(extracts from my Foreword to 75 Brexit Benefits)
Freedom is a huge win
People voted to restore our freedoms and our right to self government. We are free of the large and fast growing bills imposed on member states. We can negotiate our own trade deals. We can amend bad laws, repeal bad taxes and get closer to non EU allies and friends.
Brexit brought the most precious prize of all, the prize of freedom.
Our global seafaring reach was damaged by our membership of the EU. Our freedom loving instincts were suppressed by the need to accept laws and budgets we did not like, imposed on us from Brussels. Our democracy buckled as law after law passed by the EU behind closed doors had to be adopted by our once sovereign Parliament even where we did not want it or where it would do us harm.
I voted to leave the European Community in 1975 in one of the first votes I cast as an adult. We were told should vote to stay in a common market which would not harm our sovereignty. I read the Treaty of Rome which made clear this was a project to create an ever closer union, with ever more governing power passing from the member states. I didn’t like being lied to by the establishment.
We need to do better than the slow lane Single market
After losing the vote as a good democrat I vowed to try to help create this common or free market most voters wanted. Appointed Single Market Minister in 1989 I was told to work to “complete” the single market by 1992. I saw from the inside what a dangerous con it was. Far from being the free liberated market that would promote greater prosperity which people wanted, I saw it was a big power grab by the EU institutions. Law after law claimed power to legislate and regulate everything from employment to trade ,from farming to industry, from health and safety to taxes and subsidies. A so called market was a government in the making. No free market, this was a customs union with tariffs and other barriers to keep goods and services out from non EU sources to the cost of UK consumers. It stifled innovation, was often harsh on small business and the self employed. It buttressed the position of some established large European companies, embedding in law their way of doing things.
One of the myths this book busts is the idea that the single market was crucial to economic success. Our growth slowed after joining the EEC and slowed some more after 1992 and the single market. The UK went into permanent large trade deficit with the rest of the EU as rules, tariffs and taxes hit us but often helped France and Germany who had more influence over designing them.We had to pay a large annual membership fee and had play Treasure island for their exporters.
We can grow faster and be more prosperous outside the EU
Much of the debate about Brexit outcomes so far has been dominated by the claim that Brexit has cost us 4% of GDP loss because it has hit our exports and damaged our productivity . This is all based on a forecast made before the vote, and related to the longer term . The forecast said there would be a small shortfall in annual growth of around 0.25% a year compared to staying in, adding up to 4% less growth over 15 years. This would come from fewer exports. This was wrong. Since we left our exports have performed much better than predicted and contrary to the model used for this forecast. There has been further good growth of exports with non EU, especially in services.
The forecast of slightly less growth has often been misrepresented as a one off 4% reduction in our GDP which it was not.
The EU reset will make us poorer by tying us in to slow growth Europe with its high taxes, dear energy and excess of bad rules. .
Sent from Outlook for iOS
October 1, 2025
You must have listened to 2TK s speech yesterday and his erstwhile chancellor. We are all now racist because we show yhe flag
At the end of the speech all were waving the flag and many looked like they were chewing wasps.
The chancellor believes letting 50 000 unemployed Europeans in to take jobs and access our welfare system will increase growth.
Everything they said was destructive and spiteful.
Farage being the most popular person not attending the conference.
Liebour believe it was a mistake to leave the EU and have set in motion the gradual return under the Brussels cosh. They see the EU as a Marxist organisation in their own mold
They have to go
October 1, 2025
@Ian wragg – spiteful racist who want to ‘impose’ a religious/political ideology on a whole nation because they ‘hate’ that nation. The Palestinian flag can be flown and is flown by these left-wing ideologues, long before the flags of our Nation. To show support of your Nation is to declare that you are a racist and fascist, not simply some one that is proud of their country, says the party that wants and sings about keeping the ‘red flag’ flying.
October 1, 2025
What does Sir Kier mean by “virtually in nappies” surely you either are or you are not in nappies!
October 1, 2025
Plus so much of the government spending is spent doing net harm – Chagos, Net Zero, HS2, net harm red tape, OTT planning restrictions and building controls, the net harm Covid Vaccines and lockdowns… see the latest appalling post vaccines cancer increases averaging 27% up in a huge South Korean study! Dr John Campbell videos has the data and links.
October 1, 2025
Starmer has already back-pedalled on his and his choir’s performative smearing.
But he cannot undo this, cannot take it back, along with all the other dis-uniting, spiteful and malicious acts over the last 14 months.
Also, these disgusting performances occured outside the protective walls of parliament – I wonder whether the police will be forced to treat ( any if this ed)as incitement to violence or hate speech. Or possibly (a Minister ed)could be sued for slander. (Anyone guilty ed) should be banged up for at least as long as Lucy Conolly.
No one should be above the law and the law should be applied equially withou fear or favour. It would be a thoroughly deserved experience for the Starmer gang and a salutary lesson for the lefties who appear to have teflon clothing as far as our laws are concerned.
I am not holding my breath.
October 1, 2025
@dixie – like a court room lawyer they sowed the soundbite and thier believers will be happy. It doesn’t have to be true, once it’s out there saying it wasn’t meant straight afterwards is seen as a way to excuse them. The worst type of manipulator, degrades society
October 2, 2025
standard tactics – their words were scripted, by a 12 year old apparently
October 1, 2025
They were only waving flags as they thought they where at the ‘last night at the proms’
And all flags where returned to storage before they left the building
October 1, 2025
Starmer is a desperate man. Polling terribly and under pressure from rivals looking to take over from him.
He decided patriotism was a winning theme and decided to redefine it to suit his agenda.
It may have been politely received at conference but I am not sure it will play well elsewhere. The memory of Emily Thornberry/ Lady Nugee still looms large.
It’s not over until the fat lady sings ‘Rule Britannia’ or ‘Jerusalem’.
October 1, 2025
They lack loyalty to their own countries.Starmer is anti British which makes him racist.He hopes to gain support from those of different colours and religion for his own position.
If people who illegally come here say they are loyal to their own ,then why are they abandoning their country.So many all over the world have left acres and acres of livable land which could be built up to thriving cities.The numbers are so overwhelming ,they could easily overthrow despots.
October 1, 2025
For years and years we have had to turn a blind eye to wrongs created by other ethnicities in the knowledge that they will claim racism,whilst Brits have been trodden on.Starmer is joining these and making matters worse.He is absolutely not fit to take the UK forward.This country is full and illegal entrants are criminals.
October 1, 2025
Many are pleased that the Chancellor Rachel Reeves has followed Sir John’s advice posted recently here to do something constructive to reduce the dreadful levels of child poverty in our country.
Scrapping the 2-child benefit cap – maybe in favour of a more tapered system – was demanded by many on the left of the Labour party.
To which I would add that it is an extremely inefficient system which forces those in work, but claiming Universal Credit, to give any increase in the minimum wage to rapacious private landlords. They get any increase by using the no-fault eviction laws to cycle tenants in and out of properties, making more rent each time
Labour have also failed to force landlords to upgrade the insulation levels of their properties, forcing many tenants with children into fuel poverty. That would do more to achieve the government’s Net Zero targets than the heat pump’s campaign, which are expensive to install and run
October 1, 2025
Benefits are already generous Mr SG. Any more aid to welfare recipients should be from charity, not taxpayers. All the while the tax threshold is frozen so should the benefits awards, no inflationary increase after all we are all in this together.
No one who does not have a British passport (or the right to one) should have access to our benefits system. If you can’t afford to be here, don’t come.
It’s too easy to be nice with someone else’s money.
October 1, 2025
An NHS survey found:
One in seven children (15%) aged between two and 15 were obese. Obesity rates were 12% among those aged between two and 10, and 19% in those aged between 11 and 15.
The latest Health Survey for England shows 64% of adults were overweight or obese, including three in 10 (29%) who were obese, with more men (67%) classified as overweight or obese than women (61%).
64% of adults were overweight or obese, including 28% who were obese.
Obesity prevalence was highest among adults and children living in the most deprived areas.
The NHS in England typically spends £6.5 billion a year on treating obesity-related ill health.
We don’t have a poverty crisis; we have a health crisis. The last thing we need is to throw more money at people to continue their feckless lifestyle.
October 1, 2025
Yry telling people not to eat their staple diet!
October 1, 2025
There is virtually no return in renting out residential properties already you cannot even deduct your cost of now hugely increases interest fully, plus endless other red tape and licensing. So landlords are selling up and supply is decreasing. The government, as usual, is the cause of the problem. For lower rents you need more flats to rent or fewer would be renters! By rapacious I assume you mean they want to charge market rents/prices like nearly all businesses do if they want to survive!
October 1, 2025
+1
October 1, 2025
How many are pleased? Exactly? and where do you get the data.
I am not pleased with scrapping the 2-child benefit cap. Why should I deprive my children of funds because I am taxed more to support those people choosing to have more children than they can afford.
BTW it is not just some landlords who are rapacious, if someone receives adult soical support for some reason local authorities will claw back any increase in ESA/UC. HMRC is also pretty repacious demanding advance payment of tax on future earnings and fining you if you are late paying that guesstimate of potential earnings.
But you must of heard the saying about teaching a man to fish rather than just feeding him – I suggest the answer to child poverty is by encouraging if not providing opportunities to find employment and parents taking full and proper responsibility for their circumstances and children’s upbringing.
October 1, 2025
SG :
What legislation do you propose “to force landlords to upgrade the insulation levels of their properties”? Standards? Time Scales? Any cost limits? Penalties for non-compliance? Where do the tenants live whilst the works are carried out? In 2009 the Department for Communities and Local Government spent £17m on a pilot project to retrofit 100 social houses. Based upon this pilot it was estimated that the total cost to the nation would be £2 trillion. Professor Michael Kelly was the Chief Scientific Adviser to the Department at the time and he has written a report for the GWPF titled “DECARBONISING HOUSING The net zero fantasy”. Heat pumps will be the preferred option anyway as the real goal of the false CAGW science that increasing CO2 drives global temperature is electrification for control and individual heat pumps can be switched on and off remotely.
October 2, 2025
Correct, my BtL is in “the sticks” and has no gas service. I removed the very old electric storage heaters and installed modern programmable electric radiators so that my tenants could programme them to come on when they wanted it … and they wouldn’t be heating the storage heaters every night only to find that the next day was mild and it wasn’t needed. I also upgraded the insulation.
That’s not good enough for the Eco Authoritarians in Government. They want CONTROL, not efficiency.
October 1, 2025
Whilst I am strongly in favour of renewable energy and the green economy, I have always been pragmatic and I recognise that fossil fuels will continue to play an important part of the energy mix. Shell have just brought their Victory gas field on stream (~50km north-west of the Shetland Islands) While the production levels will represent a drop in the ocean, Victory will help to maintain domestically produced gas for Britain’s homes, businesses and power generation.
Victory will help to reduce the UK’s reliance on imports from overseas at a time when older gas fields are reaching the end of their production
October 1, 2025
Well there is no such thing as “renewable” energy – just longer lasting energy! It also costs a fortune and uses loads of fossil fuel just to build the gear needed collect it, back it up and distribute it. When the so called green economy can compete without subsidies taken from the real economy (which is killing much of it) then that is fine by me. But until then! Currently under 10% of UK energy comes from so called “renewables” despite huge subsidies for them!
October 1, 2025
SG. Fossil fuels will be required for another 100 years. There is plenty of oil and gas within our territory but the Uniparty have banned exploration. It is said from a Spanish research that foe every green jobs there us a loss of 6 highly skilled and well paid jobs. The green jobs are mainly in compliance so no value added.
We could be self sufficient in Fossil fuels if ur wasn’t foe the madcap Climate Change Act and its brainless leader Milliplank.
October 1, 2025
Frack Baby Frack!
October 1, 2025
Pragmatic is not being in favour of huge subsidies and rigged markets for so called “renewables”. Having fair and unrigged markets would be “pragmatic”.
October 1, 2025
So you admit that oil and gas reduce the energy price.
Sadly too late. Kiss your orchids goodbye Mr Cold.
October 1, 2025
I read that at the Labour Party conference the ES&NZ Secretary of State, Ed Miliband, has said he will ban fracking for good. Is this possible? Or is there something held under a super injunction that we’ve not been told that prevents this decision from being overturned by a following administration?
October 1, 2025
No Parliament can bind its successors. Each is Sovereign ie accountable to no higher authority.
October 2, 2025
Yes, the Eco Nutters in the Establishment are being forced to face FACTS …. at last.
October 1, 2025
Sir JR, it’s a pity you’re not in parliament now. Our two-faced PM is slowly wheedling us back into the EU.
(not that we ever fully left)
October 1, 2025
Did we actually leave the EU? Since the Civil Service and judges are able to determine through super injunctions what we are allowed to know and from the policies our Civil Service pursues, I’m not totally convinced that we actually left. We could be paying still paying into the EU budget.
October 1, 2025
When there is an alliance of over 20 countries they can’t all win in intra zone negotiations, so why do UK EU advocates believe that the EU was operating in our favour?
Unlike every other EU member the UK paid for membership and suffered a huge trade loss, where was our benefit? Other members were either subsidised or had their trade protected so there may have been a worthwhile reason to belong.
It is true that to trade with the EU companies need to adhere to their rules but the same is true for trading with the US, Middle East or Asia. Exporters price this in and those who don’t export don’t have to bear the cost.
Treating EU citizens the same as our own the moment they step foot in the country as though they have come from the next borough was never going to work in our stretch welfare state with tax credit subsidised wages. £12 billion of benefits paid monthly to immigrants is not the way to treat taxpayer cash (and yes not all that £12 billion went to EU arrivals but every billion is a price not worth paying).
October 1, 2025
“Brexit brought the most precious prize of all, the prize of freedom.” – the promise of freedoms that were then denied by the Government of the Day and parliament. Are not ‘freedoms’ they are chains
October 1, 2025
SACK THEM! Select your own candidates. Do you think Democratic power is given? It’s TAKEN.
October 1, 2025
@Lynn Atkinson – The big impediment to a Democracy is the ‘Gang Leaders’ they select your candidate, they fund their campaigns.
How do you get the mythical version of democracy “Government, of the people, by the people, for the people” when those you elect to represent you, to then support the country, when the party system we have does the opposite. Candidates have an ideological allegiance to their gang master and no one else.
It’s a mess, the only logical way is that the candidates and all their funding only ever come from within the constituency they wish to represent.
It is not a big stretch to suggest, the party system, the gangs that run them are in most definitions of the term actually ‘election tampering’. The problem it is the ‘gangs’ that make the rules.
October 1, 2025
The Gang Leader never did select our candidates until we GAVE UP that power to them. TAKE IT BACK.
With a Parliament of people selected by THE PEOPLE we stand half a chance.
October 1, 2025
@LA – I would suggest the stole that power. They are now the rule makers
October 1, 2025
The EU has worked very well for Germany, giving them a large internal export market, with the Euro helping to buffer them from what had been a very strong Dmark compared to other european currencies, especially southern ones. Germany also successfully sold cars, machinery, pharma and chemicals around the world, including to the rapidly growing China.
Unfortunately for Germany (and the EU) both their internal and external markets are being increasingly dominated by China these days. So the industial powerhouse of Europe is in big trouble and without Germany’s export wealth, who will fund the EU’s patronage of the very lopsided balance of givers & takers (especially now UK is not coughing up too).
I’d like to say “Well deserved” to the German elite who engineered this privileged advantage but unfortunately our lifeboat hasn’t been rowed far enough away from the EU’s sinking wreck to avoid being damaged when it finally goes down…in fact Starmer seems intent on going back to hear the band play.
October 1, 2025
Neil Kinnock says to rejoin the EU to solve UK’s economic woes.
No, solving the UK’s economic woes has nothing to do with the UK leaving the EU, and all to do with the UK government making a mess of it.
I hope in the next election the UK population will realise it wasn’t a mistake to vote to leave, but it was a big mistake to elect a Labour government.
October 1, 2025
Words wasted on the likes of Starmer and his Gang. He and Hermer are Fabians. They want to replace independent sovereign nation states with a borderless international socialist order – the same aim as the Marxists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who found that in 1914, when the chips are down, what matters more is national loyalty. Nation states are the main impediment to progress so they should be eliminated. Freedom isnotmeven on their radar. Everyone is to be a ‘client of the state’, the phrase used in Blair’s and Brown’s time.
The Telegraph used to run a clock counting down the days from 1 Jan when you start working for ourself.
October 1, 2025
Interesting. This 4% is frequently quoted by the rejoin the EU fanatics and oddly without clarification the MSM.
October 1, 2025
John, the rampant euphilia of politicos and the establishment is a religious fervour – statement of facts or reality have no effect. They grow their ranks by selecting only those who believe in the same gospel and you cannot change their minds or attitudes.
Just like those on both sides of the energy debate.
The best we can hope for ourselves and families is to find ways to avoid and mitigate their cock ups.
October 1, 2025
Words wasted on the likes of Starmer and his Gang. He and Hermer are Fabians. They want to replace independent sovereign nation states with a borderless international socialist order – the same aim as the Marxists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who found that in 1914, when the chips are down, what matters more is national loyalty. Nation states are the main impediment to progress so they should be eliminated. Freedom isnot even on their radar. Everyone is to be a ‘client of the state’, the phrase used in Blair’s and Brown’s time.
The Telegraph used to run a clock counting down the days from 1 Jan when you start working for ourself.
October 1, 2025
TwoTierKier today ‘Sir Keir Starmer has blamed the Channel migrant crisis on Brexit and dubbed migrant dinghies “Farage boats”.
Who is writing what he is reading of the autocue? Whether its him-self or not he is sounding more deranged by the minute.
He could return everyone in an instant – ‘if he wanted to’ . It is the gift the UK Electorate gave our Legislators, they even pay their wages so they can do it.
October 1, 2025
It was official EU policy to harm Britain after the Referendum decision to leave was taken. Angela Merkel even went public and said unequivocally Britain must be made to suffer for this exit from the EU.
That policy has been progressed at every opportunity, economically trade wise and every time the EU legal jurisdiction is called upon to act as arbiter in any dispute.
It will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with EU policy to realise our fish will be claimed as EU fish for eternity starting with the 12 year open access we have allowed them to take up to 2037. It will come as no surprise to know France is happy to help ship endless unwanted migrants across the Channel to the UK even providing the illegal travellers French Naval protection until the unwanted migrants they are pushing out of France, have reached the UK waters and safely adopted by British Border Force vessels or the RNLI.
The EU are not our friends or supporters, as many on the left claim. The EU is actively doing all it can to destroy the UK’s international position and our economic strength.
It is uncertain who will go down first, the UK or the EU? If Starmer has his wish it will be the UK after it has re-joined the EU on his watch.
October 1, 2025
@Rod Evans – as was publicly stated by one if their officials on the signing of the Withdrawal Agreement, the UK is a EU Colony now. And our independent so-called democratic government have fought and keep fighting to keep it that way…
The Windsor accord put the onus on the UK to protect EU Borders. The Tories ensured all EU Laws became UK Laws without review – to lazy to take responsibility to be the UK’s Legislators
October 1, 2025
We could have resisted the harm. We chose not to.
I’m losing patience with what is left of the British people in the U.K.
October 1, 2025
John,
You keep complaining about lack of progress but has not come up with any viable alternatives after a disaster called Brexit
Reply I constantly come up with ideas on how the UK can be more prosperous and successful. Cancel the re set. Reverse the Windsor framework. Restore our fishing grounds and farms. Lower taxes, no carbon taxes and cbam etc
October 1, 2025
OFT
Good to hear the BBC is dropping the ‘Boat Race’ their programmers have said it is to Elitist!
Yet the still want to be considered as part of the make up of the UK and its Society and demand anyone with a device that could, possibly, receive their content pay them a ‘Tax’ just worded as a License by Government.
October 1, 2025
Certainly “The EU reset will make us poorer by tying us in to slow growth Europe with its high taxes, dear energy and excess of bad rules” but those outcomes are in any event assured by the antics of Wreckers Reeves and Miliband here at home.
October 1, 2025
Some wonder why Brexit went so wrong, all that is needed is to look at their indoctrination.
UK Law seems to have its problems. Lawyers that enter the political arena act as if the Country is a Court Room, when their backs are against the wall, they throw out crass UN-substantiated statements, the sound-bite they want to stick, knowing even before hand they will have to retract almost immediately. But the job done is don. To some, a lawyer must know something, they are authoritative figures and work within the law and for the UK’s Legislators.
We have seen this in action many times in recent days showing its head in the media. Was reality reported or the ‘sound-bite’ as intended?
Then today the media reports, that UK Law is no longer for the best of the best, or for those with ability, it is for personal quota fixing.
‘The Bar Council, which represents barristers in England and Wales, allows only black or mixed-race university students and graduates to join a six-week summer internship.
The programme, known as the “10,000 Black interns” (10KBI) programme, has been described as “pure racism” by Rupert Lowe, the independent MP for Great Yarmouth.
In a letter, Mr Lowe said: “This is racism. What message does this send to a generation of talented, hard-working young people who happen to be white – that their ambitions are less worthy? That they must be excluded to balance some imagined historical scale?
The Bar Council hit back at the criticisms, saying Mr Lowe’s criticism was “disgraceful” and insisted the scheme was “lawful positive action”, meaning a recruitment practice endorsed by the 2010 Equality Act that assisted ethnic minority applicants to increase workforce diversity.’
Then we wonder why those from this lawyerly background is so disgraceful in Parliament
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/30/white-students-blocked-barrister-work-experience-scheme/
Note: in the USA those that are trained in that way are barred from public office, as the Universities where they received their law degrees have been shown they cant be impartial. The Law with prescribed ideas is no law at all
October 1, 2025
531 criminals were illicitly shipped, into the UK yesterday on the 30th September from France…
October 1, 2025
If only we had had a government that really wanted to leave the EU and stood up to them. Cameron, May, Johnson and Sunak were useless in making Brexit happen properly. Now we have an ignorant PM who thinks our future is in the EU and is doing everything to frustrate the will of the people, as he did after the referendum.
Unless he stops the boats and dramatically reduces legal migration, he and Labour will be wiped out at the next GE. But how much damage will be done in the next 4 years? We need a recall act so MPs cannot ignore their voters and pursue damaging and idiotic policies like Net Zero. Brexit was and still is the greatest opportunity for the UK to grow and prosper, if only we had a Government that believed it!
October 1, 2025
They did not have to want to leave the U.K. they just had to acknowledge their direct orders from the Sovereigns! The People!
October 1, 2025
Starmer wants to book GP appointments on line.For goodness sake General Practice is not a restaurant.So many want a conversation about dry skin and which moisturizer they can get on prescription, whilst breathless and people in pain can not always get to a computer or phone.
Doesn’t he realise that first come first served will create havoc and deaths.
October 1, 2025
Why didn’t he cancel the, ‘before’ 8am appointment, and bring everything back to normal