Our food trade with the EU is tariff free. This helps EU exporters compete in our market. They sell us 3.4 times as much as we sell them in the wider food and drink category. Whisky is our biggest export. Our sales of meat, dairy, fruit, vegetables and cereals are low. Years in the CAP with small milk quotas, beef bans and grants to remove orchards led to substantial reductions in UK farms home market share. We cannot now produce nearly enough temperate food to meet our own needs.
Some now argue we need to adopt again all the rules and controls the EU places on farms and food producers so we could export more to the EU without some of the border frictions the EU imposes . So what could we produce more and what would they buy? Our sales did not fall post Brexit.
The main reason the EU wants more controls over UK farming is their wish to keep out cheaper non EU food from competing with their exports to the UK.They also want to block innovation in the UK that could lead the UK to cheaper and better food at home. They veto genetic modification.
May 17, 2025
Valuable clarification : thank you
May 17, 2025
It doesn’t matter to 2TK that it makes no sense to align with the EU. He believes it was wrong to leave because his handlers told him so
His allegiance is to the WEF and UN
Why else would he give the Chagos Islands away and pay a bounty as well.
The man’s a shyster he’ll bent on doing as much destruction as he can whilst in office.
May 17, 2025
According to Guido, the Chagos Betrayal has been kicked into the long grass as Mauritius was making its allegiance to China a little bit too obvious.
https://order-order.com/2025/05/16/guido-victory-as-chagos-deal-put-on-hold/
I think Two-Tier was hoping Trump would veto the “deal,” get him off the ridiculous hook he’d got himself onto and take the flak for defying “international law.” Trump didn’t play ball and let Two-Tier own it.
May 17, 2025
@Donna – the only doubt there is that its is a good work buddy and friend of Two Tier’s that makes a lot of money from us when the deal goes through
May 18, 2025
True. But “look after a good friend” v “destroying the Labour Party – albeit not just over this issue?”
May 17, 2025
Very valuable, yes. A Conservative asking plaintively why reducing barriers to trade should be regarded as a good thing. What has become of the party of Margaret Thatcher? Very sad.
Reply under Margaret we were in the single market and customs union which placed big barriers and tariffs in the way of our trade with the rest of the world.
May 17, 2025
@JR reply; That is the agreement we joined in 1973, and what Mrs Thatcher supported in 1975, she only started to question our membership when EEC/EU politics and the roll of the European Commission stopped suiting her, hence her “No! No! No!” retort to Delors, it was never about trade, even the 2016 referendum was framed as “Who governs Britain”.
May 17, 2025
I see, so today not only Edward Heath but also Margaret Thatcher is treated as an enemy by Conservatives. No wonder your vote share continues to dwindle
Reply stop twisting my arguments and making silly points. I supported Margaret, as she wrestled down our excessive financial contributions to the EU. She was constantly battling an unhelpful Europe
May 17, 2025
@JR reply; Yes Mrs Thatcher cut our financial contributions, except she also helped reinforce the belligerent EEC, for example by sending one Francis Arthur Cockfield to Brussels; the rest is history! So indeed some people, those who are vehemently opposed to the UK’s involvement with the EEC/EU, may very well see Heath and Thatcher as heads on the same coin, which of course they are, Mrs Thatcher was no Peter Shore – thankfully…
May 17, 2025
Strange interpretation of past events there Jerry.
You seem to have your own unique pro EU history book.
Peter Shore has been proved right in many things.
May 18, 2025
@MiB; Oh dear, here we go again.
Unlike you I check my facts; Cockfield was sent to Brussels as our Commissioner, by Mrs Thatcher, he is widely credited with authoring a political report (paper) that laid the foundations to what became the Single Market Act (SEA), thus becoming a stepping-stone towards the goals set out in the Treaty of Rome. Without SEA there would likely be no EU, the EEC would still be a trading group of nations.
On Brexit, yes Peter Shore has indeed been proved correct, but then he did not want the UK to join the EEC, he wanted the UK to leave the EEC in 1975, he supported the Labour manifesto pledge to leave the EEC unilaterally in 1983 – unlike Mrs Thatcher…
It is you Martin who has the unique EU history book, but then you also appear only to know what UKIP/Reform or our host tells you.
May 18, 2025
You focus on Mr Cockfield I was talking more about your many odd posts on EU/EEC history.
But a good diversion Jerry.
PS
No need for your silly last paragraph
May 18, 2025
@Scallion – agreed
May 17, 2025
Good morning,
Keith wants us back in the EU; why the surprise. Nothing else makes clearer his intentions than the plans to damage our farmers through taxation. It will be the same with fish quotas and defence industries.
The question worth analysing is why is he doing this. Why weaken the UK economically and militarily? Why does he think we are better off in the EU? How does that help Keith and Co.?
May 17, 2025
Peter, the PM’s name is Keir, not Keith. My name is Keith and I am offended by being linked to 2TK in any way.
May 17, 2025
I don’t blame you, 2TK from now on. No offence intended.
May 17, 2025
On the one hand, Two-Tier says he wants to boost food exports to the EU.
On the other hand, he and his appalling Chancellor are deliberately implementing an IHT policy which is going to drive the small family farm food producers out of business.
So it’s obvious that Two-Tier’s betrayal has nothing to do with food trade with the EU and everything to do with trapping us back under their legislative/regulatory CONTROL.
May 17, 2025
@Donna; “implementing an IHT policy which is going to drive the small family farm food producers out of business.”
Whatever the arguments for and against such a IHT policy one thing it will not cause is any greater loss of food production than happens anyway, the only thing that might change is who owns the land. I expect it would be quite possible for affected farmers to carry on farming the same land but as Tenant farmers, or renting back their previous acres, assuming no other lawful succession strategy.
Given all the talk about how little money HMT will likely raise off such a IHT policy I do wonder if the intent is not so much a cash-cow but to force farmers to plan for succession.
May 17, 2025
It’s not just farms Jerry
All small family businesses are now caught in this inheritance tax trap.
All you need is for two or more family members to die within a few years of each other and the tax bill can ruin you.
And all the jobs you have created.
May 18, 2025
@MiB; That is why such families need a succession plan, there are ways to protect both personal wealth and the business. If you are in-scope for Reeves IHT policy you are not exactly a Sole Trader!
May 18, 2025
Succession plans cannot eliminate the new problems inheritance tax make for farms (and other SME family companies.
Some mitigation might be possible but not much more.
If you know how to do this you will be the most popular financial advisor in the UK Jerry
May 19, 2025
Interested in your continued reference to succession plans there Jerry.
Can you explain how family businesses and family farms avoid huge inheritance tax bills by using your idea.
Very keen to hear how your plans work.
May 25, 2025
inheritance-tax.co.uk 01/11/2024 ‘How to avoid inheritance tax on family businesses and farms under the 2024 IHT rules’.
I guess someone here should first apologise to jerry and then crawl back under his rock, as he is certainly not aware on what trusts can do in terms of IHT mitigation/avoidance.
May 17, 2025
Sir John, at the risk of being tedious I will ask how we can hope to counter these pro-EU myths without a proper cross-party non-party campaign to instantly rebut them when they surface in the media. We can hardly expect this government to do that, given that the previous Tory government never did it I n this case that means contradicting the NFU in particular, ideally there should never be a mass media report of a statement from the NFU which did not include an accurate critique of that statement. I think it is a pity that farmers have to resort to lies to have any chance of making a decent living and we should design an agricultural policy that avoids that.
Reply Some of us counter the lies all the time. See my recent tweets. David Frost is good today in the Telegraph. People like you can help by contacting the media.
May 17, 2025
@Denis Cooper; A start might be for Brexiteers to stop creating counter myths? It is impossible to defeat one myth with another, only by facts, even if they do sit uncomfortable with Brexit. It is not a Black or White argument.
May 17, 2025
Yes they have a backroom team dedicated to the destruction of the British economy – grow up. We were in the EU with eyes wide open so no point in blaming the EU – if was our stupid Tory negotiation stance that did for us we went too far too fast – withdrawl could have been done at a more measured better managed pace – we need not have diverted so far until we got alternatives in place.
May 17, 2025
But we never left the EU and the Windsor Agreement means we never will. A complete sell out by the uniparty and they wonder why Reform are doing so well.
May 17, 2025
We have left the EU as far as the rules go but because of our geo-location we will never be able to pull away completely – consider we have no suitable merchant shipping left anymore – it was all based on the back of the empire but now sold out in the 70’s 80’s all gone and so now we have to reinvent ourselves – the EU is there it cannot be ignored and there are no sunlit uplands either we have to get on with it – government has to get on with it – whatever
May 17, 2025
We followed Farage out of the EU with no plan for what we would do next and now you hint that we folliw him again even though he has no policies in place apart from that one about immigration – he has even lost the favour of the trump court. Farage is a populist out for himself but also a loser and is going nowhere he has no experience to manage affairs government or otherwise – none
May 17, 2025
On the contrary we did not go far enough. When the Irish government threatened to veto any trade deal unless the customs border was repositioned to separate Northern Ireland from Great Britain Theresa May should have said “OK, in that case we will leave without any special trade deal” and that would have been a slight cost to us but a much bigger cost to the Irish Republic. On the timescale, she agreed to Labour’s suggestion* of an oxymoronic transition period in which nothing would actually change when arguably it would have been better to have a schedule for the changes to take place gradually over several years. Up to twelve years of transition were allowed when the Common Market was first set up in 1957.
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2018/03/20/uk-energy/#comment-925967
“In her original Lancaster House speech of January 17th 2017 Theresa May spoke about the need for an “implementation period” after we had left the EU, which she described in these terms, my CAPITALS for emphasis:
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-governments-negotiating-objectives-for-exiting-the-eu-pm-speech
“… we believe a PHASED process of implementation, in which both Britain and the EU institutions and member states prepare for the new arrangements that will exist between us will be in our mutual self-interest. This will give businesses enough time to plan and prepare for those new arrangements. … ”
* https://www.skygroup.sky/article/Sunday-with-Niall-Paterson-Interview-with-Barry-Gardiner-Shadow-International-Trade-Secretary
“BARRY GARDINER: I am always keen to communicate our message but I think what we’ve been clear about is that we need a transition period, that that transition period should be for the status quo as it is now in terms of our relationships with the European Union, that that should not change during the transition. We said that and eventually the government have come round to our position on this.”
May 17, 2025
Denis Cooper : As regards the Irish border this should have all been well thought about beforehand but it wasn’t not even by the Unionists and it was just the same with Gibraltar and Cyprus forgotten about until special clauses had to be introduced. The whole thing was badly planned and unprepared for – remember D Davis the great negotiator showing up for the first meeting with the EU with no notebook no pen – nothing
May 18, 2025
As I recall David Cameron ordered that there should be no planning for a Leave vote.
Yes, here it is, in this google search, along with a lot of other interesting references:
https://tinyurl.com/2z4ckf5t
This is particularly interesting:
https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/publications/contingency-planning-1975-and-2016-referendums/
“In 2016, David Cameron proposed a national vote on the UK’s membership of the EU. Although ‘leave’ was one of the options on the ballot paper, the government developed no contingency plans for Brexit. Forty-one years earlier, the British voters faced a similar proposition. They were asked whether their country should stay in what was then called the European Community (EC). For over a year before the vote, and despite the fact that opinion polls consistently showed ‘yes’ in the lead, the government engaged in an extensive contingency planning exercise.”
We are now only 14 days off the 50th anniversary of the 1975 referendum, held on June 5.
May 17, 2025
@herebefore; Not so much “our stupid Tory negotiation stance” over the last 10 years, our problems started back in the 1980s, quite frankly a Brexit referendum should have been held back in 1989, the then Tory govt having clearly decided they no longer wanted to be party to the collective decision making within the EEC/EU that they and the country had signed up to in 1972. Nothing had changed as far as the EEC/EU were concerned, as set out within the 1957 Treaty of Rome.
Apologies for the date soup!
May 17, 2025
You are against referendums Jerry
Did you forget?
May 18, 2025
@Sam; Stop lying. I support the use of referendums, when necessary, hence why prior to the 2019 general election, when Parliament was blocking any Brexit, I was suggesting the question be sent back to the people, we be asked HOW we should leave, there being only leave options on the referendum ballot paper (and no minimum turn-out).
I got a lot of push back on that from UKIPers, they simply could not understand the anti Brexiteers would get their second referendum but there be a “Hobsons choice”, Brexit or Brexit.
May 18, 2025
Lying…rather poor choice of word Jerry
Do you actually talk like this to people’s faces?
My memory may be mistaken but no more.
Not happy at all.
Mind your manners.
May 17, 2025
Sir John,
We should not try to compete on everyday foods and drinks which the EU can produce itself within it’s own borders. We need to keep more of our home produced foods for ourselves and expand our own capacity to grow more for our ever increasing population.
We do produce some premium produce, especially in the artisan cheese and wine sector. We also produce many world class beers, ciders and perries. Quality always sells and also helps our balance of payments.
Of course, we need cheap energy to produce many of these quality added value products and there’s our biggest problem.
May 17, 2025
Simples, the EU is a trade protectionist racket. A retirement home for lazy politicians who leave it in the hands of undemocratic civil servants. Were our farming industry unencumbered with high taxes, regulation, and astronomic energy costs it could provide more of our temperate food needs. Do not expect realisation from a government, none of whom have run a whelk stall.
May 17, 2025
+1
May 18, 2025
@agricola +1
May 17, 2025
The subject of tariffs is topical. Guatemala is a central American country populated by indigenous Maya people, who suffered a savage civil war 1960 – 1996. During the war, which had many characteristics of a genocide, hundreds of thousands of Maya men were “disappeared” or lost their lives fighting, leaving many widows and fatherless children
Rural Maya women have organised themselves into a co-operative (tramatextiles.com) weaving blankets, rugs etc using traditional designs, locally produced dyes, cotton etc. These are exported to provide work and earn income. The Trama Textiles co-operative use any profits to run village schools.
Mrs Gold recently bought one of their excellent hand-woven double blankets online. It was made to order by a Maya artisan lady, using the traditional Jaspe technique. The blanket is beautiful, well made and with a classic Maya design
At the border the UK government applied a 32% tariff on her blanket, which had to be paid to HMRC before it could be delivered.
May 17, 2025
@SG. “That sucks”, as the Americans would say. We hardly produce any textiles any more, so that’s just a government protection racket.
Yesterday I bought a chainsaw, and had to pay 20%VAT on it. That sucks, too. I loathe paying 20% to HMRC practically any time I buy something that can’t be eaten. No-one’s invented a chocolate chainsaw that can cut down trees. More’s the pity.
May 17, 2025
Scallion is one of our ‘friends and partners’ with whom we have been at war repeatedly, who ‘wishes us well tell Mrs Gold from me that the best blankets are woven in Wales and Scotland. Tariff scree so far….
May 17, 2025
Somewhat off topic, yesterday saw the publication of two articles which could usefully be read together.
The first is by a Green MP who blithely ignores the possibility that his kind are far more responsible for our economic stagnation since 2008 than those who were on the Leave side in the EU referendum eight years later:
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/government-must-stop-brexit-decline-eu-summit-green-party_uk_68275ccee4b01633824e8615
“Government Must Seize Unprecedented Chance To Halt Economic Decline Triggered By Brexit, MP Warns”
He relies on a dodgy calculation that we are poorer by £9 billion a year since we left the EU, but he does not put that in perspective as less than 0.4% of GDP, while since 2008 our trend rate of growth has dropped from 2.7% a year to 1,1% a year, probably thanks to the ‘net zero’ policy, a reduction of 1.6% of GDP.
While the second article is from the eurofanatic Centre for European Reform:
https://www.cer.eu/insights/europe-labour-should-reconsider-its-red-chains
correctly arguing that the kinds of proposals being mooted for Starmer’s ‘reset’ would be of insignificant benefit to the UK economy while persisting with its erroneous claim that Brexit has cost us at least 4% of GDP.
Many commentators recognise that our economic problems date back to 2008 but they seem to have a blind spot when it comes to the likely effect of prioritising the health of the planet over the health of the economy.
May 17, 2025
“prioritising the health of the planet over the health of the economy.”
No they are hugely damaging the economy AND making the health of the planet far worse and spending a fortune in doing this. With these mad wars on CO2 plant, tree and crop food!
May 17, 2025
Lord Frost today – Labour has spent 10 years trying to sabotage Brexit. Now it is finally getting its way
Boris Johnson and I fought tooth and nail to liberate the UK from EU control – now Starmer threatens to undo all our hard work
But who gave Starmer his huge majority but 14 years of con-socialist tax to death net zero incompetence, electoral manifesto fraud and lies from Cameron, May, Boris, Sunak!
May 17, 2025
There is no doubt that the Labour govt are trying surreptitiously to take us de facto back into the single market, but of course with no say on any applicable laws and regs. The EU ‘reset’ will most likely kill off any real trade deals beyond headlines, as it will commit the U.K. to EU rule-taking. Some of us did point out that if people did not vote Conservative where there was a candidate with a chance of winning, this is what would happen. If the centre right again forms a circular firing squad at the next election, Starmer or rayner of whoever it is will squeak through again with c. 25-30% of the vote on a 50%+ turnout.
Then it will be game over.
May 17, 2025
Couldn’t agree with you more. But our leaders and bureaucrats don’t see it luke that.
They believe in the EU and cannot see any flaws in the project. They believe in globalisation and have no time for bation states.
This is ideology not analytical negotiation.
May 17, 2025
Indeed
May 17, 2025
Indeed.
So Miguel Veiga-Pestana says that by burning wood instead of coal Drax power station’s carbon emissions fell by 99 per cent (letter, May 4) in the Sunday Times.
What planet are these sustainability officers on. Burning wood from chopped down forests imported on diesel ships, then dried and burned (essentially young coal) is far worse than burning coal per KWH and chopping down forests far worse than mining coal. They are however right in that like coal, gas or diesel it can be useful to balance the grid when you have too many renewables – but gas and coal would be far better.
Daft and deluded or just lying I wonder?
Etc ed
May 17, 2025
Daft, deluded …. or have a vested personal interest, usually of a long-term financial nature? It’s the final one of those three which incentivises a great many “Eco Lunatics” in the Establishment. A long-term financial nature doesn’t just mean immediate returns on investments; it can mean the long-term career opportunities jumping on the Eco bandwagon provides … as Alok Sharma could explain.
May 17, 2025
+1
“it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair.
May 17, 2025
Drax operates at 36% efficiency. A modern coal-fired generator can reach up to 50% and a combined cycle gas turbine up to 60%.
Better to burn the wood in a domestic stove where efficiency matters less.
May 17, 2025
36% but even this low efficiently is further reduced by all the energy using in harvesting the wood, chopping it, drying it, stopping in self-igniting, shipping and trucking, replanting…
May 19, 2025
Modern eco-ready woodstoves are in the region of 85% efficient, rising to 93% for any with tertiary combustion.
May 17, 2025
Drax is the UK’s biggest supplier of electricity. If it had closed, the lights would have been flickering years ago. Thanks to imaginative management and Whitehall realism, a ludicrous loophole has allowed two thirds of it to keep operating as “renewable” energy. It will remain the biggest supplier to the grid until Hinkley Point C is in full rated production, should that ever happen.
May 17, 2025
Sir John, if you don’t already have a positive working relationship with Richard Tice, I do hope you’ll be doing your best to develop one 🙂
https://order-order.com/2025/05/16/richard-tice-eyeing-up-chancellor-post-in-reform-government/
May 17, 2025
@Donna; With respect, if we must have a Reform Government, I would much prefer Mr Tice to be Prime Minister, hopefully with Mr Farage as Leader of the HoLs…
May 17, 2025
Sensible people support and feed themselves with their own resources. Selling the food we produce and need ourselves, then paying other countries to charge us for much more to fill the gap generates increasingly awkward waste.
A man who reaches a plentiful oasis in the desert doesn’t travel overseas to carry back a crate of bottled water just to rinse his socks.
May 17, 2025
“their wish to keep out cheaper non EU food from competing” as with everything else it is the only ploy in play. The EU is simply a ring fenced protectionist cartel seeking isolation from the World, a World moving forward and a World enriching itself.
May 17, 2025
It is beyond parody to imagine the EU and its enforcement agencies are safer food police than our own.
We have been seen and rightly as a country with real controls over food hygiene long before the EU was a thing.
Let us not forget the common practice on continental Europe of including horse meat in dishes purporting to be beef. To clear the decks of too much horse meat in the EU it was even found in tinned fish!
The idea we in the UK have to conform to some EU defined safe food agreement is laughable.
No doubt Starmer will sign up to anything to get ever closer control from the EU. One thing is clear Starmer will hand authority over to the EU because he has no capacity to provide it himself….
May 17, 2025
There are a lot of items in our fridge which are stamped “NOT FOR EU” in case somebody is tempted to take them across the land border into the Irish Republic, part of the EU’s sacred Single Market. As they are not good enough for people in the EU to consume, apparently, does that mean I am at risk from those Tesco Scotch Eggs, or those Laughing Cow cheese triangles? I think we should be told: is the UK government happy for us to eat food which is substandard, not safe enough or otherwise good enough for EU consumers, or do they know that it is nothing more than protectionist nonsense on the part of the EU? If the latter, they should tell it as it is.
May 17, 2025
This reset is just a means to set up Commissioner type jobs in the EU when Labour are eventually kicked out.
May 17, 2025
WE all know very well that there is no advantage to the UK being locked into EU rules, but especially with food.
By ‘we’ that means Brexiteers who have at least a basic grasp of EU economics.
When Truss attempted to invoke some very valid policies including tax cuts, the establishment came down on her like huge Meteorite, wiping her out in a few brief days —- to allegedly protect the UK economy – Ha!
So where is that same establishment now, why haven’t they done something about this destructive government? Why are they not putting a stop to Starmer forcing us back into the EU by the back door?
Could it be that the establishment is aligned with Starmer and they both want to see the UK dictated to, impoverished and ruined as a once great country?
As well as getting us under the EU yoke, our great internationalist PM will no doubt continue to sign away our rights when the Pandemic treaty is put before him. Why is parliament not involved directly in these decisions!
May 17, 2025
commonslibrary.parliament.uk 16/07/2024 ‘Low growth: the economy’s biggest challenge’.
– GDP growth moved from 3%/year averaged over the period 1993-2007 to 1.5%/year over 2009-2023.
– Labour productivity growth was 1.9%/year between 1983-2008, and 0.4% over 2008-2023.
Possible causes:
* low investment, for 30 years the UK has been at the bottom of the G7 countries for investment.
* policy uncertainty, frequent changes to policy makes it more difficult for businesses to confidently plan and invest for the long-term. Brexit is one element of this.
– lower business dynamism, see ons.gov.uk 03/12/2024 ‘Trends in UK business dynamism and productivity, 2024’.
And none of these published in the Maidenhead Observer …
May 17, 2025
In regard to investment, UK government policy is to tax away the money businesses might have to invest in their business, then look to foreign investment to make up the shortfall. Then those foreign companies avail themselves of accounting loopholes so they pay very little tax.
May 17, 2025
Dear Hefner,
Overall productivity is a very wide concept, close to value added per head. Two obvious fasctors are:
1) The financial crash caused a big fall in business capital that has not been replaced. This includes businesses shrinking or closing down, including for instance very many small housebilders; banks losing capital and cutting back on business lending, partly for regulatory reasons; more than a dozen years of emergency low interest rates, driving people to put their money into assets, principally housing, rather than savings accounts.
2) Accelerating decline in process and manufacturing industries, which tend to have higher value added. Growth has increasingly relied on services that, with notable exceptions, add less value per head.
Brexit no doubt caused some dislocation for more than two years thanks to recalcitrant Conservative MPs, but probably a lot less than Covid, energy prices and shifting net-zero regulations.
May 17, 2025
As I said above, “Many commentators recognise that our economic problems date back to 2008 … ” including the Banl of England, the NIESR, various academics at the LSE, the IFS, Global Britain and the Resolution Foundation. I have looked at the ONS GDP data back to 1948 to obtain my trend growth rate of 2.7% a year prior to 2008, which has been cut to 1.1% a year since then. On that basis I calculated that GDP is now 22% smaller than it would have been if the previous trend growth rate of 2.7% a year had continued, and as it happens the Resolution Foundation came up with the same number, but for one year earlier, page 40 here:
https://economy2030.resolutionfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Ending-stagnation-final-report.pdf
“Looking back over the past 15 years reveals that Britain’s economy in 2023 is 22 per cent smaller than it would have been had we continued on our pre-financial crisis trend.”
So unless we invoke time travel we know that Brexit has not been the main cause for our problems. But as I also said above the economic commentators “seem to have a blind spot when it comes to the likely effect of prioritising the health of the planet over the health of the economy”, perhaps because the kind of person who favours the EU is likely to also favour urgent action to address the so-called “climate crisis”.
Maybe it will all come right in the end, when we have completed the transition to ‘net zero’, or maybe not.
May 17, 2025
DC, I don’t dispute your diagnostic, I simply think that the way you link the drop in GDP growth (not today but in previous posts) to net zero is unlikely to be correct. A simple look at EU countries, which also develop renewables on more or less the same timescale as the UK, do not show such a drop.
– mdpi.com ‘Does the increase in renewable energy influence GDP growth? An EU-28 analysis’, Energies 2021, https://doi.org/10.3390/en14164762 , D.N.Sahlian et al.
– nature.com 17/01/2025 ‘Harnessing technological innovation and renewable energy and their impact on environmental pollution in G-20 countries’, Sci.Rep.15, 2236, https//doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-85182-0 , S.Han et al.
– business.com 07/05/2025 ‘Renewable resources: The impact of green energy on the economy’.
Reply Euro area has slower growth than UK
May 18, 2025
Thanks for the references, which I will check out later.
Meanwhile I would point you back to these comments in February:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2025/02/26/dear-energy-sinks-the-uk-economy/#comment-1501159
“… the CCC Secretariat were confident that decarbonisation did not mean deindustrialisation, let alone economic debilitation or degrowth or destitution … But a 60% increase in GDP between 1990 and 2016 works out at only 1.8% a year, while the average from 1948 to 2008, the year of the Climate Change Act, was 2.7% a year, since when it has been only 1.1% a year.”
“1948 – 1990 2.9
1990 – 2008 2.4
2008 – 2016 1.1
2016 – 2024 1.1
Of course that doesn’t prove that the Climate Change Act has cut our growth rate, it could still be the long term consequence of the global financial crisis which was unfolding at the same time as the Act was being passed.”
However the US seems to have recovered from that crisis while the EU has not …
May 18, 2025
Having looked at those articles I suppose that the emergence of a new source of cheap energy is indeed likely to enhance economic growth, but conversely the removal of existing sources of energy is likely to have the opposite effect, and discouraging any processes that involve the emission of carbon dioxide is also likely to have a negative effect on economic growth. So maybe it will all come right in the end, with the dream of abundant cheap renewable energy fuelling economic growth coming true, with almost all processes that now produce greenhouse gasses replaced by new processes, and with the government able to meet all the financial commitments it made on the assumption of increasing tax revenues, but so far the policy as it is being implemented – too fast, basically – seems to be a drag on the UK economy.
May 17, 2025
Sell food to the EU, that’s a bit like trying to sell sand to the Middle-East! Nor do we do buy from the EU27 because they expect us to, we buy because they are ‘local’ that ensures freshness.
“Years in the CAP with small milk quotas, beef bans and grants to remove orchards led to substantial reductions in UK farms home market share.”
Indeed, but are they not the arguments used back in 1975 (never mind 1972)? Yet we were told then, being a part of the EEC would be good for trade. Clearly some thought the CAP good, just the details needed tweaking, yet we remained in the EEC despite never finding those tweaks, people who suggested an alternative to the EEC/EU were pilloried. I well remember seeing local orchards and local greenhouses being grubbed-up or demolished in the mid 1980s, both Market Garden and Horticulture.
“We cannot now produce nearly enough temperate food to meet our own needs.”
Well we could. Immediately post WA Brexit, why did we not scrap the eco nonsense of set aside & re-wilding etc, then use the Brexit dividend, money no longer going to the EU, to support UK Farmers and Growers to replant their acres. Not an immediate solution though.
“The main reason the EU wants more controls over UK farming is their wish to keep out cheaper non EU food … They also want to block innovation in the UK that could lead the UK to cheaper and better food at home.”
Not just the EU, the green-blob & British farmers too, hence all the hyperbole about GM crops, US chicken and beef etc.
May 18, 2025
Quite simply all successive Governments ignore the obvious need for home produced food, temperate, diary, fish….
May 17, 2025
Why does Sadiq Kahn write such rubbish?
https://www.lbc.co.uk/opinion/views/uk-eu-youth-mobility-scheme-essential-reverse-brexit-damage-economy/
“UK-EU youth mobility scheme is essential to reverse Brexit damage and rocket launch the economy”
Because he knows he can get away with it, and some people will be fooled.
May 17, 2025
@Denis Cooper; Why do some write to the Maidenhead Observer?
Because he knows he can get away with it, and some people will be fooled.
Could it be Sadiq Kahn knows his local voters and what they want/need better than someone living 10 miles west of the M25. What is right for Maidenhead is not necessarily what is right for Hounslow, Milwall or the City of London. How did London vote back in 2016.
May 17, 2025
Please do not compare my carefully researched and factually accurate missives to his deceitful rubbish.
May 17, 2025
People will make what ever comparisons and conclusions they like Denis; authors always think their own scribes are the bees-knees, that is why most authors welcome independent (critical) review or comment…
Have you ever considered that both you and Kahn might be misguided, after all you both appear to be tarred with the same brush of extreme dogmatic opinion!
May 17, 2025
Oh Jerry
Just calm down
Allow others their own opinions.
May 17, 2025
Talk about clutching at straws………….
By accident or by fluke, the economy grows by an unexpected .1% and the chancellor is ‘over the moon that her policies are working’.
What a load of nonsense!
Unfortunately her policies are working and it won’t be us seeing the economy growing, her insane policies will cause the UK to self-destruct!
May 17, 2025
@BH; “Talk about clutching at straws”
Indeed you are trying to make hay….
Previous governments have also crowed about similar insignificant economic growth, Geese & Ganders and all that. Talk about sour grapes, to get back on topic!
May 17, 2025
You OK Jerry?
You seem to be getting more agitated with every post.
May 18, 2025
@Martin in Bristol +1
May 17, 2025
On a single-country basis France is our biggest food export market (mostly for meat and fish). I am surprised we are not exporting more across the other 25 EU member states though – especially Germany.
Have the DBT (DTI) been vigorously promoting what France likes to the other EU member states such as Germany, Austria and the Netherlands etc? Have they vigorously promoted our uniquely British products like Scottish smoked salmon, Arbroath smokies, Jersey Royals, Welsh leeks etc… Have they vigorously promoted British processed product like cheeses, pork pies, pasties, sauces, jams, gin, cider etc? I suspect if we focus on comparative advantage and British uniqueness we could find much more EU demand than just predominantly France. As ever doing this has nothing to do with silly things like freedom of movement or regulatory control.
May 17, 2025
@Paul Freedman; “As ever doing this has nothing to do with silly things like freedom of movement or regulatory control.”
It does if some $£%k of a politico or eurocrat wishes to link UK food exports into the EU with non food issues, or even non trade issues, such as freedom of movement. It’s a buyers market for them, there is not much that the EU27 (and EEA/EFTA) can not provide for themselves, or can not be sources via more cooperative bilateral trade agreements – some of the best Smoked Salmon also comes from Canada by the way.
May 17, 2025
Jerry, you have misinterpreted what I said. I am saying exports as a practice SHOULD have nothing to do with FOM, regulatory control, loss of sovereignty etc. Of course the EU will always try to expand its global control but we should not accept any of it. A trade deal is just about trade and investment only. If that is unacceptable to the EU then it’s NO DEAL! Also, only Britain can export its PDO’s and PGI’s so we should focus on that as exports as the EU cannot do it. Naturally we need to focus on comparative advantage as well wherever it exists for all British products. By the way the best smoked salmon in the world is Scottish. Go to Waitrose and buy John Ross or H Forman & Son.
May 17, 2025
@Paul Freedman; Well yes, but even Boris Johnson refused to walk away on effective WTO terms, and I’m not entirely sure UKIP/Reform want to either. Taste is personal, and you assume I have never tasted best Scottish smoked salmon.
May 17, 2025
You are flogging a dead horse. As far as 2TK is concerned, what he did in trying to overturn the Brexit result is all you need to know. The PM is blind, deaf and dumb to any problem with the EU, and determined to tie us to it forever. However, the Conservative Government’s failed Brexit is the real issue. If the previous government had done the job properly, 2TK would not be able to tie us to the failing EU.
Once again, we have a PM and government acting against the interests of the UK and its people. With a war in Europe, our armed forces, energy and food security should be absolute priorities! But the crunch is coming and will sweep Labour away. It is simply a question of how much damage they do first!!
Oh, for a PM who puts the UK first and stands up to the EU and any other nation that tries to disadvantage us.
Is Nigel Farage that man?
May 17, 2025
In theory, shouldn’t we have a lot of fish we could sell to the EU?
The Civil Service’s reasons for importing more food from the EU include further impoverishment, the destruction of UK farming to replace with re-wilding and solar factories and making us more dependent upon the EU whilst increasing the cost of food to reduce consumption and hence our CO2 emissions.
May 17, 2025
Don’t think the EU cares two hoots about Britsh food – they have plenty plenty Plenty.
UK who who Who
May 17, 2025
So now we know that the three Iranian spies/terrorists arrived here as asylum seekers.
Is any more proof needed that we should be processing every person who arrives here illegally at some form of uncomfortable offshore processing centre? It should take at least six months and very few should ultimately be admittted, and those need to be only ones whose identity and background we have been able to establish.
May 17, 2025
@Chris S; Always easy to be critical after the event, 20/20 hindsight and all that.
Those three Iranians could have been processed in a third country, be cleared as valid asylum seekers, but then still turn out to be spies/terrorists at a later date. If someone was to enter the UK on a tourist visa, as visitor or returnee (the latter having been radicalized abroad), and then later turn out to be a danger, should we detain all tourists in a third country until we understand their ‘true’ motives for (re)entering the UK, is that not the road to a closed and sealed country?
May 18, 2025
An awful lot of people were critical BEFORE the event, not least the man leading Reform (who you’d rather not have as PM).
He’s already made it perfectly clear, not least in the House of Commons during the last PMQs, that the invasion of criminal migrants across the channel (which I think is Government approved), should be regarded as a National Security Emergency.
Two-Tier is making a hostage to fortune by Ignoring that statement/warning. It’s only a matter of time …..
May 18, 2025
Gosh Jerry..almost every other post is from you.
You ought to start your own blog site..maybe call it…Jerry Says and no alternative opinions accepted.
May 18, 2025
@MiB; It’s called debate, something you, and Sam, appear to dislike, both of you preferring unchallenged assertions. As for comment count, perhaps, @lifelogic must be on holiday! Whatever.
May 18, 2025
Your idea of debate is far away from the discussions on here.
Calling people liars for example.
Shouting “nonsense” and “oh for pity’s sake” and other provocative phrases isn’t debating.
You need to calm down Jerry.