The government has sent out its latest update of progress in repealing, amending and incorporating EU law into UK law. It gives us the apparent good news that 2000 laws have now been repealed or reformed in total. This leaves another 4500 to deal with.
The latest list of laws repealed or amended continues with the official approach of doing manyĀ repeals to items that are already time expired or did not apply to us in the first place. The first 3 on the list that I checked out from the latest report were:
Commission decision of 29 June 2005 (2005/477/EC) This was a temporary permission for plants Vitis L to be allowed into the Community from Croatia between January and March 2006. This was requested by Italy.
Commission decision of 9 March 2001 (2001/199/EC) This was a temporary permission for New Zealand potatoes to enter the EC from 1 March to 31 August 2001.
Commission decision of 29 January 2004 (2004/110/EC) was measures to handle the risk of BSE at a time when the UK had BSE in the cattle herd. This no longer applies with the end of BSE.
It is difficult to assessĀ progress whenĀ Ā lumping inĀ so many items that never applied, applied temporarily or apply only in circumstances no longer applying to the UK.
Many of the other items recorded in the list show how industrious the civil service has been to transfer many EU requirements into new SI s or Acts of Parliament, sometimes reinforcing their regulatory impact. The Aviation(Consumers) Amendment Regulations 2023 may well be important ārestatements of EU case law related to compensation and assistance for passengersā but they are not repeals or deregulations. They keep us close to EU ways of doing this.
The Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme Amendment Regulations 2023 āamended the EU 2014 regulations ā¦to report additional information concerning ESOS assessments/energy performance data and provide an action plan with annual progress updatesā. In other words this one strengthens and extends the requirements of the EU regulation.
There is plenty more scope to do some good by repealing the unnecessary and simplifying the important. I have set out many examples in previous blogs of what can be done.
January 27, 2024
Indeed – get rid of the idiotic, pointless and totally misleading energy performance certificates for a start.
January 27, 2024
LL, Sir J, wouldn’t a better principle be “scrap the EU law, unlesss someone makes a full justification for keeping it”?
I say again “Government is best that governs least” (Thoreau, Civil Disobedience)
January 27, 2024
Scrap all of them and replace with new laws in the extremely few cases where any replacement is needed.
January 27, 2024
LL,
Getting rid of the obsolete EU laws is hardly a marker of success.
This is part of the Tory spin to get elected when Sunak is about to strengthen his EU Windsor sell out to stop UK diverging from EU through N.Ireland. No.10 says speculation, most think Sunak caught out, selling out our nation, again.
Cameron was a snake oil salesman, Sunak is a snake!
January 27, 2024
@Hope – Cameron unaccountable by the electorate, hiding in an un-elected chamber and speaking to the World on the UK’s behalf. Says a lot about the deceit of Sunak and of the Conservative Government
January 27, 2024
and within 11 months Cameron wonāt be the Foreign Secretary but will remain a Peer in the House of Lords ā¦.its just undemocratic
January 27, 2024
glen – – but Dave needs the H of L daily attendance money.
January 27, 2024
@PeteB & @LL & @Hope
We pay and empower them to do one job and they refuse. All Laws, Rules & Regulations should only be valid if created by our democratically empowered legislators, who have the option to empower or repeal – no one else has that power. Unless of course we have been conquered by a dictatorship and we are treated as a colony. As @Hope stated, Sunak ‘his’ Windsor accord was him ensuring the UK can never leave the EU
January 27, 2024
should read ‘option to create, amend or repeal’ (predictive text gone mad)
January 27, 2024
They’re “needed” for Net Zero enforcement. Imposing Net Zero is an EU competency, which the Treacherous Tories have signed us up to.
January 27, 2024
@Donna – sort of. There are 27 Countries in the EU. World wide only 6 Countries have put the achievement of NetZero into Law – the other 189 Countries have put their economies first. It says a lot about the disdain this Conservative Government has for the UK
January 27, 2024
This is one of the main moves needed!
January 27, 2024
Scrap Nut zero, its all lies. I wiil do my best not to comply
January 27, 2024
Putin and Trump are hopefull going to save us !
January 27, 2024
Both love their country and put it first. In stark contrast to the weak insipid trecherous Tory PMs who one by one betrayed the nation to the EU.
January 28, 2024
Yes!
I can see a number of E U politicians ending up like Mussolini.
January 27, 2024
The State, which seeks to confound us should look at what is happening in the United States of America.
The people of the west are becoming restless, and where they donāt have alternative, state Governments to fight for them, they will divide in other ways.
But the institutions which have visited this destruction on the West are doomed and were I a part thereof, I would be quaking in my shoes.
January 27, 2024
the people of England are ready for revolution, not just restless!
January 27, 2024
boots
January 28, 2024
They donāt have boots, mostly high heels!
January 27, 2024
There is no excuse for not reviewing all EU laws and making quick decisions. Sir John already knows the details of the government’s approach and Kemi Baddenoch’s unsuccessful attempts to introduce a more effective process so no need to rehearse them here. I have conducted similar exercises as a consultant to overseas governments. It is not difficult and need take no more than 3-4 months to identify the Retained EU Laws it is most important or most urgent to repeal, amend or keep.
First a simple rule needs to be implemented that in cases before UK courts where there are differences in UK and EU law, UK law must take precedence. The government has not even done this so EU law still takes precedence in the UK. this should be corrected first. The most effective approach thereafter would not start with EU laws but with a survey of each sector of the economy to find out which laws and regulations, whether originating in the EU, the UK or elsewhere are the most significant barriers to enterprise in both private and public sectors of the economy. Deal with the most significant barriers first, whether they are caused by UK or EU law, by repealing or amending them and the rest can be treated as retain, review in slower time or if a need arises.
This is actually a golden opportunity rather than a problem. Many UK laws are also barriers to enterprise and the over arching objective is to improve enteprise rather than to make a spectacular bonfire of EU laws for its own sake or for PR purposes – the original purposes of the Government and Tory Party as was clearly evident from the Scrutiny Committee’s examination of Kemi Badenoch on REUL.
January 27, 2024
To get the economy going just deregulate hugely, cut the size of the state, ditch net zero, go for easy hire and fire and cut taxes.
Meanwhile – Jeremy Hunt hints āmoreā tax cuts are on the way as he admits voters are ‘very angry’.
āMore tax cutsā the cut in NI is hugely outweighed by the inflation and the frozen allowances tax grabs. I know Hunt only read PPE but surely even he know that he is lying. Anyway he will surely not even be an MP by the end of the year with the pending Tory wipe out. So his budget promises will be worthless. Even if the Tories did (amazingly) retain power in some way then who would trust them after all their 13+ years of delivering the complete reverse of their manifesto promises on Tax, immigration, law and order, the EU, energy, the economyā¦
January 27, 2024
Peter, what you suggest – a review – is already being done. The EU is (by far) our largest expxort market, so if we set UK law different from EU law, we are simply adding costs to our exporters, with no gain. So the rational choice is to stay aligned with the EU, and this is what all reviews recommend. The Brexiter claims of a brave new world were always fantasy not reality – I think we all know that now
January 27, 2024
You say āThe EU is (by far) our largest expxort market, so if we set UK law different from EU law, we are simply adding costs to our exporters, with no gain.ā
Your logic fails you. To export to the EU the UK will have to comply with EU regulations but having fewer & simpler UK laws lowers costs in the UK market (and for some non EU exports too). Overall EU costs will be the same & other costs fall so obviously a net overall reduction.
January 27, 2024
Indeed to export goods anywhere in the World you need to comply with that Countries laws and regulations.
UK law and regulations only need to apply to goods made and supplied here, why burden companies with external laws and additional costs, if they are never going to export goods or services outside the UK.
January 27, 2024
Alan, there are no additional costs. Uk law does apply to goods made and supplied here. The point is that if UK law is the same as EU law, it makes no difference to UK producers who are not exporters but it helps UK producers who are exporters to the EU. It is that simple
January 27, 2024
Correct – Its killing the small medium business that never export ….and thats 99% of them
January 27, 2024
Lemming – do you not see that much of EU law puts obstacles in the way of importing to the fiefdom? Thats why our exports have grown elsewhere, wanting to avoid the ‘bloc’.
January 27, 2024
Idiotic Lemming forgets you do not have to be in the EU to trade with the EU. Most of the world is not in the ā¦ā¦..EU.
You do not have to be governed or a vassal state in the parasitic EU to trade or be friends. UK trades with many tyrannical regimes including the EU, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia etc etc.
January 27, 2024
Well said Hope,
January 27, 2024
I’m sorry, but (yet again) you have no understanding of what you voted for or what Brexit even means. If we set UK laws different from EU laws, then exporters to the EU have to set up a separate production line for the EU. That costs money. And there are no compensating benefits. If we align our laws to the EU, there can be a single production line for UK and EU, and that saves money. It is that simple. Of course we could choose to align to US law or Peruvian law, but it makes more sense to align to the EU since it is our biggest export market by far
Reply Broken record. Why do you not argue we heed to adopt all US laws to sell to the US as they are our largest country export market? Brexit was about making our own laws and spending our own money. Why deny hs that right which most other countries enjoy?
January 27, 2024
Well said Sir, It’s time that people realise the EU needs your money. Make them change their ways before we condescend to buy from them , or better still boycott them completely
January 27, 2024
In my own field of electronics, EU standards are simply copies of international ones, so ISOxxxx becomes EN6xxxx for example. UK aligning with EU is rather both aligning with international standards.
January 27, 2024
It’s long been known that there is a ‘double coffin lid’. Break out of the EU regulations and you find that above them there are the international ones on top, that the EU was applying within the Union. I imagine our rulers are aware of that.
January 27, 2024
Yes, true in my field too (cars and lorries). Itās one of many things Brexiters never understood ( and mostly still donāt). Withdrawing from the EU doesnāt give us some magical āfreedomā, it simply shows us how complicated and rule-based international trade is. At least when we were in the EU we had a voice at the top table when rules were agreed. Weāre sidelined now
January 27, 2024
that ‘voice’ was an inaudible whisper, while others raised their voice!
January 27, 2024
What a dreamer you are Squid, we had no say at any top table asmost MEPās were puppets
January 27, 2024
Exporters have to meet the demands of their export markets, with the EU now accounting for less than half of exports, and if we exclude oil, gas and power which are not really subject to the sort of regulation applied to manufactures and food, barely a third. Most firms in the UK do not export at all with exports to the EU accounting for just 7% of GDP. I see no case for letting the tail wag the dog.
January 27, 2024
Lemming.
Manufacturing companies make products which comply with requirements in every international market they sell into.
They have been doing this for decades.
It isn’t a problem for them.
January 27, 2024
Obviously, Martin. But if UK law is different from the law of every international market, then every exporter has to have one production run for the UK and another one for each market they export to. Whereas if UK law is the same as EU law, then every exporter can have a single production run for the UK and EU markets, and another one for each market they export to. Result – exporters save money and are more competitive and sell more, to the general benefit of the UK, and nobody loses anything. It’s that simple
January 27, 2024
Lemming
You fail to realise that there are different requirements for products even within European markets.
In plumbing and heating and electrical and automotive markets for example.
And you fail to realise over 85% of companies in the UK don’t export.
And you fail to realise that often the differences between export markets requirements is very minor things like labelling or packaging.
It’s obvious to me you’ve no experience of how export companies operate nor what they do
January 27, 2024
You need to trust that UK standards will only be different for good reasons. We do lose out if we need to make things to EU specifications for no good reason reference the UK market.
January 27, 2024
Good morning.
So we are getting rid of minor leftovers. That’s it ! What about all the other stuff we cannot free ourselves from, such as all the environmental regulations, since we agreed to remain in lockstep with the EU ?
I am glad we will not be expected to be made liable for further EU losses as stated in your previous article, Sir John. But I am worried that when the EU begging bowl comes round again our unscrupulous government and CS will contrive someway to dip their hands in OUR pockets.
Trust is all gone.
January 27, 2024
Indeed
January 27, 2024
Spot on. A few crumbs for presentation as we are in election year! They only had a 85 seat majority to get Brexit done and 4 years to do so!!!
(Badenoch ed) stopped what Rees-Mogg was doing to scrap all EU laws.
January 27, 2024
What part of the brexit referendum didn’t this tory government & MPs understand …..the voice of the people was clear, even Cameron was clear saying a vote to leave was a vote to ”leave the EU and all her institutions”
January 27, 2024
and that vote was clear for him to leave the ship, and his constituency. Now he arrives back with the captain’s blessing, but the crew would like to throw him overboard again.
January 27, 2024
Indeed. We see the Snake giving away our money to some foreign cause when he travels abroad. So keep him in the UK. Secondly, it’s very clear that the Tory Government, that’s Sir Johns Government, want to keep us closely aligned to the EU and is only prepared to remove redundant regulations and keep us very close to the EU on everything else. The Windsor framework shows the absolute dishonesty of the Snake and his cohort and he must go. If we get Starmergeddon so be it. Politics will then realign and he will be booted out. The Tory’s in their current form are now dead. Their brand is toxic and associated with every policy failure.
Taxation, failing health/dentistry services, all other public services failing. Woke EDI/ESG/LGBTXYZ. Mass legal illegal immigration where its their choice to import both. They decided by policy to import 1.2 million a year by choice. The boat people are a distraction of pantomime proportions. They can be returned the same day by international law by pick up and return or by boat/train/ferry the same day to France. International law allows. It’s a French problem and their responsibility to secure their borders not ours. Would we mind if they returned our illegals if it was the other way around, of course not! It’s all spin. Time for conservatism, time for Reform.
January 27, 2024
The worrying concern is that civil servants are legally uplifting the legal status of EU wishes and aspirations to legally binding UK regulations.
The democratic deficit deepens.
January 27, 2024
+1 but Starmer will (in effect) take us back in with his 300+ majority that Sunakās net zero, tax to death, globalist, socialism is building up for him.
January 27, 2024
LL,
What on earth are you talking about.
Sunak has done that with his EU windsor sell out!! It gives away N.Ireland to EU control making it a vassal state, placing border down Irish Sea, checks on goods from one part of our country to another, forces GB to act in lockstep to EU preventing any divergence, UK fined recently by ECJ for Ā£34 million- that is an EU court with EU laws fining the whole of UK for red diesel!! The ECJ made clear it wanted the fine persuasive to all of UK!!
Sunak (Heaton-Harris) cutting the pay of DUP MPs!! They have coerced, bribed DUP to accept EU vassal state status. Look at how David Davis and Steve Baker sold their souls, one for a title the other for ministerial position!!
Sunak now conjuring up legal ways to bypass DUP to get Stormant running. Sunak was in office and part of 2019 manifesto to get Brexit done!! He stated he would serve with integrity! He is a Horrible back stabbing little weasel.
January 27, 2024
Hope, I agree that it is an abomination that there is a border within our own United Kingdom, so that Northern Ireland is now separated from England, Scotland and Wales. But I voted Remain exactly to stop this happening, and so did the large majority of people in Northern Ireland. Everyone in 2016 knew, because John Major and Tony Blair explained it, that Brexit would be a calamity for our precious Union. It’s a bit late now to complain!
January 27, 2024
Not a bit lemming, we will persist and eventually defeat the enemy in europe and within, we have before!
January 27, 2024
Let,
Stop being stupid. N.Ireland should leave in its entirety with the rest of GB All PMs said leave as one nation, All PM said no PM could put a border down the Irish Sea etc etc. if RoI want a border or check goods let them, FCK them. Stop buying RoI dairy products. By British.
January 27, 2024
I agree Sunak and the Windsor Accord are dreadful. Starmer & Labour (esp. if given a huge majority by Sunak’s incompetence) will be even worse.
January 27, 2024
Best vote Reform then.
January 27, 2024
The people are being taken for mugs
January 27, 2024
not taken for – they are!
January 27, 2024
I’ve voted tory for decades, never again, never a mug again
January 28, 2024
perhaps millions feel the same?
January 27, 2024
By the end of 2024 we will have a Europhile Labour government and I have no doubt the UK will apply to ‘rejoin’ the EU in some shape or form in 2025. Those who disagree with this will be criminalised, branded and destroyed by new laws passed by a party that will prove even more authoritarian than the treacherous snakes led by Sunak
I for one am dreading the oppression and demonisation that Labour will impose upon certain identities that Labour have openly expressed contempt for. This party in government will destroy this nation and our freedoms.
The scum EU will approve of all of this fascist barbarity
January 27, 2024
They will not call it ārejoinā but that is what it will be in all but name. Rather like the dire Mrs May. āLeave means Leaveā she kept saying but to Theresa May āleaveā meant remain in all but name and pretend to leave. One can only judge people like May, Cameron, Hunt, Hammond, Osborne, Sunakā¦ by their actions as what they say is nearly always either a blatant lie, a distortion or something so obviously true as to be hardly even worth saying.
January 27, 2024
+1 which is why they will shortly be politically toast but of course with sinecures to bobble along on…
January 27, 2024
Dom,
I think the European Political Community which Sunak has joined is the outer ring of the EU. It will follow and be in lock step without actually being in single market or customs. That is why idiotic Sunak signed up to Horizon. A project to promote EU interests where UK pays in Ā£2.4 billion each year and the EU Might, just might, award some of the money back for UK projects!! That is a sell out. We voted leave the EU, JRs party betrayed the nation and all voters. JRs party by stealth are tying UK to EU. Another example is the energy inter connectors which are tied to fishing rights. So when the fishing rights come up the UK will not be able to take back its territorial waters and fish because it needs energy from EU. Another pact pact signed the EU energy interdependence!!
UK will not be in single market and customs union just a host of pacts, treaties that make it a vassal state!! No difference between Labour and Tory. The rogue parliament is currently in force but trying to,hide what it is doing from the public. A few presentational stories to create the illusion of having left the EU but nothing of the sort.
January 27, 2024
Correct. We are, in effect, Associate Members of the EU. Which is what Cameron proposed to Merkel and she rejected because she never thought we’d dare vote to leave the EU ….. or that the British Establishment would implement it.
She was wrong with the first assumption …. but right about the second.
January 27, 2024
+1
January 27, 2024
There is no prospect of the UK rejoining the EU. Maastricht rules require debt to GDP ratio no more than 60%, and that will never be achieved, given our ratio is more like 100% and Labour like this government is totally committed to borrowing policies. The door is closed and bolted.
January 27, 2024
So how come France’s government debt to GDP is 111% (CEIC data 2023), and Italy’s 142%, Dave A.? Just asking.
January 28, 2024
Because the 60% debt to GDP ratio is for countries trying to access the EU.
At time of access in 1957-58 France and Italy must have been below that ratio. So could it be that it is because subsequently they did not leave the EEC/EU?
As far as I know, a debt to GDP ratio above 60% has never been a motive for exclusion from the EU.
Only Estonia, Luxembourg, Bulgaria, Czech Rep., Sweden, Denmark, Latvia, Romania, Lithuania, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Ro Ireland recently had such a ratio below 60%.
The EU average was at 75.9% (statista.com, 2020).
January 27, 2024
You’re correct
January 27, 2024
The judgement on any UK government should be on what EU law is retained in full or in part.
The next question is, on whose authority are repeals, part retentions, or full retentions made. There is no place in the decision process for the civil service. They are only there to act on ministerial direction. In a democracy we need to know who is responsible.
Lastly the big question is can our current 650 politicians be trusted considering their history as largely remainers. The answer to which is an emphatic no. What is to prevent a small comittee of five under Bill Cash for instance acting as final arbiters of any part or full retentions proposed. Proposals need scrutiny before the become law.
The impression I retain is that the tardiness and involvement of the scribes is preparation for a continued blurring of our sovereignty and the easing of the path to a future relarionship with the EU that is Brexit but in name only.
January 27, 2024
@agricola – why are our 650 politicians refusing the only job they have been empowered and paid to do?
January 27, 2024
because it is only a GE that will unload them!
January 27, 2024
MT _ A GE will do NOTHING. It will only replace one bunch of treasonous individuals with another bunch of treasonous individuals. They are ALL under the control and diktat of the Globalist UK WEF Establishment. Nothing will change until our WHOLE system of government is changed and Change is coming.
January 27, 2024
I beg to differ, the point being that at least 200 H of C faces, I could have said bums on seats, which is more appropriate, will be gone due to their failure to do what the job entails.
January 27, 2024
Ian B,
Prior to 2016 our MPs did not make law, they were not even asked to approve the EU law foisted upon us. The law makers were EU and UK civil servants. The reason for civil servant unrest lies in their reluctance to accept the loss of power that Brexit has brought. Additionally while government plays lip service to UK sovereignty they in reality pay greater attention to outside forces. Davos, the WEF, the WHO, the climate change circus, and still the EU, to name but a few. They have sold their souls to an array of dubious gods. The 650 from whom they gestate are reduced to useless letter writing, question asking lobby fodder. I hope the above satisfies your curiosity.
January 27, 2024
@agricola – agreed, it’s disgusting these guys(MPs)get to even suggest they are part of a democratic process. The point of democracy is that we the people get to create, amend & repeal laws, – if that is not what happens, it’s not a democracy it’s a dictatorship. The only realistic way out is a removal of all of them – that’s going to take more than a GE
January 27, 2024
In addition, there are laws passed by the UK parliament that need to be repealed.
e.g. The Climate Change Act and Net Zero for starters.
January 27, 2024
Indeed most laws (and the vast tax and regulation increases) passed under Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron/Clegg, Cameron, May, Boris, Sunak would be a good start.
January 27, 2024
Though Theresa May did give us an opt out organ donation system which will benefit many people. So keep that. Not much else worth keeping over these 35 or so years I suspect. Go back to 1% stamp duty not 15% tops, no Insurance tax now 12%, no climate change act, VAT at 8% not 20%, far lower NI rates, lower CGT amd indexed to inflation, higher tax free thresholds. IHT threshold has be at Ā£325k for over 15 years so it has almost halved in real terms. Just link all thresholds to inflation.
January 27, 2024
In order to pay for that you would have to let Scotland go, NI and maybe Wales too. Take back local authority powers, cancel the Foreign Aid, stop trying to be USA equal as world policeman, dig for coal, encourage more oil rigs that have to sell output England, halve CS, abandon H of L, terminate Supreme Court, resign from ECHR, UN and WHO. End two-thirds of Quangos, nationalise the rail operators, introduce smart rail signalling, move towards standard rolling stock, close Post Office, employ English only nurses’ training without degrees or ‘A’ levels, increase paramedic force by factor of 3. Terminate GP contracts that allow essential work from home by telephone.
I’ll stop there, no end of revolutionary work to be done to put England back on its feet.
January 27, 2024
BOF hear, hear to that!
Both acts are destroying our country!
January 27, 2024
Plus the Sex Acts propaganda in Schools and the non-Equality Laws that discriminate against white English men. EDI/ESG must go entirely to make us economically competitive in the world. Investors look at merit/profits not minority characteristic’s. Go woke, go broke. That’s why investors are looking anywhere other than London with our current Political fools who could not cut it in the real world, accept if they were given a free pass under positive action, wink, wink.
January 27, 2024
The CHINESE Climate Change Act ….I’ve corrrected it for you (at the end of the day they’re the only one’s benefitting)
January 27, 2024
BOF: Indeed but I suspect we are trussed up like a kipper under myriad treaties & ‘agreements’. The fines for non-compliance with ‘their’ various diktats heaped upon the individual & business are appalling & I will not vote for any of it, even though the likely incomers will carry on regardless. If the proposal is that we are to be hit in our pocket then ‘they’ will be hit where it hurts at voting time.
January 27, 2024
A great cover up is what it is, hiding inaction.
January 27, 2024
Dear, dear Mickey
Brexit advocates were unwittingly forerunners
to the current massive worldwide awakening.
Don’t get bogged down in the Brexit detail.
Beauty is TRUTH, truth beauty.
January 27, 2024
Why do laws which are past their sell by date not become automatically extinct ?
What is the point in keeping outdated laws on the statute book, so they then need to be removed ?
January 27, 2024
B Alan
Having outdated laws automatically become extinct would be too sensible!
January 27, 2024
+1
January 27, 2024
Sir John
You would think that when were asked to vote for someone to represent us as our (UK) Legislator, to make, amend and repeal laws that pertain to how the UK is run they would understand that is their job. Afterall thatās why they take our money.
So, for these same individuals to roll over be subordinate to un-elected, unaccountable bureaucrats in a foreign land, you have to ask whatās the point of suggesting the UK is a democracy and its MPs have a purpose.
Thatās the deceit we get from this Conservative Government and the UK Parliament as a whole, they are refusing their job, their purpose. They have refused to allow the UK to be an independent, sovereign democracy, they are hanging on to the coat tails that we canāt vote for and hold to account. By every measure the HoC is fighting the people and trying to manipulate a full return to full un-democratic rule.
January 27, 2024
What Sir John is hinting at is that we haven’t really LEFT the EU, which is what the Treacherous Tories were instructed to do.
We are, in effect, an Associate Member: still controlled by the EU across large swathes of our economy and other policy areas. Sunak specifically said that we would not compete with “our friends” on the continent.
The Government is dragging its feet on repeal and deregulation because we are currently in a holding pattern. The plan is to create a two-tier EU, with the core Eurozone and an outer tier of Associate Members. That’s the proposal Cameron put to Merkel and she refused; Macron revived it a year ago. They’re just waiting for the Ukraine war to end so that the terms of Associate Membership (to include UK, Ukraine, Turkey, the remaining EFTA nations and possibly Switzerland) can be finalised.
Isn’t it interesting that Lord Dave of Greenshill Lobbying has been brought back and installed in the Foreign Office ….. just in time.
January 27, 2024
But how stupid can the Snake be to consider Lord Greenshill a political asset, when he is despised by the left and conservative (The Turnip Taliban, said pigs had Dave)? It shows total ignorance and poor decision making.
January 27, 2024
I doubt Sunak really had much say in the decision. The Party Grandees would have instructed him.
January 27, 2024
@Timaction – part of the plan to pull down democracy, he is following the diktats of his socialist master Klaus Schwab with the need to contrive the ‘great reset’. Only then can the World be modeled in their image
January 27, 2024
@Donna +1 – highlights Sunak’s disdain for the UK and its people. He will go when he has destroyed the Tory Party and they will weep for a generation for not seeing that
January 27, 2024
Itās dodgy MPs and Civil Servants that need repealing.
Do that then the nonsense soon disappears automatically.
January 27, 2024
Oh, how much I would love some people here to read āHow Westminster works ā¦ and why it doesnātā and understand why all the gesticulations we see around us from politicians are merely performative and as efficacious as native American stomp dances.
January 27, 2024
We need genuine, committed Brexiteers to do these jobs.
JM-R and Lord Frost are the two that immediately spring to mind.
Instead we get Badinoch whose only interest is not upsetting the One Nation wets because she wants their support for a leadership bid.
January 27, 2024
With “…the official approach of doing many repeals to items that are already time expired or did not apply to us in the first place” we see this duplicitous, lazy, cheating government mount yet another attack on the British people.
January 27, 2024
Best comedy film for a cold , grey Saturday afternoon.
Shawn of the Dead (2004)
Unassuming Working Class hero and his mates smash Zombies.
January 27, 2024
We voted to leave the EU in 2016. So, for the past 7 + years, what have those departmental civil servants been doing about the now irrelevant EU laws that remain on our Statute Book? Dragging their feet of course, because they are, as always, part of the problem never the solution.
Our problem with the lack of real Brexit is that there are too many Europhile desk jockeys in a position to delay our true and final exit. Alarmingly, they’re maybe getting their way (by design) because there are now some leavers who are being persuaded by these same anti-democracy Europhiles that it was not a good idea. They suggest we’ve been lied to as we have actually left but now, apparently, are suffering economically only because of voting for Brexit in the first case. It’s time these charlatans were exposed to the public. Name and shame works wonders.
Regarding the abolition of EU Laws, the back benchers have among them, qualified Barristers and can call upon distinguished experts on British and EU law. I’d like to hear that a group of them had prepared a new Bill which will overrule any or all of the EU laws when so decided by a judge or Parliamentary representative, et al at will. Let’s bring back firm and final control to OUR courts and reject the ECJ forever. But it must be done very soon before any GE.
Reply Yes we produced a Repeal Bill, Johnson put it through Commons. Sunak and Badenoch withdrew it from Lords.
January 27, 2024
Why? The truth please.
January 28, 2024
But in any case you would still have to get a Bill through the EU cosy H of L!!
January 29, 2024
Is it any wonder we are in such dire straits? Incompetence rules at the top. So much so, our armed forces are now smaller than those of France and Spain. We old Brits weep at the deterioration of our once Great Britain. And all because of the socialist policies that have been introduced over the past 3 decades. Regardless of the Party in power. And still they persist!!
January 27, 2024
Sunak doesn’t want to repeal any significant EU laws because he wants to stay aligned with them for the purposes of the Northern Ireland protocol. Same reason he won’t remove VAT on domestic fuel.
January 27, 2024
I bought some food today from a well known supermarket, the data info on back said ”Not for EU” ….it didn’t say, not for the USA, or anywhere else in the world, just the EU ….our laws are pathetic and costly
January 27, 2024
Dear Sir John,
Regarding your statement a few pieces ago that it may be possible to store power using batteries or hydrogen manufacture, there’s a far cleaner and more secure way – pumped storage. These are large, permanent installations in mountainous areas near large sources of water – use excess power to pump water up the hill, then retrieve power by letting it fall down and power turbines. There are several projects mired in development, and the only reason that I can see is that there’s no money in it. Companies would as far as I am aware have to make what money they could purchasing power from Wind Farms etc., then utilising market fluctuations to sell it at a profit.
What is really needed to get any traction behind any form of storage is to reform the subsidy regime massively, so that storing power is financially incentivised for renewables firms, and constraining (being paid to switch off) ceases to be profitable. When it’s more profitable to store power than switch off, watch money appear for storage. Before that time, watch more meaningless empty conversations and platitudes about it.
SR
Reply Indeed.It is not for me to tell them how to store their green power. I am just trying to get them to have sufficient reliable power at an affordable price. They need to work out how to do that better than keeping and adding to our gas power stations.
January 28, 2024
Pumped storage is completely impractical. It has to be on a massive scale. I read recently that we have (if memory serves) only 4 current pumped storage installations and their maximum power is derisory. Just a couple of megawatt hours – enough to run a small town for a couple of hours.
January 28, 2024
As much a Brexiteer as the next person, I voted to Leave because the EU is an autocracy – not because of any EU laws I was being forced to obey.
Can anyone name one EU law that they donāt agree with.
As for Energy Performance Certificates – I have no issue with them. I like the idea that people will feel like upgrading their insulation.
Iām also rather keen on our sewage companies not being allowed to pump sewage into our rivers and seas. A shame it takes an EUnkawnto enforce this.
Reply I disagree with many VAT provisions for example. The UK has its own water quality laws
January 28, 2024