To Remain Brexit was mainly about trade. They wanted no dilution in our heavily managed trade with the EU and wanted to keep all the barriers of the EU Customs Union up against the rest of the world. They justified this with a patently wrong theory that you could only trade easily with countries that were nearby, giving them a dodgy model and false forecasts of what would happen post Brexit. They wrongly forecast less trade and lower GDP as a result, which did not happen. As it happened UK negotiators paid a high price to keep tariff free trade with the EU and tried to keep us closely aligned with the EU business and trading regulations.
In our later years in the EU our trade with the EU declined to under half our total trade. The relative decline and the amazing surge in trade in services with non EU since 2016 has continued this trend. The relative decline will continue in our EU exports as some of our leading exports to the EU, oil, gas, refined oil products and petrol cars are being banned and taxed into extinction. Doubtless what net zero achieves will be blamed on Brexit by Remain.
Now we are out we can bring down barriers with the rest of the world. We have signed the large TPP Free Trade Agreement which the EU would not do. We have added services chapters to some of the old EU trade deals we adopted as UK trade deals. We proved Remain wrong by renewing all EU deals as Uk ones.
In a later piece I will look at what Brexit was really all about – taking back control. We have used some of the opportunities this brings but there are so many more to take up. Intervening to save blast furnaces would have needed EU consent to subsidies which could have caused delays and might have been refused.
April 16, 2025
Good morning.
You forget, Sir John that all previous PM’s have signed us up to the fact that the UK does not compete with its ‘friends’ in the EU and that, sooner or later, one of these ‘friends’ is going to point out that the UK has a competitive edge and will use such a clause against us.
We signed a set of rotten deals and the BREXIT we got was not the one I voted for.
April 16, 2025
@Mark B
Nobody voted for “Brexit”
“Brexit” was not on the ballot paper.
The majority voted “Leave”.
“Brexit” was what the Establishment gave them.
April 16, 2025
+1
April 16, 2025
+1
April 16, 2025
+1
April 16, 2025
@oldwulf +1 so true
Yet Parliament is still fighting, still fighting those that empower and pay them.
April 16, 2025
We still maintain a raft of tariffs on good we don’t produce such ad finished coffee products and bananas.
Labour promised before the election to remove VAT from domestic energy but they haven’t because they need Brussels permission because of the invidious Windsor Agreement
2TK now wants dynamic alignment with with agri products with ECJ oversight.
He will scupper any US trade deal with his deferring to Brussels. Maybe he thinks we should have 20% tariffs in solidarity.
April 16, 2025
@Ian Wraggg – ‘2TK now wants dynamic alignment with with agri products with ECJ oversight.’ that was the plan as it ensures the UK can’t trade with the free World including the USA.
April 16, 2025
Economic perturbations associated with Brexit are marginal compared to the effects of events in 2008.
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2024/07/26/37906/#comment-1466677
“… a letter in the Maidenhead Advertiser today headed “Driving with handbrake on for past 16 years””
For 60 years before 2008 the trend growth rate was 2.7% a year, since then it has been only 1.1% a year.
But what happened in 2008 which is still having such a profoundly damaging effect on our economy?
Was it something to do with the global financial crisis, as commonly accepted without any question?
Or was it something else that happened coincidentally, without attracting so much public attention?
For example, Parliament launching a official crusade to rescue the planet from possible overheating?
April 16, 2025
Of course you are right about our trade, but some simply don’t have the wherewithall to see the facts even in hindsight, what chance of their 5 year plans based on forecasts being even remotely correct?
The problem with being unable to admit that you were wrong in the face of indisputable new evidence is that you can’t change your policies. Therefore the woodenheadedness persists irrespective of the damage – think of the Easter Islanders.
All we can do is change the personnel. Across the board. We need a Trump.
April 16, 2025
Trumps, sadly in the UK, are in short supply.
He is not a Trump, but perhaps Farage can get sufficient support to counteract the wimps.
April 16, 2025
Are you sure they are beginning to understand this? The Tories under Sunak certainly did not with his appalling Windsor Accord. Labour certainly do not seem to understand that nearly everything they are doing is anti-growth like Net Zero, their workers rights bill, the vast over taxation, open door low skilled immigration, over regulation of everything and their wars on motorists, the self employed, private schools, Non Doms, small business, large business, the hard working, their anti-white male racism and sexism…
April 16, 2025
There was no evidence of “two-tier policing” in the handling of riots that erupted after last year’s Southport murders, the Home Affairs Committee has said.
MPs on committee have concluded there was no evidence to support these “baseless” claims.
Officers’ handling of the violence was “entirely appropriate given the levels of violence and criminality that were on display”. MPs said: “This was not protest.”
“It was disgraceful to see unsubstantiated commentary about ‘two-tier policing’ undermining the efforts of police officers who served bravely in the face of violence.”
Sure, what is really disgraceful is this appallingly dishonest committee and the imprisonment of Starmer’s political prisoner Lucy Conolly for 31 months! The evidence for two tier policing and justice is overwhelming!
April 16, 2025
It seems the home affairs committee looked soley at the violence in the streets on the day(s) As almost everyone involved was essentially White/British, they can claim there was no two-tier policing.
If the committee had looked beyond that, they would have seen glaring evidence of two-tier policing. Palestinian rioters ignored, BLM rioters ignored, far-Left immigrant supporters ignored. The list goes on.
April 16, 2025
A record day for illegal arrivals yesterday 700 for the day. Starmer’s “smash the gangs” and his zero deterrent agenda (indeed quite the reverse) is going well it seems!
April 16, 2025
Ll. All going to plan. Agenda 30. Dilute indigenous population to prevent nationalism as a pre cursor to OWG. Signed up to by the uniparty.
April 16, 2025
We have the illegal immigration act, the international law of the sea, the royal navy & border force, the Immigration enforcement (IE) & police and assistance of the french police …..all to no avail and pointless
We also don’t force foreign students to return home after their course has finished …we encourage them to stay !!!
April 16, 2025
With good weather forecast for the next few days, that number could well be surpassed. Starmer either hasn’t got a clue and is totally incompetent on the issue. Or perhaps he’s never been honest about stopping the boats?
April 16, 2025
LL: Yes, final total for yesterday 15 Apr: 705 in 12 boats.
That totals 2092 people crossed in 36 boats during the last 8 days. April 08 to 15 inclusive. Official figures. Where are they now… how many already left ‘our care’ for whereabouts unknown.
April 16, 2025
and no-one saw them coming …..too busy chasing the gang leaders
April 16, 2025
It’s not ‘anti-white male racism’ – think what has been done to white women … it’s simply ‘anti-white racism’ or just ‘racism’. This is happening across the white western world of course, not just in Britain.
Let’s stick with ‘racism’ because that is already cast as the greatest crime. And racism against the smallest of the races – ie the whites, and the most productive must rank as an even worse crime.
April 16, 2025
That’s precisely why we’re being discriminated against. We are the most productive. By marginalising us is an attempt to hide the inadequacy of their way of life/beliefs.
Soon we will be a minority in our own country and be forced to accept some alien concept because we were too nice and embraced their culture rather than defend our own.
It’s our own fault.
April 16, 2025
@Lyn A. +1. From “I don’t really need to see loads of useless white male pilots” (RAF recruitment) to police forces paying £5k less per year to white officers. We are an institutionally racist country, but not quite in the way that progressives believe!
April 16, 2025
+++ Quite so. Regarding the anti-white male crusade in full swing, I have commented to all those left wing white women I know who have been brainwashed into believing in the ‘patriarchy’ and male toxicity being the root of all their problems, well just wait until it’s your turn for this treatment, and mark my words it will happen.
April 16, 2025
Labour may begin to use Brexit freedoms, while having no fundamental belief in them. The EU is a socalist super state in gestation running by dictat, not by democracy. This suits the past15 years of largely socialist UK government whatever flag of convenience they fooled the electorate into thinking they were voting for.
Once in government anything of consequence was left to the burocracy of the EU to decide and implement via a compliant UK parliament and hundreds of unelected quangos. A total facade of democracy. The electorate realised the enormity of this con in 2016 and voted Brexit, but have failed to remove the trojan horse that is Remain. The realisation that they have to is fast dawning. A reversion to sovereign government will return in 2029 if not sooner by default of the present incompetent zealots. Singapore offshore the EU should be the aim.
April 16, 2025
‘Belief’ is for subject where there is no empirical proof. There is no need to believe that Brexit has produced better trading figures for the U.K., in spite of being sabotaged by the entire political class. It is a FACT.
April 16, 2025
+1
April 16, 2025
Do you have a link to those facts? A serious question. I keep reading the opposite.
April 18, 2025
https://www.facts4eu.org/news
They say they use official stats from the EU/UK. So the sources should be checkable.
April 16, 2025
Absolutely spot-on!
As for Starmer beginning to understand the freedoms of Brexit; he didn’t want it, and promised to get so close to the EU we wouldn’t know we’d left. We’re about to see that ‘all-but-in’ objective with our new reset deal.
Trump needs to get trade deals from around the word fast, to counteract the same plan underway by Xi. We are witnessing two egos fighting it out for world dominance — it was ever thus….
April 16, 2025
The services economy keeps a number of my younger aquaintences in employment but all of them incorporate abroad in Singapore. US states or elsewhere. The UK has adopted the EU regulation and taxation policies such as VAT and HMRC is one of the most aggressive in the world, even driving the self employed out of business. The UK is losing vast amounts of corporation tax to foreign states.
April 16, 2025
Agricola “The EU is a socalist super state in gestation running by dictat, not by democracy. “ – now that presumably explains why Generation Z-ers are typically so annoyed about Brexit.
April 16, 2025
Delineate and define why Generation-Zers are so anti Brexit. Precisely which age group are you talking of and give the evidence for such a fanciful assertion.
April 16, 2025
@ agricola – Generation Z is the standard definition, being those born between 1997 and 2012.
By way of illustrative example I draw your attention to: –
Research from 2021 by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) confirms younger people are hostile to capitalism and hold positive views of socialist alternatives. It states “67 per cent of young Brits want a socialist economic system”.
The Independent in September last year reported “Gen Z leads drive to reverse Brexit” citing a poll by Redfield and Wilton. The Independent reports “Among 18- to 24-year-olds, which includes Gen Z, a total of 61 per cent would vote to rejoin. Only 28 per cent would vote to stay out.”
As for why, you would have ask them of course but I think Gen. Z feel they get a raw deal, the system is stacked against them, leaving the EU denies them opportunities and protections, that their future is bleak, that their lot compares very unfavourably with that of the Baby Boomers, that capitalism is not delivering for them. I do not consider their views fanciful, inchoate though they might be and doubtful though their favoured solutions are.
April 16, 2025
+James1
April 16, 2025
There is no evidence that this Government, any more than the last treacherous one, understood the need to take advantage of “our Brexit freedoms.” Two-Tier is doing everything he possibly can to destroy what little freedoms we got from Johnson’s pathetic deal, like Sunak did with the Windsor Treachery.
As Guido reports “the government plans to accept ‘dynamic alignment’ of regulations on some products including agrifood goods, and reportedly will accept EU rulings from the European Court of Justice on the sanitary and phytosanitary elements of its new deal with Brussels.”
Why would an independent, Sovereign nation, place itself under the control of a hostile foreign Oligarchy and its corrupt court?
https://order-order.com/2025/04/15/starmer-confirms-plan-to-reverse-brexit-as-uk-accepts-eu-rules-under-labour-deal/
April 16, 2025
….and why would a kingdom allow a quarter of its nation be controlled & regulated by a third party country/union law & tax
April 16, 2025
“To Remain Brexit was mainly about trade.”
I think that depended in what circles one moved. Outside of the political class very many Remainers I came across merely parroted the economic argument, if at all. They were captured by the siren call of a European fraternity, with its shared enlightenment values and free movement. Total horlicks, of course. They might not have put it that way, but having pleasant holidays in European destinations had heightened their disdain for everything British (especially our culture) and made them feel continental (what a delusion!).
April 16, 2025
Agree ‘Wanderer’ The remainiacs dreamt of a Woke Europe where anyone could come and go as they pleased. In effect a borderless EU.
Rather like the borderless UK we have now, where anyone from anywhere can come in as when they please.
April 16, 2025
The current sequences of daily turbulence President Trump is causing around the world will enable the benefits of our having left the direct control of the EU to shake even more of the EU’s crazy shackles off our freedom to act as we choose.
April 16, 2025
Maybe that should read: Trump shakes EU shackles off the UK!
April 16, 2025
Starmer wants the appearance of using Brexit freedoms whilst he rejoins the EU step by step. This is why the press are being briefed about a potential US trade deal at the same time as what he is actually doing is signing us up to automatically follow EU agri/food regulations which will scupper a proper US trade deal and allow him to say he tried but our future is clearly with the EU. The sensible approach would be to push for mutual recognition of agri/food standards which the EU do with New Zealand but this suits neither the EU or Starmer strategically.
Another point to note is what a terrible negotiator Starmer is, he caves in on an EU demand like this (which they know disadvantages the UK in non-EU trade) without getting anything at all in return. I suppose next he’ll sign a fishing agreement in advance of any other trade negotiations or deal. In fact allowing access for French fishing boats would be good leverage for telling them to stop allowing access for other types of boats from France but of course Starmer would never do that.
April 16, 2025
”terrible negotiator Starmer is” ….Chagos Islands
April 16, 2025
We import far more agrifood products from the EU than we export to the EU, so who would stand to gain most from removal of any unnecessary impediments to that trade? We would be doing them a favour, just as we would be doing them a favour by helping with their defence and security. You wouldn’t think so from this:
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/mackerel-missiles-eu-uk-defence-064205873.html
“Mackerel and missiles: EU-UK defence deal snags on fish”
If we had a patriotic government it would be asking whether the French are serious about defence co-operation if it depends on them being allowed to pillage our fishing grounds. It’s almost childish.
April 16, 2025
RG :
The advantage of Brexit is that an incoming administration can tear up the agreements Starmer makes with the EU.
April 16, 2025
Let’s hope Europe and the UK learn from the present trade war although I do believe China has outgrown it’s forecast.
April 16, 2025
Labour does seem to be learning that government is difficult although it has yet to learn it is likely beyond its capability.
With Trump obligingly creating turmoil in world trade there must be many new opportunities that Labour and our deskilled (though having relied on the E.U.) civil servants will miss, despite Brexit.
April 16, 2025
There has been a deathly silence from the right-wing press over the dreadful Russian attack on Sumy, where peaceful Ukrainian civilians on their way to church on Palm Sunday were bombed by ballistic missiles, no less.
Undoubtedly, these rags have failed to condemn this particular attack because Trump has declared it to be a “mistake”. Going further, yesterday he again traduced the brave and resourceful Volodymyr Zelenskyy and in remarks broadcast nationally said “When you start a war, you got to know you can win”
Trump went further into the realms of bully-backing with remarks on Monday that “you don’t start a war against someone 20 times your size and then hope that people give you missiles”
Zelensky was not president when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. He was elected by a landslide in 2019. Russia launched its attempt to kill him, capture Kyiv, and colonise Ukraine in February 2022. It’s about time that the British right-wing press recognise that the sun does not shine from Trump’s backside and publishes a condemnation.
April 16, 2025
What are you talking about? I don’t know what counts as right wing press for you but I’ve seen this attack condemned in numerous media. The telegraph eg (where there are plenty of critics of trump)
April 16, 2025
In the real world, SG, what happened was that the Armed Forces of Ukraine held a military award ceremony in a town barely 20 miles from the battlefront. Stupidly, the organisers allowed participants to invite their families to the event. Were you better informed, you would have seen that Ukraine’s own MPs and mayors have been furious about what their military did here, and Zelensky is reported to be seeking the dismissal of the local area military commander. I realise that the truth punctures your outrage story, as so often, but there you are.
You might also ask yourself why the huge outrage in the war-supporting media about the victims of this missile strike, but not about the hundreds of civilians killed in the Donbas over the years by Kiev’s missiles and shells. Is it perhaps linked to the presence of Western ‘advisors’ among the military killed in Sumy? I wonder.
April 16, 2025
I’m really not sure the “British Right-Wing press” who may support some of Trumps actions, actually support his ridiculous stance on Ukraine.
April 16, 2025
SG
There are articles on this attack available with a simple Internet search for you to read in The Sun and The Telegraph as well as other non Guardian type newspapers.
Perhaps a little research before you make yourself look foolish.
April 16, 2025
Tariffs are good when negotiated by the EU.
When others use them they are an instrument of war.
It’s all in the narrative. The USSR might still exist if the had EU spin.
April 16, 2025
Dear Mr. Redwood,
It looks like the consensus here is that Two-Tier Starmer is also Two-Faced and will bind us to the EU in order to scupper a deal with the US.
April 16, 2025
To Remain it isn’t about trade, that’s just a pretext to give the appearance of rational behaviour. Remain is an abused mistress of the EU, vainly hoping the beatings will end and he will show her the same besotted love she has for him.
April 16, 2025
But how does this square with what we read about Starmer now proposing to risk a trade deal with the USA, by realigning us more closely with EU rules?
April 16, 2025
‘Labour begins to understand the need to use Brexit freedoms’ ? that statement doesn’t stack up with all the behind the scenes activity
Media reports – “Sir Keir Starmer is closing in on a new partnership with the EU that could put a trade deal with the White House at risk. British negotiators are close to signing up to Brussels’ food and veterinary standards,” Along with giving the ECJ more say in over-ruling the UK.
TTK wants to be involved in the EU Defence loans (it is only loan money) pact, as such the EU is demanding he gives up rights to UK Fish in UK waters. So on, and so on.
This integration by stealth, with no say a loose, loose for the UK. By doing the opposite of Brexit Freedoms, ensuring the UK cant develop and be part of the World, TTK, his Government, Parliament is fighting against the UK and its people, chasing enslavement and punishment. So much wasted effort and money in fighting the Country and its People just so that they don’t have to work with them and achieve potential
April 16, 2025
The UK Supreme Court will today confirm the definition of a ‘women’ …or is it just reliagning with the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the EU
This is important as politicians, governments & courts could redefine anything to social engineer society & behaviour …if they can rule that a man is a women, they could also rule the a cat is a dog, a nuclear power station is a renewable green windmill …this is 1984 stuff
There’s no brexit benefit if we still follow the rulings of the EU
April 16, 2025
Brexit was the opportunity to set this country free and unshackle us from E.U. restrictions which did not benefit this country at all, such a shame that Politicians did not have the foresight to see the opportunities and Potential Brexit Freedom presented.
April 16, 2025
Where there is no vision, the people perish. That is what is happening to the UK now. The PM has no vision except
for tying us closer to the EU. He will blow up any chance of a trade deal with the US because of his obsession with getting us back into the EU.
For the last 25 years, we have needed a giant and got a succession of pygmies!
April 16, 2025
The approach and reasoning by remainers regarding BREXIT has always been irrational, built on supposition and wishful thinking rather than hard facts. It show how hopeless our MSM is that they take any notice of die hard remainers an their wild claims.
Trade is important and how that is managed is vital to our prosperity. Being tied to an outdated EU model has meant lost opportunities and less prosperity.
Time we turned our backs on the EU!
April 17, 2025
@Bryan Harris – its not about turning our backs on anything. The thing we expect from ‘our’ Government and Parliament is that all our Laws Rules and Regulations are created by our own democratically elected legislators, those we empower and pay – our MPs. Then we expect the same crowd ensures we are safe, secure, resilient and self-reliant, not beholden and surfs of others.
We have the talent, ability and resources to stand on our own two feet. In that position we get to deal with others out of mutual respect with mutual reciprocal engagement. The EU just as with this Government & Parliament doesn’t allow for any of that
April 16, 2025
Here is a paper from the incurably pro-EU Centre for European Reform:
https://www.cer.eu/publications/archive/policy-brief/2025/will-eu-enlargement-create-new-models-eu-uk-relationship
“WILL EU ENLARGEMENT CREATE NEW MODELS FOR THE EU-UK RELATIONSHIP?”
For example, some form of Associate Membership; but while there is a lot of detailed discussion of various options I see nothing to say how much we might gain or lose from any of them. Meanwhile, there is a problem which should be commanding much more attention from our government: why has our trend growth rate been slashed from 2.7% a year to 1.1% a year since 2008, ie 8 years before the EU referendum, and how can that be rectified?
April 16, 2025
Don’t forget the £100bn/year trading deficit we have with the EU which we can do nothing about whilst we are members of the EU or following with “dynamic alignment”.
Why do socialists love EU membership? Could it be that it impoverishes the UK and socialism depends upon making and keeping people poor? Could it be they are attracted to the pleasures of office (limousines, flunkies, dinners, parties, endless meetings, flights to exotic holiday destinations staying at luxury hotels etc.) whist not being responsible for any decisions? Could it be that EU membership allows laws, regulations and policies to be unemocratically forced upon the country which they know their electorate would never accept?
April 16, 2025
Hi sir John
All this publicity about British steel is taking the news about illegals being bought into the uk by the boarder force
Brexit was supposed to give us control of our boarders
Sir John
Can you confirm if our democratic right to vote in the local elections is still going to happen
I would have thought that labour would wanted to loose their seats to get them off the hook for bankrupting the city of Birmingham and increasing the rates and causing the bin strikes I don’t understand while rubbish is piled high in some areas where I live there is no rubish in the streets we have a team of volunteers who litter pick other areas think it’s some else’s job
April 16, 2025
Now that you’ve taken back control you should form your own economic bloc with America – you can be the rule maker and America can be the rule taker – if that makes sense – then all of those EU owned ships can carry the cargo across the Atlantic between you – cars one way and chicken the other way – if that makes sense.
April 16, 2025
705 criminals arrived in the UK yesterday; from the safe country of France …contravening the Illegal Immigration Act 2023 ….and over 500 today
April 16, 2025
This kind of anti-Brexit propaganda is why a majority now want us to rejoin the EU:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/travel/news/eu-warning-uk-issues-sudden-35066807
“EU warning as UK issues sudden ban on food items being brought into the country”
Ask the outraged travellers whether they would be OK with the UK suffering another foot and mouth epidemic and most of them would say certainly not, but the brief mention of the reason for the ban is written to show up the UK government as being unreasonable:
“The government says the new measures have been brought in to ‘protect farmers from the spread of foot and mouth disease’ but insisted there are currently no cases in the UK.”
But then the government Tweet does not put that front and foremost, why not?
Oh, and *The rules for bringing food or animal products are different if you live in Northern Ireland.”
April 17, 2025
The UK Government is in talks with the EU to join the EU’s loan scheme for Defence procurement – it is just a loan facility. To that end the EU demands that fish in UK waters is under EU control and laws to supply the EU before, not support the UK. The UK Government says yes please do you need more!
2TK is sort to align the UK with the EU on agriculture products (a lower standard than traditional UK standards) with over-site from the ECJ. Primarily it appears to be in the first instance a blocking move to sop completely in deal with the USA. Then it is to stop the UK being engaged in World Trade, but more important to 2TK and his crew they get to slide the UK back under the control of an unelected unaccountable bureaucratic cabal.
Even yesterdays Supreme Court ruling on Women came from direction of their high court the ECJ.
Rules and legislations to keep the UK aligned to the EU take precedence over our own elected legislators, our Parliament. It would appear is that Government has ordered complete integration with the EU at every level – they have reversed more in their 12months in office than has been achieved to extract us from the undemocratic yoke of the EU since 2016. They just haven’t got round to telling the ‘truth’
A UK Parliament is a disaster the fight the People first, they refuse their job as UK Legislators.
The vote, the ballot paper said leave or stay – nothing else, no other options. The People voted leave – the Parliament stuck two fingers up and said up yours we are staying.