I will spare you a party political response to the Reeves Mais lecture. Various journalists have described its vacuity, verbosity and timidity. I want to set out the big issues that directly affect UK growth, productivity, jobs and incomes that she ignored or knows nothing about.
1 The big role of the Bank of England in creating the instability in inflation and output she condemns. A Bank which buys up £845 bn of bonds to keep money too loose is bound to cause inflation. When it then goes on to hike rates and to sell £130 bn of bonds at big losses it is likely to sabotage growth. She supports this wayward conduct.
2. She rightly criticises poor UK productivity. She fails to reveal the collapse of public sector productivity since 2019 or to show UK private sector factories have competitive productivity. Not a single proposal for turning round public sector productivity.
3. The labour market is talked about with no mention of large scale migration. Will she join me in wanting to ban work permits for migrants to fill low wage vacancies? Will she back government plans to cut legal migration by 300,000 and demand they go further?
4. She sees green investment and jobs as central. How much would her accelerated net zero policies cost? How would she avoid creating many new jobs in China that has cornered the market in big batteries, turbines and solar panels? How would she keep the lights on? Is she going to make us all go electric?
March 25, 2024
‘ She fails to reveal the collapse of public sector productivity ’
She is unlikely to point the finger and thus jeopardise potential Labour votes.
March 25, 2024
So much of what they “produce” is not wanted at all and or of negative value.
March 25, 2024
She will continue the uniparty headlong dash for nut zero thus cancelling more well paid jobs in favour of China.
She will continue with mass immigration because liebour hates the British (much like the conservatives).
The public sector will go on a 4 day week for the same pay and services will become more dire. Not a very appealing choice considering what you’ve done in the last 14 years
Legalised gay marriage being the high point.
March 25, 2024
“She is unlikely to point the finger and thus jeopardise potential Labour votes.”
Well Hunt said something like £100k is not much salary for some areas. So he did not seem to consider how this might go down with voters or with Junior Doctors on 1/3 of this? But then given his majority is only 8.8K so he has probably, like Sunak, given up already. Though Sunak with an 80k+ majority should just about scrape home but will this please him? Assuming the Tories scrape 100 seats anyway.
March 25, 2024
Local news. The third ULEZ camera near me has been chopped in half. Friday night seems the favourite time for this activity. All the cameras are still laying across the pavement. No repairs have been attempted.
Yet, by all accounts, Sad Dick Khan is a certainty for a third term in office, with a big majority.
Time for the Mayor of London role to be abolished. He can inflict major damage. Before it was just a vehicle for politicians to get noticed. They did not do as much harm as the present incumbent.
March 26, 2024
The EU required regionalisation of England and Greater London is one of their regions. The EU-supporting Uni-Party isn’t going to scrap the London Mayoralty; it’s going full steam ahead and imposing the other regional mayors the EU demanded.
March 26, 2024
A god Mayor (or local administrator) knows what the local area needs and can ensure it is delivered using the funds available.
Unfortunately there are very few good Mayors, most of them use their platform to raise their own profile rather than performing for their constituents.
March 26, 2024
“Not a single proposal for turning round public sector productivity.”
The only glimmer of light I can see is that when Labour strolls into government, the Labour-supporting civil service may mollify some of the stubbornly sulky opposition it has maintained since 2015. Particularly if financial incentives are kindly if unwittingly provided for it by the taxpayer.
March 25, 2024
Good morning.
I have far greater to say about a government and party that has been in office for the last 14 years and created most of the mess we see today (eg Nut Zero) than a politician who will inherit not a letter telling them that there is no money left, but a letter of final demand.
Over the last 14 years the Tories have been more concerned in :
a) Enacting policies they and their donors want.
b) Fighting each other and purging those on the right.
c) Parceling up the UK for the Globalists to inherit.
d) Trying to appease Labour and its supporters. As was said by another poster recently. There is no point in pandering to such people, they are going to hate you no matter what.
e) Telling us they’re going to do something and end up doing the opposite.
14 Years in which we could have achieved so much. For example. If we at the very beginning started to build nuclear reactors of a design that was known and trusted, we would be energy independent and would have saved most of our industrial base, saving jobs and creating wealth.
The Socialists have won. And you didn’t raise a finger to stop them.
March 25, 2024
Yes, there is an often repeated theme in Sir J’s writings; what he criticises Labour for are often the same policies his own party are, de facto, carrying out, or not but should be. He can’t seem to see it.
Best not to point out the failing of others when you’ve been in power for 14 years!
March 25, 2024
Unless SJR is actually promoting Reform and its policies without openly saying so.
March 25, 2024
Highlighting faults to urge better is proper, wherever the criticism emerges from or is aimed at.
SJR supports the right things to do.
March 25, 2024
I am quite sure JR sees it and often he points it out.
March 25, 2024
It’s the life-cycle of parties in government; they start off by proclaiming their own policies and end decrying the opposition’s policies …the writings on the wall
March 25, 2024
Excellent post, Mark. The Conservatives have been in power for 14 years. There is not one single thing they can point to as a success. Not one. All they have to offer us is complaining about what Labour (out of power for 14 years) might do. Pitiful. Labour should probably get their chance but I shall vote Reform until such time as the Conservative party offers me some conservative policies
March 25, 2024
++++
I have to agree.
I mean no offence to Sir John, but for the life of me I cannot see why or how he can bear to be a party to this.
The Conservatives have been overrun and wear a rosette in a sickening shade of ‘Blair Blue’
March 25, 2024
The buck stops at the next GE. Decision time – dismiss or condone?
March 25, 2024
They not only didn’t raise a finger to stop them, most of the time they’ve actively pursued the same policies the socialists would have implemented.
There’s no difference between the Red-Green Socialists and the Blue-Green ones.
March 25, 2024
@Mark B +1 – yes agreed. The Conservative Government now with seeming full support of the Conservative party have deserted the UK’s middle ground, the UK’s conservatives and pushing on with extremism of WEF dominated Socialism -‘ the Blair project’, which has failed a whole generation
March 25, 2024
Net Zero has been revealed for what it is in the excellent video which reveals the truth about the scam ….
March 25, 2024
So very similar mad and deluded policies to Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak then!
Nick Timothy today “Britain, like many European countries, is in a bad way. Growth is sluggish, and wages no higher than before the Great Financial Crash. Our birth rate is declining, and immigration has soared. Productivity is poor. We have a persistent trade deficit, a budget deficit and a large stock of debt. Our very viability depends on the kindness of strangers”
You could add that the public sector police, NHS, NHS dentists, the legal system, planning, housing, probate, passports, LEAs… do not really work either.
The solutions are simple ditch the net zero religion, halve the size of the parasitic state sector, cut taxes, cut red tape but Reeves, Starmer, Hunt and “unequivocally safe” Sunak have the exact opposite agenda.
It seem we have yet another new tax the “bogey tax” – “Briton fined £150 by Ealing Council for ‘picking his nose and dropping mucus on floor’ by jobsworth enforcement agents.” So they do virtually nothing about burglary, muggings, shop lifting, illegal boat people… but mugging motorists and nose pickers are very high priority.
March 25, 2024
Do they think people will keep their bogeys in their pockets all day and wait for a suitable bin? Public litter bin are rather rare now too. How much do these special constables get paid? Are they expected to fund themselves with their bogey mugging and similar activities?
March 25, 2024
Fancy WATCHING and not shouting “Use a handkerchief my man!”
I would have proffered one. (Possibly?)
A relative went to her surgery recently and there was a pile of 💩in the middle of reception with a small trail…..She made me laugh by telling me that another patient was “on traffic duty” directing newcomers around it.
No one demanding or providing mop and bucket.
So much for germs, viruses, handwashing and masks. Side-splitting!
March 25, 2024
He should have put in his mouth and eaten the evidence – that would have stumped them!
March 25, 2024
14 million jobs saved 4 years ago claims a Sunak advert.
Furlough didn’t save millions of jobs. Its true costs are only now becoming clear.
Sunak was right to worry about his £70 billion scheme. It has led to a welfare crisis, not a jobs recovery. Frazer Nelson today.
It also helped (with QE) cause Sunak’s 11% inflation, caused vast economic damage and did nothing for public health either. Indeed it damaged public health significantly as did the vaccines as is now clear from the statistics. Statistics the government and state are actively trying to hide and to obscure.
March 25, 2024
@LifeLogic – “So very similar mad and deluded policies to Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak then! ” YUP….
March 25, 2024
April 2008 the NMW was £5.52 from age 22
April 2024 the NMW is £11.44 from age 21
What do you think it should be?
Do you believe it has impact on the rates for those graduating compared to those with no skills or training at 21?
The BBC said in 2016 that a young graduate in 2008 was typically earning around £24k.
Save the Student says the average graduate salary in 2024 is £38.5k I’m not sure of the hours this is based on as hours have dropped over the past two decades from 39 to 36 per week.
March 25, 2024
Hunt doubles down on his £100,000 salary comment saying that even on what most people would consider is a very high salary, it does not go as far as you think, because of taxes, housing costs and childcare.
Indeed we know Jeremy – about 45% goes in tax and NI, then you have commuting costs, childcare, rent, mortgage, council tax, rip off net zero energy costs, motorist mugging taxes and parking taxes, 12% IPT on you now rip off insurance costs, your business attire costs, ULEZ, Sunak’s QE currency debasement and a government insanely demanding we buy vastly expensive and impractical EV cars and heat pumps too.
He also said the UK had been through a “very, very tough patch”, which he said was caused primarily by the invasion in Ukraine. No mate it was caused by lockdowns, incompetent economic policies, net harm vaccines, vast government waste and corruption, QE, covid loans, eat out to help out, crony capitalism, vast tax increases…
Jeremy Hunt says UK should ‘absolutely’ be concerned about Islamic State. Indeed hunt and from other islamic terrorists. This especially as Sunak clearly has no serious intention of even attempting to stop the boats.
March 25, 2024
“The solution is even simper, vote in a government that is truly conservative, neither of the big two and not their acolyte.
March 25, 2024
The Conservatives have implemented truly terrible socialist policies of NetZero, Mass Migration, Authoritarian LockDowns, Expansion of the Public Sector and the highest taxes outside a world war.
And I say this sincerely. Labour would be even worse.
One small consequence is the jails are full. The reason for this is that there has been a rise in criminal gangs dealing drugs, mugging and burglaries, a rise in people with different attitudes to rape and fraud and people who see this country as nothing more than a cash cow.
A leading group of Tory MPs have drawn up a ten point plan to crack down on crime. One of their suggestions is that’s Offenders should face automatic jail sentences after FIVE convictions. FIVE !
If you don’t understand why the public now see the main stream political parties as a failed globalist uniparty then there really is no hope.
March 25, 2024
The jails are full and this is despite the fact that most serious crimes are not even addressed by the police or criminal justice system.
March 25, 2024
So little or no deterrent to most crimes – burglary, muggings, pickpocketing, shop lifting, fraud, identity theft…but motorist mugging and “nose picker” state muggings continue as a hugely inefficient additional tax system.
March 25, 2024
Oh come on, that’s not true is it. There is the chap recently sent to prison for some stickers.
I for one am relieved, as I lay awake worrying about offensive stationery. I’m sure you must too.
In fact I’d feel safer if we had a ‘stop and search’ for people carrying such stationery.
March 26, 2024
+1
March 25, 2024
Automatic jail sentences after 5 convictions?
But nobody is currently going to jail for a term of less than two years (because there is no room for all the offenders) and at the same time this leading group of Tory MPs is recommending that offenders should only be jailed for two years after 45 convictions.
FORTY FIVE CONVICTIONS!
March 25, 2024
45 convictions probably takes 45,000 actual offences – given the dire conviction rates we have.
How on earth was Hunt so dim as to say a £100k salary is not enough for his area. It is true especially after his taxes take 45% of it off you then even more when you spend it. But why, in his position as a politician & Chancellor, would you be so dim as to say this? It is three times what this government choose to pay to junior doctors in Central London and they have circa £7k of student debt interest to cover too.
March 25, 2024
Lifelogic
If he really thinks £100,000 is sensible and reasonable for some jobs (just a little higher than our MP’s get) then why does he think it is possible the State Pension is good enough to live on at £12,000
March 26, 2024
£12000 less tax often.
March 26, 2024
Less if you have the old pension and have paid in for more years and therefore more money as well, than the new pensioners have done. What luck we have such wonderful brains in parliament and all for the bargain price of 91 grand a year each
March 25, 2024
Well, he’s a politician so 100 grand is normal wages to him, so out of touch are they.
March 25, 2024
Well said.
March 25, 2024
@Javelin +1
March 25, 2024
Could we sub out the jails to lower-cost countries, especially for foreign criminals?
March 25, 2024
Indeed.
March 25, 2024
Much talk from Reeves and Labour on the lines of we will “invest” in this green lunacy or that absurd nonsense. But the money to “invest” is taken off businesses or people who would have invested it far better. This is not hard as most government “investments” HS2, Net Zero, payments to augment the feckless, road blocking, carbon capture, renewable subsidies, pointless degrees…usually return negative value or circa 90% of the “investment” is wasted.
March 25, 2024
‘invest’ means rob you all of a lot more taxes – that is if you work and pay taxes.
March 25, 2024
Good questions, Sir John, and I am sure you have sensible answers but unfortunately your party as a whole does not and we have to take the party either whole or not at all.
March 25, 2024
Given the voting system we will get Labour (circa 90% chance) or Sunak’s green crap pushing Con-socialists 1% or a hung parliament 9% all with rather similar and totally deluded policies.
All very depressing, The Boris 80 seat majority was totally wasted. They got everything wrong on Covid Lockdowns, vaccines, treatments, the NHS and on Brexit – the dire Windsor accord and on energy, net zero and the size of the state.
March 25, 2024
Did they get one single thing right? I can’t think of one.
We want to know if all those suffering the cancer ‘epidemic’ (to quote the medical profession) have been jabbed with MRNA – if not, what percentage? How many jabs etc. This is basic stuff. Why so determinedly ignored?
March 25, 2024
They impliment policies without measuring the success or failure ….to them its just good enough that they’re done the woke thing (see cycle-lanes, E10 fuel, plastic bags etc etc)
March 25, 2024
They knew that there was nothing to worry about during the Covid lockdown hence the partying in Downing Street
Matt Hancock taking his mask off before the front door had closed behind him
and the same people are still in government today
March 25, 2024
Indeed.
March 25, 2024
Agree
March 25, 2024
Now the Conservative project is clear and us voters are delivering our marks out of ten, all Sir John can do is work at Project Fear. The others will be worse. Great – so that is our option?
March 25, 2024
too close to the mark, eh?
March 25, 2024
Thank you for including.
March 25, 2024
Concur – project fear is the strategy of the weak politician
March 25, 2024
It is a long speech that voters will not read. It points out weakness in the economy and suggests causes without going into fine detail on how to address the weakness.
She highlights the different fortunes of regions within the UK which may resonate with much of the country. She also condemns a short term approach and comes up with her own catch phrase securonomics.
Unfortunately she wants everything to be approved by the OBR before anything happens which will hamstring any progress. Once again bodies outside parliament limit its scope,
March 25, 2024
In this case the OBR might be useful. They might cause Reeves to be no more dreadful than Hunt!
In the north we always benefit from Labour. They try to buy the north to ensure the red wall is intact at the next election.
If the conservative government ad PPC are too stupid to take a single piece of JR’s advice, even staring down the barrel of the gun, we, the electorate have no option but to sack them.
For heavens sake, do everything you can to ensure the Spartans are returned.
March 25, 2024
+1
They were too stupid not to change John Major and so they all followed him over the cliff for 3 plus terms. Will I ever see a half sensible government again before I shuffle off this mortal coil?. Only Thatcher in my lifetime so far was OK, and even she was very far from ideal. She let John Major join the ERM (so as to prepare to joint the EURO), she fell for climate alarmism, closed endless grammar schools, buried us further into the EU, failed to cut the state back sufficiently or to sort out the dire NHS…
March 25, 2024
‘ I will spare you a party political response to the Reeves Mais lecture.’ begins Sir John Redwood.
However, the following sentence is just that – under the cover of ‘various journalists’.
March 25, 2024
“vacuity, verbosity and timidity” typical of most political speeches then.
Politicians usually say things that are either so obviously true there is little point in saying them. Things like “we want an excellent, integrated, affordable, clean, coordinated and safe transport system”. No many wanted a dreadful, disintegrated, unafforadable, dirty, uncoordinated, dangerous on did they?
Or they just lie “the vaccines were unequivocally safe”, “The Net Zero Science is Settled”, we have cut taxes )when they are clearly still rising), we have cut crime when it is rising, we saved 14 million jobs 4 years ago, HS2 is a good investment, a transwomen is a women, we will stop the boats, cut NHS waiting lists, grow the economy, reduce government debt…
March 25, 2024
securonomics = an every larger state sector I assume – so we will go into even more of a doom loop – tax take reduces, tax rates go up, the private sector reduces, tax take reduces further, tax rates go up again…
March 25, 2024
LL,
I am not entirely sure what securonomics means – but it is catchphrase at least.. There is some waffle about ‘embracing change’.
Apparently it means greater exports, but with secure conditions for home industry without becoming ‘fortress Britain’.
As they used to say about Boris Johnson, it sounds a bit like ‘cakeism’.
March 25, 2024
LL,
She says :-
‘ Securonomics advances not the big state but the smart and strategic state.’
Make of that what you will.
March 25, 2024
“No more boom and bust!”.
March 25, 2024
…well, no kore boom! Half right.
March 25, 2024
That went well did it not but endogenous growth theory Gordon Brown did Save the World he tells us.
March 25, 2024
Oh I think you’ll find that with Labour in power the OBR will suddenly become sunny optimists who are much more accommodating to Labour’s borrow, tax and spend plans.
March 25, 2024
She is wrong about the regional imbalances. A report by Sheffield Hallam University called ‘LOCAL PRODUCTIVITY: The real differences across UK cities and regions’ shows little difference in productivity between UK regions and cities. Most of the headline differences can be explained by:
* Levels of housing costs (boosts productivity in areas where rents are high)
* Proportions of working-age people (lower output per head in areas with a large proportion of retired people)
* Commuting patterns (output gets measured where people work, not where they live, so boosting the GDP of cities)
* The types of jobs people do (in high vs low output industries, highly paid managers and professionals vs lowly paid roles)
* The hours worked.
If politicians misdiagnose the problem, they will come up with the wrong answers!
March 26, 2024
Indeed.
March 25, 2024
The OBR is just a cover for the excuse when they can’t do what they’re promising everything from raising benefits; free school meals for all; free breakfast for all school children; no zero hours relief contracts; removal of employer rights; scrapping triple lock; no removing triple lock; giving the waspi’s back their lost years, no not doing that, I can’t keep up. A £15 minimum wage, more holidays, more sick and maternity pay, more childcare Surestart, a big bill for wealthy pensioners, and a much bigger bill for those that do well in life.
The Countries slowing down because people are looking to close down and get out or try to sell up to people who will merge and cut.
March 25, 2024
Ask her to explain the process of QE and its effect on bond prices and the inverse relationship to short term rates. I saw her once in an interview trying to do just this. Embarrassing doesn’t do justice to her infantile efforts
She’s got less brain than I have
To stop this fool becoming Chancellor destroy her credibility by portraying as a clueless child fiddling with a scientific calculator. If the gutless Tories can perform this task on one of her own (Truss and Kwarteng) they can do it to Islamist loving Starmer and his halfwitted Keynesian sidekick
March 25, 2024
She read PPE at New College Oxford it seems. So what is it about people drawn to that degree? Or is it the actual degree?
She sat A-Levels in Politics, Economics, Maths and Further Maths it seems. I assume she passed them all I wonder what grades she achieved? No physics alas or she might have worked out just how absurdly damaging deluded the war on CO2 plant food actually is.
March 25, 2024
LL,
Perhaps you could ask to see her school reports as well.
Maybe count the number of gold stars she was awarded in primary school?
March 25, 2024
“Women still earn less and own less than men, they’ve been disproportionately hit by austerity and now they are being disproportionately hit by the cost-of-living crisis,” says Rachel Reeves. “It’s more than 50 years since the Equal Pay Act was introduced and yet we still don’t have equal pay. One of the things I’m really determined to do if I become chancellor is to close that gap between what men and women are paid.”
Well dear surely with you maths you understand why women earn less do you not Rachel? You can only even this out by either discriminating heavily against men or some brain reprogramming. They make very different career life choices and work life balance choices. Do women actually own less than men I wonder? Married couples in effect own it jointly anyway and as they live longer often inherit it all. Determined to close the pay gap is she? What a totally pathetic discriminatory (against men) and damaging agenda.
It is a free market if there were loads of bargain women employees sitting around then anyone employing them would have a huge competitive advantage and the market would adjust would it not Rachael?
March 25, 2024
Oh yes!
That is such a good strategy.
Questions and more questions of economic complexity!
March 25, 2024
Rachel Reeves offered a different vision for the UK economy than the 14 years of Tory mismanagement of the nation’s finances – which has resulted in a doubling of the national debt to 105% of GDP, or £2.7 TRILLION – and the highest tax burden since 1947
Whatever happens after the Jan 2025 election, on the face of it nothing Reeves proposes will make the economic situation worse. In particular, the Shadow Chancellor said she would reverse Jeremy Hunt’s decision to “downgrade the emphasis put on climate change in the remits for both Bank committees”.
She pledged the Labour government would “reverse these changes, at the first opportunity”, and cited the need for a “serious plan for net zero” in order to secure stability and growth. Many green Conservative voters will like that
Reply Her net zero policies are based on more state subsidy and dear energy. Far from helpful.
March 25, 2024
Her agenda is basically the same as Sunak’s Tories but even worse. We need to scrap net zero not have even more of this lunacy.
March 25, 2024
The huge increase in national debt 2019-2023 (c.850bn) followed the government’s absurd overreach in response to the Covid outbreak. I seem to remember, though, that at the time you were in favour of lockdowns, furlough, PPE, plastic screens, mask mandates and all the rest of that grim circus, SG. The government did what people like you wanted, and now the country has to pay for it. You shouldn’t complain.
March 26, 2024
+1
March 25, 2024
I consider myself a green conservative SG. In no particular order…
I would certainly try to limit the amount of plastic waste generated (by packaging for instance) that is polluting our seas. I would try to maintain our green and pleasant land by not covering it in windmills and solar panels. I would encourage farmers to adopt sustainable methods and encourage wildlife, without requiring ‘re-wilding’ or needing them to return to horse power. I would provide builders with commercial incentives to renew and redevelop existing towns and cities, rather than allow constant greenfield development. I would limit immigration to it’s former levels (it used to to be 20-30k per annum) and vary student fees to encourage/prioritise skills in any required areas. I would allow test fracking to establish the viability of doing so. I’d accept that gas-fired power stations were a neccessary interim measure until we could build nuclear alternatives but if really neccessary for our well being, I’d build new coal fired one making sure they controlled air polluntants (carbon isn’t one of them btw). I’d give energy tax breaks to our key industries that would allow them to compete internationally. I’d allow consumer choice in respect of such things as cars and home heating, so the public can choose what is best for them. In fact I’d give tax breaks to those who kept running older cars – the very best carbon reduction measure. I’d encourage a UK Robotics industry (which will be as important as the car industry before too long) and automate our infrastructure, starting with the rail network. My list goes on….
Of course Rachel Reeves is going to do none of this. She will continue with the mindless ‘Net Zero’ mantra that is not only killing our industry and wealth but not making the slightest difference to global emmissions – because it is carbon accounting fraud. I am a green conservative (small g, small c) because I do care about our country, our environment and the people who live here – whereas many ‘Greens’ seem not to and indeed often appear to have more in common with the Marxists. I guess the rest are just the useful idiots…
March 25, 2024
” Many green Conservative voters will like that” ha ha ha they won’t when they get the bill.
March 25, 2024
Reply to reply.
Who pays for state subsidy and dear energy. You dear reader.
Subsidy is only required when the market will not buy into it, with due respect to chinese cuisine, subsidy is a main course of chickens feet.
Dear energy in the UK results from a refusal to use the energy beneath our feet, combined with an EU appeasing business plan, and a tax regime that few other nations suffer. It is a means of de- industrialising the UK. And now the intellectual D streamers are into further taxing that which we now have to import at the behest of the EU, thanks to said de-industrialisation. Victor Meldrew had a phrase for it.
March 25, 2024
Reply to Reply
Was it only yesterday that Net Zero was revealed as s scam of epic proportions?
March 25, 2024
Good evening SG.
May I suggest, if you have an hour or so to spare, that you watch The Climate movie on YouTube.
I found it interesting and you may also.
March 26, 2024
It is very good indeed. Also read The Death of Science: The Retreat from Reason in the Post-Modern World Kindle Edition
by P.Goddard (Author), Angus G Dalgleish (Editor), & 2 more even free on kindle unlimited.
March 25, 2024
The questions you ask are legitimate. While it is acceptable to ask Reeves or any party for their corrective solution, the real question is why has your faux conservative party allowed all these problems to grow in the first place.
I covered it yesterday, nobody in the current House of Commons espouses a vision for the future of United Kingdom. There is nothing the people would want to get behind and wish to make work. I can understand their reluctance because most of the big ideas leaders, Napoleon, the Kaiser, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito, Mao, Pol Pot were inherantly evil, even after you point out autobahns and trains running on time. We in the UK were correct in opposing all of them .
The one great exception was Lee Quan Yu ,who building on Raffles gave us modern day Singapore. So my question is who in the UK has the vision to achieve the same in the UK. The only party with such a vision is Reform UK. Their biggest challenge, if ever in power, will be the inertia of the vested interest establishment and the anarchic fringes and snake oil salesmen that said inertia gives sustenance to. A veneer of sensible discipline needs to descend on the UK in parallel with any visionary plan. I think you should all give Reform a chance, because more of the same will grease the slide down the personal GDP ladder.
March 25, 2024
A,
Reform can damage the Conservative party but I cannot see it winning seats. Recent elections saw it win a percentage of votes in the low teens
It lacks the presence, personalities and funds to drive a big change.
That said, undermining the current Conservative party is a significant step along the road. They just will not fill the subsequent vacuum themselves.
March 25, 2024
They need to be damaged otherwise they’ll continue along the same path
March 25, 2024
There are visionary plans for Britain, Agricola. The trouble is, they are nurtured by the likes of the WEF and their globalist apparatchiks, and involve such things as LTNs, 15-minute communities, ‘health security’ (= WHO diktats) and so forth. They don’t involve Britain as a trading nation doing well for itself, as with your Singapore example. The Great Reset was and is the visionary plan, but as it isn’t linked to a tyrannical single leader, it seems more palatable to the public, as you say. Still, Boris Johnson gave the game away when he used the WEF’s ‘Build Back Better’ slogan during Covid, effectively backing the Great Reset. And you’re right – most of the faux Conservatives are happy to go along with it. They’ll be rewarded for that, I’m sure, in their post-Parliamentary career after the next GE Tory wipe-out.
March 25, 2024
Well…didn’t Boris have a similar idea? Shame he didn’t achieve it?
However…last ditch plan…bring him back!! Yes…I know…but a haircut and set of new delightful narratives. I’d happily swallow it rather that have Labour. And people love his winsome ways. They would forgive all I am sure.
Apparently there is a Reform Party in Singapore.
March 25, 2024
Hong Kong as well as Singapore – both founded on discipline, law and order, hard work and low taxes.
March 25, 2024
Agricola, who is the spokesperson for the Reform UK finance? I haven’t heard anything from anyone other than the shouty two men on GB news, I used to like Tice until I saw more of him. So Tice and Daubney (whoops I’ve just looked him up to check the spelling of his name he isn’t even Reform he’s Reclaim).
March 25, 2024
Martin Daubney is a presenter on GBNews and he’s a misguided advocate for Reform who will get nowhere near the number of votes that they’re predicting….. Laurence Fox leads the Reclaim Party
March 26, 2024
In the piece I read Daubney was deputy leader of Reclaim, however, after checking again this morning he resigned from that in 2022 and “has never been part of Reform”, said Tice.
March 25, 2024
So essentially. Following fourteen years of Conservative government. We will soon get a Labour government that will continue the themes that have failed us so badly.
What a system ……………… envy of the world?
March 25, 2024
We the people have not done our part, so the democratic system has collapsed. Our fault. We have to insist on shooting our candidates. Simple!
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
March 25, 2024
Correct – I don’t envisage a change in government, I see a handover of leadership and continuity of strategies & polices
March 25, 2024
In every aspect of policy Labour would be slightly worse, and nothing would be better. There will be some areas – the ridiculous labour market changes and some tax increases for example – where they will be much worse. Vote Conservative therefore, better 4/10 than 2/10.
March 25, 2024
I can only think of one possible benefit of a Labour govt.
The “levelled”above and beyond others, anti-social, life-destroying next doors might be moved elsewhere by Labour…to the vast swimming-pooled mansion they so surely deserve?
The constant piling in and additions of a vast family on just one subsidised rent makes Mrs T’s polltax look really appealing. But now of course benefits would cover it!
Still..it’s not over yet!
March 25, 2024
There is little to no reason why Reeves or any other Labour politician should break into a sweat about sounding competent.
They have been given a clear run by the Blair Blue’s (once known as the Conservative party) and as always, mainstream media are reluctant to push them on anything.
Example being a recent interview with Shadow Home Sec. Cooper on the boats.
A nicely choreographed waltz around the real issues, such as how many is too many and when is enough ever going to be enough, allowing her to waffle on about more safe and legal routes.
March 25, 2024
Well Sir John, I suppose she could have adopted the policy of successive “Conservative” Chancellors over the last 14 years.
Lie about what she’s intending to do (to get the votes she wants) and then do the exact opposite.
We can but hope.
March 25, 2024
‘Will she back government plans to cut legal migration by 300,000 and demand they go further?’ I’m wondering, Sir John, when will we see ACTION and MEASURABLE RESULTS on this issue? In the next few months? Or will this be just another manifesto promise? I will not be voting for a party that cannot even control LEGAL migration.
March 25, 2024
Has our government done anything to date to reduce the number of immigrant work/student visas ?
March 25, 2024
It’s a bit rich for a Conservative MP to ask Reeves those questions when Jeremy Hunt has already failed to answer any of them !
I see in their latest ramblings on interest rates the BoE cited problems in the Red Sea as an inflationary factor preventing them decreasing interest rates. I’m not sure what sort of a fantasy world they’re living in where a useful response to terrorism in the Red Sea is to make everyone in the UK pay more for their mortgages.
March 25, 2024
Rachel Reeves uses her former Bank of England employee role as a buttress in attempting to support her claimed insight, knowledge and skills in finance.
She treats the BoE as if it is a renowned organisation, always doing right.
She is averse to drawing attention to its faults as that risks undermining herself too. She and Janet Street Porter have similar voices, but Rachel does seem to have the more financial awareness of the two.
March 25, 2024
Quite honestly John I do not think many politicians have a clue about their own finances let alone caring about those of Government.
They all want to promise the earth to get elected ,and then make excuses as to why it cannot happen !
You are one of the few who seems to understand there’s a link between, growth, cost, productivity, efficiency, taxation, budgets, borrowing, quantitive easing, expenditure, and Human nature.
Shame the last Prime Minister to see and use your talent was Margaret Thatcher.
March 25, 2024
Those 4 points – I thought you were describing the current situation under a Tory government
1. Your government/chancellor did allow the BoE freedom of action
2. Your government has been in control during the managed decline in productivity
3. You annually issue visas to over a million people and their families
4. Your net-zero policies are front and centre of your economic & energy plan
March 25, 2024
I agree with Mark B and Javelin above. The Conservative Party has implemented disastrous International Socialist policies, such as Net Zero and mass immigration.
With regard to the latter, for a party to promise to reduce immigration to the “tens of thousands” and then when in government to issue 1.2m visas in a single year without a further GE or a referendum is utterly undemocratic and deserves a severe punishment from the electorate as a deterrent to future administrations.
March 25, 2024
…and most tory MPs are happy to go with the plan ….I expect another million this year (and they never go home)
March 25, 2024
Although expected for the Labour Party the top of the Conservative Party has also been totally captured by the “woke” emanating out of our universities who are filled with 120,000 Chinese “students”.
Woke is simply the fifth column Marxists/communists at work to destroy the West’s wealth, social cohesion and ultimately security. Woke will invent and promote any policy which weakens and wrecks our nation. Attacking our history, implementing diversity to replace meritocracy, abolishing free speech, causing racist, religious and gender divisions and ruining our education/culture, judicial system, economy and military capability are all tools they use.
The reason why so much woke is hypocritical and impractical economy destroying nonsense is because the only coherent thread running through it all is the wrecking of the West using the tactics of Net Zero and mass immigration whilst organising protests, strikes, lock-ins, lock-outs, and disruptive demonstrations for any reason they can find.
March 25, 2024
Racheal Reves according to her WikI page, is seemingly as with other members of her family a career politician as a family trait, and without any proper job experience
Became a labour MP as a result of the Labour party’s discrimination process. From that you would assume she is an advocate of discrimination ahead of ‘fit for purpose’
Reeves is said to have worked as an economist at the Bank of England, which paints the picture of the patronising political view the BoE has all taxpayer money no responsibility. So does she ignore or is part of it.
Then contrast to her seeming position with the Sunak/Hunt and the Conservative Government views on running a Country. 70 Year high tax. Do the opposite of campaign manifestos. No expenditure control, seemingly just spending on efforts to keep mates employed in non-jobs, sending taxpayer money to foreign entities and taxpayer money to support foreign government nationalised industry. UK support in comparison is non-existent. Finance and ensure by punishment the off-shoring of UK Industry under the guise of carbon reduction – something no other World Government does. Ensure and encourage criminal activity by rewarding the boat people invasion – refuse UK its legislator and give an illegitimate Court and its laws power over the UK. Declining delivery in all Government run and managed Services.
I could go on, but Sir John you are asking us to compare one unproven scary version of the UK to one 14-year proven version of the UK – they are in unison.
March 25, 2024
If Rachel Reeves knows nothing about the BoE and its role in our current malaise – she has company. Your government is the same.
If she has no concern about public sector productivity, ditto.
Etc. And the animals looked from pigs to men ….
March 25, 2024
Sir John
In simple terms, we have the failure of our MPs, Parliament and Government to fulfill any sort of Democratic role. A whole cabal that takes from the taxpayer, then refuses even a modicum of service to those that have empowered them
March 25, 2024
I’ve just received my council tax bill 2024/25 its just under £2,000 ….and thats to collect one waste bin every two weeks; thanks very much
March 25, 2024
The labour party are more than just “vacuity, verbosity and timidity” – Their misguided war against the middle class, and their desire to implement even more excessive taxation shows them to be ill suited to run the country.
We should remind voters of the very successful campaign showing how “Labour isn’t working” – with great queues of people at the benefits office. Or when the country had to go on bended knees to the IMF, because we were bankrupt.
Labour are about dogma, not common sense – If we want to see the country ruined faster than the Tories are doing it, with us back in the EU by the back door, then vote for labour.
Rachel Reeves is not competent to teach anyone about economics, and her dogma associated with windmills and more jobs just shows how distorted, and hopeless, her ideas are.
March 25, 2024
Sir John, why bother getting into what Rachel Reeved says or thinks? She is the ultimate example of someone talking to an empty room. There may have been the odd journalist (limited in number, not mental capacity, though who knows these days?) and the nodding left in attendance, but anyone with any real merit and awareness of the nation’s direction of travel do not listen too, or pay any attention to Reeves.
We have a real battle on our hands in the coming years. People like Starmer, Reeved and Rayner are mere pawns in the game.
Time to get real Sir John.
March 25, 2024
Sir John
As a comparison your Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt – quotes over the weekend
From April 2024, if you contributed NI for a minimum of 30 years (A 30-year investment commitment to pay!) your, the UK Basic Pension will rise to £169.50 per week, that is £8,814.00 a year.
The chancellor on this states that over the last 14 years the Conservative Government has lifted Pensioners out of ‘poverty’? £169.50 is not poverty according to Hunt?
Then Jermey Hunt goes on to say on ‘X’ – £100,000 a year or £1,923 a week is not a ‘lot of money’
We obviously have 2 different Planets, the Hunt/Sunak one and the real people of the UK one
March 25, 2024
They’ve forgotten the people, they’ve forgotten the referendum and they’ve forgotten their own manifesto
March 25, 2024
and there you have it – the social conscience of the Conservative Party writ large.
Hunt /Sunak are more concerned at the ability of their flock to pat themselves with praise for driving an EV!
March 25, 2024
An excellent film starring John Mills was made in 1958, Dunkirk…..
March 25, 2024
Sir John
Quoting others.. “Stakeholder democracy has, for all intents and purposes, turned out to be rule by experts.” – “hand power to us and we will use our knowledge to make the economic machine run at optimal speed”. Who gets to define an expert, especially when its Taxpayer Money, in a Democracy that would be the Chancellor, the duo Sunak/Hunt, the 2 that CCHQ says we should vote or get Racheal Reeves – to hell with any good ‘Conservative’ MP
The BoE Quantitative easing commitment £191 billion or 7.5% of GDP. This year alone it will cost us £40billion Inflation 2020 1%, 2024 3.4%(for reference that is 340% greater)
Thanks to an agreement between HM Treasury and the Bank of England all the losses that accrue to the Bank will be immediately transferred to the Treasury and, via the Treasury, onto the taxpayer.
Why is an ‘Independent’ body being allowed by Jeremy Hunt and Rishi Sunak to keep mounting losses and then dump them on the taxpayer? Is that what is meant be responsible Government?
£191 Billion or 7.5% of GDP how big a tax break would that afford?
How does the electorate end the nightmare when those in power, those MPs we elect refuse?
March 25, 2024
In today’s Media
Rish Sunak will today announce pumping millions of taxpayer money into French Nationalized Industry to protect UK jobs and defense.
In other words, the UK’s resilience and self-reliance will be in the hands of the ‘whims’ of foreign governments.
Does this Conservative Government not understand ‘resilience and self-reliance’? Even the ultra-left wing Biden insists that the US taxpayer only funds US based industry.
March 25, 2024
Sunak announces ‘national endeavour’ – that’s his words for punishing the UK
March 25, 2024
It might seem that I have a downer on Foreign Governments – I don’t, it’s a question of reciprocal balance – the level playing field.
There should be a test when giving our/Taxpayer money to foreign nationalized industries( in fact all foreign industries), does the Country involved permit reciprocal arrangements when their Countries security, safety and self-reliance is concerned. Then just as importantly was UK enterprise ‘not’ available or could it have been available with the same financing
This Conservative Government keeps demonstrating its dislike of the UK standing on its own ‘2 feet’ and will fight against the UK being treated as an equal.
March 25, 2024
Quite simply, all these points can be aimed at your Chancellor(s) and PM(s). People in green houses are not recommended to throw stones.
March 25, 2024
Electioneering has started and both sides are going to come up with all sorts of statements to lure votes . I would never vote for Labour no matter what they might offer , on the other hand the Tories have made a mess of the economy and turned their backs on the likes of me . I would like to believe that a deal could be struck with the emerging Reformers ; this move might re-emphasise a proper shift to the right . It’s early days , I will bide my time .
March 25, 2024
But the tories are quite happy …they believe that they’re doing a good job …oh the madness
March 25, 2024
John, what is stopping your party from taking action with the BoE?
It would be interesting to hear what you think your Conservative party have done right financially.
March 25, 2024
A Labour government will hasten the UK`s decline. It is probably a necessary stage the country must endure before there is a political revolution that sweeps away the current (Lib/Lab/Tory) incumbents and replace them with a government with the ideas and support to introduce reforms that will actually improve economic performance on which the quality of life ultimately depends. Let us hope the voting system is equal to the task.
March 25, 2024
the Uk now has more foreign born workers nthan the US. All whilst we have a so called Conservative Government. Your writing is excellent however it is a shame your party is not listening
March 25, 2024
As always, this is an intelligent description of the empty promise of Labour.
It would be much more powerful if the Government had been Conservative for the last 14 years, but they are mainly going along the same stupid path. Net Zero is now beginning to have a serious effect on the UK. For example, the NHS has committed to transitioning to battery-powered Ambulances at a cost of £170,000 each.
They can do 70 to 100 miles on a charge and take four hours to be recharged. As a result, people will die waiting for the ambulance to arrive. The NHS should be spending its money on patients, not vanity Net Zero projects.
The NHS even has a team devoted to achieving Net Zero, Why?
I am sorry to say the Conservatives are facing a 1993 Canada meltdown when the ruling party was reduced to two seats.
March 25, 2024
and a police response blues/twos car is £17,600 and the same EV is £60,000
March 25, 2024
So Ms. Reeves is doomed even before she starts her chancellorship?
Will no-one think of the young persons, c. ninety per cent. of whom some polls say will vote Labour? How are they to cope with the disillusion from a failed Reeves tenure?
March 25, 2024
My comments all just disappear.
March 25, 2024
Have you been cancelled, I thought that only happened to elite celebs
March 25, 2024
The entirely vacuous Ed Miliband was given free reign on the World At One today by Sarah Montague (who should be correctly introduced as Sarah, Ann Louise Montague, Lady Brook.
These days I hardly ever listen to it, but today, Lady Brook entirely failed to seriously question Miliband on the wisdom and cost of his discredited green investment plan. Without a much larger nuclear component, how can we possibly be reliant on 100% renewable energy by 2030, when the interconnectors are largely fed with power from Germany’s extremely dirty Lignite coal ?
It’s ludicrous on every level that we have discussed here, yet she let him get away with it, presumably because she supports it. After all, she has a degree in biology so I suppose she doesn’t understand physics.
Miliband obviously doesn’t understand the science either : he has a PPE degree from Oxford !
He should stick to eating decidedly un-green burgers in a fast food shop.
March 26, 2024
He life Socialist dope Gove takes his Climate Advice from school drop outs like Greta. Google the picture.
March 26, 2024
Electricity brought by interconnectors from the continent is more likely to come from Norway, France, Belgium, or the Netherlands than from Germany.
And even if it came from Germany, only 8.5% (2023) of German electricity is produced in power stations using lignite.
Do you ever check before belching?
March 27, 2024
But Reeves plans to be as irrelevant in power as Hunt is now. The Treasury tells them what to do and say, a brain is not required.
How else do you imagine Hunt came up with a brainless plan to “abolish” EE NI? He’s not smart enough to see that the ensuing rise in income tax would mean pensioners would be taxed much more heavily – thereby destroying the core vote of his party.
The utter stupidity of those statements, especially in an election year, beggars belief.