Car output in the UK has halved since 2017. Government and the industry has largely ignored this, as the main reason is the government policy to ban the manufacture and sale of all the popular diesel and petrol cars the industry has been making by 2030, with aggressive phase out and factory closure from last year.
You read it here first. It is official government policy to close all petrol and diesel car factories and sack all their workers over the next five years. They would like to open new battery car factories with new jobs instead, but have reported little progress in doing this. To replace what they are definitely closing would take many more approved projects with contracts underway to build the factories and new production lines it would take. Like most UK net zero policies it looks like a policy of close our factories and import the new cars from China.
Honda has left the UK and the EU altogether as it could not sell enough cars. Mini plans to switch most of its production to battery models made abroad, and is delaying an investment in production of two dearer low volume battery variants here. The Jaguar brand is losing market share fast and is planning a small battery range of very dear cars that will likely mean a tiny market share. It wants to lose most of its past customers who want a more traditional Jaguar. Ford no longer makes cars here. Stellantis ( includes Vauxhall) is negative on investing here. It has decided to close its Luton works. It is making electric vans at Ellesmere Port but no cars. Even Nissan is concerned about volumes as it seeks to roll over a large loan it borrowed and considers the pace and scale of its commitment to new battery car capacity.
To save the car industry the government must stop the £15,000 a car tax on “excess” petrols and diesels. It must relax its electric timetable, allowing the industry to carry on making petrol and diesel cars people want to buy.
April 7, 2025
Exactly, it is an insane agenda justified by the bogus CO2 devil gas religion but EV cars actually cause more CO2 not less as so much energy is used to manufacture them and their rather short lived batteries. Furthermore we have no spare low CO2 electricity to charge them anyway.
A typical new EV car might cost £40K and only last about 6/10 years. They tend to be lower mileage cars too so likely to cost you circa £1.30 a mile or so overall. The logical thing to do is to keep your old car running as long as you can until the technology get better or we get more sensible less religious policies. More tyre wear, road wear, & more costly insurance too,
April 7, 2025
All goung to plan then. Another industry killed off at the altar of net zero. I bet milibrains has orgasms daily as he sees the country slide into oblivion. His father would be extremely proud.
He can now focus on destroying the farmers, nationalising their land and carpeting the country in useless mirrors and windmills.
Soon 2TK can legislate to ban Reform emboldened by his friends in Paris and Berlin because we cannot allow anyone to stray from Agenda 30.
His speech today will be interesting for being long winded and saying nothing changes.
April 7, 2025
Plus the fire that you cannot even put out risk too!
April 7, 2025
Well done Israel for sensibly returning the two Labour MPs.
David Lammy “It’s disgraceful you are cheerleading another country for detaining and deporting two British MPs. Do you say the same about Tory MPs banned from China?” Does this silly race baiter and Chagos give away man really think that a comparison between China and Israel is sensible?
April 7, 2025
Talking about Kemi’s comments in her interviews yesterday. Kemi still sitting on the fence on the Net Zero lunacy just like Sunak the Labour agenda but slightly more slowly! Net zero needs ditching in full Kemi. You claim to be an engineer (albeit one with no Physics A level and duff grades) even so Kemi you surely can see that the Tory CO2 religion from Cameron onwards has been insane as was their tax to death agenda?
Get off the fence dear it is rather pathetic! She kept saying it will take time for the Tories to recover. It will take a long time for people to forget how appalling the Con-socialists were is what she means! On net zero, on vast tax borrow and waste, on the national debt, on Covid, the lockdowns, the duff and dangerous Covid “vaccines”, on to the tens of thousands…
April 7, 2025
She’s a WEF-approved candidate. If she ditched Net Zero, she’d be an ex-Party Leader very shortly afterwards.
April 7, 2025
But even if you get rid of Net Zero policies doesn’t get rid of the underlying problem why we are not able to produce cars like the Germans and others!
Over-focusing on Net Zero or Brexit is 6th form, blame game debate COMPARED to the real problems facing the industry. We need to be far more ambitious for our car industry whether you’re pro Remain or pro Brexit or pro Net Zero or completely against it.
April 7, 2025
Focus on this: for six decades before 2008. average growth rate 2.7% a year. since 2008 1.1% a year.
If we had kept up 2.7% a year GDP would now be 28% higher, conversely we are short of 22% of GDP.
April 7, 2025
Sorry, if I understand you correctly, you’re saying if we had a car industry like the Germans, with our British-brand and British-manufactured cars and cars of German tech quality and design, for the last 6 decades, our GDO would be as high as that?
April 7, 2025
Indeed, LL. She needs to be brave – or stand aside for someone who is. Are you watching the Australian election? Mazingly, early intentions-polling shows that the dreadful Albanese might just win. And if he does, it will be because Dutton wasn’t brave.
April 7, 2025
As pathetic as calling her ‘dear’? When are men going to stop this patronising nonsense. She is the leader of a once important political party and a prime minister in waiting. I think she deserves a bit more respect than ‘dear’.
April 7, 2025
How about “Oh dear?”
April 7, 2025
Just say “expensive”.
April 8, 2025
Dear Mr Wilson, it is not sexist or patronising. Just short for Dear Sir or Dear Madam!
What word would you suggest “Get off the fence you energy engineering ignoramus” is that better for your tastes?
April 9, 2025
Wasn’t the idiotic Lammy one of those who said that Donald trump should be banned from the U.K. during his first term? Certainly many other Labour MPs were, and are forever calling for the banning or silencing of those whose opinions they don’t like. The humbug and stupidity of these leftists beggars belief.
April 7, 2025
What do these legislators think they are doing? Do they hate us so much that they want to wipe us out even if their is no advantage to them?
The Globalist objective of One World Government has been defeated. Why pursue the policy of making ‘white’ living standards equal to the world average? Revenge on the only people over whom they have locus?
USAID no longer funds the WEF and Schwarb has resigned, the policy of the destruction of Caucasian nations no longer makes any sense at all, not even the warped sense that the objectives of One World Government dictates.
We need to come up with a means of changing this trajectory or it will all end in scenes we have not witnessed in these islands for many, many generations, if ever.
April 7, 2025
This is conspiracy-like theory to a degree compared to the real reason why we don’t produce and export like the Germans and others. It is nebulous / distracted thinking like this that is holding the UK back in the car industry and related industries.
April 7, 2025
What these legislators are doing is, unfortunately, implementing what the country voted for in the last general election. That was because all major parties were committed to the Net Zero agenda, and this requires measures to be taken now to get there. You can’t blame MPs for proceeding with what they were elected on.
But of course that elite agenda has nothing to do with parliamentary democracy. As with the Covid lockdowns, the public were brainwashed by the big players and their lobbyists into believing that ‘the science’ makes it necessary to adopt these measures. If the green agenda can be replaced with something more profitable for international corporations, the trajectory can be changed, Lynn. But that’s what it will take. It could be that Van Der Leyen thinks rearmament might do instead, as a new big-profit agenda, and if so Starmer will probably follow her lead.
April 7, 2025
@Lynn Atkinson – Oh Lynnn if only half of that was the real position we would all be over the moon. Just as with Brexit they, the WEF diehards are still fighting for them to personally dictate your, mine, our direction. The last thing they will do is work with, preferring to fight to impose a totalitarian Politburo on us all
April 7, 2025
Indeed all very depressing indeed.
April 7, 2025
@ Lynn
I agree with you that the one world governance plans are failing…but unfortunately, those who desire it are doubling down. In particular, it seems, too many on these islands seem to be married to the idea. Net zero, of course, being a tool to reach the goal.
April 7, 2025
I fear this scenario is now inevitable.
April 7, 2025
Karl Schwab is 86. He said he was retiring from the WEF’s board of trustees in January 2027. Not really the story that LA is pushing today.
April 7, 2025
Still one if the world’s most powerful people hefner.
Why are you so keen to play it down?
April 8, 2025
If LA cannot report such a simple fact, how do you think she’s reporting other things, like wrt to Russia?
April 7, 2025
Absolute madness .Cluelessness from this and the previous ‘governments’
April 7, 2025
As we have grown to expect over the last 40+ years of observation of the dire UK governments!
April 7, 2025
Everything government is doing is reminicient of USSR five year industrial plans. Equally these plans make no reference to the market who see these plans as imposition detatched from reality.
Despite mad red Ed’s zealotry we do not produce constant reliable electicity at a level to sustain his insanity. Nor can we distribue it in the quantities required with instant flexibility, witness the Heathrow outage. What energy the UK produces is three to five times more expensive than it needs to be thanks to denial of our own sources and under a business plan that benefits all those involved but the end user.
We have no plans to introduce SMRs that could provide constant reliable power until Nuclear Fusion becomes a reality. Those that for CND driven arguements see SMRs as an impractical threat, should be reminded that the same power sources have for many years powered our submarines and will continue to do so in the future.
It is begining to dawn on our joke of a government that they cannot sustain their spending without the tax revenue from ICE cars. So caveat emptor all those trendy Tesla buyers. Nor has it occured that only a small percentage of potential car owners have a drive for overnight parked charging.
The ultimate question is, for how long can the UK, under its so called but warped democracy, continue to sustain itself with such a bunch of incompetents in government.
April 7, 2025
The government may well eventually buy SMRs but you can rest assured they will buy from abroad. Manufacturing in this country is to be actively discouraged. JcB and RR are increasing Manufacturing in the states. Taiwan chip manufacturers are building a plant in the US as are Apple to make i phones. Trumps strategy is obviously working. With drill baby drill we can watch Britain and the EU disappear in the rear view mirror.
April 7, 2025
President Trump – nor you, seemingly – grasp the complexity of modern world trading system.
Boeing, for example, receives a huge amount of its parts from abroad. Which means Boeing is being tarriffed, too – not just Belgium or Bahrain and all the others. If Trump carries on on this trajectory, then he will be pricing Boeing out of the market (as they will have to raise the prices of their places by possibly up to 50%). And so Airbus could come out-perform Boeing in long-term as a result.
I’ve selected Boeing because it’s so big and well-known. But the same applies to so many US companies in general.
Not just that, American investors are already pulling their investments out of US and into Europe and Asia as they want certainty not uncertainly. This isn’t rocket science.
Trump is also hurting, badly, American consumers.
And middle class pension pots.
And more.
And China has imposed tariffs, in response, which will bite a bit as China still imports a third of what the US imports from China but that 1/3 is still a lot.
And then other things to worry about such as inflation, recession and more.
Tarrifs still work to a degree but only in moderation and finely tuned – Donald Trump’s tariffs are anything but moderate and finely-tuned.
Reply US and foreign investors have been putting money into Us investment markets,figures to Friday
April 7, 2025
Whether we had the energy or not what’s your argument that things have changed that we’d actually be able to produce cars like the Germans (or like Elon Musk if you’re pro EVs).
You’re not being ruthlessly objective like an entrepreneurial-minded CEO. But more nitpicking and way too under-ambitious for what Britain can and should be doing with cars.
April 7, 2025
what we should be doing is banning more imports. We have too many cars of sufficient quality and working life already. Encourage scrapping of older rust bucket smoke belching diesel smuts for a decent cash settlement. One wonders how they pass an MOT – a different subject we can ignore here. New cars are mostly ‘look at me and what I can buy’.
April 7, 2025
We should be focused on manufacturing the British brand equivalent of the German Golf, Mercedes, Audi and BMW and Elon Musk’s Tesla.
This is Britain. Country of the Spitfire, the mini, JCB, Rolls Royce, Cambridge University and Sir Isaac Newton! Not some second rate country that no longer has its own brand cars like this and instead struggling to produce and export Japanese brand cars.
April 7, 2025
Wake up, theUK does nothing with cars with the exception of Morgan. Three japanese manufacturers deemed it a good place to make cars, two are left. They are highly efficient and at the cutting edge of technology.
2TK has like Nero, fiddled at the edge of disaster. A £12,000 penalty remains for anyone selling what the market wants in excess of Soviet style dictat. All to keep mad red Ed on side. It is being set up for an influx of cheap EVs from their friends in China. Without question this rat bag of a so called government are a walking disaster.
April 7, 2025
@agricola – exactly that is why a Marxist Politburo has been handed control
April 7, 2025
Indeed top down government know best. The people at the coal face invariably know best, the people in government and the state sector might know what is best for them and their vested interest mates! Though I am not even sure they know this!
April 7, 2025
Good morning.
If the UK driver was a customer and the UK Government as seller the customer would have strong grounds to demand all the money they give the UK Government back, such is the poor service and return. For example. The so called. ‘Luxury Car Tax’, a levy placed upon the buyer of a vehicle over £40k is a scandal. They are deliberately killing demand.
Back in the 1980’s when the government sought to control the national debt, it saw the coal industry as a big loss maker that money was pointlessly being poured into. Sadly many people lost their jobs, but I remember the fury over it. Today we are seeing much the same thing with the excuse of Climate Change being used to justify the destruction of good profit making industries and the de-industrialisation of the UK.
My, how things have changed.
April 7, 2025
Yes, but the coal industry was closed by the wicked Thatcher not the nice tool maker’s son. Entirely different apparently.
April 7, 2025
Most of the coal mines were worked to a level that was no longer efficient, continuing to kill miners via lungs.
It hastened what was inevitable. Tough medicine to swallow of course.
April 7, 2025
A dumbo Arthur Skargill closed the mining industry. The look alike mad red Ed is intent on doing the same with the UK automotive industry. Watch this space.
April 7, 2025
We were producing relatively rubbish cars compared to the Germans and others back in the 1980s. People have to get realistic. It’s not just necessary but more fun to focus on the reality and try and fix it! Instead of just blame game in a nitpicking way.
April 7, 2025
Mark B
The annual luxury car tax on vehicles over £40,000 also applies every year for 5 years, it even applies if you purchased a second hand car that was listed over £40,00 when new, but you only paid £25,000 for it 3 years later.
Afraid if it moves, breaths, speaks, or takes up space, it will be taxed, such is the way our Country has been governed for the past few decades.
Afraid the Government has absolutely no interest in any sort of business, only for the tax it may generate and pay, so they can then fund their own vanity projects like HS2, Net Zero, Ev’s, Heat Pumps, etc, etc
April 7, 2025
They want to deindustrialise, otherwise we’d have different policies on cars, energy, tax, etc. Maybe some believe in Net Zero; maybe some just follow WEF/UN plans. For whatever reason, most of our elected representatives and most of the rest of the blob are for deindustrialisation.
What they will do is blame others for the carnage, as it’s no longer enough to blame “climate change” (since so many people can see the rest of the world is not “following our lead” on that). Trump and Putin will be useful scapegoats. The legacy media will play their part in the deception.
April 7, 2025
In 20 to 30 years, long after I have departed the scene, the UK will be like Cuba. It will be full of 20+ year old ICE cars, held together with gaffer tape. JLR will have shut its Solihull and Halewood factories and relocated to Slovakia and India if it is to survive at all. The utter stupidity of the political class knows no bounds.
April 7, 2025
People often wonder how renewables could replace fossil fuels when the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. However, a combination of increasingly cheap battery storage, cost effective electrolysers for making green hydrogen and investment in expanding the national grid – with AI technology to manage it – means that a steady, zero carbon energy supply is entirely possible. In 2024, cheap renewables harvesting free energy from the wind and the sun produced over 50% of our electricity for the first time. On good days we are already exporting surplus juice to the EU. Where were the predicted blackouts last winter?
The technological and economic forces driving this transition are global and unstoppable. Britain’s choice is not whether to engage in this transition, but whether to be a leader or a laggard. Badenoch was completely wrong when she said pursuing net zero would harm Britain’s standard of living. Clean energy is already cheaper today than fossil fuel generated electricity.
April 7, 2025
If clean energy is cheaper than fossil fuel energy how come the UK has a higher share of renewables than every G7 country except Canada but by far the highest electricity prices ?
April 7, 2025
Elon Musk had the best take on this topic than any other capitalist i know. We need to take a sensible approach to both Renewables (and EVs) AND Petrol, Gas, Diesel and Nuclear. If if doesn’t fit in with what Musk is arguing now then it’s a flawed argument essentially!
April 7, 2025
First of all SG you are talking only about electricity.
Which is a small part of out total energy requirements.
Secondly battery storage currently has a very limited ability of just a few minutes of national reserve power .
Despite many millions spent.
Thirdly back up fossil fuel powered power stations are paid hundreds of millions to sit on tick over ready to power up when renewables fail us.
The world’s most expensive electricity is what your policies have led to SG
Many of us have lost our jobs and our companies due to this unnecessary nonsense.
Tell us SG…by how much will global temperatures be reduced when the UK gets to Net Zero
April 7, 2025
there are none so blind as they that will not see
April 8, 2025
There are none so committed to the cause as those who expect to benefit personally from the nonsense.
April 8, 2025
(:
April 7, 2025
Consumers used to be free to choose both what to buy and refuse. Desirable products and services with value thrived; bad ones failed and faded away.
Labour destroyed that self-righting mechanism by piling excessive weight of taxes on consumers, forcing them to pay for whatever damaging moves Labour makes and takes.
Opposition to Labour needs much more thrust. Voting against them in the Local Elections would help begin to reduce their dangerous powers.
April 7, 2025
All the government has to do is repeat its ‘the world has changed’ mantra and follow it with a ‘suspension’ of all CO2 reduction targets to counter the global uncertainty and mitigate the immediate threat to jobs. That would be rational and enable it to maintain its ‘green credentials’. They won’t do it though, as it would initiate the withering of the uniquely high level of climate alarmist based policy in the UK. We’re set to become the very warehouse economy that Labour warned against in the 1980s. Ironic to say the least.
April 7, 2025
We may “have read it here first” but the WEF signalled a long time ago what the intention was and it was being implemented by the Not-a-Conservative-Party in Government just as enthusiastically as Labour has been.
They know that most people can’t afford (and for a variety of practical reasons) don’t want an EV. That is the point of the process: they don’t want so many “lower wealth” people owning and regularly driving cars. They have been steadily implementing their plans for 15 minute cities and will force people to walk, cycle or use public transport for their everyday travel.
In due course, when enough people have been forced to relinquish their personal car we will see the growth of car pools / car rental for when they need to make a longer journey/go on holiday etc. And that will be a very nice little earner for the multi-millionaires/Corporations who will own the vehicles.
All part of the “you will own nothing.”
You weren’t allowed to vote against it because the Westminster Uni-Party is operating the usual CONsensus when the policy is being implemented “from above.”
I wonder if Two-Tier has worked out yet that if Nissan goes, so does the Labour Party in the NE?
April 7, 2025
The British car industry has been plagued over the decades by three groups of people: 1) Socialists / trade unionists 2) Amateurish public-school captains of industry 3) Accountants / financial directors looking for short-term profits. Group 3 is now a much bigger problem now than the other two groups compared to 1970s and 1980s (and this short-termism, of Group 3, is rife not just with UK car industry but UK tech overall)
When our car industry should be run by entrepreneurial-minded CEOs, techies and designers.
People can argue about impact of EV or Brexit but the underlying problem is what I mention here. Our incapacity to produce en masse, good value, high quality – tech and design – and British branded, British-owned cars. Which is what any self-respecting nation should be aiming for.
April 7, 2025
I have come to this from a different angle, that our problem with low economic growth did not start when we voted to leave the EU in 2016 but eight years earlier in 2008. That is usually marked out as the time of the global financial crisis, for example on page 8 here:
https://purehost.bath.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/313094908/UKICE-The-State-of-the-UK-Economy-2024-Report.pdf
“The UK economy since the global financial crisis”
“The UK’s economic performance since the 2008 financial crisis has been extremely poor in historical terms… ”
But I have increasingly come to believe that while the impact of that crisis was severe it was short lived and it is not still significantly affecting our economy sixteen years later, while Parliament’s 2008 decision to prioritise the health of the planet over the health of the UK economy has been a continuing drag on the economy, and could potentially become a perpetual drag as it is found that our efforts to limit global warming have not be sufficient.
Then I read the UK’s net zero “tsar” Emma Pinchbeck boasting:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03/29/uk-net-zero-tsar-i-understand-why-people-are-angry/
that the UK was:
“the first G7 economy to half its emissions; the first to prove you could do it while also growing economically”
Apparently unconcerned that the growth rate has been cut from an average of 2.7% a year to only 1.1% a year.
But try convincing Ed Davey that the answer is not to reverse Brexit but to row back on the net zero policy.
April 7, 2025
What is puzzling is that it is reported Starmer is planning an import quota on Chinese EVs to stop cheap cars flooding the market now they cannot be sold in USA due to tariffs. Why ? Isn’t having lots of cheap EVs a good thing if you believe there is a climate emergency ? See Also the EU who have put a 35% tariff on Chinese EVs. Almost as if they know there’s no climate emergency at all.
April 7, 2025
If our government and others announced that net zero policy has been paused for five years for review you would see an immediate reversal of the recent falls in stock markets.
That would be decisive government, not the announcement of a few more electric chargers
April 7, 2025
Utter madness, then what can we expect from ill-informed politicians of all stripes who have swallowed the whole ‘climate change’ nonsense.
Crippling UK car manufacturers with a stupid ban on ICE car production (2030) and in the meantime fining them for not selling enough over-priced EV’s. Guess what? car manufacurers are leaving the UK. Who’d a thought it?
All this to remove <1% of global co2, while the rest of the world carries on unabated. (China's emissions are still increasing)
Due to my advancing years, I'll never be forced into an electric vehicle. If my current three year old car needs replacing before I'm crocked, I'll be looking for another nearly new car around 2029. It will be good old-fashioned petrol.
April 7, 2025
Tariffs and Net Zero are destroying the last vestiges of British mass manufacturing. The latest excuse of a policy decision by Starmer, where he is giving car producers who sell less than 2500 car/year an exemption from the electric car obligation, is risible. His further decision to reduce the fine imposed on larger producers from £15,000/vehicle to £12.000 is playing around the edges and is again pathetic.
Our defence industry is beholden to France for steel, we are reliant on China and Taiwan for electronics, we are reliant on the USA for intelligence and guidance systems. No matter Keir Starmer thinks knocking £3.000 of a fine they impose on all non electric cars sold will fix things…. well it takes all sorts to form a government I suppose.
The stock market is falling at an alarming rate and Rachel from Accounts is strangely quiet?
April 7, 2025
I believe government policy is very tied up with China. It looks to me that our whole economy is.being slanted towards China. The luxury car tax being one that is aimed to importing cheap EV cars. No doubt we will eventually hear an announcement that the government has approved the construction of the proposed mega Chinese embassy on the old Royal Mint site.
April 7, 2025
I had a choice to make 2 years ago when looking to replace a 21 year old V6 petrol vehicle, after much thought and consideration, I decided to purchase a Mercedes Diesel AMG GLB, just 4 months old at a 20% discount on the new price.
Lovely comfortable Car/SUV, does 55 MPG on long runs, 45 MPG around town, will seat 7 (for a short Journey) reasonably low emissions, with a range of 700 miles (fill up time 5 mins), but I suffer the extra annual Luxury car tax for 4 years.
No regrets whatsoever as I sail past EV cars queuing up at Motorway service stations (at busy times) just to get onto a charger (if working).
Our second car is a diesel Toyota Corolla 18 years old, (90,000 miles) still in excellent condition, so plan to keep for another 5 years at least, as it did all of its depreciation a few years ago.
Service Engineer calling in today to service our Gas boiler which we replaced 9 years ago having had a quote for an air source heat pump of £25,000, (ground source was £35,000) Not including any rad or pipework modifications, which may have been needed.
Net Zero madness !!!!!!!!!!!
April 7, 2025
Amazing how the BBC is bitching about Donald Trump and claiming that the tarriffs are disastrous while almost completely ignoring the decimation of British industry by extremists and fanatics
April 7, 2025
The WEF’s ‘great reset’ just as with Communism in general requires that to create a command and control separate from democracy and the people you first have to destroy Society. Look at who has found the way to the top of the UK’s command control, implementation and you can be assured of that is the aim.
In a democracy to change, there would first be a viable, resilient alternative in place and the market would evolve in that direction. That has been omitted by the Politburo as that is not their path.
April 7, 2025
Yes indeed, that was spelled out in official documents including ‘Absolute Zero’.
We should stop being surprised at government inaction to save the car industry when HMG have already told us that keeping this industry is not a part of their plans.
Under normal circumstances the industry could be saved by implementing suggested options, but here we are on the slippery slopes to net0, already, where our industries begin a gradual decline to extinction. But why is HMG undoing all the progress we have made over centuries, and what will be left to us – that’s what we should consider, because without massive industry what will we have?
– Massive unemployment;
– Very little energy;
– Inability to produce even computer related services;
– Pre-industrial levels of feudalism and quality of life;
– Unable to defend ourselves;
– Prone to invasion and attacks by hostiles;
– Mechanisation abolished in favour of human muscles.
April 7, 2025
It started with fishing, and nobody in parliament did anything, than farming, steel and energy ….now ice vehicles ! (the plan of both tory & labour is to import everything)
April 7, 2025
Dear Glen, that seems to be the plan, even if the leading politicians do not realise they are implementing
it. In that case, it would make sense to impose heavy import duties on manufactured goods and use the proceeds to cut taxes on employment and earned income. This would make manufactures more expensive relative to services, reversing the long-term trend.
April 7, 2025
President Trump tariffs makes me think of what must have happened on the malaysian airlines MH370 as it disappeared into southern indian ocean 370 passengers on board with the madman captain locked into the flight deck.
April 7, 2025
They had all been dead for some hours, the captain alive possibly until he knew the aircraft was down to the last hour of fuel and turned the oxygen off in the cockpit.
April 7, 2025
Reducing the charge to £12,000 per car is a joke !
I suppose the one hope is that manufacturers can postpone paying the fines immediately if they make up their EV sales number in 2029-2030.
That won’t happen, of course, but by then Labour will have been kicked out. The new Reform-led coalition will cancel the fines having abandoned net zero 2050 under the disguise of postponing it for a decade until the big polluters catch up.
In the run up to the 2029 election, how much money will Miliband have been allowed to waste on his stupid policies ?
April 7, 2025
From the Telegraph – If true why stop there?
“Elite British carmakers will be exempt from net zero rules, Sir Keir Starmer will announce on Monday.
Aston Martin and McLaren are among the small car manufacturers that will no longer be required to phase out the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030.”
April 7, 2025
great, if only I could afford to jump the queue for a McLaren in a few years time.
April 7, 2025
“Like most UK net zero policies it looks like a policy of close our factories and import the new cars from China.”
Yes, this is the purpose of Net Zero. It is to de-industrialise and impoverish plus transition to electrification which allows individual control through smart meters. There is no intention to transition all our ice vehicles to evs as this is impossible and any travel is to be using public transport and “active travel”. If it were not for Net Zero evs would not be allowed on our roads. They’re far too dangerous. The obligatory crash tests are made with dead weights for the batteries as crashing the batteries would lead to explosions, uncontrollable fires and highly toxic fumes.
According to IPCC WG1 Table 12 in Chapter 12 there are no signals for climate change other some mild warming which UAH satellite data shows as 0.14 degrees C per decade. Shula & Ott have shown both theoretically and experimentally that CO2 is a trace gas that has no warming effect because of a phenomenon known as thermalisation. They know this of course.
April 7, 2025
Net Zero madness – from today’s Telegraph
“Sir Keir Starmer joined top brass from the Royal Navy last month to mark the keel laying for Britain’s first Dreadnought-class nuclear submarine.”
“The type of specialist, high-pressure steel needed for submarine hulls is no longer made domestically.”
“But it is here that an inconvenient footnote must be added: Britain’s latest generation of submarines is being built from steel that has, for the most part, been produced not here, but in France & Belgium”
How much CO2 did the Boris/Kimi.. et al cabal manage to save form the Planet? How many UK jobs have they thrown down the drain? Are Labour 2TK going to stick with destroying the UK and handing UK taxpayer money to foreign coffers?
Utter madness
April 7, 2025
Government transparency disclosures for 2017/18 to 2022/23 show that a total of £173.7m was spent on acquiring approximately 78,000 tonnes of steel for Dreadnought and two other flagship Royal Navy shipbuilding programmes, the Type 26 and Type 31 frigates.
Of this, only £8.5m went to British producers, with tens of millions of pounds instead being diverted to manufacturers in Sweden, Germany and Spain.
April 7, 2025
we probably made the kitchens.
April 7, 2025
Yes of course that is right. The removal of the £15000 tax per excess ICE vehicle is just a short term solution to a Government problem not a market problem. For so long now we have been under the threat of this ill conceived cost that no one knows what the customer really wants to buy, as against what he or she is required to buy. The sooner NetZero is killed for good the better.
April 7, 2025
Most of this new EVs, heatpump and so called green tech technology is being rolled out prematurely by government tax, grants and other market rigging. The result of this in premature technology littered all over the place that will need to be expensively replaced and disposed of later. This wasting vast sums of our money and making us all poor and in much a worse place.
Perhaps I can explain to our scientifically illiterate government? The order should be:- Lots of R&D and prototypes until we get products that works, are reliable, are better (and more cost effective) than the existing and only THEN you can roll them out to a willing public – without all this government fraud & market rigging. This happened with steam ships, narrow boats and canals, steam trains then diesel trains then electric train, cars to replace horses and trains, mobile phones, washing machines, fridges, computers, gas boilers…
April 7, 2025
Just as they say the “process is the punishment” so the damage to the economy in simply attempting to achieve the impossible net Zero target is already achieving the desired goal. In fact the non achievement of Net Zero is preferred to keep the process going.
April 7, 2025
See the new VED taxes too. Why on earth does this government want a war on net good plant, tree and crop food? Well it is clearly just another excuse to tax people and order them about they cannot really believe in Ed mad religion can they?
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/advice/car-tax-everything-you-need-know-about-ved
New cars with a value (list price) of more than £40,000 land in the premium car tax band from years two to six of registration. You will need to pay £425 per year on top of the £195 standard rate for five years, starting from the second year the car is registered.
The most I have ever paid for a car was £13,000 for a secondhand Volvo V70 with all the car booster seats and rear facing child seats back in my child rearing and ferrying days. My current three cars are perhaps worth £10K in total. So this £40K limit is rather unlikely to bother me much!
April 7, 2025
Listening to the Transport Minister today on R4 it’s clear Labour is hell bent on destroying the production of ICE’s whilst distorting (perhaps lying would be more appropriate) the truth on EV sales! All this on the high altar of Net Zero. They are not listening to the car industry or to the people of this country. We are living in a dictatorship.
April 7, 2025
Since the introduction of the Climate Change Act, government policy under both Tory and Labour has switched from supplying low cost despatchable energy to Saving the Planet which means in practice supplying intermittent and expensive energy and relying on interconnectors to make up the shortfall when the Sun and wind don’t provide enough ‘free’ energy. Most Vehicle manufacturers have done their best to follow the law in our country bearing in mind they are largely multinationals with larger markets elsewhere and locations where labour and material costs may be lower. We have also seen laughable postulations by politicians on possible untapped sources of green energy demonstrating their total ignorance of Physics.
The Climate Change Act like Mass Third World immigration unless revoked will destroy this country and both are symptoms of the failure of our electoral system to deliver sane government.
April 7, 2025
Milliband’s “Elephant in the room” is the problem of storing sufficient electricity for when it is night and the wind is not blowing. I’ve not seen any viable proposal which will work ‘at scale’; yes there have been small scale systems but whether they are up to the full job is an open question.
April 7, 2025
The elephant in the room is the 22% of GDP we are missing thanks to adoption of the net zero policy in 2008.
April 7, 2025
Atlas :
You’ve not seen any viable proposal because no economic solution exists. This is why Net Zero and electrification will destroy both our economy and our national security.
April 7, 2025
When the blind lead the blind, they both fall into the ditch! What a blind, shortsighted government we have now and have had. It was the Conservatives who introduced this mad tax on ICE cars, and Labour doesn’t have the vision to change it.
Likewise, Net Zero is dangerous for the UK’s security, but Ed the zealot, the PM and the Chancellor are all blind to any future danger.
April 7, 2025
Dear Mr. Redwood,
Electric cars that are too expensive to buy for most people. Heat pumps that do not work well and are too expensive. Mass migration and all its deleterious effects with no effort at control. The cosying up to China despite its hostile intentions. Giving away our overseas territory against the national interest. The promotion of international law above our own. I’m sure readers can think of others.
It is becoming almost impossible to deny that there is some kind of hidden conspiracy against the British people by its political class who seem determined to destroy our way of life and all we hold dear?
April 7, 2025
Why is this not obvious to Starmer?
Why WAS it not obvious to all but one Tory PM?
April 7, 2025
Sir John
When Governments peruse projects that have costs, the first thing on the agenda should be is how they as custodians of the Country’s safety, security, wealth, resilience and self-reliance get to maintain and advance the position of the Country and its People? As without that there is nothing
First thing in that is to ensure is that wealth is being created to cover these new costs. As far as the UK goes successive UK Government and Parliaments’ (you have to include the whole of Parliament it is their duty also) – its a fail. They have deliberately and maliciously disadvantage the UK against all it competing nations – no one else did that, just the 650 members of the UK Parliament.
No one else off-shored and deindustrialized the UK, no one else raised taxes (essentially destroying the economy) in doing so removing the means for the country and its people to earn. Its wealth its future.
We learn today (The DT) that the previous Government handed the UK’s ability to defend itself to Foreign unpredictable, even unfriendly governments, as it handed the component/raw material manufacture essential to forming any form of defense, away. It highlights the hypocritical 2 tier nature of Parliament, the very reason they site for the explosion of a UK strength – ‘NetZero’ is the very thing they have increased while ensuring maximum damage to the Country and its People. Not balanced, not realistic, just maximum damage inflicted on a Nation, in its, Parliaments Fight with the People.
You couldn’t make it up!
The damage to the Auto Industry, not taken up anywhere else in the World – is Government, Parliament fighting the People. Even their ‘holy grail’ religious cult of NetZero has by their action increased, world pollution is up by a whole other magnitude. UK wealth down and future down….
April 7, 2025
Labour spokesman (person) talking about changing/slowing the ZEV mandate to “help the car industry” as if the car industry plans it’s production capacities over a two-three year period. Complete nonsense of course, serious permanent damage has already been done to our car industry. Trumps car tarifs will just be used by Labour as cover for Ed’s completely mad Net Zero policies.
Quentin Willson was also doing the rounds today, pushing EVS as usual. Apparently “European Research” has shown that the “environmental impact of building an EV is recovered after the first 12,000 miles”. He’s clearly not seen the paper by Volvo that suggested the CO2 breakeven point over the same ICE vehicle is more like 72,000 miles. I hope he believes his own guff but I’m sure it doesn’t harm his ‘After Dinner’ speaking business either…
April 7, 2025
Sir Keir Starmer reveals world leading alternative to Full Self Driving (FSD) car technology at JLR.
Jaguar Land Rover are proud to announce Self Driving Roads (SDR). Simply park your car on the new SDR and read the paper as you get transported to your destination with zero emmissions. The SDR prototype only moves cars at 2 mph currently and has a very limited range of destinations but great progress is expected in these areas shortly.
“We expect to be World leaders in Self Driving Roads” stated Sir Keir, adding that he was determined to have afordable ‘British Cars for British Workers’ (as left hand drive Range Rovers passed behind him on the SDR).
“Another shining example of British Brilliance” stated Sir Keir. “You can really take your foot off the pedal with SDRs” he claimed
April 7, 2025
It’s time for this government to sit down and allow the markets to dictate their own future requirements. The Nannying State always fails.
Surely, common sense tells them that net zero for us means a minute 0.8% drop in the total global emissions of CO2. And at what cost to us taxpayers? £Trillon? How much would it cost China to achieve Net Zero given its output is 33% of the global total? BUT!! Miliband still expects others to follow us down the road to ruin
April 7, 2025
It would appear to me that the PM is about to water down the cessation of all ICE vehicle production due to take place in 2030. From all I can ascertain this will be a meaningless political exercise that keeps his mad monk zealots on side. It will be of no use to our car industry whatsoever. Industry likes to plan ahead knowing that they need to satisfy the market with progressive certainty for the next 25 years.
I’m sure the industry does not object to targets coupled with incentives to produce product that satisfies the market. That is nudge nudge, not the current soviet style dictat. Anything that dictates cars use only electricity that costs three to five times what it should cost, electricity that for many cannot be accessed from home, in a refueling process measured in hours not minutes, is a none starter. Were it to all happen we do not have the grid or generating capacity to cope with it. You would think that a PM who is a lawyer could work this out, but I fear not. I anticipate more meaningless nonsense of deckchair shifting on the Titanic.
April 7, 2025
My local town’s main car park has had 4 nice shiny new public EV chargers installed.
Only another 2,000-or-so required for all the car owners who don’t have the ability to home-charge. Quite how they’ll get to and from the chargers is beyond me …. they’ll be queuing all around the one-way system and the town will be completely gridlocked 24/7.
April 7, 2025
More opportunity for cable theft, which aparently is of growing concern Nationwide.
April 7, 2025
Donna :
They’re planning for ev ownership to be just a small fraction of today’s ice ownership. It’s to be public transport and active travel for most of us. Hence the requirement for 15 minute cities.
April 7, 2025
Dear Sir John, Mr Milliband is a highly intelligent man, if not too clever. He wil know that closing UK production of cars and importing them from China increases global carbon emissions and accelerates CO2 driven climate change. We must therefore deduce that these are not his top priorities, which perhaps lie closer to home. One is that ordinary working families should in future not own ordinary family cars, whether they are ICE or battery powered.
You will recall that the switch by consumers to buying diesel, which cut carbon emissions, was soon followed by massive campaigns to demonise diesel, aided by the emissions testing scandal. You may have noticed growing claims of environmental damage caused by heavier electric vehicles and particle emissions from tyres and cannot have missed ever more intensive measures to curb local use of family vehicles. As I recall, an abortive plan by Canterbury City Council , then run by Conservatives, was one of the most notorious. Do our politicians really know what they are doing?
April 7, 2025
Trump’s protectionist tariff-based anti-free-trade anti-globalist policies are the same as those that were promoted by Bernie Sanders a few years ago and also resemble Jeremy Corbyn’s policies to some extent. One of several areas where the supposed far right and hard left overlap.
April 7, 2025
Industry figures and many others have said time & time again in the past & recently that the £15.000 mandate must be scrapped. It’s a disaster. And now this, no sign of “radical” but a “pragmatic” £ 3000. The people trying to move these unwanted EVs will still just be juggling and spending their valuable time trying to avoid the £12.000 penalties as they were with the £15.000 rather than concentrating their efforts in trying to move these blasted things on to us all.
April 8, 2025
Weren’t these ludicrous laws passed by a Conservative government when you were an MP?
So did you vote against them?
Reply I made clear my opposition to them at the time. They were usually done in an SI committee where the government ensured a majority and the Opposition usually agreed