The Labour Manifesto is based on offering the best sustained growth in the G7. That means transforming our growth rate, which has been one of the better slow growth rates that characterise the main European countries, to surpass US growth which has been in the fast lane. I admire the ambition but do not think the policy proposals that accompany it will get anywhere near delivering.
If we want to start catching up with the USA we need to recognise how far we and the EU have fallen behind. EU GDP per head, lower than U.K., is just half the US level. US growth has been around 2% a year in recent years with Europe below 1%.
If we want to overtake the US growth rate we need to consider
1 Switching back to Common Law as we now can. EU Code law is too restrictive and anti innovation.
2. Expand our private equity, angel investing, self employment and small business sectors by a more positive regulatory regime
3 Cut taxes on incomes and enterprise. The US has no federal Inheritance tax and an estates tax on assets above $13 million. 32% Income tax only comes in at $191,ooo a year on the marginal earnings, and the 37% top rate at $609,000.Capital Gains is at 15%.
4. Halve the cost of energy. US energy is much cheaper owing to a willingness to find and extract their own domestic gas and oil.
5. Onshore more industry and investment as the US is doing
6. Government to promote and be a customer for an expanded tec and semi conductor industry,
The U.K. to generate this high growth rate could attract more business investment and raise more business revenue by putting Corporation tax down to 15%
June 27, 2024
Good morning.
Labour’s plan is much the same as the Tories over the last 14 years – Import more people !!
June 27, 2024
The only growth with liebour will be in the public sector
Already the motor manufacturers are following the oil companies. Starmergeddon will ensure growth in China and beyond.
June 27, 2024
JR, when relatives/partners of Labour Party are in No.10 advising Tory party or quangos setting economic policy why should anyone believe there is a difference in any growth plan other than grow population through mass immigration and high taxes?
Is Sunak that dull or does he and Hunt think we are stupid?
When Sunak repeatedly talks about a plan could he or any of you show us where he sought a mandate for mass immigration please.
June 27, 2024
His mandate is the fear of the woke backlash
June 27, 2024
Hunt actually thinks we should all be very grateful for the excellent performance of the Tories for 14 years. So clearly he is totally bonkers. Doubtless he thinks he worked wonders in his five years as health Secretary too.
Grateful for the following I assume:-
A botched hugely delayed half Brexit, the dire Windsor Accord, the absurd net zero agenda, the net harm pointless lockdowns, the failure to keep (or even try) to get net immigration down to the ten of thousands, the lack of any real growth in living standards PPP per head for 14 years, the vast increases in government debt, the net harm lockdowns, the net harm vaccines, the dire & rationed NHS, the war on Landlords, small business, the self employed and car users, the lack of housing and the corruption and crony capitalism, the sick joke of HS2, betting gate, the total contempt for the public and party members, appalling crime levels, woke lunacy and over regulation in all directions, vast over taxation, frozen allowances… and now even worse a huge Labour Majority – thanks very much Sunak, Hunt, Cameron, Boris and the dire net zero Theresa May.
June 27, 2024
Indeed nothing in the Labour Manifesto is pro-growth all of it as anti-growth. Yet Starmer says they want growth, growth, growth. Labour are the Con-socialists but even worse. For growth we need cheep on demand energy, lower taxes, far less State, relaxed planning and a bonfire of red tape.
Sunak, defending Badenock against some idiotic Dr Who actor, said that “freedom of speech was the most powerful feature of our democracy” well the Tories did huge amounts to suppress free speech during lockdowns and when pushing the net harm covid “vaccines”. Nothing pro free speech about the last 14 years of Con-Socialism.
June 27, 2024
So Darren Jones, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, has admitted that decarbonising the British economy will cost “£ hundreds of billions” in a leaked tape. Correct Darren, probably over £1 Trillion, indeed almost totally impossible with current technology, unless you export many industries totally and use false accounting (as they do with imported wood at Drax (and burning young coal or biofuels is far worse than burning old coal).
So the uni-parties propose spending £Trillions of our taxes doing huge net harm, pushing up our energy bills and giving negative benefit – what a great plan from the insane uni-parties. But the Tories will do this pointless torture a tiny bit more slowly!
June 27, 2024
I know that you are correct. I know that “import no export” is their business model.
BUT what I don’t understand is …
The country, overcrowded and dangerous, is becoming poorer and poorer.
The people are becoming utterly sick of the economic model.
And more importantly the U.K. is running out of money.
Where’s the magnet except by comparison with previous misfortune?
AND every imported worker will eventually need a pension!
June 27, 2024
Its only in the last decade that the tories have done a 180 on there historic policies
June 27, 2024
No real difference on that, just the VAT on private school fees and they might well drop that when they realise it will cost far more than it raises and do huge net harm to education and to the economy. Tories election pitch is “we are not quite as bad as Labour but c. similar but a tiny touch on the brakes.
So some idiotic yobs allegedly left a deposit in Sunak’s Richmond’s house garden pond. Better than in his expensively electrically heated swimming pool I suppose.
Still rather a larger problem is Theresa May’s massive net zero “deposit” for the nation – waved through by 95%+ of our clearly bonkers (or bought perhaps) MPs & without any sensible costing or even any analysis as to how it might even be engineered. May’s moronic evil “deposit” will cost about 1-3 £ trillion + thanks very much Theresa. Likely to end up at about £100k+ per household if they really do go for it and with zero benefit for anyone other than crony cpaitalists.
At least she has retired let us hope we do not see too much more from the deluded Geography graduate.
June 27, 2024
I think the pollsters have got this election massively wrong. I think reform support is far higher than they do.
June 27, 2024
I tend to agree, lots of shy Reform voters, though their support outside England is lower. Within England, Reform is almost invariably the best way to vote to stop Labour & Socialism other than in a tiny handful of seats (single figures at best) like Badenock’s the seats with a sound MP and where they have the best chance.
Otherwise Reform is the best way to go. The huge socialist wing of the Con-Socialists must surely be buried permanently. Also many old Tories voters are often voters who will realist where they have to vote reform to have the best chance of beating Labour or Libdems.
June 27, 2024
Armageddon is upon us, and Britain will never be the same again
Right-wing Britain faces meltdown, with the almost total elimination of any power over the UK’s destiny
ALLISTER HEATH.
Thanks very much Cameron, May, Boris and Suank.
The chap asking a question in the BBC debate last night said Sunak was a decent Chancellor but a poor PM. Not at all he was a dire Chancellor who wasted hundreds of £billions, caused the 12% inflation, wrecked the economy, approved vast QE, funded the net harm lock downs and net harm vaccines – he even still assures us they are “unequivocally safe”. Sunak as Chancellor did even more harm than Sunak PM.
June 27, 2024
There’s an awful lot of people in this country that don’t follow politics and probably don’t even know who Reform are. They will decide to vote Labour because they see the Conservatives have made a mess of things, not because they think Labour offer a sensible alternative. They are oblivious to such things.
Can you think of any other reason why Labour are riding high in the polls? Well it’s not their inspiring leader.
June 28, 2024
Agree.
We have bad Keynesian Socialist politicians at present and even worse Keynesian Socialist politicians as the alternative for the next parliament. This is the politics of the 60’s and 70’s.
It is as though the boom times of the late 80’s and 90’s never happened.
The anti-Thatcher politicians and academics have spawned today’s generation.
June 28, 2024
Dave,
I spoke with two teachers yesterday at a family funeral. I haven’t seen them in years, and they have both done well in their education careers, one a Head maths teacher in middle school; they were both convinced that Labour would improve their hours, pay, and help in schools with more teachers’ assistants.
One of them thinks overturning Brexit is Labour’s mission, but Starmer’s not saying anything at the moment so they don’t spook people; when I asked if that’s such a good sales pitch, why isn’t he making it?
A nurse thinks they will put all the new money into hospitals and sort out the doctors. A social worker cousin says they’ll get all the monetary investment they need. These non-doms, private school parents, and ‘the rich’—you know, investor people—are going to be fixing everything.
June 27, 2024
Totally agree. Most Conservative voters I know including myself are now voting Reform despite the main parties and the media doing their best to besmirch them.
June 27, 2024
Hi Iain, Lord Ashcroft has just written about his latest polling; you may find bit this interesting:
‘In any case, former Conservatives are divided as to whether the most effective opposition after the election will come from the Tories or from Nigel Farage and Reform UK. Nearly half of 2019 Tories say they are interested in the party’s ideas and would consider voting for them; another quarter say that even if they can’t see themselves voting Reform this time, they like the fact that they are around to challenge the status quo.’ — https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2024/06/voters-see-rishi-as-leading-a-gang-out-for-themselves/
(I’ve seen Ref used as a shorthand for Reform UK; RUK seems much better — it’s leader often makes a ruckus, shifting the Overton window.)
June 27, 2024
🤞Lets hope so, I’m dreading the communist far left Starmer and his clan!
June 27, 2024
When will a journalist have the courage to ask Starmer ‘how long have you been a Marxist, and do you think Marxism will benefit England and English people?’
June 27, 2024
The Brexit Party and UKIP both came first in EU elections with the Tories 3rd or was it 4th. That is what is needed once again. A once in a lifetime opportunity to get some sensible, right of centre policies and bury the fake Conservatives for their 14 years of appalling lies & total betrayal.
June 27, 2024
If our recent consocialist government can steal Labours clothes, as it has done in recent years, then there is no reason why Labour should not do the same and becoms Conservative in its financial thinking. SKS may be confused about sexual identity, but I do not see him handling all this cross dressing, nor do I see his newly sanitised party. They would be in no mans land.
It may be distastefull for you to admitt it, but the only party with the declared intent of following the necessary path you define are Reform. The electorate seem to be slowly awakening to this, but the only real poll is on the 4th of July.
June 27, 2024
We can only hope, but look at the dire line up in the Shadow Cabinet hugely depressing. Only Starmer and Streeting who can ocasionally talk in full coherent sentences.
https://labour.org.uk/about-us/the-shadow-cabinet/
It should not take them long to realise that VAT on school fees and their abolition of Non Doms will cost them net money, damage education and the economy. But they are driven by the politics envy not logic and what works. Mad agendas like ever more state sector, every higher taxes, ever more red tape and the net zero insanity.
June 27, 2024
Oh goodness that’s a dreadful portent. Far too many loudmouthed headbangers there. This will not only be dreadful but embarrassing and personally I blame Cameron & May for starting the ship on a course that’s led to this.
June 27, 2024
Indeed, especially the net zero lunacy.
June 27, 2024
Good Morning,
Great ideas Sir J. but aren’t they all restricted or negated by 1. ‘Non compete’ clause in EU exit agreement, and 2. Net Zero legislation?
Tinkering around the edges….
PS, Yesterdays debate was a draw according to poll, so Starmer and Sunak are equally disliked… OMG, we’re in trouble!
June 27, 2024
PW,
Agreed.
Our manufacture industry will continue to move abroad due high energy and labour costs. There is a lack of interest or protection by government.
More of our population will be employed by the state in areas that do not add to GDP.
Others will remain on benefits because it is more attractive than working.
I am more concerned about how much more damage government will do to industry. I don’t expect real growth.
June 28, 2024
Peter my husband always said the public sector doesn’t add to GDP but if it wasn’t State owned the essential services would be still run with shareholders expecting a dividend so doesn’t the State make money out of essential work such as hospitals and dentists?
The AA is like a lower-grade Fire Service. They are private sector, but every home would have to be covered if it wasn’t billed by the State.
Private care homes, state care homes. The taxpayer pays a fair share of both groups costs.
June 27, 2024
Yes, they should both have been booed off…
June 27, 2024
P W
Yes they are both intensely disliked and their uniparty with them. The not a leaders debate held no interest for me.
I saved myself the agro by reading a bit more of The Death of Science by paul Goddard and Angus Dalgleish.
June 27, 2024
Without Reform/Farage in the debate there is no serious discussion on the main issues of Net Zero, Immigration levels, tax levels, the size of the state, the net harm “vaccines”, growth and net harm lockdowns…
This as Starmer and Sunak are the uni-party on all these issue. Just the tiny pre-election claims that we will slow net zero a bit, or not tax or have open immigration quite as much as Starmer.
We can only judge the Tories & Sunak by their 14 years of action and inaction. Total obliteration is what they both richly deserve.
June 27, 2024
Without Farage there was no real or serious debate on net zero, immigration, size of the state, energy… just more uni party lunacy. Sunak’s line was:- we have the same mad agenda as Starmer but very slightly slower and slightly less bad.
We are truly dire but not quite as dire as them.
June 27, 2024
This is naive.
I thought John understand what Labour’s become? It seems not. If an intelligent, considered and politically experienced man like John doesn’t understand then we can hardly expect the voter to understand either. That spells danger, real danger
I’ll tell you what Labour’s become, an existential threat to our very being. This party has revenge and hate in its heart and a thirst for total power and control over our every waking moment.
Labour is gonna turn this nation into a total shit hole
June 27, 2024
Faster than the last 14 years trend!
June 28, 2024
Yes, faster than that. I hope the IMF steps in to control their PFI and borrowing for my children’s and grandchildren’s sakes.
June 27, 2024
Dom
Indeed! It’s called The Great Reset, I believe!
As Donna said yesterday it’s to introduce stakeholder capitalism aka communism, by destroying the west to level us down to the rest of the world.
June 27, 2024
Even more of a sh*t hole. By the day.
Appeasement to extremists is a VERY bad idea but the feeble have proudly excelled in it.
Sic transit etc.
I daresay this is exactly how Cromwell managed to bring the establishment to its knees.
(With pc and bullying…mafia-like tactics)
And then he unleashed Hell on earth. No mercy.
June 27, 2024
Seems so.
Armageddon is upon us and Britain will never be the same again.
Right-wing Britain faces meltdown, with the almost total elimination of any power over the UK’s destiny
ALLISTER HEATH today is surely spot on.
Thanks very much Cameron, May, Boris & Sunak!
June 27, 2024
All these are excellent suggestions and would almost certainly deliver the higher growth rate needed. The Conservative party would be in much better shape if they had acted on them. But it failed to do so. Starmer’s declarations about growth under his Labour government are just vapid, worthless utterances of an election campaign. They are not backed up by any practical proposals that will deliver growth, only by those that will make matters worse such as higher taxes, more wasteful expenditures and regulatory alignment with the EU.
June 27, 2024
Indeed and even more state sector, rip off energy and more net zero lunacy. Not a single pro-growth policy is proposed by Labour.
June 28, 2024
Yes they have proposed growth,
Growth in public services, more jobs, higher pay, 4 day weeks, the biggest upgrade in workers rights in a generation. Starmer has already been warned not to take trade union support for granted.
Within 100 days Rayner has promised to repeal anti-union legislation such as the 2016 Trade Union Act and the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 so we ain’t seen nothing yet. New Deal for Adult social care workers so get ready for social care insurance whether you want it or not you’ll be paying for it.
A lot of the promises someone else pays for such as employers, sick pay from day 1 for all, so employers pass it on so the cost of goods and services increases don’t be surprised by a pint or a fancy coffee costs £10. So that will give growth as turnover increases, GDP isn’t interested in the bottom line.
June 27, 2024
Labour’s plan for growth is the same as the Not-a-Conservative-Party’s …. since it comes from the same Blob-controlled sources:
Grow the population.
And tax the productive to pay for them.
June 27, 2024
+1
June 27, 2024
Stopping so much immigration would allow an increase in per capita GDP. Labour want to do more trade with the EU by reducing all the stupid paperwork that exporters now need to sell anything into the single market
June 27, 2024
Labour or conservatives – in short politicians don’t do trade with anyone. They have no idea what comprises good trading conditions. The EU is in existential decline. Individual components are is serious trouble. There is no trade to pick up there.
We received our Conservative candidates literature today. He was a minister in the Sunak government. The word ‘Conservative’ does not appear on his flyer! Says it all really.
June 27, 2024
Anybody who is interested in polling will wonder why so many firms doing MRP polls are coming up with such different results. MRP (Multi-level Regression and Post-stratification) is a relatively new polling technique, which claims it can predict voter intentions at the single constituency level
MRP has a good track record, but no method is foolproof and will deffo not get every single seat right. I don’t think every MRP is the same, we are not comparing like with like. Some of the recent national MRP polls have only sampled 2000 people out of an electorate of maybe 40 million.
One also observes that it depends on who commissions the poll. The right-wing press is in raptures over Farage and the alleged “rise” in his Reform anti-net zero landlords party and are now claiming that Reform will win “up to” 15 seats. No chance!
It is telling that Labour campaign managers are refusing to believe recent MRP polls. Watching Starmer’s careful, measured performance in the debate last night, neither does he.
June 27, 2024
Regression says it all .Going back and looking at events based on what politicians say amounts to little.Society at present is so unstable and fluid a cameo shot for purposes of a political premise to predict future opinions is unreliable.
June 27, 2024
Ido not see your suggestion being taken up John, I fear it will be more money for state departments and local authorities at the expense of those you outline.
Now if the conservatives had done as you have suggested over the last 14 years, then they and all of us would be in better shape now.
June 27, 2024
Mrs Gold has developed an interest in growing tropical orchids. This means that I have had to put shading on the glass in my greenhouse and install electricity, so that the necessary fans and mist spraying tech can operate.
Yesterday we took a trip to one of the larger nearby garden centres, looking for some specialist growing media. At the entrance was a Conservative candidate and her team, handing out blue leaflets etc.
A dowager larger lady with a blue rinse was in front of us. Clearly cross, she grabbed one of the leaflets, tearing it into shreds while uttering imprecations about Gamblergate and the state of the NHS.
If true-blue Tory women are losing faith with the party, there really is no hope for a closing of the polls before election day
June 27, 2024
SG,
Oldies love garden centres. Lots of very expensive stuff there, as well as inexpensive bedding plants.
Perhaps the canvassing candidate expected a more genteel audience and less aggravation than on the doorsteps.
I don’t really understand people that go there to eat. Maybe they don’t like restaurants or pubs.
Orchids sounds like a lot of hard work in this country.
June 27, 2024
You are using electricity to grow orchids!!! Don’t you care about ‘saving the planet’?
Mrs Gold should take up knitting. Scarves, rugs anything to keep warm when the wind does not blow – which is all winter.
Please convey to Mrs Gold the shock of readers of this blog at the waste of energy in your greenhouse.
June 27, 2024
Orchids were my late wife’s favourite flower and I continue to grow them – but indoors where they can be seen at all times.
June 27, 2024
How does growing Orchids in a cold climate contribute to your net zero obsession husband of Mrs Gold?
Or are those measures just for the plebs?
June 27, 2024
Labour says it will stimulate growth by improving the planning regime. This idea would work, and it is what the Conservatives promised in 2019 but failed to deliver.
Unfortunately, there is no sign of Labour doing any of this here in Wales, despite 80% of the country being sparsely populated. They recently turned down planning for a new Aldi store in a town near me. After a ten-year process, they rejected it despite being on a brownfield site next to an existing retail park on a main road.
June 28, 2024
Starmer has said several times he is going to stop nimbies, he is a yimby on housebuilding. Developers could override local objections under his plans announced in October. Angela is sharing migrants out in every Borough, which gave me a chuckle. I hope she follows through. They usually put eight in the nice big house up your road, so all those Tory snipers right now are going to reap what you sow; we’ve already had more than our fair share, and they’ll need new build houses soon.
June 27, 2024
I don’t think we want to follow the USA, whose debt is now at $35 trillion. We would be far better off following the Asian countries that look after their own countries and citizens. We were told we could be Singapore on Thames but in reality we have become an EU poodle ruled by woke idiots.
June 27, 2024
I’m quite confident Labour will achieve growth – growth in the civil service, growth in spending, growth in debt, growth in waste, growth in tax, growth in unemployment, growth in welfare, growth in hospital waiting lists, growth in legal and illegal immigration and growth in crime.
Perhaps the Conservative party can find themselves again in the next 5 years, or Reform can establish itself as a regular political party and not a protest movement that might well fall apart in short order, as new parties often do.
June 27, 2024
Yes, I agree, but want to emphasise something embedded in you suggests above;
Self Employment (Contracting, Startups, sole trading, etc,…), before 2003 (starting 1979) was more then a tax dodge, it was an important wealth generator for the Regions!
E.g A Contractor (before SME startup phase) would travel the UK, earn their fee, then bring it home and pay the mortgage! A transfer of wealth from London, Cambridge, M4 corridor, to the Region involved. And, it was a very quick way to startup, as the IP was also controllable and be the basis for the startup!
A Nurse contracting in London, will transfer her income (pay the mortgage) back to the region they come from!
Not now, not since IR35, which was the original purpose of it! Now People don’t even remember this as a mechanism! This transfer, and Overseas investment was, by far, the quickest way to re-generate a region!
You still need House Building, Cheap Energy, and growth potential with infrastructure building (the M4 bypass is still not done)! But, an important part of individual wealth generation!
One that has been long forgotten with Devolution, Narrow Minded Nationalist, and EU Marxism!
An earning differential of the Self Employed, SME’s, Contractors, is so important for the Regions!
Please promote the scraping of IR35, and allow People to use Sole Trader status, to reinstate this mechanism!
Just a gentile reminder, if you can remember the battles during 1997..2003, when they killed it! All part of the move to the EU Customs Union!
Regards,
RDM.
June 27, 2024
Sir John
All sounds good, but do they, Labour, believe themselves.
Starmer as he said yesterday wants closer ties to the EU on trade and defense. The EU won’t permit those trading outside their protectionist bubble to have access to the World on different terms.
Starmer is also on record as saying the UK’s democratically elected Parliament and legislator is not who should be making our Laws, he wants that to be offloaded to unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats elsewhere.
June 27, 2024
We are in NATO, why do we need ‘close defence ties with the EU?
The EU has given up on trade. It’s going to ‘buy in’ exclusively. It has nothing to sell.
The man is seriously confused.
June 27, 2024
Sometimes the unelected have more insight and knowledge.I am not altogether happy with the we want brigade.
June 27, 2024
You must be joking! The Labour haven’t got the brains to understand what you are proposing. I bet next week we will see us being governed back in the 1970s and before (some of us were there to remember the fiasco they caused). The Tory Party have let us down by having too many kids on the block who didn’t come from ordinary households (grammar school closures one reason the bottom has not got through to the top of Eton Mess lot) who know a thing of two which the lot we have had obviously do not. A wasted few years when we could have got back to some form of wealth with getting out of the slavery of the EU which we seem to be going back into. I give up and just hope I have enough money to get me to my box after working so hard for this country. How long before those of us who have worked hard for our homes are shunted out into one bed flats communist style to make way for the hoards of immigrants?
June 27, 2024
Spot on.
June 27, 2024
Sir John
Point 1 is essential to rebalance and bring us all into a better place. Unfortunately, the difference while vast are seemingly too subtle for some to grasp. The big one is that the EU takes all rights away then approves what should be permitted – they control your right to ‘be’. Common Law only takes things away if there is a good reason to do so in the first place, that still can then be amended and repealed through the democratic process.
June 27, 2024
Sir John
Your reference to the USA, clearly a World leader in trade and freedoms. As such it is also a UK Competitor in trade.
The USA does not have our Conservative Government introduced Laws on NetZero, it does not have out Conservative Government high energy costs – it pushes enterprise. The punitive punishment has been written into UK Law by this Conservative Government. They could have changed it but refused. Only 6 Nations out of 195 have chosen to Punish its People for existing in the way this Conservative Government has.
USA, Germany, China and so on while aspiring to reduce carbon outputs by 2050 have not put it at the expense of their economies. As it stands with the UK bowing out of an active trading World all other Countries get to profit more, they all get to increase World Carbon output.
June 27, 2024
For balance, other Parliamentary groupings have also declared they wish the UK to go down the drain. The wish to wreck not nurture a thriving economy. They see a virtue signal of punitive unbalanced punishment of the People of the UK as their right to dictate rather than work with those that empower and pay them.
That highlights the situation that this election wont resolve, we will get complete carnage before someone wakes up and sees they are the problem
June 27, 2024
It might be simpler just to say, we need to be more British, rather than looking to ape the USA.
We used to lead the world. We did that not by mimicking others but by being the best at what we did. We were able to lead the world in: electronics, aeronautics, nuclear technology, auto design and manufacture ship building, insurance, exploration, mining, farming, education, ceramics, chemicals, glass technology and many many more. That was possible with a governing system in charge of the nation that allowed free enterprise to work its magic.
The dead hand of government must be removed from the tiller of Enterprise GB, if we are to head in the right direction ever again.
June 27, 2024
Straight from manifesto:
‘’We will support people to choose electric cars by ensuring our charging infrastructure is truly nationwide, including rapid charging and delivering the Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate to support manufacturers to safeguard skilled British jobs’’
But is it from Labour or Conservative ?
June 27, 2024
G C
They can install all the charging points they like. There will not be the electricity to charge the cars, especially during a spell of high pressure in the middle of winter.
It is the new normal for the UK to be importing 15% to 20% of electricity.
June 27, 2024
From the Media
“Stellantis, the car giant behind Vauxhall, warned that it would be forced to close plants at Ellesmere Port and Luton, unless the Government relaxed rules forcing manufacturers to sell a certain proportion of EVs.”
Rishi Sunak brought in this Law in January this year, companies that don’t meet his demands for EV production will have to pay £15,000 per vehicle – it was another of his pretend softening of a ridiculous punitive punishment Law.
It fall into line with his Conservative Governments pretend tax cuts he and Hunt announced, just shuffling the pack to extract more money from the economy – thus causing it to worsen
June 27, 2024
We are indeed living in commumist britain ….the state will tell you what to drive, what to eat and where you live
June 27, 2024
Everybody needs to read the link ‘autotrader’
”All new vehicles sold in Europe will be fitted with a mandatory speed limiter from July 2024 to keep cars within the UK speed limits”
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/content/news/mandatory-speed-limiters-on-uk-cars-from-2022?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR1vnDyAIIwN9dxefFaqzy5VqEODanmgZNzc0Dd_UfWy8hrYnux5dzuKhjE_aem_V8uzrpYjfnAs0YkuMUWgAg
June 27, 2024
Including the UK
June 27, 2024
Glen, indeed they are already an option on some cars for a couple of years
June 27, 2024
But law from July
June 27, 2024
The silly season is upon us again
June 27, 2024
Sunak and Hunt remain oblivious of the calamitous results of the policies they followed. Threatening the electorate never works. Starter will have to explain why his policies have not produced his stated aim – we have has enough of the political class. I think they are actually in danger and not from the natives.
June 27, 2024
Despite being an unreformed Thatcherite, and having followed politics closely since canvassing for Tristan Garrell-Jones in Watford, I confess to having no idea what is going to happen next Thursday !
Does the electorate understand and remember Labour’s previous record ? Voters are clearly deeply unimpressed with the current Labour leadership. If so, we could see Starmer in power with a much smaller majority than the polls are predicting, Reform with at most two seats, and a sizeable Conservative opposition.
Alternatively, maybe they are even more fed up with Sunak and Co (could you blame them ?) and we could see a massive Labour majority, The Conservatives could be reduced to less than 100 seats, and Reform with 15-20.
I would then predict an amalgamation on the right and, of course, the leader would inevitably be Nigel Farage.
He would make mincemeat of Starmer at PMQs, or any other Labour leader, for that matter.
I would hope that a Farage-led party could win a general election but that is debatable. In my view, since 1997, the electorate has gone so soft that I doubt that even Margaret Thatcher could win a majority today.
Only one thing is certain : however bad the last five years have been under the Conservatives, the next five will be far, far worse !
June 27, 2024
Hi sir John
So why didn’t your party the conservatives
Do this ?
They had fourteen years
Thank you
June 27, 2024
Indeed! But all those policies are far away from anything Labour want. Even reform are concentrating on inanities like an extra employment tax on foreigners. And the Conservatives are tinkering at the edges. Too late, we will have a decade or so of full blown wokery and social democracy. Any potential advantages from the freedoms offered by Brexit are now for academic discussion in history books. Labour will quickly discover that ‘improved’ trade with the eu comes at a price of economic ‘alignment’ / subjugation.
June 27, 2024
Best bet for the U.K. now would be rejoin the single market, it might constrain some of the dumber left wing stuff.
June 27, 2024
How?
June 27, 2024
The point I’m making is this is what Labour are going to try to do surreptitiously in any event. Better to maximise the position by doing it in one go, there probably is a confidence boost, after all ‘Business’ has been largely in favour of SM membership ever since Brexit, and large swathes moaning about it ever since. SM membership might focus attention on the need to be competitive versus the sclerotic economies of the EU. Given the leftist direction of travel we now have, we can forget competitiveness versus the more dynamic economies around the world, which was the Brexit vision.
Not an inspiring option from a free market / conservative point of view I admit, but we are where we are and needs must.
June 28, 2024
You seem to be under the delusion that we can join the single market but not the EU. I thought it was clear five years ago that that wasn’t possible.
June 27, 2024
There are reports that secret labour plans exist to raise a whole host of taxes – but of course they won’t talk about them now – but we won’t see a growing economy in that case.
More taxes will see the economy collapse even more!
As for removing existing EU laws – that will never happen with Starmer. We already know he plans to get us back into the EU by the side door. Something else he will not talk about before the election.
Anybody irrational enough to imagine that voting labour will improve their lot should think again – it won’t be just more of the same with a few tweaks, it will be full on hard taxing heavy socialism at its worst. Whatever the Tories did will be made 10x worse under labour, and that includes lockdowns for no reason and an even more deadly netzero policy.
June 27, 2024
I doubt many people commenting on this site were considering voting Labour. What you’re doing, Bryan, is saying people should vote Tory instead of Reform. That’s fine if you want a neutered Tory party, no proper opposition, and many millions feeling that once again their voices will be ignored, in what they thought was a democracy. Some might see that as a recipe for civil war, I fear. Surely we want to avoid that.
June 27, 2024
@Clough – Don’t put words into my mouth – I’ve never said anything like that.
If we do not get a massive vote against the big 3 next week we are doomed to more of the same, but worse!
We know the Tories won’t get back in – we have to make sure labour do not. As Starmer is our prime enemy in this election, we must do what we can to attack his false ideology and the potential he has to ruin our country at a very fast rate.
Check out my other comments on earlier diary entries to get a better idea of where I’m coming from.
June 27, 2024
“Halve the cost of energy. US energy is much cheaper owing to a willingness to find and extract their own domestic gas and oil.”
Correct. Labour does not intend to simply “change” but to destroy and this includes our energy and consequently our industry and whole way of life.
Unfortunately PM May provided the net zero by 2050 legislation without a full debate, vote or costing. PM Johnson wrote the suicide manual “The Net Zero Strategy – Build Back Greener” with the now Labour supporting Conservative MP, Chris Skidmore, writing the “Mission Zero – Independent (?) Review of Net Zero” destruction manual.
As recently as 16/05/2024, Lord Callanan, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero and Minister for Energy Efficiency & Green Growth, in reply to a HoL question said that fixed offshore wind is cheaper than gas, thus allowing Labour to continue with their claim that renewables are far cheaper than gas and lead us down a certain path to expensive and chaotically intermittent energy and de-industrialisation.
Even the far Left and BBC supporting Private Eye magazine in a recent issue described Labour’s claim that “renewables are far cheaper than gas” as “an outright falsehood”.
June 27, 2024
Off topic if I may please :
Both Conservative and Labour say they want to end the illegal migrant crossings, as does a majority of UK voters.
PM Sunak says this is achievable with his Rwanda plan. Sir Keir Starmer says the Rwanda plan will not work and he will cancel it to find a better way.
If PM Sunak believes his plan will work why did he then call the election before it could be tested:
1) Because he really didn’t think it would work and thought it better to call the election before it was shown to fail?
2) Because it will work but he wants Labour to scrap it so the illegal migrant crossings continue?
3) Because although he thought it would work he wanted to use it as a re-election bribe even if meant the chance of losing the election and the possibility of the illegal migrant crossings continuing?
June 27, 2024
Agree but Sir John you have missed the elephant in the room. Immigration both legal & illegal. The UK needs the right people with the right skills. Who will contribute to our tax system & GDP.
With so many joining the unemployed sector. Soon there will be less actually in work. Bearing in mind the number of jobs being shared by 2 people. Which increases the employment costs! Which is utterly ridiculous.
Plus too many non Christian families where every additional wife has a house for her & the children. This is the real drain on housing stocks.
All tax payers are just cash cows for HMRC & the inactive.
When & how will this be addressed.. because Labour will not upset their core voters???
June 27, 2024
Jude
‘Plus too many non Christian families where every additional wife has a house for her & the children.’
I wonder which religion you could possibly mean?!!!
June 27, 2024
One only has to read the code of practise for private car parks released today that apparently will voluntarily come in to force in the autumn and the reaction of motoring organisations to it to understand why the common law approach is not always the best way. As shown by some private parking companies, the common law approach permits private companies to treat individuals badly until such time as the government of the day decides to put a stop to such behaviour.
Another example of where common law lets down individuals was the issue of upskirting and the fact that legislation had to be introduced to make that an offence.
June 27, 2024
Mr Hollinrake, the small businesses minister, –
‘But let’s not forget, only 10 per cent of British companies export at all… and 73 per cent of our exports are not goods with the European Union, they are services and goods to the rest of the world.’
“Easy on the sidelines, Keir Starmer saying we’ll get a better deal with the European Union. At what price? At what price?”
So one side wants to damage 73% of UK trade by giving the unelected unaccountable control of what we can and cannot do!
June 27, 2024
Now we are getting somewhere bravo John,
This is what the political debate should be about and not if we can afford it nonsense. We issue the £ we can afford everything we want to do. What we then do with our skills and real resources is what the political debates should be about. We can run out of those and these can cause inflation if we don’t have enough productive capacity. We can never run out of £’s.
I totally agree with some of those listed but an awful lot of it sounds like Supply side trickle down. That when tried, caused a banking crises and Minskey raised his head again. You can’t swap government spending and replace it with bank lending or as history shows quite clearly. The deficit becomes too small to support the credit structure of the economy. You can’t grow an economy by loading private sector debt onto the backs of consumers. It never ends very well.
Capitalism is run on sales. So you need very healthy consumers. The way to keep consumers healthy is tax cuts along with bigger government budget deficits – IE larger private sector surpluses. The government has to meet The savings desires of households and businesses. Scrap the full funding rule and stop issuing £ of debt ( Gilts ) for every £ spent.
In the spirit of debate this is how we see a basic functioning structure that could be added to the way any political party sees fit. Keeps the UK as a fully sovereign nation state.
https://new-wayland.com/blog/running-a-modern-money-economy/
Some parts you will agree with, some parts you will disagree with. That shows a healthy democracy. Moves the debate to where it should be. Away from the false claim of we can’t afford to do anything. Move it to what do want to do with our skills and real resources. Human’s can’t be moved around like ignots of steel. Productivity improvements create job losses and so do large transitions as Thatcher found out to her cost. Some people still won’t vote conservative because she thought humans could be moved around like ignots of steel. On the false belief that there was always somebody waiting with their cheque books open ready to hire them. Which is never the case in the real world.
The debate should be welcomed.
June 27, 2024
150 illegal economic /criminals arrived yesterday from the safe country of France
June 27, 2024
For growth please cancel net-zero
‘One study that rounded up scientists’ data on 709 islands across the Pacific and Indian Oceans showed that nearly 89 percent either had increased in area or hadn’t changed much in recent decades. Only 11 percent had contracted’
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/27/briefing/maldives-atolls-climate-change.html#:~:text=If%2C%20say%2C%20the%20ice%20sheets,cope%20with%20their%20changing%20environment
June 27, 2024
Do we have any industry left? I thought the Tories had managed to sell it all off to France Germany India USA; these countries protect their industries from predation. The Tories only protect their warmongering companies from takeover believing our ability to bomb other countries into the Stone Age is essential for our survival whilst at the same time flooding us with hostile immigrants for whom we have no provision that does not detract from our own and destroying our economy with their Net Zero lunacy.
June 27, 2024
You don’t mention a key growth driver and a big difference with the USA which is planning reform. Of course all Conservative MPs pretend to be interested in planning reform as long as none of the new building and infrastructure is in their own constituency.
Reply. I am not a Conservative MP! Labour will reintroduce top down housing targets for local plans that Gove was persuaded to drop. This will take time to filter through the system as local plans take a couple of years or so to be designed and consulted on. The policy will make no difference in most places that have a current local plan or no local plan. There are anyway loads of outstanding planning permissions not being built out owing to mortgage availability and house prices.
June 27, 2024
This article about the Bank of England piling losses on to taxpayers through reversal of “quantitative easing”:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/06/27/how-the-bank-of-england-could-hand-starmer-a-11bn-windfall/
prompts me to write that one of the many reasons why the Tory party will be smashed next week can be traced back to George Osborne choosing not to explain what was going on to the public back in 2009.
One of the earliest of my many comments on this topic can still be found here, fifteen years and a few days ago:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2009/06/23/prices-and-money/
“For the record, last week the Bank of England created another £6.5 billion and used it to buy up existing gilts, while the Treasury borrowed £6.8 billion by issuing new gilts.
As of June 18th, the “Quantity of assets purchased by the creation of central bank reserves” was £92.72 billion:
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/markets/apf/results.htm
broken down as follows:
Commercial Paper £2.10 billion
Corporate Bonds £0.75 billion
Gilts £89.87 billion
ie 97% of the “quantitative easing” has been used to ensure that the government can continue to borrow in order to cover its budget deficit, which is now running at about a quarter of its expenditure.
The question is whether the Bank will agree to continue to help the government out for long enough – ie, until it can go into an election next spring claiming to have seen us through the recession – or the MPC will decide this autumn that there’s no longer any plausible justification for more “quantitative easing” of its financial difficulties.
My guess is that the MPC will look at the potential economic consequences of suddenly cutting off the supply of new money, and will decide to tail it off very gradually during 2010.
And on that basis, I’d say that Gordon Brown still has a fighting chance of winning the next election.”
If Osborne had hammered home to the electorate that the Labour government had got itself into the position where it was having to borrow a quarter of all the money it was spending, and it could only do that by getting the Bank of England to rig the gilts market, then the Tories might have won an overall majority and we would not have had the Liberal Democrats in government and we might not have fallen for the net zero insanity.
June 27, 2024
@Denis Cooper +1 – and today the BoE has the temerity to criticize the French, suggesting it would be the elected French Government “that poses a threat to global financial stability and the British economy.”
It will of course, as has been proven, not be this Conservative Government, the BoE, the IFS, the OBR and the whole cabal of proven fiscal incompetents with their policy intransigence, the lack of thinking things through that causes the UK to take a hit. The one thing they should ask is when have they themselves(all of them) ever been right!
June 27, 2024
@Denis Cooper
Who is supporting Who?
From the Media, The Daily Telegraph business ection
The OBR has suggested the incoming Labour Party will have an unexpected £16billion to give away in tax cuts – Apparently, they got their forecasts ‘wrong’, not new ‘uncosted’ money just misscalculated
Not to be outdone the BoE looks likely to massage another £11Billion towards the Labour Chancellors coffers. – Apparently Andrew Bailey admits he hasn’t been doing things correctly and needs to fall into line with his foreign counter-parts on how he does his job.
So a week before the election up pops £27billion that wasn’t missing, just put in the wrong pigeon holes
I wonder how mutch more is down the back of the sofa?
June 27, 2024
I suspect the that Labour cannot be trusted one inch and all Labour wants is ever higher and higher taxes.
June 27, 2024
Sounds like this current government
June 27, 2024
It’s quite clear that Labour will lead to a continuing decline in real GDP per capita. It has of course fallen for the past six quarters, so it is understandable that voters do not trust the Tories to improve matters.
They need to be even more sceptical about Labour, who will make things worse faster. If you don’t want a worse Uniparty continuity government then don’t vote Labour as a means of trying to punish the Tories. Reform may not quite have all the pieces worked out in their programme, but they do have the essential foundations in place: cancel net zero, cut immigration, restore proper standards in education, incentivise growth with tax cuts and an end to IR35, withdraw from foreign rule (WHO, ECHR etc.).
June 27, 2024
Mark :
Correct.
June 27, 2024
If Labour gain a majority of seats on 5 July, Chancellor Rachel Reeves would grow better with our country being guided by Sir John Redwood as her highest quality advisor.
June 27, 2024
Labour are not interested in “sustained fast growth” they’re only interested in destruction and then control.
Imagine how it will be with Parliament, the BBC, the Civil Service, the judiciary, the quangos and institutions all forcing far left polices upon us. And with the Lib Dems as the Official Opposition!
Expect, cancelation, then lawfare and finally prison sentences to be used to stifle any opposition remaining. We’re already been for some time at the cancellation stage with the BBC refusing to allow anyone with a different view to them, particularly for CAGW, to air their views. Class action lawfare is the next stage to close down whole industries. We’ve already had a judge ruling on the ”downstream” emissions for oil extraction.
We’ve seen how it works in the USA under Biden’s Presidency.
June 27, 2024
BREAKING: Tata is to take steps to cease operations at its steel plant in Port Talbot.
The company wants to stop operations by 7 July because of a planned strike by Unite …….and due to the polices of net-zero
June 27, 2024
From the Media, The Daily Telegraph
Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer are destroying the offshore oil industry and undermining Britain’s energy security, a leading oil and gas company has said.
“I have never encountered a [political] situation which was so challenging when it comes to making investment decisions, and planning for the future more generally, as it is in the UK at present.”
David Latin, the chairman of Serica Energy, claimed that windfall taxes and political opposition had made Britain the most hostile country he had ever operated in outside of war zones.
Hasn’t everyone accept this Conservative Government with the support of Parliament been saying that? In applying their vindictive NetZero Laws that no other World Trading nation is crippled by, they are forcing the UK to disappear for personal self-gratification. There is no logic in importing at greater cost and increasing World CO2 production if even only half of their fear culture was true.
June 27, 2024
Dear Sir John,
Unfortunately, your proposals conflict wth Labour policy or instincts or attitudes toward EU co-operation , apart from 5 – onshoring production. Given Labour’s wish to give “an example to the world” on carbon emissions, its government could help onshoring by imposing a stiff countervailing tariff on any country not legally committed to Net Zero by 2050. The EU is so committed so no problem there.
Not sure if this would be a great idea but it is at least feasible.
reply Labour will impose the carbon border adjustment mechanism , an Eu style tariff on imports, to make them dearer