation and much else that was to evolve.             I was in this spirit for twenty years, never challenging the decision to stay in. I was appointed Single market Minister. That was the worst job I had to do in government and showed me from the inside just how far the EC and its single market had deviated from the common market vision of 1975. Using the market as cover the EC bombarded us with laws over wide ranging topics from the environment to taxation, from health and safety to employment. They sought to lay down in law how businesses in different sectors should do their jobs. The Franco-German axis had undue weight with the Commission, seeking to embed the business models of their main companies into EC law. It was a brilliant power grab. It was anti enterprise and innovation, creating trade barriers without and barriers to innovators and small business from within. My job was the negative one of seeking to delay, defer or amend the worst proposals. I went hoarse explaining a common market just needed the rule that any product deemed to be of merchandisable quality in one member state could be sold in another. With clear labels consumers could make their own choices,The net result of single market excess law making has been to give a huge competitive boost to the USA where companies have not faced the same controls and legal strictures. The digital revolution which has changed lives and been powered by smartphones, downloads, social media and the web has been dominated by the US. Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Netflix, Nvidia and the rest are US titans. There is no single large global digital company from a European base. This is such a dominant part of a modern economy.When the EC moved to being the European Union and wanted to press on with a single currency I wrote the books and some of the articles to keep the pound. It was obvious most UK voters understood surrendering our currency would end any pretence of effective self government. Polls always showed strong majorities against. It was also clear that many MPs and top civil servants wanted to join the Euro or would go along with it. I fought battles within the Conservative Party to firm up our view that the UK should keep its own currency. We persuaded John Major to secure the all important opt out from joining but then had to battle to make sure no Conservative leader flirted with joining nonetheless.As the war over the Treaty of Maastricht developed it became clearer to more people the EU was not mainly about trade and a market. It was about building an integrated Union with a flag, a Parliament, a Supreme Court,extensive law codes, EU taxes and debts, with common policies across all fields. It became obvious to more Conservatives that we needed a new referendum. The new question would not be to reverse the idea of the common market but to test out the reality that the evolving Union was so much more than a market, and its market was not free. Belonging to its market meant accepting many clumsy laws, paying a large tax to be in it, and putting up with many restrictions on internal and external trade.The UKâs predictable and tragic ejection from the European Exchange Mechanism and the nasty recession that caused led to the exile of Conservatives from office for 13 years. In opposition the party wisely opposed the further integration of the Nice, Amsterdam and Lisbon Treaties. Under our democracy it was unacceptable for a new government to get into power unable to govern in many ways owing to the surrender of big powers to the EU by the outgoing government with Opposition support. I and a few other MPs campaigned for a referendum. David Cameronâs good decision to promise one in the 2015 Manifesto helped us win a majority to govern that year for the first time since 1992.I am so pleased the UK electors voted to take back control in 2016. Everyday since I rejoice that we can now shape our future again. So far government has been too cautious, sticking to failed EU laws and policies. Too many MPs and civil servants have fought to prevent the UK altering things to help us succeed, seeking to keep us tied to the EU whatever the costs.  In a future piece I will set out how we can use our freedoms more. It is high time we had some Brexit wins. The USA need not always build the main global business successes. We could narrow the gap in income per head if we tried, now we are free to do so. It will take lower and fewer taxes and better laws to do so.Sent from my iPad
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June 28, 2023
Good morning.
And
With respect, Sir John you supported a lie. A lie that became all too apparent with the creation of the Maastricht Treaty. But t be fair, you were and are, not alone.
Today we are still shackled to the EU thanks to a treacherous parliament, government and Civil Service. We are bound to many of their rules and have surrendered territory, both NI and our fishing waters, for no gain.
We were told that, “No deal is better than a bad deal” and so, in essence, we got the former dressed up as the latter.
BREXIT did not fail, those we placed our trust and faith in did.
June 28, 2023
Most think Brexit has not really started, talk is cheap, political posturing covers up failure and disinterest.
The controlling institutions find being ruled by others across the Channel is preferable to determining where UK should set itself a vision and form a strategy to get there.
Political subterfuge at an all-time high?
June 28, 2023
Mark, Sir J,
I agree the UK population was sold a lie in 1975 – funny no UK politician has been acused of lying to Paliament about the matter.
European integration will ultimately fail, which is why the UK is best off getting out early. Ask an individual in the EU where they are from and they will identify with their nation, not a nebulous continental union. Their national history stretches back for thousands of years and will not be easily swept aside. As the EU technocrats grab more power from the nations the resistance will grow.
As a quick aside “free trade agreement” must be one of the bigger oxymorons ever. All should be called restrictive trade agreements.
June 28, 2023
That is the purpose of mass immigration, to erase these ‘national histories’ which are a barrier to a global technocracy. In parallel to this we have the attempts to rewrite our history in derogatory terms and the efforts in schools to undermine heterosexual relationships.
June 28, 2023
I have not looked at âConservative Homeâ in a very long time. It was like Liberal Democrat Central.
They still pine for David Gauke.
So this article will not go down well over there. Still, I suppose somebody has to tell them a few home truths from time to time.
June 28, 2023
One useful item on ‘Conservative Home’ is a list of Tory MPs who are not standing at the next election. Current total is 40. Plus Boris Johnson who has already resigned.
Make of that what you will.
June 29, 2023
The article did not go down well there. It certainly seems that ordinary Conservatives have turned decisively against Brexit. No surprise, now that its reality has hit
June 29, 2023
Conservatives are moderated out. You will only see the comments of social democrats. But conservatives read it.
June 28, 2023
@Mark B +1
Yup the HoC is now the âHouse of Disreputeâ they want your vote with wonderful, honest words then renege and capitulate to what they see is a higher power, of the EU and the Socialist WEF Cabal.
They refuse their job as the sole UK legislator that has been empowered by the people as such deny democracy in the UK
Voting for any of them is to support their lies.
It doesnât need to be that way MPâs could just start serving their Constituents, and the Country i.e. those that pay and empower them.
June 28, 2023
Mark B
Bang on++++
June 28, 2023
We still haven’t had a brexit in and shape or form ….and this government continues to make sidebar treaty and agreements to ensure we never really leave
June 28, 2023
“BREXIT did not fail, those we placed our trust and faith in did”
I’m afraid that is so very true.
June 28, 2023
Agreed 100%, I wiil not be voting Conservative ever again, I have recently joined Reform UK the only one supported by Non-liars now
June 28, 2023
Indeed. We were lied to for a generation on their true intentions and still they lie about their true intentions. Brexit has shown how bad our civil service and MP’s/Ministers are. Totally clueless and a bunch of Haw Haw’s. The Tory’s didn’t secure Brexit Sir John and you know it. UKIP and Sir Nigel did with no help from ………anywhere. Apart from a small minority of dissenters your Party tried every trick in the book to try and win the vote (Plagues of locusts/recession, interest rates, trade deficits/mortgage rates) and betray us after. Remember May’s Chequers? Unelected Snake’s dropping laws and refusing to implement change and divergence from EU regulation. The Windsor betrayal. Please Sir John, just go. Your Party are a disgrace and need to be obliterated so a right of centre party can emerge to represent us.
June 28, 2023
Timaction, ++++++
True, it was the Tric winner, Nigel, who did it.
June 29, 2023
Farage had no influence in calling the referendum. That was wielded by 150 Conservative backbenchers threatening a leadership contest. Farage did, however, play a large part in winning the referendum once it had been called.
Another point on which Farage should be more honest is that we would never have got the referendum under his vaunted PR. Only a Conservative majority gained under FPTP was able to do that.
June 29, 2023
Actually the referendum was won by a cross party effort. Just as Heath won with Labour votes.
Now the cross party majority voted patriotically though, Remain Labour mainly suckered into it by clever Corbyn, a lifelong Brexiteer.
June 28, 2023
Mark B, Nonsense we have ‘taken back control’ so your claim about losing territory and fishing grounds etc doesn’t hold up – if it appears that we have lost some ground it is only because government is being very clever and has allowed it to suit some clever tactical ploy – all in the grander scheme of things. Believe it or not
June 29, 2023
I choose not.
June 28, 2023
I thank John for his first sentence, where he explodes the myth, repeated endlessly repeated by the Leave campaigns, that “in 1975 we had no idea, that what we were voting for would lead to what we now have in the European Union”
The pamphlet sent to every single electoral address in the UK made that as plain as day.
Thanks again.
June 29, 2023
I have the 1975 pamphlet in front of me, and your statement about it is entirely false. It in no way states or even implies that total economic and political union and statehood might be the purpose of the EEC. On the contrary, the pamphlet states:
“The aims of the Common Market are:
To bring together the peoples of Europe.
To raise living standards and improve working conditions.
To promote growth and boost world trade.
To help the poorer regions of Europe and the rest of the world.
To help maintain peace and freedom.”
The pamphlet stresses “there will be no ERM… which would have been a threat to British jobs and the British economy….
Britain will not have to put VAT on necessities…
Britain (i.e. Labour) won a better deal for Commonwealth countries and their imports….
No important new policy can be decided in Brussels without the consent of a British Minister answering to Parliament.”
Well, as we know, that went well.
June 29, 2023
+1
June 29, 2023
But SJR didn’t support the lie of Maastricht, and the creation of the EU in place of the EEC. On the contrary, he staunchly and persistently opposed it vociferously, and in 1995 stood against Major in the party leader election. The country was singularly blinkered about Maastricht, as most people did not read the Treaty let alone grasp its implications. Government propaganda prevailed in the media, the flimsy and temporary ‘opt-outs’ filled the news pages, and the ‘bad news’ was largely ignored. Most voters were EU-uninformed and indifferent. The links between the EU and the Black Wednesday currency and market collapse and sky-high mortgage rates/repossessions were not understood, and not explained by the government. Even had there been a referendum, recalling the spirit of the times back then, I’m not sure No would have won. I bet the turnout would have been very low.
June 29, 2023
The treaty was unavailable in those days. No internet, and it appears that Parliament didn’t want the electorate to know the truth anyway. Parliament (as a whole) allowed an illegal action, by Parliament.
June 29, 2023
He didn’t support a lie, any more than he supported a lie in 1997. He simply gave losers’ consent which is an essential part of democracy but one which has been withdrawn by the remainiacs since 2016.
June 28, 2023
âThere is no question of Britain losing essential sovereigntyâ Edward Heath.
He may have believed that (?) but it always seemed obvious that in joining such a scheme as the EU loss of sovereignty was inevitable.
And in fact how has it changed anything for the better?
Look at Ukraine.
A âJust warââŠlike the other two?
June 28, 2023
Heath surely knew full well that there was a considerable loss of Sovereignty indeed a substantial loss of democracy. I assume that is why he inserted the subjective & loose word âessentialâ into this claim.
Heath was never a fan of Democracy. âThe Chinese pay tribute to Chairman Mao’s old pal Ted Heath – Sir Edward Heath was outspoken in his defence of China after the communist dictatorship massacred several hundred pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989.â Also an economic incompetent in the currency debaser mode rather like Sunak. Does Sunak have three day weeks and prices and income policies planned.
I was too young to vote in 1975 but was hugely for leave convinced by the rational arguments of E Powell, Tony Benn, Peter Shaw types as opposed the largely emotional âbetter togetherâ arguments of the remainers. Heath had taken us in without any permission and the question âDo you think that the United Kingdom should stay in the European Community (the Common Market)? A simple YES / NO answer was permitted (to be marked with a single ‘X’)â surely was biased. Surveys show people like to say yes.
Do you want to be ruled by unelected people in Brussels that you cannot remove or influence or Elected MPs in Westminster that you can? A or B might have be a rather more honest and balaned question.
June 28, 2023
A SECRET document, which remained locked away for 30 years, advised the British government to cover-up the realities of EU membership so that by the time the public realised what was happening it would be too late.
June 28, 2023
Ll,
So you were under 18 in 1975. So you are under 66.
June 28, 2023
Edward Heath was probably the main proponent who deceived the nation. Geoffrey Rippon should have been more resistant instead of going along with him.
June 28, 2023
As far as I am aware, it is (or was) illegal for ANY sovereignty to be handed to a foreign power. What went wrong? Parliament allowed it, and FCO30/1048 confirms Parliament knew it was illegal.
June 29, 2023
Utter nonsense, Shirley. Signing an international Treaty – which is all that EU membership is – is never illegal. It is what sovereign countries like Germany, France and yes, the UK, do all the time
June 28, 2023
There was never a Referendum asking if we wanted to join the EU/Common Market. The decision to join was made for us. We were sold down the river!!
June 28, 2023
Correct. It was sold to the people as, “The Common Market”. It was just another trade deal. Nothing to worry about đ
June 28, 2023
Because General de Gaulle liked to say ‘No!’, joining the Common Market was sold as some sort of victory.
This view was boosted by French and German economies growing faster than the UK.
June 28, 2023
Heath knew exactly what he was saying. NO SOVEREIGNTY WAS LOST. The House of Commons could have voted any day to once again assume responsibility for legislating and governing the U.K. They simply did not do so because they loved having the status and salary and no responsibility.
Heath knew that de facto we had set aside our sovereignty possibly never to reclaim it – that was his hope. But he spoke the truth when he said that de jure we had lost no sovereignty.
No Parliament can surrender Britains Sovereignty in perpetuity because it canât bind itâs successors, so any Parliament can recover said Sovereignty – as they did under our direct orders.
June 28, 2023
Heath was absolutely right. It never did lose essential sovereignty. It agreed to pool it in areas with which no reasonable person would have a problem, no more.
The fact that it was able to leave the European Union by the mere sending of a letter proves that conclusively.
June 29, 2023
I’ve missed you Martin. The daily morning chuckle has been absent. Most commentators on here are boring in comparison to your funny jibes.
June 29, 2023
In later life, towards the end of The Great Sulk, Heath admitted in an interview that he knew the Common Market was intended to evolve into the European Union and he had lied about it.
June 28, 2023
What a dreadful waste of time, money and energy it has all been.
Generally speaking bloody wars are waged and lost before a country surrenders all its rights and self determination.
Having âwonâ two appalling wars we just strewed flowers in front of the oncoming motorcade.
June 28, 2023
âSo far government has been too cautiousâ. Far too cautious despite the 80 seat majority they were given. So as a result it seems we have to suffer a few terms of even more socialism under Labour/SNP.
Deregulate hugely, relax planning, cut taxes, halve the size of the state, ditch net zero, have real incentives to work, ditch the Windsor framework disaster, stop the wars on motorists, small business, landlords, the self employed, stop soft loans for worthless degrees, control the levels and quality of immigration. Remove the Ted Heath type tax to death Sunak and Hunt types.
June 28, 2023
Most degrees are worthless. There must be a better education than following what others have done 50 plus years ago and still taking their superiority as something they did in youth, then find that 30 years later they still cannot do the job. It is useless to always talk about degrees .It is the job which is more important , Exams should be taken whilst learning on the job and studying what is important. We are teaching youth to become responsible, knowledgeable adults . The work role is not the same as it was 60 years ago and we need to keep the learning equitable.
June 29, 2023
Indeed many are fairly worthless and rarely worth the ÂŁ50k they cost (plus the 3 years+) but rather different types of people aspire to different degree in general. Politics, sociology, art, PPE people are rarely like physicists, engineers, or mathematicians.
June 28, 2023
You dream of a utopian world for Britain but your ideas exist detached from reality. We are part of a global network, interelated via large trading blocks from which we have just extracated ourselves and therfore we have lost our relevance and our way, and it will be to Britain’s detriment. The leave position was to many about migration and series of lies about money being able to be redirected to our beloved institutions like the NHS. Sovereignty was also a myth peddled by the medicine men of the leave campaign. Brexit is basically one big lie and that is why it has failed and will fail. Until this country detaches itself from the rubbish of regressive nostalgics the better…
Reply The opposite is true. The more tge UK uses its freedoms and independence the more the world will listen.
June 29, 2023
Sir JR
Your conclusions are not a given
June 29, 2023
National independence is a very important thing.
Witness the people fighting for it and dying for it. in Ukraine.
June 28, 2023
Laced with a huge dollop of Panglossian hubris, we see why those who adhere to the rule of law, to democracy and to civility always lose the battle. Reading this article I sense all the above.
Does Mr Redwood appreciate the evil we are up against? Yes, I use the term evil to mean genuine evil.
Those who accept the Brexit result are to a degree naive and clueless if we believe that the enemy will not turn over the result. The enemy WILL TURN OVER THE RESULT. They will take us back into the EU. It’s happening already with the realignment of UK and EU financial services announced by Hunt this week and the partitioning of N Ireland. Then we have Bailey upping rates to create recession to lay the groundwork for a Europhile Labour govt
The Globalists who promote the divisive, destructive poison of race, gender and transgender based politics want to destroy western nations from within and from without using mass immigration to splinter unifying cultures and trigger resentment The filth at ‘the top’ are only too happy to succumb if it protects their wealth
Nothing that is happening today is ACCIDENTAL.
And we won’t get any answers from our esteemed host being a party politician who pulls the party line.
June 28, 2023
Indeed seems so.
June 28, 2023
Yes DOM.
Evil almost seems inadequate to describe much of what is happening. Democracy here and around the world is being crushed.
June 28, 2023
Sadly, Dom, you are correct!
There’s a lot of evil in the world at the moment! But, we can fight back, plenty are! But it’s a big battle, change won’t happen overnight.
June 28, 2023
Agree 100%
Actually Iâve long believed ( as I have oft banged on) that the 1832 please-donât-chop-off
-our-heads Great Reform Bill set our so-called âdemocracyâ in aspic.
I canât think of an occasion until 2016 when democracy, as crafted by the elite, was put to the test.
Were referenda held on entering the two wars?
No!
Just every so often we are asked to choose between Buggins and Buggins, safe in the knowledge that they will screw up our lives with equal zeal.
And yesâŠpure, unadulterated evil.
June 28, 2023
When I say âput to the testâ I mean delivering a result contrary to that desired and propagandised for by the powers that be.
June 28, 2023
Yes SJR is a safe pair of hands, staying clear of direct confrontation, and not causing too many ripples. Full of common sense and practical solutions but not yet ready to abandon the Titanic.
June 28, 2023
There is no movement trying to destroy us from within through mass immigration
June 28, 2023
Then Bill Brown explain the reason for mass illegal migration. And dont come out with the rubbish they are refugees as there is a legal channel for them.
I personally would use Royal Marines working in ribs from a mother ship to stop them on the line of our waters, turn them round and let the risk their problem of running out of petrol returning to France from thence they came!
Drownings!! Their problem.
June 29, 2023
There is no legal channel. That is why they are on the boats in the first place. The problem of the boats would be solved tomorrow by providing a legal channel
June 29, 2023
We have legal channels, Syria, Hong Kong, Afghanistan and Ukraine, every other route is illegal â therefore every immigrant that has transit via a safe country of France to cross in small boats is illegal
June 29, 2023
MFD
I don’t wish to debate at this level it’s not serious
June 28, 2023
correct, it isn’t a movement its this Tory government
June 28, 2023
Don’t forget Raab’s replacement Alex Chalk scrapping Raab’s Bill of Rights.
If these other Countries around the world want to do deals with the UK they best get a move on and not delay, it’ll all be over next year.
June 28, 2023
Spot on DOM.
June 28, 2023
Hi John
Let’s get on and make Britain Great again
But with so many undemocratic in government wanting to rejoin it’s like we are on a treadmill just getting no where
Let’s show we have control back and stop the boats cancel unsesary EU laws
Support for business let’s stop giving the French hundreds of millions of hard got pounds for with Return
You are doing a good job sir john
June 28, 2023
Agree 100%
JR canât work miracles alone!
As you say, one HUGE thing, even if it were only symbolic, ( in terms of âlegalâ numbers etc.)would be to stop the boats!
June 28, 2023
The boats should be turned round or immediately sent back via the tunnel to France. They are France’s illegal immigrants and should be returned, if need be via the Channel tunnel. All this picking them up and providing them shelter, hotels etc processing blah blah blah is not necessary. SEND THE BACK IMMEDIATELY AS FRANCE HAS AND WOULD DO SO NOW, TO US. This protects their lives and our borders and taxes. Stop your weak Government hiding behind in ECHR/Human rights bunting. There is no need to receive them end of. They can certainly be processed in an hour and returned and tell not ask France. YOUR GOVERNMENT IS PRETENDING AND MAKING PROBLEMS/EXCUSES. HM GOVERNMENT has agreed a secret deal to receive their quota.
June 28, 2023
unnecessary?
June 28, 2023
unnecessary, George Sheard.
June 28, 2023
Brexit has brought some benefits to the EU:
It has been able to move on, propelled by crises like the migrant crisis, the pandemice, the Russion war in Ukraine.
It has been decoupled from a member which was too uncomfortable inside, resulting in many major opt-outs, and âspanner in the worksâ behaviour.
Cooperation between the two unions of course still exists and could be enhanced over time.
With regard to the small issue of the young generation which voted 75% remain, they may have to wait for older generations having passed away and for major reforms in tabloid Britain.
June 28, 2023
The younger generation may get wiser as they get older and more experienced. Thought the EU didn’t want us anyway with our ‘spanner in the works’ behaviour. Presumably you mean the tame way our politicians were trying to get something advantageous to the UK by that remark.
June 29, 2023
@Graham: Wikipedia mentions as former UK opt outs:
– Schengen Area (more of an optional opt in than an opt out. Ireland is also outside Schengen)
– Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) (the obligation to work towards adoption of the euro)
– Charter of Fundamental Rights,
– Area of freedom, security and justice (AFSJ),
– Social Chapter (later on adopted under a Blair government)
June 28, 2023
Younger generations become older generations, Peter, and wiser heads. And they vote.
June 28, 2023
What a load of nonsense, and you expect us to believe that bullshit?
Be honest even you know it is untrue.
We were not born yesterday even if you think so.
June 29, 2023
@Mickey Taking : at who are you addressing your rant?
If it is me, I only cited well-known “facts”
June 28, 2023
If we had had good government over the years, people would have been much less likely to support being in the EU.
What should have happened is that the Westminster Parliament should have been disbanded and a EU commissioner appointed to run the civil service. Thatâs effectively what we have.
June 28, 2023
Interesting to hear you “went hoarse explaining a common market just needed the rule that any product deemed to be of merchandisable quality in one member state could be sold in another”. So what you are telling us is that you failed to win the arguments. Did you ever conside resigning, so the UK could be represented by someone better at arguing than you are? Meanwhile, after Brexit, we are now in the position that we have to comply with all the rules of our largest export market, the EU, when we trade with them, but no one, whether they are good at arguing or none, represents us at the table. What a total failure Brexit is
June 28, 2023
What rubbish.
We can still make representations to the EU about their laws just as we can make representations to the US and other countries about their laws. One difference is that those representations can now be our own independent representations, not some restricted variation on the EU representations. Another difference is that we no longer have some small share of the votes in the EU – rarely a veto – but UK businesses are now only bound by its laws in respect of their exports to the EU, just as applies to exports to the US and other countries.
As pointed out in April, when you were making similar comments:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2023/04/29/which-inherited-eu-laws-should-be-improved-or-removed/#comment-1385237
“In 2022 the biggest market for UK producers was the UK domestic market, 64% of GDP.”
And:
“Of those two alternatives – align our regulations with the EU, or with the US, the first would cover 79% of our production while the second would cover 71%, so clearly the first would be slightly preferable, but much better would be to have the 64% covered by our own regulations under our own democratic control and have the rest required to meet the requirements of each of their export markets.”
June 28, 2023
We obey import rules whichever country we export to as regards the goods despatched, but don’t have to have our laws made by say USA or China. Brexit is not a failure, our supine politicians are, who never wanted it and won’t permit it to happen. We need a clearout, but won’t get it unless the Tories and Labour are defeated and a new clean party comes in, but with FTFP that cannot happen, it is a carve up between the two legacy parties and suits them just fine. They cock up and go out for a while, knowing the others will also cock up and then come back again for another go. It has been like that all my life – one crisis follows another.
June 28, 2023
At what table, Lemming? The one where you have to put down your money for the EU? No thanks.
June 28, 2023
Let me give my thoughts of ‘failure’. Politicians have failed to remove unnecessary EU laws. All businesses comply with the standards required by the country being exported to. There is absolutely no justification for 100% of UK businesses being forced into catering for one market only (the EU) when only 6-8% of UK businesses export to the EU.
June 28, 2023
OFF TOPIC.
According to the German car maker’s work council, a shift at Volkswagen’s Emden plant in Lower Saxony has been cancelled for the next two weeks in a lead-up to an extended four-week summer holiday period for workers on electric vehicle lines in July and August.
Among the models affected are the ID 4 SUV and early production of the ID 7 saloon. Details of the shortening of shifts were provided by Manfred Wulff, head of the works council for the Emden plant, in response to an inquiry from the German Press Agency and an earlier article published by the North West newspaper.
While the production of combustion-engine models, including the Volkswagen Passat, continues unchanged, the factory holidays for electric vehicle line workers have been extended by one week.
Additionally, Wulff says 300 of the current 1500 temporary workers employed at Volkswagen’s Emden plant will not have their contracts renewed in August 2023. Employees were informed about the reduction in electric vehicle production on Monday.
June 28, 2023
The average Joe doesnât want them nor can afford them, theyâre only selling to the rich, the famous and the climate crusader âŠ.all who have a garage and a second petrol engine car
Once the subsidy has gone production will stop
June 28, 2023
“I found it difficult to grasp how they could so misinterpret the Treaty we had signed.”
They (Ministers and MPs) didn’t misinterpret it. They knew full well that the intention was to create a United States of Europe, controlled by bureaucrats who were safely above democracy so that the project could not be challenged or derailed by the pesky voters in any of the countries in the bloc.
The Civil Servant who briefed Heath specifically spelled out that the project would be advanced by stealth and that by the time British voters had worked out what was happening, it would be too late to leave. And they very nearly succeeded: if Blair had managed to get us into the Euro, it would have been impossible.
I’m afraid the “dim, gullible, naive, tricked” argument for our Ministers and MPs doesn’t fly Sir John. They were traitors – who deliberately set out to deceive the people. Even the Blessed Margaret, who recanted far, far too late.
Sadly, far too many traitors are still in positions of considerable power in Westminster and Whitehall; they have done their level best to prevent a real Brexit from being implemented and largely succeeded.
June 28, 2023
Older voters did not die off as quickly as they expected, and then there is the internet as a source of information.
June 29, 2023
@Denis+Cooper: the orgument of older voters dying works both ways.
Ryanair’s boss: âIn the next five to 10 years, quite a number of the Brexiteers will dieâ
By which time he expects a Norway-like deal for the UK with the EU.
June 28, 2023
Apparently the British Bill of Rights has now disappeared round a U turn.
Not sure if it was actually worth anything.
ButâŠ.?
Maybe they âmisinterpreted itâ?
June 28, 2023
+many Donna
June 28, 2023
âNorth Devon council has refused to grant planning permission for flats above shops in existing building in Barnstaple, where there is a chronic housing shortage, because they might be affected by floods in over 8o yearsâ time.â
Total insanity form the climate alarmist nutters! Just sleep in the doorways all you homeless people.
June 28, 2023
And now, Sunak surrenders control of the armed services (or what remains of them) to the EU.
The betrayal continues.
June 28, 2023
What isn’t under the continued control of the EU ?
June 28, 2023
This morning I made the mistake of listening to the Today programme.
From 6am onwards, it was one piece after another, either having a go at the government or pushing policies that require ever greater public expenditure. eg, we are spending ÂŁ2.6bn a year on school buildings but some report says we need to be spending ÂŁ7bn ! Labour says our housing policy is failing because we are building only 200,000 plus homes a year when we need 340,000. 200,000 would be enough if we even only halved the 600,000 net migrants who are being allowed in !
Yvette Cooper was allowed to trash the Rwanda policy because a report says it will cost ÂŁ69,000 more to send one economic refugee to Rwanda rather than keep him here in a hotel. The presenters make no attempt to counter the argument that if the policy stops 2/3 of those coming in small boats, it will save us billions ! Cooper said there is no evidence that the policy will work but nobody mentioned that the simple expedient of returning Albanians has cut the flow of them coming to a trickle. Why should Africans be any different ?
I dispair. It seems certain that the BBC is determined to give us a very one-sided election campaign
June 28, 2023
They also failed to mention that, for every asylum seeker we send them, Rwanda will send us one of theirs in return. The only thing is, the former Rwandan asylum seeker may have considerable medical issues that will need to be dealt with.
June 28, 2023
The people we will be receiving will definitely need looking after for the rest of their lives, not may.
June 28, 2023
….as it always has.
June 28, 2023
In 1975 I felt EFTA worked just fine and we had enough bureaucracy of our own, so I voted LEAVE. Then I was the only one in my family to vote that way, but over the years all my family have realised I was right. I still have the 1975 leaflets touting the benefits the Common Market would give us; periodically I read them again and feel ever more reassured in my choice. It was one almighty con job and still is.
June 28, 2023
No, I will not have “So far government has been too cautious, sticking to failed EU laws and policies” for that overlooks the at best negligence and at worst betrayal, underhand and devious.
For one, where are Prime Minister Sunak’s freeports, so strongly promoted in the past and now forgotten?
June 28, 2023
Where is fracking shale gas, where is stopping the boats ….its a big list
June 29, 2023
But we do stop the boats – briefly to have them invited onto luxury craft and enjoy a nice queue jumping trip to Dover, where hotel accomodation is quickly found for them.
June 29, 2023
I stand corrected
June 28, 2023
F57, ++++++, âtoo cautiousâ, sorry, Sir John, the euphemism insults the intelligence of your readers
June 28, 2023
I read the late Christopher Booker’s book about the EU. Apparently, the ‘United States of Europe’ was set up in competition with the USA. However, because it was known it would be unpopular, it had to be set up by stealth, so it started life as a trading block. I suppose, telling lies about its destination became a habit, because remainers are still doing it.
With regards to deviating from EU laws and regulations- a number of leavers say this can’t easily be done, because it would show up the fact that N Ireland is not part of the UK any more, just in name only.
June 29, 2023
Not ‘just in name only’ but in cost, as we pay billions to support it.
June 28, 2023
What do remainers not understand about the UK being independent? Or is it we now have too many in Westminster who have been bought by EU. Who see independence as too much work. Much easier to let others rule us. Who see voters as a nuisance rather than embrace democracy. A few who who put personal gain before their own country. How sad is that!
July 2, 2023
There is a word for that and it is not sad. The penalty for it should be re-introduced, the higher the position the higher the penalty.
June 28, 2023
I wonder that you could not see that the people voted on a false premise? They were duped into voting for something that was not on offer.
In those days it was inconceivable for a British Prime Minister to lie so obviously and to campaign to destroy the entire Constitutional settlement. I accept that. But if you had asked the MPs who voted to âgo inâ you would have found they had been duped too. They truly believed the PM rather than the words in the Treaty of Rome.
A few told me that had they realized what they were accepting, they would NEVER have supported the PM.
Such a contract, where one side was stron-armed or deliberately duped, does not stand in our law.
And NOTHING is more precious than OUR LAW!
June 28, 2023
Lynn
It was perfectly well spelled out by the likes of Enoch Powell and others. I therefore cannot believe that those who say they did not know what was contained in the Treaty of Rome. Even our kind host took time to read the damned document. Why did those MP’s at the time do the same ? If not lying, then a total dereliction of duty.
June 29, 2023
Norris McWhirter used to say that it was literally âincredibleâ. People could not credit it. Even the evidence of their own eyes. Enoch said people listened to him and then he could see in their eyes âyou might be right, you might be wrong – we shall wait and seeâ.
We waited, we saw, we Brexited.
June 28, 2023
âThe Salami Sliceâ of the all the malicious actions by the so-called Political Class. The lunacy of ego placed above âjustâ serving the people that elected them, awarded them with pay, the privileged of empowerment of our laws, rules and regulations.
What did the do, well everything to contradict them selves. They turned English Common Law on its head and removed it from the UK. They handed over the authority to make UK Laws, Rules and Regulations that pertain to the internal workings of the UK to an unelected unaccountable bureaucracy.
This Political Class trashed the meaning of Democracy for the sake of their own personal self gratification. Now in today’s World the have refused what the jargon of the Media calls Brexit. The UK Parliament is still refusing its function as the UK Legislator.
The Conservative Party to the same end has trashed the ideals of Conservativism and have moved to a Socialist WEF doctrine, by putting a place a Conservative Government that is the most extreme left blundering numpties anyone could conjure up.
June 28, 2023
As one former Cabinet minister put it: “The only way we can rebuild the country with conservative values is by rebuilding the Conservative Party first and making it conservative again.
“We cannot hope to rebuild the Conservative Party while we are still clinging on to power.
“It can only be done in opposition.”
June 28, 2023
Ian B
Ahh! My husband saw that yesterday, but couldn’t remember who’d said it. This former Cabinet Minister also thinks that two thirds of the Conservative Party are Liberal Democrats. He’s right, the party needs re-building.
June 28, 2023
that wish will soon be granted…
June 28, 2023
Brexit was good news in 2016 to all of us who voted for it. It was bad news for remainers. MPs would have to be up to legislating again, to understand what they were doing, and to be more responsive to their electorate. Civil servants would have to relinquish their power to legislate via Brussels. For seven years this cohort of fellow travellers, a fifth column, have fought tooth and nail to thwart Brexit at every opportunity. Thanks to the lack of enthusiasm for Brexit among the majority in your party, and their imminent political demise, the cohort are gathering to thwart it further.
The nay sayers are out to dilute it. Consider,
1. The blatent reluctance to remove EU law from our statute book.
2. The tepid response to Sir Geoffrey Donaldsons proposals to correct the insidious faults of the NI Protocol and the Windsor fudge.
3. The total dishonesty of our immigtation policy. 1,200,000 arrivals last year plus illegals.
4. A tax situation guaranteeing our subserveyance, the death of enterprise, and the growth of dependency.
5. A deliberately engineered energy policy to make us dependent on everything except our own resources at astronomical cost to the citizen.
6. Digital Currency hovering in the wings as the next form of central control.
Anti Brexit has not gone away one little bit. To the hissing and shouting of the bubble media last night, Nigel Farage collected his award as best news broadcaster. No mean feat for someone only two years in the game, but achieved because it was the general public who voted for him. Watch out the blob, if he so chooses he could repeat his success in the last EU election, in our 2024 general election. The electorate are desperate for an alternative to at least 550 of the present parliamentary incumbents.
June 29, 2023
Nigel is able to think on his feet and make sense. News readers just read autocues. They don’t like to be shown up.
June 28, 2023
In 1975 after many years of putting up with petty customs officials and narrow minded immigration officers I flew into one of the regional airports in Britain from somewhere in Europe arriving around ten o’ clock in the evening to be met with no customs no immigration no police no control whatsoever it seemed ‘ I formed an opinion then and I have held it since that this EEC or EU had to be the greatest thing ever and have never changed that opinion.
I know that because of terrorism threats and other things an amount of security had since to be brought in and that’s understandable but to go from the time of my arrival in 1975 to where we are now is at the other end of he scale. Where did it all go wrong and welcome to your the new brexit Britain.
June 28, 2023
If that happened in 1975 then they were anticipating the Single Market by 18 years.
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2017/12/06/comments-to-this-site/#comment-905832
âGetting rid of border controls on trade thus depended on both the European customs union, and the European single market … The UK and Ireland were members of a customs union before 1993, but not a single market, and the result again was border controls.”
But in any case you should reconsider because the world has changed a lot since 1975.
June 28, 2023
My views entirely. I did not vote in the 1975 referendum, or whatever they called it, as I was on holiday in the South of France (oh, yes I like Europe for holidays only) and anyone outside the country was not allowed to vote by Harold Wilson and the Labour Government. They were frightened they would lose the vote but no worry the frighteners had been put on the nation by media outlets and a large vote ensued. I admire Nigel Farage for giving 25 years of his life to get us out but he has been sidelined instead of rewarded with a seat in The Lords. Now, where exactly do we go from here as we certainly have a large pack of remainers who are getting rid of the outers to get us aligned back in. I hope you have a lot of young enthusiasts to keep us out in your group as we are all on the way out with age etc., and they are waiting to pick us off. Bring on the young and educate them properly not in these second rate comprehensives with leftist liberal rubbish.
June 28, 2023
He, NF, has recently won a media award. Once again, voted for by the people.
It seems that, if you give people what they want they have a habit of rewarding you with their votes. Someone needs to tell the usurper in Number 10.
PS I see Gilts have hit levels not seen since the Mini-Budget. Any reasons why the usurper is still in office ?
June 28, 2023
Brexit
It was reported yesterday that what was hailed as a big success by Jeremy Hunt as part of the so-called the so-called âWindsor Agreementâ doesnât exist.
âJeremy Hunt travelled to Brussels on Tuesday to sign a memorandum of understanding with the European Commission, designed to boost regulatory cooperation on financial services.
The Chancellor said he was âabsolutely delightedâ with the pact, adding: âWe also see it as an important turning point… We see this very much as not the end of the process, but the beginning.â â
However âA spokesman for the Commission said the deal âdoes not restore UK access to the EU, nor prejudices adoption of equivalence decisionsâ. Instead, the agreement means that the two sides will establish a forum to discuss
Brussels refused to make any provision for financial services in the trade deal.
âFundamentally, the EU is competing with the UK for financial business and thus we do not expect any meaningful concessions from the EU other than those dictated by self-interest or systemic considerations.â
Lord Kinnoull, chairman of the Lords European affairs committee, said: âChina has been granted equivalence by the EU in a dozen or more areas. It looks odd and wrong that the UK has not been granted this considering we are democracies of a similar character.â
June 28, 2023
âChina has been granted equivalence by the EU in a dozen or more areas. It looks odd..” no it is not odd at all.
China is big player. HUGE actually. UK – not so much.
Out is out.
What is the problem? Thought you would be happy – you voted for this didn’t you?
June 28, 2023
I read every single EU treaty before the 2016 referendum. The lies and the betrayal which became so obvious turned my dislike into hatred. I HATE the EU and their eagerness to deceive the people they serve. Like wise for any politician who does the same. Parliament has ALLOWED illegal laws and actions unchecked.
There is nothing else to say other then Parliament willingly serves foreign governments at the expense of OUR country. The country belongs to the people, NOT the politicians, the PTB, the influencers, and the immigrants who gain so much more from it than the people who fund it all.
I hope you will allow the following link: https://www.brugesgroup.com/media-centre/papers/8-papers/899-britain-and-europe-the-culture-of-deceit
Remember, Jean Monnet said the people of Europe should be guided into a superstate, and it be irreversible.
June 28, 2023
@Shirley+M: If you had read the 1957 Treaty of Rome – just like John Redwood did – you would have realised that any lies in that referendum there were told by BRITISH politicians to the British people.
June 28, 2023
Quite right, Peter, it was all there from the very beginning, as plain as plain could be. A young aide of Heath’s drove his car abroad, as far away as he could get during the campaign in1975, in order to avoid telling lies to the public. Because he had read the Treaty of Rome.
June 29, 2023
Nobody has ever denied that Peter. No foreigner did anything to us. We shall never forget or forgive the traitors.
June 28, 2023
+many
June 28, 2023
Sir John
As a small business owner working and exporting into the single market, for me and my business Brexit has been expensive and a disaster
June 28, 2023
So where on the scale of disasters would you place Brexit?
Let’s be realistic and leave out super nova explosions and so on, let’s restrict it to terrestrial events:
Asteroid impact, Extinction Level Event
Thermonuclear war
The Black Death
Explosion of Krakatoa
Tsunami
Mad cow disease
Labour winning a general election
Shortage of toilet paper in the shops
Lost key to business premises
My parents went through two world wars and a great depression and complained less than Rejoiners.
June 28, 2023
Sorry Bill. But to the majority the EU is a parasite.
June 29, 2023
MFD
I don’t wish to debate at this level it’s not serious
June 29, 2023
I think you will find that a majority no longer think this is the case
June 28, 2023
Your fault entirely – if you wish to have to deal with such partners perhaps you now understand it would be wise to find other customers/suppliers. In future the closed trading bloc will be a backwater on the world stage.
June 29, 2023
I think you will find that a majority no longer think this is the case
June 29, 2023
Mickey Taking
If I believed you knew more about trading in the single market, I might take your remarks seriously
June 29, 2023
What nonsense and it says more about your incompetence than anything else. If you haven’t figured out how to do it by now at reasonable cost, you don’t deserve to be in business.
June 28, 2023
As I got to part about the excessive regulation strangling innovation and small business, I thought of the US companies with no such restrictions and how they produced such successful companies that shape the world in their free environment… and then the piece said exactly that.
Quite right.
The question that leads to, for me, is… how do we keep electing such utterly useless MPs?
So many socialists here for a start, coming into national politics from a union background, with little or no qualifications and a chip on their shoulder. But then, there are socialists from privileged backgrounds too – many doing non-vocational degrees they will never use in any meaningful way, their “university” being nothing more than a breeding ground for more people like them.
We won’t suddenly lurch into a version of the USA unless we do something about the way politics is done in this country. When someone like Boris, Oxford-educated, comes into No10 and starts enacting green, woke policies… you have to wonder. Is it to pander to the masses for votes? Does he really believe that guff – or at least, does he really believe we should aim for net zero by 2020? Why did he not slow it down to, say, 2050?
If he does believe it all, how did someone with his background become so muddled in his thinking? And perhaps more importantly: how do we prevent it in future and get sensible thinking ruling the roost here again, where people don’t believe they can challenge science with opinion (think: MMR jab for example)?
June 28, 2023
I agree with every word, as an ordinary member of the public I have always thought that those MPs who are so keen to stay in the EU are so used to just rubber stamping their orders from Brussels that they have lost the ability to govern and are too frightened to make decisions. They have had their free will and ability taken away from them over the years. Just my view.
June 28, 2023
The eternal grouch took us in on a lie, of which I am sure he was fully aware. He was followed by a treacherous civil service who, without a spark of democracy in their sorry hides have thwarted a full and successful Brexit ever since. So called ‘Grandees’ of the Tory party have conived with them. Until these anti-democratic parasites are expunged nothing will change.
June 28, 2023
“David Cameronâs good decision to promise one in the 2015 Manifesto…”
David Cameron never imagined for a moment that he would lose the referendum or he would not have held it. If I needed any proof of the contempt the EU held the UK in, it was the way they slammed the door in Camerons face when he went looking for consessions he could hold up as proof we had some k(any) kind of influence within the EU. This turned out to be a very stupid thing to do and quite likely was one of the factors that convinced many here that the EU was not interested in compromise.
As far as I’m concerned, calling the Referendum was one of the few good things Cameron managed to do – even though it turned out to be a huge mistake from his point of view. I very much doubt we would have had the opportunity if the idiots in power had even suspected they might lose that vote. Even Farage & Johnson were shocked…
June 28, 2023
@IanT: David Cameron actually secured an opt out from “ever closer union”, quite something as it is one of the founding principles already stated in every treaty since the Treaty of Rome.
June 29, 2023
Little sign of ever-closer union! Germany and France still at odds with other members, Poland and Hungary doing their own thing. The EU is divided between north and south or creditors and debtors.
June 29, 2023
Graham
You obviously don’t know enough about the implications in terms of customs, vat and paper work, otherwise hundreds of thousands of smaller businesses would have reacted more positively to Brexit.
I will disregard your personal remarks as unserious
June 29, 2023
Donald Tusk at that meeting “This is a make or break time”
Well at least he was right on that Peter đ
June 29, 2023
PvL – don’t you think DC got that in 2015 in readiness for the vote and like all things over time it would just be overturned like the WTD which has so affected our doctors and hospitals, as you have indicated a couple of times this week you are all much happier now that we aren’t holding your plans back and you can all get much closer.
David Cameron – ‘a humiliating defeat’ we were told.
David Cameron loses Jean-Claude Juncker vote The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com âș world âș jun âș david-ca…
27 Jun 2014 â Cameron objected to Juncker’s appointment on two grounds: that he will not be able to lead EU reform, and that the spitzenkandidaten system…
The seven-year brake in the EU on benefits is lifted this year for all members. That’s going to be interesting.
European Council June 2015: David Cameron’s speech
GOV.UK https://www.gov.uk âș Government âș Europe
29 Jun 2015 â Now the UK has been clear that we will not take part in any relocation scheme to move migrants who have already arrived across member states…. Well this is going well apparently we are taking part in relocation schemes one way or another!
June 28, 2023
Johnson was shocked …. which is why he didn’t immediately seize the crown, Henry VII style.
Farage was jubilant. The impromptu “dare to dream” speech he gave when the result came through was absolutely wonderful. 25 years of his life were completely vindicated.
June 28, 2023
There was a good outcome, the spoilt child stormed off, thus allowing a better MP for the constituency.
June 28, 2023
Does the United States of America have the same ‘working time directive’ type rules for all its members?
Do all States pay vat/tax on all ROW imports to the Base (the main federal government to spend)?
I found this about their income taxes that was interesting.
https://taxfoundation.org/publications/state-individual-income-tax-rates-and-brackets/
Does the federal government choose which individual states will get which industries prioritised to them, which State grows most of their olive oil, which State builds most of their commercial vehicles, which State gets the flower growing, white goods? Do the different States compete with each other on Technology advances? Does one offer a much lower corporation tax half the others? How free are they to set their own rates?
June 28, 2023
I really don’t know the answers to all your questions about a foreign country, a–tracy. Do tell us.
June 29, 2023
I wasn’t aware I asked you R.Grange. I thought I was asking John Redwood as he brought the USAs success into it.
The EU seems to me to be picking which country will produce what and if you give one ‘state’ a near monopoly, such as on vans or farming, for example, it cuts off any competitive advances.
June 28, 2023
‘David Cameronâs good decision to promise [a referendum] in the 2015 Manifesto’
I do not think this would happened without Nigel Farage’s perseverance building the UKIP vote by taking votes from the Conservatives.
Sir John, It would be interesting to have a post from you on the MoU on Regulatory Cooperation in Financial Services which the Chancellor has just signed with the EU.âHunt campaigned to remain in the EU and then thought a second referendum was needed on the terms of leaving.âOf course, he is signing with the PM’s agreement.
‘[The MoU] will see greater co-operation between officials from the EU and the Treasury’ â https://www.gbnews.com/politics/brexit-latest-new-pact-signed-eu-britain
History suggests this is co-operation which travels in one direction and is welcome by Treasury officials.
Reply I do not comment on Uk financial services
June 28, 2023
The policy paper, updated 27/06/2023, is on gov.uk âUK-EU MoU on Financial Services Cooperationâ.
You might get more out of it than what G.Cutler did.
June 28, 2023
Ralph Corderey I haven’t checked but I expect Facts4Eu will be on the case too!
June 28, 2023
Unlike Sir John I did not vote to join the EU in 1975 . In the 60’s I had set up several branches of my own professional business in Europe and as a result became aware of the underlying dislike that existed for we Brits . These investments were profitable but not outstanding and , as a result I turned my attention to the USA and elsewhere . The world for me then became a much better and rewarding place . The Franco / German alliance was very much in evidence and it was not until Thatcher made her stance that the public became alert to the problem . Leaving the EU was and continues to be the right result ; it always was a defunct organisation with little benefit to its members .
Reply I voted against staying in the EC!
June 28, 2023
JR ponders why we do not have any great technology businesses (apart of those for making lethal weapons some of which work) and wants to blame the EU. The answer is that they have been sold off under the Tories to foreign buyers in Europe, the USA and Japan. According to dimwitted Tories this constitutes “Inward investment”; you get a real asset and we get a pile of banknotes fresh off the printing press to pay off the debts generated from buying everything from abroad including stuff that we used to make but whose technology and patents are now foreign owned.
We are the only country that does not jealously guard its indigenous businesses built by far cleverer and more usefully industrious people than those in parliament.
Great oaks from little acorns grow. We have the much vaunted City so where is the funding to ensure our saplings and small trees stay British together with the jobs and wealth?
Laissez-faire is a confidence trick to rip us off.
June 28, 2023
Successful British businesses are always sold to foreigners waving a cheque book at the founding shareholders. Business in the UK is such a ball ache – thanks to the government – that you canât blame people for selling as soon as the business is worth a couple of million.
June 28, 2023
I have now just read in Computing magazine:
“The [Semiconductor Leadership Group] said it also looking for ways to increase long-term investment from “investors with real-world semiconductor experience and understanding.”
It voiced concern that semiconductor companies are being snapped up by overseas companies, and said it’s important that sufficient capabilities remain in the UK. It was critical of the financial sector’s lack of understanding of the long term investment needs of the industry.
“UK has strong capital markets, however unlike other global markets, they do not understand the semiconductor sector,” the SLG said.”
The group did welcome the government’s strategy and allocation of funds. The government now needs to block the external takeovers whether the financial spivs understand the sector or not and ensure that promising companies do not run out of funds when it comes to second round financing.
June 28, 2023
Sir John,
I have no doubt that there are plenty of remoaners eager to rejoin their beloved EU, their Garden of Eden. So many of them follow your twitter thread. Their bitterness and nastiness is palpable and unremitting. It must occupy their minds through most of their waking hours. I have seen these people, often after a People’s Vote march (remember those) in central London. I’ll never forget the look of condescending arrogance on the faces of some of them. Usually they were on their way home to their leafy suburbs in north and south-west London. Many of them could be described as retired teachers, university lecturers, their students, old hippies living off trust funds, the upper middle classes with well paid jobs and comfortable lifestyles, and their entitled obnoxious and spoilt offspring.
I also have no doubt that the majority of people in this country will never vote to give up the pound, adopt the euro, become part of Schengen with unlimited free movement, contribute a vast and increasing annual tribute without any rebates, accept qualified majority voting with no veto, an ever increasing deluge of EU laws and regulations, all while gradually being subsumed into a corrupt and declining transnational EU monolith.
June 28, 2023
“I found it difficult to grasp how they could so misinterpret the Treaty we had signed.”
They didn’t, Sir John. They lied, as cabinets papers subsequently released showed.
The founding fathers of the European Project to form a new State of Europe knew that the project had no democratic support and never would. Therefore it would have to proceed incrementally, by stealth and deceit. It has been that way ever since.
The tragedy is that after 40 years or so of EU membership that way of conducting politics has infected and become ingrained in Remainers in Westminster and other institutions. They undermined the Brexit negotiations in every way they could; they continue to resist all efforts to take advantage of the oppoptunities afforded by Brexit; they side with the EU in every difference between the UK and the EU; they continue to claim non-existent benefits of EU membership and to deny disadvantages, even claiming sovereignty is retained in the EU – the original and persistent great lie of Heath & Co, although they have had to admit the EU Army does, after all, exist.
June 28, 2023
A letter to the Belfast News Letter:
“I found little to fault in the DUP report recommending collaborative “mutual enforcement” as the best way to regulate the carriage of goods across the international frontier between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, with the UK retaining the option of setting up our half of the system if Dublin and Brussels declined to reciprocate.
But what does the UK government think? I have looked around for any public reaction – critical or supportive, from London or Belfast – but so far it seems to be silence. So is our government hoping that if they simply ignore this proposal it will just go away? Well, do they want the Stormont executive back up and running, or not?
As mentioned before, there is nothing in the Northern Ireland Protocol/Windsor Framework to prevent the UK government unilaterally imposing export controls on the trickle of goods crossing the open land border into EU territory.”
June 29, 2023
Denis, Am afraid that Donaldson and the DUP are not flavour of the month with government at the minute so don’t think the Sunak & Co are too concerned about cross border trade especaially now with all of the other problems lining up – like Thames Water etc.
June 29, 2023
Well, do they want the Stormont executive back up and running, or not?
June 29, 2023
But are the usurpers concerned with getting the Assembly back up and running? That was the excuse for doing the Windsor Framework in the first place. Now it has failed, as it was bound to do, demolishing as it does the very foundations of Unionism, what will the usurpers come up with instead?
June 28, 2023
âI am so pleased the UK electors voted to take back control in 2016.â
Yes. A majority voted against the direction and orders of the PM, the Chancellor, a majority of MPs, the Governor of the BoE, the educational establishment, the judiciary, the POTUS and the Archbishop of Canterbury etc. and despite the BBCâs ceaseless pro EU propaganda, all informing us of how we will be doomed if we vote leave.
The result clearly showed how those we elect to govern us are not acting upon the wishes of a majority of the voters and they continue to throw spanners into the works to make life more difficult because of the way we voted.
If this continues, with a UniParty Parliament refusing to allow referendums to achieve the necessary mandates for irreversible and large scale changes to our culture through massive legal and illegal immigration and for the economy destroying Net Zero Strategy â Build Back Greener, then I can see social upheaval coming towards us fast.
June 29, 2023
OR – Nothing can stop what is coming, NOTHING. Hold tight.
June 28, 2023
We had a Dyson technology business. JCB fleet technology.
The UK tech industry is a key growth sector, growing at a faster rate than the UK economy and maintaining its lead as one of the world’s premier locations for tech of all kinds.
âDespite recent blows such as the closing of Tech Nation, the UK is still the number one tech hub in Europe by some margin, and number three in the world, boasting a tech sector with a combined market value of $1tn.23 Mar 2023 Computer Weekly
New global index ranks UK first in Europe for advanced digital technology. The UK is better placed than any country in Europe to take advantage of the technologies impacting global businesses over the next decade, according to a new index launched by Digital Catapult, the UK authority on advanced digital technologies.20 Sept 2021 New global index ranks UK first in Europe for advanced digital …
digicatapult.org.uk https://www.digicatapult.org.uk âș press-releases âș post
June 28, 2023
My memory of the 1975 referendum was that the Second World War still haunted the public consciousness and the reason most people voted to Remain was the simplistic hope that belonging to the Common Market meant we wouldnât have to sacrifice another generation of young men.
I donât think âsovereigntyâ or âdemocracyâ were relevant factors for most people.
June 28, 2023
Suggest the Conservative party doesn’t bother with writing a manifesto for the next general election, it gets ignored completely every single time anyway. Save the energy.
June 28, 2023
It Is depressing John, that whatever you write here, nothing will change.
June 29, 2023
JH – Now you understand that the Globalist UK Establishment is in control and has been for decades and moreso centuries. At present YOU / WE are irrelevant but Nothing can stop what is coming ,NOTHING
June 28, 2023
I take my hat off to you Sir John as your lifelong service challenging the untruthful claims and aims of the selfish European elites took us for fools.
I am surprised you still have your indomitable spirit (and your own hair to be honest!) given what you have experienced and I have always had deep respect for you and your fellow travellers who have had to operate like whistle-blowers to keep your integrity and sanity.
You are the best of British of all post war politicians in my humble opinion – the human embodiment of what the poem “If” forecast a century ago.
I know you will remain the same humble but wise man many of us respect.
June 28, 2023
Here’s a good read:
https://cms-lawnow.com/en/ealerts/2023/06/revised-guidance-on-the-application-of-eu-state-aid-rules-in-the-uk-post-brexit
“Revised guidance on the application of EU State aid rules in the UK post-Brexit”
So why do we need this guidance on the application of EU state aid rules in the UK post-Brexit?
Let’s go back to the spring of 2016 and the “Project Fear” lies told by the Treasury under George Osborne.
Which helped to confirm the decades long delusion that EU membership was vital for our economy, supporting the obvious conclusion that it would madness to leave the EU without a special trade deal and thereby turning our government into a supplicant – a position which many of them actively welcomed.
So, November 26 2017:
https://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2021/10/19/the-state-of-the-union-2/#comment-1269044
âOn the TV this morning it was stated that the UK government is âdesperateâ to move on to trade talks, but this would be vetoed by the Irish government unless the UK government committed to keeping the UK in both the Single Market and the Customs Union.â
There are people, some still in Parliament, who should be languishing in the Tower of London.
June 29, 2023
Before a short walk to the block.
June 29, 2023
Donna – Where can I buy a ticket for the best seat???
June 28, 2023
Well said forthurst. It is even worse when essential utilities are foreign owned.
June 28, 2023
Brexit is pointless without the political will in the political and ruling class to actually use the freedom it gives this country.
We are not formally slaves to the EU now, but we are slaves to a ruling class in the most senior layers of the UK public sector, and the large companies that serve the public sector one way or another. That ruling class is completely alien to the majority of decent Brits, but we dont seem to have any say whatsoever.
The political process is broken.
June 28, 2023
We could return every immigrant back to France by one simply, no cost, policy âŠ.tell the French that they can no longer fish in our waters until they accept back âtheirâ immigrants âŠ.thatâs BREXIT
June 28, 2023
It is reported that a bill proposed by Andrew Bridgen to prevent the teaching of radical gender theory in schools has been blocked by a consortium of Labour and ‘Conservative’ MPs. Is this confirmation that the Uniparty is actually in favour of the corruption of our children, or is it a childish Parliamentary game to deny the fledgling Reclaim Party credit for a measure which would have massive support across communities?
June 29, 2023
Probably both.
As we saw during the Covid scamdemic, the well-being of our children is of no concern whatsoever to Uni-Party MPs.
June 29, 2023
Its confirmation that the Tory party MPs are no longer Tory
June 29, 2023
On this distinction between the authoritarian ‘Uniparty’ and ‘others’, see recent interview of Paul Kingsnorth by Freddy Sayers. While being 20 years older and not religious, my views are otherwise similar to Kingsnorth’s. He appreciates limits to growth, something I urge JR to read more about. LtG were correctly predicted in a report 50 years ago.
Someone I know, involved in one of the small parties, says left’ and ‘right’ became meaningless after the UK signed the Maastricht Treaty. Good point. Enoch Powell and Michael Foot agreed on many things including EEC membership.
June 30, 2023
Why has the US benefited from the revolution in computing that followed the widespread use of personal computers. The answer is mundane. It is because American schools taught their children how to type. This meant that when computing became available to all, the American workforce could learn to code easily while those in the UK were still wondering where “Y” was on the keyboard.
The girlfriend of a friend of mine, for her PhD, had to write some software which aided the design of optical systems. After finishing her PhD, she went into business selling it to researchers in other universities. This was successful… but the days of crude front ends to software packages was numbered. An American company, which had access to programmers who could type with facility and so who could do more with their software, had a similar product, but with a much nicer user interface. Not having access to persons with the necessary technical skills, there was little her company could do to compete. So, being in possession of data base of customers which would be valuable to the American company, she sold her company to the American one.
Go and watch the film “The Social Network” and see how Mark Zuckerberg is presented as a student creating the first version of “The Facebook”… how many UK undergraduates could have typed with such facility?
The reality is that it is something as banal as teaching touch typing that allowed the USA dominate the internet economy.
It is time that the National Curriculum was rewritten with the aim of skilling the children of this country for the future rather than pretending that they’re all going to be Edwardian gentlefolk.