The Uk is the fourth largest trading nation in the world.Just 41% of our exports go to the EU and 59% to the rest of the world. Services makes up 56% of our trade, and goods 44%.
The Uk has attracted £2079 bn of inward investment. Just 31% of that has come from the EU and 69% from the rest of the world. The top three investors in the UK are the USA, Jersey and Luxembourg. Our trade with and investment from the rest of the world is growing more quickly than with the EU, as it did in our later years in the EU.
Our trade with the EU is in heavy deficit, as when we were in it. In the last year the deficit was £98 bn. We are in good surplus with the rest of the world at £79 bn last year.
Our export growth since Brexit of 64% in cash terms is real growth of more than fifth. There has even been real growth in exports to tge EU despite our slower growth with them continuing. Our fastest growth is in service export’s to non EU. That can be assisted by more trade Treaties with non EU countries that include good Services chapters. The EU never bothered to negotiate good services provisions as France and Germany wanted to favour industrial and food products.
January 28, 2025
Good morning.
This underlines what I said yesterday about the UK mainly being about Services and the EU being of little value to the UK in that regard.
What concerns me is that, ‘the top three investors in the UK are the USA, Jersey and Luxembourg.’ Not Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, S. Korea or even China. These are Far Eastern nations and I have made it no secret that that is where the future lay.
BREXIT was a golden opportunity spurned and lost. It was a chance to reset the nation and the economy. It offered our government freedom of action and to act in our own interests. Today I and I am sure many others can only look across the pond with envy.
January 28, 2025
Jersey and Luxumbourg will be ships of convenience, for investors avoiding the penalties of an avaricious UK tax regime. What’s the betting that many of them will be UK investors with the sense to keep their wealth or its control offshore.
January 28, 2025
Sensible people will keep their wealth offshore and out of the clutches of thr rapacious uniparty government
No longer do we get investment from Japan, South Korea or nations that matter. Successive governments have destroyed the country with nonesense net zero, DEI and ethical investment.
When history is written people will be astounded at the rank stupidity of 21st century politicians.
January 28, 2025
Ian,
Absolutely!!
The UK (and Australia) needs to learn from what is now being done, in double quick time, in the US. Trump is showing what decisive leadership can achieve. Shame, with Starmer, that the beneficiaries of his focus are not the British people.
January 28, 2025
“Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st Century’s the developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.”
Professor Richard Lindzen”
But still Kemi, Countinho and the Tories sit on the fence on this issue while Labour continues with Milibands moronic vandalism!
January 28, 2025
@agricola – that’s called survival on the one hand and stupidity elsewhere. The UK’s tax ideology loses it more than it gains and it is the little people the ‘minions’ that get to pick up the tab
January 28, 2025
We are governed by ideologues, only facts that fit the theory are allowed.
January 28, 2025
I agree with you that Brexit was a lost opportunity, deliberately lost by the ruling political class and the blob. But the UK needs more than just services and asset sales of land, property and businesses to keep its head above water. It needs to develop and encourage more knowledge based businesses that can penetrate global markets. It needs a healthy stock market to support their needs for finance. It needs individuals wealthy enough and ready to take the risks inherent in backing early stage ventures and young, growing businesses. But all that is being destroyed, systematically and deliberately by this Labour government.
January 28, 2025
we could easily change things by borrowing some Trump policies.
being mainly a “services based economy” is entirely due to social engineering by the political class, and it would not take a massive reversal of such social engineering to balance things out more, simply implementing neutral policies which left business activities to succeed or fail on their own without political interference would quickly change things.
things are going to change here, the status quo political elite and ruling classes have had their day.
January 28, 2025
The whole international framework is collapsing-the west has lost control.Significant comment from former US central banker,Kathleen Tyson,this morning on x:
“The BIS,BoE,ECB and IMF are calling for papers for a joint spillover conference(‘Policy Challenges in a Fragmenting World:Global Trade,Exchange Rates and Capital Flows’).I was tempted to write something about Multi-Currency Mercantilism* being positive for the world,but having read the spec more carefully will not.
The elephant in the room they dare not see or name is sanctions.Sanctions and asset seizures have destroyed their monetary,trade,financial regulation,capital mobility and currency stability policies,but they are unable to diagnose or allude to the correlation.
Sanctions also led to the image on the right(picture of DeepSeek logo) but once again no-one in authority will allude to the correlation.”
*title of her book:Multicurrency Mercantilism:The New International Monetary Order.
January 28, 2025
President Trumps executive orders are online on the white house website, well worth a read of the detail, mostly very well written, and stuff I and the British people would support, and support similar in the UK.
We need some UK politicians prepared to say what they really really think, and not bow down to the things we are not allowed to say.
January 28, 2025
Please can you post sources for these figures because I may use them in commenting on other forums.
Reply Government trade figures
January 28, 2025
gov.uk 23/01/2025 ‘UK trade in numbers (web version)’.
January 28, 2025
Figures for previous years are with ons.gov.uk ‘UK trade statistical bulletins’.
All of those starting from Feb’15 can be accessed from there.
January 28, 2025
Results for the previous year Y are usually often given in the Jan’ (or Feb’) bulletin of year Y+1.
January 28, 2025
The problem is that you have to dig that data out of the morass to see it Sir John. Your collegues should have been shouting these facts from the rooftops but they didn’t (and are still not). So most people in the UK believe Brexit has been an economic disaster, which gives Starmer the freedom to snuggle back up to the EU.
If the Tories had only done one thing post-Brexit, they should have kept pushing the message that the long journey back to independance had begun and that it was succeding. They didn’t, because half your Party, most of the media and all of the Blob didn’t want Brexit to succeed (or be seen to be working)
We were lucky and took to the lifeboats before the EU Titanic hit the iceburg. We should be busy rowing away as fast as we can before she goes down. Starmer & Co want to get back on board and listen to the band playing but people need understand the very real dangers of doing so. Who is telling them currently – not the Conservative Party I’m afraid.
January 28, 2025
‘Out of the morass’? Those figures have been available for years, at least since the Office of National Statistics was created in 1996 to help parliamentarians. Obviously as long as the web had not been easily accessible it was really difficult for people outside Parliament to get access to their reports. Nowadays anybody curious enough can (relatively) easily find them.
The British State is one of the most open for releasing the information. The main problem seems, to me at least, either the lack of curiosity of people and/or their far too large faith/confidence/trust/reliance on the discourse of politicians.
As the Russians were used to say ‘Doveryay, no proveryay’ ie, Trust but verify.
January 29, 2025
+1 from the outset the Not-a-Conservative-Party treated Brexit as a disaster to be mitigated, not an opportunity to be seized: they took the cowardly “cling to nurse” option with the “Deal” and the Windsor Treachery.
January 28, 2025
The figures you give suggest that Labour’s cosying up to the EU is purely political, and of little commercial value.
It puts us in a strong, Trump / Columbia like, position with France. Strong political UK leadership would say, no more ot your Renault, Citroen or Peugot vehicles until you accept the immediate return of all the illegal economic migrants you are complicit in sending us daily. We could throw in Brie and Camambert as a bonus. French farmers and industrialists would be very pursuasive allies in such a situation. Our trade might have to go to the EU via Antwerp, Rotterdam, and Santander, but that can be pre planned. However we have a knickers round their ankles government so don’t hold your breath.
January 28, 2025
The migrants coming across the Channel aren’t French, so the French aren’t obliged to take them in again. The US sent Columbians back to Columbia.
We have illegal migrants coming in because they are enticed with free everything, and that’s not the fault of the French. Put them in detention camps with good porridge to eat, but nothing to do except notify the officials where they can be returned to, and the flow will reduce to a trickle. Plus we may see European countries doing the same.
January 28, 2025
Detention: We hear nothing as far as I can tell, about the detention centre ( in France ) which was to be part of our 2023 announced £ 450m 3 year funding to the French, admittedly not to be built immediately but surely we should be hearing some news on that as the anticipated date approaches, which was 2026 I believe.
January 28, 2025
For Brexit hating weasels our relationship with the EU is not about trade but about beliefs, ideology and political convictions. Trade is a mere afterthought.
January 28, 2025
Indeed just the same with our war on CO2 is not about the climate change, logic, energy engineering… but politics and religion (combined with people and industries on the make by forcing people to change to EVs, heat-pumps, and rip off renewable energy.
January 28, 2025
Well then no need to worry we are doing so well although looking at the amount of shut down retail outlets on the high street you wouldn’t think it – also does Rachel Reeves know about our good fortune because according to the news reports she thinks we are not in the clear yet?
January 28, 2025
Thieves wouldn’t know the date or time let alone the state of the UK economy.
She is taking a wrecking ball to all before her as part of the great reset.
Until we’re rubble she won’t stop.
January 28, 2025
We are doing badly, and we have been doing badly since the 2008 global financial crisis eight years before we voted to leave the EU. 2008 was when we went from a long term trend growth rate of 2.3% a year in per capita GDP to about half that and have never recovered, the break in the curve is unmistakeable:
https://globalbritain.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Ewen-Stewart-Chart-1-UK-GDP-per-capita.jpg
Whatever Brexit has done to the economy its effects will not have been retroactive.
January 28, 2025
Do we know the true sources behind the numbers that allow the statement “The top three investors in the UK are the USA, Jersey and Luxembourg”?
My thought is that investors from anywhere may for reasons of fiscal efficiency route funds via intermediates in certainly Jersey and Luxembourg but perhaps the USA too and others outside the top three such that the origins of the real top investors may be different.
Reply Yes, ONS as I said. Go to Trade and Investment Core Statistics. 16.3 Top 10 investors in UK from ONS Foreign Direct Investment totals for inwards and outwards flows
January 28, 2025
@ Reply – it is kind of you to provide the source reference: thank you.
Following links from that source led me to ONS methodologies/foreign direct ivestment fdiqmi that states referring to data quality: –
“The Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) survey collects financial information relating to direct investment in the UK by enterprises located abroad (inward FDI) and direct investment abroad by enterprises located in the UK (outward FDI). In either case the foreign investment relationship must have at least 10% of the ordinary shares or voting power.”
So “an enterprise located abroad” could be a Jersey intermediate holding company of some Far Eastern conglomerate that owns “at least 10%” of the UK business receiving the FDI and the survey might/would(?) then record Jersey as the FDI source, thereby disgusing for survey purposes the true Far East origins perhaps. That would maybe explain the high table positions of Jersey and Luxembourg.
January 28, 2025
The Establishment’s obsession with EU membership has nothing to do with trade.
Just like the Net Zero scam has nothing to do with the climate.
January 28, 2025
I was struck by the importance of services to our economy.
We’ve outsourced our manufacturing, and de-industrialised for ideological reasons. We’re heavily reliant on income from our service sector. Isn’t this supposedly the sector most at risk from AI (whose technology will come from elsewhere)? Could we have a double-whammy…industry gone via an own goal and services eviscerated by a technological revolution?
January 28, 2025
W, Yes.
January 28, 2025
AI running into massive trouble already. It will not fly.
January 28, 2025
Our total exports (goods + services) to the EU are at a record all-time high. You wouldn’t know this if you listened to Remoaners who claim vast “losses” in our exports – this is based on some ramshackle computer model they use which claims to predict what exports “would” have been without Brexit – so exactly the same problem as with the Prof Lockdown models in Covid, absolutely no way of validating them because they are only ever used to predict things that didn’t happen.
January 28, 2025
These trade figures are interesting. Unfortunately, we still run a substantial balance of payments deficit. This means that we have to find foreign currency to pay for the imports that we need. Ever since Thatcher, this has been financed by selling off profitable exporting companies in exchange for hard currency. The end result is the inexorable fall in the value of sterling and the loss of British jobs.
Other countries are catching us up on services. We need to be playing to our strengths – pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, life sciences, the recent renaissance in machine tools. We were always known for engineering skills, but we don’t manufacture vehicles now – we just assemble them from components manufactured in Japan, Germany etc
Reply Reply Under Labour in 1970s we needed an IMF loan
January 28, 2025
@Reply – true but we also had computing, aerospace, electronics, nuclear, engineering and transport (of all types) manufacturing industries ..
Today we have finance services who appear to have fled to other countries over the last two decades. Although you can blame the socialist blob for some of it, the Tories were in control for all that time.
We are ill served by the blob and short termist politicians who predominantly have no grasp at all of industry and commerce but instead focus on lawfare and property dealing.
January 28, 2025
The EU has always been a protectionist racket, that in turn due to over use of subsidies goes on to undermine World Trade. protected from the World but seeking to damage the World
Then they steal fish from UK territorial waters in a destructive way. UK fishermen manage stocks only for the EU to trash them – the UK Government gave the EU access with no reciprocal pay back .
EU tariffs are not reciprocal with the rest of the World which is one of Trumps points, they charge the US 400% more than the US charges them. The UK gets sucked into any rows as it has embedded EU Laws and Rules on its statute(more so thanks to Kemi).
The UK is doing well under the circumstances but it could be doing a lot better if it dropped the Command and Control from the centre Socialist/Marxist ideology and just let it industry get on
January 28, 2025
The EU are still smarting in revenge at what they regard as our temerity in being so rude as to refuse continuing to pay to prop up their fragile rubbish and regulations.
We are better off in the security of our regained freedom.
January 28, 2025
You really need a platform to shout these types of figures out from. The younger generation certainly needs to be made aware of this type of information as they are being consumed by remainer talk from people with blocked minds. I really worry that all the work some of us put into getting our freedom back are being let down by the left wing element at work in all areas of government.
January 28, 2025
We need a cross-party non-party campaigning organisation to defend what we gained, or we will lose it.
This is just part of the anti-Brexit propaganda being delivered to readers of the Tenby Observer today:
https://www.tenby-today.co.uk/news/politics/plaid-cymru-proposes-new-law-that-would-undo-botched-brexit-damage-759942
“According to the Economic Cost of Brexit project, the average person in the UK is now £2,000 worse off as a result of Brexit, amplifying the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.”
Nobody will contradict that, the same kind of message will be repeated everywhere, and we will lose.
January 28, 2025
Reform / Conservative Party should be focused on helping our High Tech industry. Worth potentially zillions of pounds with great jobs / skills. But there is a ferocious war going on here with China, USA, Japan, South Korea, Japan, Germany etc. We must be in the fray not looking on from thd sidelines as the rest win out.
January 28, 2025
And there’s no point talking about the EU and taxation etc if we have no-one to tax if we let our High Tech industry slip. We should be leading the way per capita. Including building our own branded cars and related tech both hardware and soft.
We are the UK. Let’s get our people working with high skilled jobs and high exports.
January 28, 2025
I try once again to comment, Sir John…I was suddenly distracted by the dulcet tones of a lovely lady and this new machine I’m using decided to send a hardly started offering without my permission. The cheek of it….I start again, keeping it short….You are as usual giving your Readers ‘the facts’..or as many as you can while remaining succinct. It is true what you say and often imply: We ‘the People’ are constantly being given a diet of untruths re many areas of life..including our EU relationship. One asks oneself who’s doing it to us? Is there a propaganda department in government (What government?) paid lotsa dosh to deliver gibberish or – better – articulated untruths. Do the perpetrators akshally believe we’re new here? That we’ve just arrived from Mars and finding our feet? (What an expression, eh?). Such folk should be fined for their attempt to mislead. (Who’s gonna do it? A new Department could be set up. You could represent ‘the Right’ (in every sense of the word) and – to make it acceptable to all (for facts are facts: Right people [You] love facts), we’ll throw in ‘leftie lot’ people to make it fair. Your love and knowledge of statistics can only win through. A regular bi-weekly/monthly fact check announcement will become the norm and MSM is to print it as a governmental announcement…
January 28, 2025
So why on Earth would anyone want us tied more closely to the failing EU when we have the world at our feet?
Starmer’s actions to move us back under EU control are simply misplaced illogical bias – He certainly cannot justify his moves other than with excuses that make no sense.
The EU has made it an art form to try and punish the UK whenever possible for being successful. Time we did something about the unfair rules that allows the EU to export far more to us than we do to them. I would charge import duty on luxury items from the EU to see if that would balance the accounts. It couldn’t hurt it.
January 28, 2025
That’s a fallacious economic argument (even though you may be right!).
Our trade deficit could be even higher (or lower) outside the EU. We need to kick that kind of thinking into touch.
Personally, I think because we voted Brexit just need to get on with it! And that includes helping our High Tech industry for greater high quality brand exports to the world – both non EU and EU . Who cares where. As long as the export numbers and quality of are up.
January 28, 2025
“Our trade with the EU is in heavy deficit, as when we were in it. In the last year the deficit was £98 bn”.
You would think that with such a large deficit, essentially making us a truly good customer for the EU, it would ensure that we had a strong bargaining position with the EU?
Perhaps continuing with this very unfair trading position only if we are allowed to return illegal migrants who attempt to cross the Channel?
But make no mistake our strong position will be given away by our “Make Britain Pay”, reverse Midas PM. In fact I would say that the reason our PM wants to align more the EU is because it is failing. The US innovates, China replicates and the EU regulates.
January 28, 2025
Your final sentence is a dated propaganda cliche,certainly where China is concerned.
David P Goldman,columnist and fmr editor Asia Times:
“Five years ago,I warned that the combination of AI and data dominance would give China the edge in the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution and that China would use this to assimilate(‘Sino-form’) the Global South.All that is happening.What I did not expect was that China might lead the world in AI computing as such.That now seems possible after the release of DeepSeek R1.”
As a longtime reader of Asia Times(one of the best sources of unbiased geoeconomic and geopolitical commentary there is) I can confirm what he says.
January 28, 2025
China can go down the AI and EV rabbit holes with my blessing.
We will automate in factories to counter their advantage in numbers of people. Our automation will be more reliable than their (very reliable) workers.
The west will be competitive again in both manufacturing and services under the Trump philosophy of energy security, food security and the Trump/Putin vision to stop wasting manpower and money on wars and destruction.
We westerners, and especially the British at home and in our ex-Dominions and the USA,have incredible innovative and artistic ability.
It needs to be unleashed!
January 29, 2025
What a ridiculous uninformed comment.You obviously haven’t seen the level of automated manufacturing China enjoys or the sheer scale of its manufacturing base.
Reuters,10/10/24:”China’s Chery assembles cars in Russian plants vacated by western rivals”
Those plants are the very modern plants built by Volkswagen,Mercedes and Nissan in recent years.Poor old Germany!Russia has also been awarded a manufacturing licence by China’s leading manufacturer of advanced robotic plant.
January 28, 2025
‘China replicates’: DeepSeek does things that ChatGPT could not when it was publicly released in 2022. One can give DS a bit of code written in Python, SQL, C++, HTML, Fortran and a number of other languages. DS will correct the faults in syntax and/or provides optimisation. As far as I know CG could not do that at the time of its public release and I don’t think that even now it can.
Obviously who would load some codes to a Chinese LLM platform?
January 28, 2025
Nobody uses Fortran anymore, even RPG is obsolete. AI does not just correct code but specifies and programmes itself TOTALLY.
January 29, 2025
You must have left the field a long time ago to write such ignorant comments.
Latest release is FORTRAN2023 which keeps on allowing plug-ins in or being called by other languages (C/C++, Jenkins, CDash, …) For parallel multiprocessing scientific calculations with OpenMP and access to GPUs it is still the language of choice.
Just for the UK, look at Fortran-lang.discourse.group (‘Companies that use Fortran’ 21/02/2024) and see who was still using it …
And for a more balanced view on the topic see analyticinsight.net 01/12/2024 ‘Fortran in AI: Is it still useful in scientific computing?’
And your comment on DS R1 is similarly wrong.
January 29, 2025
And just for those who might be a bit behind the curve, another Chinese AI announcement: Alibaba Qwen2.5, available in different flavours, LLM, and various dedicated options: VL (vision and language), -Audio, -Coder, and -Math (alibabacloud.com ‘Alibaba Cloud for Generative AI’.)
The blurb says Qwen is open-source and supports 29 languages including obviously English and Chinese.
January 28, 2025
Fools are still fools, whatever political label they wear! Both this Labour and the previous Conservative governments were and are plain stupid. Neither believe in the UK and its people, and neither has/had a vision for the long-term future of the UK.
Neither can see the damage Net Zero is doing or willfully refuse to see it!
Neither had or have the courage to walk away from the EU which is also going nowhere.
No government in a free country should be forcing manufacturers to sell a certain percentage of vehicles as EVs or Heat Pumps. Nor should it be subsidising wind turbines or solar panels. If they were efficient and value for money, no subsidy would be needed. Where there is no vision, the people perish as the UK economy is!
January 28, 2025
Lot of truth here. I think there is a man-made climate problem but that it will / can be eventually solved by capitalists meeting consumer demands in the High Tech sector (something which Musk understands with Tesla and which Trump is beginning to get).
The oil and gas folks need to chill out. No-one is going to suppress their industry. But at same time we need to slowly transition out from oil and gas to Green Energy and Tech but over next few decades as opposed to years. I think Elon Musk is on the money here – in every sense!
January 28, 2025
Ed M: “But at same time we need to slowly transition out from oil and gas to Green Energy and Tech but over next few decades as opposed to years.”
No we don’t. Net Zero is a death cult. CO2 is the gas of life. We need more CO2 in the atmosphere to promote growth and crops to feed the planet’s growing population, not less. Plants in greenhouses are fed CO2 up to 3 to 4 times the current atmospheric level of 400 ppm to enhance growth.
In the short term hydrocarbons produce fertiliser and if the death cultists get their way millions will starve to death. We’ve already seen the result when Sri Lanka banned fertilisers.
In the long term, if CO2 drops below 150 ppm, then plants die and all life on the planet. CO2 has in the recent geological past been several times as low as 180 ppm having been on a continuous decline for the last 150m years when it was 4 times higher than today. We have been very close to extinction. We’re doing ourselves a favour by burning hydrocarbons and releasing into the atmosphere CO2 that has been locked up for millions of years.
Furthermore, Shula and Ott on the Tom Nelson YT “Missing Link” video show both theoretically and experimentally that there is no greenhouse effect from the greenhouse gases, such as water vapour (the largest) and CO2, at the planet’s surface because of a phenomenon known as thermalisation making the IPCC’s radiative model and hence that CO2 controls the temperature completely invalid. In fact at the top of the atmosphere the greenhouse gases cool the planet.
January 29, 2025
‘No we don’t’ – most young Conservative / right-wing / Tory voters do and many middle-aged Conservative / right-wing / Tory voters do!
‘Net Zero is a death cult’ – I agree to a degree.
‘CO2 is the gas of life’ – What?!
‘Furthermore’ – but you need to communicate all this to middle-class Tory voters and to people such as Elon Musk whose the richest man in the world because of his response to meeting the demands of greener technology!
January 28, 2025
Everyone is ‘suppressing’ oil and gas. Have you not noticed? It’s not those in the industry who are concerned – it’s ALL the consumers.
January 29, 2025
Huge problem with gas in the UK is that the UK has failed to INVEST in storage of gas.
So we’re at the mercy of gas supply on tap (and paying the highest prices in the Western world – or something like that).
This is something the Tory government failed to address in its 14 years in power.
Reply We have plenty of gas stored in natural reservoirs beneath our feet and under sea. The folly is refusing to get it out.
January 29, 2025
‘We have plenty of gas stored in natural reservoirs beneath our feet and under sea. The folly is refusing to get it out’
– They’re two separate issues.
Industry needs cheaper gas. That can be certainly be solved, to a degree, by building gas storage. But not necessarily by drilling as
that is ultimately determined by market forces – not politicians.
reply Why do you make up such nonsense? Politicians have banned new gas in the UK and put confiscatory taxes on oil and gas companies.
January 28, 2025
Sir John
The PM speaking this morning – https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/01/28/keir-starmer-veto-anti-growth-policy-rescue-economy/
‘Sir Keir Starmer is to ditch every Labour policy that damages growth as he scrambles to rescue Britain’s struggling economy.
Sir Keir said: “Growth is the number one mission of this Government. Wealth Creation and investment is what we mean by growth. Because all of the other things that we want to do, whether it’s the NHS, public services, you name it, none of that can be done if the economy is not thriving and we’re not creating wealth.”
We keep hearing the Speech’s but the actual doing is always the opposite. Ideology and Political Terrorism have been the culture in this Government since day one. Not one once of energy has been given over to managing, managing expenditure, managing the Country for its people.
So does anyone believe or trust the PM and his team. He seems to be more concerned with how other people outsiders perceive him personally than managing UK.plc as a proper CEO
January 28, 2025
We all here know what needs to be done. We all here know that they cannot do it. We all know why they cannot do it. And we all know that nothing will be done. Because if they were serious they would reverse all the legislation and policies of the last 30 years.
January 28, 2025
Reset with EU: May be of interest, a short read on the Briefings for Britain website by Catherine McBride 14/01/25:
‘ The Only Reset UK Trade Needs’
January 28, 2025
Another O/T ons.gov.uk 28/01/2025 ‘Comparing national population projections to estimates reports’.
January 28, 2025
Tell that to our useless, incompetent government and they’ll brand you a member of the “Far Right”!
The man who is PM, is a lawyer.
Thus, anything not written in his law books or in other legal sources does not exist in his agenda.
January 28, 2025
Derek :
From where our PM, a majority of Parliament and the Civil Service is standing everyone is “Far Right”. This term no longer has any real meaning.
January 28, 2025
Can we really have a £79bn surplus with the rest of the world when that includes China ???
Reply Yes. We import much more from EU whilst we sell lots of services to the english speaking world
January 29, 2025
In 2023-4 we sold £32bn worth of goods to China
We imported £55.7bn worth of goods from China
That means we had a trade surplus with the rest of the world, excluding the EU and China, of £102.7bn
January 28, 2025
Trade with the EU has surged? Has it?
Doesn’t sound like much of a surge.
Reply surged from 2016 vote. Obviously covid lockdown in 2020 hit every country’s trade
January 28, 2025
That is great news, John.
But you are not going to hear it on the Mainstream Media.
January 28, 2025
I’ve been saying for ages now how we need to focus on High Tech.
Now China has dropped a bombshell on how advanced it is now in terms of High Tech.
To be truly right-wing and Conservative / Reform is to prioritise High Tech which hardly anyone is doing. Like less than 1% of people in right-wing politics in the UK.
And if people hadn’t taken High Tech more seriously during and after Brexit, Brexit would have been much more of a success than it is now.
January 28, 2025
‘And if people hadn’t taken High Tech more seriously during and after Brexit, Brexit would have been much more of a success than it is now’
– If people HAD taken High Tech more seriously during / after Brexit I meant.
January 28, 2025
‘China’s lightning AI success should frighten Wall Street – and Trump’ [And UK]
‘Western hopes of winning the next technological revolution are being dashed’ – Telegraph.
This is the kind of thing I’ve been warning about for ages on this website.
January 28, 2025
The E.U. has never done anything Beneficial for this country. Apparently the Blue Print for the U.K. was for the Service Industry and Tourism, reading your interesting article that they basically only Promoted their own Industrial and Food Products, is it any wonder after forty years of Membership this country has never Prospered. How much has this Membership cost us over forty years Billions or a Trillion, which ever it is it has been an expensive Experiment for this country.
January 28, 2025
Where Rachel Reeves could turn out to be a lot smarter than most Tories / Reform:
Her plan to create ‘Silicon Valley’ between Oxford and Cambridge
(Something that Michael Gove was pushing – or something similar – but a lack of support from other Tory MPs).
Hopefully what’s happened with DeepSeek will wake people up.
Reply Conservatives did put in extra rail capacity which Labour will now continue. Allowing more homes will not bring extra hi tec to Cambridge. The UK needs to cut corporation tax to get more US digital investment currently going to Ireland.
January 29, 2025
We don’t want American call centres in Cambridge / Oxford. We want Silicon Valley! Although I agree about reducing Corp tax (so transfer these call centre jobs from Dublin to North of England).
January 29, 2025
So just to be clear: Dublin is NOT Silicon Valley. But mainly just call centres (useful jobs for sure but nothing like Silicon Valley).
January 28, 2025
Reply to reply. But we didn’t leave until January 2020. So your ‘surge’ includes 4 1/2 years when we were still in and 5 years out. Whereas the figures I found compare just before we left (pre Covid) to the end of 2023 (post Covid).
Surely, the fact is, there has been no ‘surge’ since we actually left but goods exports have fallen by 11%. That’s billions of pounds of exports lost.
Reply Remain said voting to leave would cause the damage. It didnt. Nor did leaving. Lockdown did huge damage.