What goods does the UK Ā government think we could sell more of if we accepted more controls from Brussels?
Three of our past leading exports to the continent have been oil and gas, refined oil products and petrol and diesel cars. The government is busily closing down all three of these industries. They want to stop us making things using gas, so our steel industry closes this year. Sky high energy prices have already throttled back ceramics, glass, aluminium, building materials. There is little left to boost goods exports as net zero policy drives us to import more.
The government says we might export more food if we changed the rules. Surely the easier priority is to grow and sell more food at home, where the Common Agricultural Policy hit Uk market share in milk, beef, fruit, veg and other basics.
We would not benefit from joining the customs union. It would make us impose tariffs against the rest of the world, where our trade is growing faster. It would be another boost to the huge import volumes we already buy and another boost to their huge trade surplus with us.
January 27, 2025
The electorate, if you believe the latest polls, is increasingly aware of the stupidity of the current UK government and its inability to come up with a viable solution for anything. They are faithfully pursuing their historical path to national bankruptcy.
The only question is how long can they last, or more significantly, or realistically, how long before they realise they are on the path to nowhere.
January 27, 2025
Seems so, ever more red tape, ever more taxes, ever more expensive and unreliable energy, ever more EU alignment, ever more state sectorā¦ what could possible go wrong?
Matthew Lynn (Telegraph and Spectator Journalist) the other day seems to say that all industries are the same for the economy (so long as they make a profit) it does not matter if you are manufacturing products or services that people want or perhaps issuing bus lane fines, over regulating employments, forcing people or Heatpumps onto people or pointlessly capturing CO2, or building white elephant train tracks and Ā£100 million bat tunnels (like HS2) using vast tax payer/government grants or red tape to produce nothing of value or inconvenience the productive. Or the Net Harm Covid Vaccine industires!
How can anyone be so daft as to think anything so stupid? But then I noticed he read PPE.
January 27, 2025
They must be running out of farmland to sell to foreign interests – that is why they are clobbering farmers with IHT to get them to cough it up for sale. They must also be running out of businesses to sell to foreign interests to cover the trade deficit. I note that the other day the CEO of a successful VCT said they were seeking to speed up partial disposals of their holdings either to private equity or to US firms – no suggestion of them going onto any of the shrinking UK listed markets. The destruction of wealth by successive UK governments is unrelenting.
January 27, 2025
Indeed have they run out of houses in Chelsea to sell off or perhaps they fees London is too dangerous for them now.
January 27, 2025
I think they too are becoming aware of their failings and that of their ideology and policies. But they simply cannot admit it. The Chancer of the Exchequer is waking up to this with her comments regarding taxing nom-doms. Which is odd, as it shows that she cares more for multi-millionaire foreigners than the poor and elderly. Similar to that of governments putting criminals in 4 star hotels whilst ex-servicemen live on the streets.
January 27, 2025
Plus she’s exempting US military personnel from VAT on private school fees but not our own UK military. This government hates the British people.
January 27, 2025
The joys of being a vassal state.
January 27, 2025
+1
January 27, 2025
The Telegraph this morning shocked me ; āOn wealth taxes, a much bigger problem than the non-dom exodus is a tax system that aims to make wealthy foreign nationals living in Britain liable to UK inheritance tax on their entire estate, including their overseas assets, even after they leave the country.ā
This MUST be voted down!
January 27, 2025
Do we not all believe the objective is nothing to do with selling more goods, rather it is to provide for ” more controls from Brussels”? Credit to the British Establishment for its persistence.
January 27, 2025
Good morning.
The game is to surrender as much as possible until we reach a point where the argument for full membership (ie Rejoin) becomes almost a fait accompli.
The only area where the UK is dominant, is in services and, I suspect one of the things we will be asked to surrender will be this to Frankfurt.
We are being led by ideological morons who are more interested in Globalism than patriotism and see the latter as simply Far Right.
January 27, 2025
Whatever else it may be it is certainly a step towards getting UK back into the EU in all but name.
January 27, 2025
The Conservatives couldn’t bear to give us the real Brexit that we voted for so it’s no wonder the Labour Party thinks it can take us back in with no opposition. The Conservatives, thanks to Theresa May, committed us to what Richard Tice aptly calls ‘net stupid’. Unless that committment is unenshrined, and as soon as possible, the UK is doomed. This has happened in less than thirty years as our governments, from 1997 until the current day, have become more and more anti-British in every way. This is NOT what the electorate voted for but then, who really listens to the electorate these days? We are simply required to pay for it all, that’s all; pay up and shut up.
I can foresee a time when there will be no more elections. Voters will become so tired of being let down and lied to that fewer and fewer will turn out on polling day. The uniparty will then decide that ‘due to voter apathy’ (and they won’t have the decency or the intelligence to question that apathy), there will be no more elections. They will simply change leaders – from a pool of career politicians with rapidly-diminishing talent – so that everyone has a go at being Prime Minister. Heaven help us all. We don’t deserve to be treated in this way.
January 27, 2025
it’s all about politicians in awe of their Shangri-La EU. Of course we can’t join again, because the Maastricht Treaty requires debt to GDP not exceeding 60%, and there’s neither the prospect for that to be achieved nor the EU changing the Treaty simply to accommodate little Britain.
Haven’t you noticed though how the ideology is unravelling in the face of economic reality?
January 27, 2025
+1
January 27, 2025
@Mark B – of course. Just as raising taxes and costs grows the econom
January 27, 2025
economy
January 27, 2025
SInce Starmer has expressed a preference for being with the WEF rather than in Westminster, I guess the EU/Brussels is second best. It is inconceivable that any new or revised deal with the EU will not entail more regulatory impositions on UK’s industry and internal market, especially if the UK position is negotiated by ardent Remainers – Starmer’s statements that it is not practical to rejoin are just camouflage. It is perfectly possible to rejoin in all but name. The customs union deal would inevitably impact UK’s trade arrangements with other countries as the EU attempts to align UK with its common external tariff and various NTBs (Its level playing field! Couple this Customs Union proposal with immigration – a quota of EU so called asylum seekers – and defence and UK would be back in the EU for all intents and purposes and out of deals like the CPTPP and no prospect of a deal with the USA.
January 27, 2025
PS. The EU’s imperative is that UK must not gain any economic or political advantage from Brexit. This is the existential threat to ever closer union. All its efforts and manoeuvres are intended to further this aim. It certainly would not propose anything that would be an advantage to the UK, nor would it accept any UK proposal that would be even slightly disadvantageous to the EU. Sunak gave it permanent rule and ECJ jursidction in NI and it will never let this go under any circumstance and will use it as leverage on every aspect of any negotiation on any topic.
January 27, 2025
The first three comments today see it rather more clearly than our host; we have socialist idealogues running our country and their plan is to join us to a pan-europe socialist state. Everything else is subordinate and usually a distraction. How will we stop Starmer and mob?
Observations without identifying motivations are easy….
January 27, 2025
I’m old enough to remember when Conservatives were in favour of free trade
January 27, 2025
And the Customs Union forbids free trade. So whatās your point?
January 27, 2025
Rejoining by the back door, Blasphemy laws by the back door, replacement levels of immigration by the back door…I could go on.
‘More trade’ is just verbal gymnastics to hide the true intent of Starmer and his crew, and I despair that anyone actually believes this bunch did a full turn around on their policies and ideological beliefs.
He and the party were always solidly against leaving the EU (as were many Conservatives, and it showed) and if general observations can be believed, were keen to seek re-entry.
The politicians art of doing something while soothingly telling the people that they’re not doing it will hit new levels.
January 27, 2025
Apparently fifty relatives of asylum seekers are being admitted to the country each day.
January 27, 2025
The Establishment’s desire to rejoin the EU has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with ideology, just like the original obsession with joining the EEC.
They have never accepted that “the peasants” rejected governance by their anti-democratic “Club of European Bureaucrats.” And the Westminster Uni-Party did everything it could to ensure that we didn’t LEAVE, only reluctantly allowing a semi-detached status.
I am convinced that Labour is deliberately tanking the economy in order to cover their electoral back for dragging us back in – complying with the instructions of the IMF following a bailout.
January 27, 2025
+1
January 27, 2025
This intention has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with the insistent desire to rejoin the EU.
Kier Starmer was a member of the Trilateral Commission, a group which sees the EU as a core part of the Western Alliance. He will be imbued with its ethos and ideals.
January 27, 2025
The Trilateral Commission has in the past spoken of “an excess of democracy”.
(Crisis of Democracy,1975)
January 27, 2025
Just the first step toward rejoining the EU. If only we had an opposition party in parliament to speak up and expose this corrupt government.
January 27, 2025
In the third quarter of 2024 UK ran a Ā£10.5 billion trade deficit with the rest of the world.
There is plenty of trade for UK companies to tap into domestically. We might need to pay more for better quality but economies of scale and competition would lead to lower prices eventually (unless the government gets involved).
January 27, 2025
At this point it is ridiculous scaremongering to suggest Starmer is looking to rejoin the Customs Union. It is explicitly ruled out in his manifesto. To implement it it would mean he would have to withdraw from CPTPP and void assorted free trade agreements including with Australia and it would be very foolish to voluntarily put UK in line for Trump tariff sanctions on the EU. If he is re-elected the situation may be different.
What is actually under discussion is joining the Pan Europe Customs Scheme which is a far more benign arrangement that takes in the EU, several North African countries, several Eastern European/Balkan countries not in the EU, Turkey and apparently Palestine (!). So instead of deliberately misrepresenting Starmer maybe those on the right should address this specific scheme which may or may not have some (small) benefits. Or are we supposed to blindly agree that absolutely everything Starmer does is wrong ?
January 27, 2025
As was National Insurance Contribution rises. Didn’t stop him though !
January 27, 2025
The eu miss the UKās money. That seems to be the main thing driving the surrender to the eu.
I cannot see any benefit for the UK. The eu is performing poorly economically, does not have a strong military force and has worsening relations with the U.S.
I think we will be better off keeping our distance from the eu.
January 27, 2025
I’ve just glanced at Ed Davey’s biography:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Davey
and confirmed that he is not an idiot, he is an intelligent man, and even with a background in economics.
So when I watch him spouting this rubbish about a customs union with the EU:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G6kKZI-YPM
I can only conclude that he is deliberately setting out to deceive the electorate.
Thinking about a cost-benefit analysis of his proposal the Lords looked at some of the costs in 2016:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2025/01/26/going-for-growth-5/#comment-1495869
but what does he suppose would be the benefits? We already have a zero-tariff zero-quota trade deal with the EU, and that itself is not worth a lot to us – a miserable 0.75% of GDP, according to the EU Commission – so how much more does he think could be extracted through a customs union? An additional 0.1% of GDP, maybe?
And the same with joining the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean Convention; before we spend time and energy looking for whatever dangers may lurk in the small print, how much could we hope to gain through it anyway?
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2025/01/26/going-for-growth-5/#comment-1495912
Just on the largely unnecessary problems faced by UK companies which still have products worth exporting to the EU, despite the best efforts of politicians to regulate them out of existence, there is maybe 1% of GDP that could be recovered if we joined the EU Single Market and devoted more than that to payment of the fees.
If Ed Davey wants to get a better understanding of the problem he should look at this chart:
https://globalbritain.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Ewen-Stewart-Chart-1-UK-GDP-per-capita.jpg
showing how it started with the global financial crisis in 2008, not the EU referendum in 2016.
January 27, 2025
Ed Davey has always been useless.
At the hustings in 2015 when James Berry (Conservative) unseated he was the worst of the speakers. All were better than him.
He narrowly defeated the laughably-named Dick Tracey, a Conservative sports minister, who lived outside the borough in Wandsworth. I was always reminded of the American detective on the radio when I heard Tracey’s name.
January 27, 2025
Post pointing out pluses and also downsides of Trump gets deleted.
This site is censored to suit a particular view.
January 27, 2025
Excellent summary of the lack of logic within Starmer’s government when it come to the EU.
Why does he think that bigger is always better – It’s a falsehood that socialists share for some strange reason. That must be part of the illogic that connects their socialist minds.
Big government has never worked and he is proving it over and over, but again he is also going against the wishes of the majority of UK people by inching us ever closer to being controlled from Brussels.
We voted to be free of foreign interference. Certainly we were sick of over-regulation and dodgy deals with the EU that put us at a disadvantage.
Having achieved the high office of Prime Minister why is he so keen to give that power away. We know he has a low competence level, the Eu is not much better, however it seems to be a recognition on his part that socialism is unsustainable in the UK without a huge conglomeration of bureaucracy to keep it alive.
In moving us towards the jaws of the EU, like everything else he does, he is very wrong, but most definitely DUPLICITOUS.
January 27, 2025
Of course it will. Its a one side protectionist racket.
January 27, 2025
Off topic, but boy does it relate to the stupidity that has wormed its way into our lives – particularly here in Wokingham
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01/26/junction-berkshire-playground-road-safety-highway-code/
‘A junction has been branded a āplaygroundā after a council spent Ā£5.5 million on a colourful makeover.’
That is Ā£5.5 million of our pounds spent after more than 6 months of closure and for what?
I know we expect nutty thing in California and I know this is what we know as California Cross be this area is going down the drain the traffic is as worse than ever yet this is defined as a road improvement
January 27, 2025
What the image doesnāt show is the full extent of the junction. It is at the end of a very busy road called Nine Ride, that was (can be seen on an ordnance survey map) what it suggests a perfectly straight road from Windsor Castle, it now has a few roundabouts at intersections.
I used to follow Ayrton Senna along this road in the evening me coming from the swimming pool and Ayrton coming from McLaren on his way home. Not a slow road much to the dismay of the residents. But it is a major route when keeping off the motorways.
Our new Liberal Council appears to have picked up and embraced Parliamentās desire for euthanasia accept not the infirm, but the children, the next generation ā dress up a road in non-recognized non-conforming decorations to look like a childrenās playground. Confuse them.
Not recognizable to anyone as to the intention or the instruction it wants to convey. Is it even legal to do that on a major road?
January 27, 2025
Am afraid I don’t know what the EU free trade agreement is so I can’t comment.
January 27, 2025
It excludes tariff-free trade with the rest of the world.
January 27, 2025
All the savings we’ve finally made since September last year, this change of government is handing away. There is no opposition from the Tories (I’m sorry, John, but I think that’s why Tory MPs gave up; it seems they knew the score), and Reform needs to wake up and make themselves heard. Instead, Farage keeps saying that Brexit wasn’t carried out! Boris needs to start to detail the savings we no longer have to pay. The EU need to tie us back in so we don’t start ordering at lower cost from elsewhere in the World.
January 27, 2025
Every move by this squalid, pathetic government is taking us in the wrong direction.
Thankfully, even Labour voters have realised this and many will be secretly looking across the Atlantic in admiration at the way President Trump has started his second term.
We are already seeing Reform pull ahead in some recent polls and Nigel Farage has been rather quiet of late, being over there quietly building relationships with Team Trump, as has Suella and Priti. I suspect all three have told Team Trump how they would raise the money that Starmer says can’t be found to increase our defences :
Cancel carbon capture and storage – leave it to the private sector
Cancel all of Miliband’s net zero plans inc EVs and wind farm
Drill, Baby, Drill here. Starting right now.
Cancel HS2 today.
Reduce civil service numbers to pre-pandemic levels and use AI to reduce them further
Do away with all public sector final salary schemes, including MPs and Starmer’s own.
That would more than pay for 3-4% defence spending.
I would love to listen in on the conversation when President Trump puts this all to Starmer !
January 27, 2025
More moves to destroy British Farming- Reeves from accounts is as low as Starmer, both working hard to destroy Britain and weaken us for their bosses in the WEF
January 27, 2025
āIt [joining the EU Customs Union] would be another boost to the huge import volumes we already buy and another boost to their huge trade surplus with usā
Correct. This is firstly a Net Zero policy as increasing our Ā£100bn/year trading deficit with the EU will assist with further de-industrialisation to reduce our territorial CO2 emissions in accordance with UK and international law to 81% by 2035 and 100% by 2050.
But secondly, and more importantly, such a measure is part of the program to give Parliamentary powers away to foreign and national organisations and courts so as to make voting for MPs in our Parliament, the only way we can influence our laws and policies, a worthless exercise as we see in China, Russia and just recently in Belarus.
Hence the PM choosing Davos to Westminster.
January 27, 2025
I cannot believe we are having to rehearse these arguments AGAIN.
Itās like the Chinese water torture. It just NEVER ends.
Moreover politicians have no locus to overturn the decision of the Sovereigns which was TO LEAVE completely, totally, in full, comprehensively, with no exceptions.
Which bit do these infantile people not understand?
January 27, 2025
They understand perfectly well. What we fail to realise is, they would sooner ‘others’ do the work we pay them for.
January 27, 2025
Keir Starmer creates a tangled mess, lacking the ability to think ahead of the consequences he causes.
This chap is not a valid leader.
What he attempts risks the welfare of so many of our citizens.
A period of non-cooperation may follow from those affected, especially those who voted Labour last time, expecting something sensible to occur.
January 27, 2025
The Tory Party’s Net Zero is being continued by Labour so no real change. Had the Tory Party not been wrecking the economy for 14 years by failing to repeal the Climate Change Act and closing down power stations and covering us in Wind Turbines, Ed Miliband would have been starting from scratch to wreck the economy but he is simply following scientifically ignorant Tory wreckers who are fully paid up to the global warming hoax.
January 27, 2025
Do PMs, Cabinet Ministers, and MPs have a special operation to remove common sense when they become an MP? Labour and the media are determined to take us back into the EU by stealth, and the previous conservative government did not take advantage of the freedom Brexit offered to make it impossible to return.
Likewise, Net Zero is damaging the UK economy, and both government and MPs seem blissfully unaware of that.
Cheap, reliable energy is the key to a thriving and growing economy; how hard is it to understand that?
Where is the UK, Trump? We need him or her urgently and even more if Labour serve a full term!
January 27, 2025
Mentioned elsewhere, a speech on “ECONOMIC INTEGRATION AND POLITICAL UNITY IN EUROPE” given by EEC Commission President Walter Hallstein in May 1961, available through the Archive of European Integration:
https://aei.pitt.edu/34485/
No doubt Ed Davey would agree with his view of what “a customs union” should mean:
“This, in a nutshell, is the philosophy behind the CommonĀ· Market Treaty. But let me state it more concisely still. The statement is not mine. It comes from one of the last documents produced by the League of Nations, and issued by the United Nations in 1947. Here it is: ‘For a customs union to exist it is necessary to allow free movement of goods within the union. For a customs union to be a reality, it is necessary to allow free movement of persons. For Ā·a customs union to be stable it is necessary to maintain free exchangeability of currency and Ā·stable exchange rates within the union. This implies, inter alia, free movement of capital within the union. When there is free movement of goods, persons, and capital in an area, diverse economic policies concerned with maintaining economic activity cannot be pursued’.”
Instead, these would all be controlled by the “FEDERAL INSTITUTIONS” discussed in the next section.
Of course the UK politicians who wanted us in the Common Market knew all that, they simply lied to get us in, and then lied some more about how it was developing, and here three decades later is John Major making sure that the word “federal” did not appear in the Maastricht Treaty:
https://johnmajorarchive.org.uk/1991/06/29/mr-majors-statement-at-luxembourg-european-council-29-june-1991/
“… I explained that federal union was a term capable of misunderstanding. We will insist on its removal before we are able to sign any treaty in December … “
January 27, 2025
The EU continues to demand control over all countries in Europe, that includes the UK though not a member the EU does not accept any country trading in the EU outside its rules of engagement.
The Labour Party are determined, supported by the bulk of the civil service and the Parliamentary parties to allow the EU to have hegemony over the UK.
That is where we are…..for now.
January 27, 2025
I do not have an issue with the EU setting its rules for items we and others sell into its market. I do however have an issue when they seek to dictate the rules of our own internal market. By allowing them to do so we lose control and they can stifle any industry we may be a success at.
January 27, 2025
The EU foreign ministers are meeting in Brussels today to form a plan to thwart the worst of Trump chaos coming our way and I have no doubt that with their combined strength they will succeed. The UK, on the other hand stands alone and must count on the ” special relationship” well we’ll see soon enough if Trump is if the same mind
January 27, 2025
The EU seeks to survive the competition that the unleashed USA embodies. They will fail, indeed Van der Lyne admitted at Davos that they were failing already. She tried to blame the full scale deindustrialisation on Putin for demanding all Russian exports has to be paid in Rubles, unsurprising as Russiaās USD 300 billion in foreign currency had been āfrozenā and the west was discussing how to āseizeā it. He did not want to give the oil and gas to the west free of charge – any arguments?
The EU is finished. So is the Ukraine War. A few loose ends to tie up and then we move to the next phase which will see Rachel from Accounts being forced to cut the State to the bone šš¤£- they are going to be sooooo angry with her – couldnāt happen to a better person.
January 27, 2025
BTW – Trump is being misled by Kellog about Ukraine and Russia. Consider that the Russian Armed Forces have already seized 50% of Ukraine’s natural resources. Russia has easily recovered itās military expenses.
January 27, 2025
Plus all the foreign business assets in Russia that could be seized-some of which have already been taken under state management control,most recently the huge InBev Efes Brewery business(largest brewer in Russia).
Has anyone read the policy document for the UK-Ukraine 100 year Partnership?I have,last Friday!In effect it is the UK attempting to take control of every aspect of life in Ukraine(from a joint space programme to a joint naval flotilla on the Azov Sea(a Russia lake!)via green energy and education.It stops short of an annexation attempt(that would bring all the liabilities with it) but would make the UK a managing agent in Ukraine for the same transnational financial cabal that controls the UK itself.Plenty of scope for skimming!
January 27, 2025
Live atm 9.15pm. Putin on TV offering Trump talks on a massive Geopolitical Security Deal! It will include a settlement for the whole of Europe. The USA can go home!
This is massive. Iām sure Trump will step up to the plate and I believe he is the best negotiator we could have. He does not want Wars! Neither does Putin! Neither do any sane people!
We can give up paying for NATO and German defence – 81 years is enough! The EU is redundant!
We can secure our own borders, maintain our own Defence which is cheap – it Offence that is very very expensive.
For Britain this is the Best of Times and the Worst of Times. We need to be shot of Starmerās āLabourā and the look-alike Tories. Time for a resurgence of Thatcherism!
January 27, 2025
The EU is looking in the wrong direction. It needs to look East – Far East. Because that is where the treat to them and their industries is coming from. VW and other German brands are in trouble, and it will only get worse.
January 27, 2025
There is limited scope for “Trump chaos” to come our way, at least as far as tariffs are concerned. In 2023 we exported goods worth Ā£60 billion to the US, and as GDP was Ā£2535 billion they comprised only 2.4% of GDP.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6762c58cbe7b2c675de3075a/united-states-trade-and-investment-factsheet-2024-12-20.pdf
With 20% tariffs we might lose some part of that 2.4%, but then there would be some compensating factors.
January 27, 2025
Hi sir John
We should not have anything to do with the EU they have treated this country very badly they just want our fish and money which they are already getting for no return
The labour party are closing this country down going back on their policies
And are totally against white English Christians
Thanks
January 27, 2025
It is my understanding that the EU Customs Union is a customs arrangement beteen EU member states and is not open to non-members. Sure, we could come to a bilateral agreement on tariffs, which I thought we already had. It would appear that Rejoiners do not know the difference between the Single Market, which is open to Efta and other non-members (Switzerland) and the EU Customs Union. Am I correct or not?
January 27, 2025
Turkey is part of the Customs Union – And hates it !!
January 27, 2025
O/T just for OR, There are people able to run a GCM with explicit convection (not saying as Shula & Ott do that it would be too costly):
āThe impact of the explicit representation of convection on the climate of a tidally locked planet in global stretched-mesh simulationsā, 2024, D.E.Sergeev et al., Astrophys.Journal, 970, doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ad4ecd.
Even more beautiful, the model they have developed is the base for LFRic-Atmosphere, the next generation MetOffice climate and weather forecast model, and it uses a standard radiative transfer approach (contrary to the unrealistic and unphysical comments of S&O).
January 27, 2025
Trump is only going to be there for four more years and if you allow for the mid terms and primaries leading to the next election then he’ll probably run out of steam long before.
Add to this he is getting old now now so we can also expect some doddery type appearances ‘a la Joe Biden’ near the end of his watch – Bark/Bite. As regards the EU we can make any trade agreement we like and with whom we like and add any tarriffs we like so don’t know why we are discussing this also whatever happened to those new trade deals we were supposed to get with countries far far away?