The government’s worst mistake as it surveys the damage it is doing to our economy is thinking an EU re set will boost growth. As the EU is making clear, any attempt to get closer to them would come on their terms. It would mean us paying big bills to them. It would mean us accepting their laws on many matters. It would mean even higher carbon taxes and dearer energy.
They want us to pay £5 bn a year to have a chance to bid to supply them with some weapons. They want us to surrender the Turing scheme which helps UK students to go to a university anywhere in the world, and to go into Erasmus to pay for more EU students to come to the UK at the expense of the freedoms of UK students to go to non EU universities.
They insist on us joining their carbon market to impose a still higher carbon tax on everything we do. They want us to impose big tariffs called a carbon border tax on imports from outside Europe, making things dearer. They want us to accept a lot more younger migrants into our country, who may come with the need for subsidised housing and free public services. They require us to accept their rules over farm products and will impose a charge for supervising our food trade.They have demanded many more years of taking too many fish from our waters, stifling the UK fishing industry.
None of this would make us better off. Linking to a slow growth protectionist customs union gave us dire growth in the last decade. Their rules make them uncompetitive with the USA and China. The OBR should mark down their forecast of growth for the re set policy.They should add in around £10 bn a year more cost and lost activity.
There is one simple word for Ministers to use for every one of the EU’s demands. It is No. When I was single market Minister No was in constant use as we had to fight off so many costly and damaging proposals.
November 13, 2025
When you are the supplicant, you can’t say ‘no’.
But the British People said No to the whole scam.
Pity the poor political class if they refute the People.
Dead men walking!
November 13, 2025
@Lyn Atkinson. I agree with your sentiments but there is consistent polling showing 50-60% support for rejoining the EU (and 65% for “closer ties” but not rejoining. We here are in a minority on this issue. The BBC propoganda has done its dirty work.
They are toast, but for other reasons. The EU gives our political class another potential lucrative off-ramp, once they are booted out of that less favoured of their parliaments, at Westminster. PR Euro elections, think tank, and bureacratic jobs present new career paths for them.
Reply See the Queen Marys College London independent poll which showed majorities against surrendering any of the powers to make decisions the EU would take back.
November 13, 2025
Attitudes towards many things vary depending on the question asked (and how it is phrased). If you ask people would they like to able to travel within Europe more freely, they will probably say ‘Yes’. But if you were to ask them if they would like to join the Euro (e.g. give up the Pound) or allow free (unliited) movement into the UK from Europe – then you might well get a very less positive answer…
November 13, 2025
Rachel Reeves stated categorically, and with sadness, that her Brexit voting constituency would vote the same way again.
Don’t believe the liars who said exactly the same thing before the Brexit referendum.
We would get a bigger majority if they tried again, and the fact that they won’t is proof that they know that.
November 13, 2025
@Lynn Atkinson. I hope so. I really hope so.
I used Grok AI to summarise recent polling, so it could be that its algorithms are tweaked to give a certain answer, or that it is rubbish in-rubbish out.
November 13, 2025
Definitely RIRO.
Basically never believe a thing the State tells you.
Depend on your own soundings.
Anyway, the EU is kaput bigtime.
November 13, 2025
Good Morning,
The EU, this Labour government and the BBC all have many of the same problems. No doubt Starmer will make paying more to the EU a priority, as he supports the socialist dogma espoused as the ONLY way forward and can do no wrong.
The EU now want their own ‘intelligence gathering service’, and have requested money to set this up. It is clear they want to replace the individual European state members of NATO, so that they will become the decision making body on military matters for all Europe.
We are living in very dangerous times.
November 13, 2025
A dealer who offers onerous, worthless and expensive terms should not be encouraged by acceptance but rejected like foul-smelling rubbish.
November 13, 2025
NATO is beaten and finished. The U.K. is ‘withholding intelligence from the USA’. The NATO establishment in Brussels is already the ‘fighting’ arm of the EU. Toothless with with loads of sass – like the BBC.
November 13, 2025
Farage only has to say he will cancel any agreement signed by this traitorous bunch and pay NO EU imposed fines.
He has already said Reform will not honour any payments to the latest auction if windmills
Brussels must know that this government us hated by the electorate and has no moral authority to sign any agreement with the grifting Brussels scammers
November 13, 2025
Ian W
Totally Agree, Madness needs challenging!
November 13, 2025
This is Starmer’s job. He won’t go until its complete. Then he’ll slink away into a top role in the EU. Who knows he may have his eye on President of the EU, its quite a sellout.
November 14, 2025
I do wonder what is his true motivation, does he and Zealot Ed just hate the UK and want to do it down in every way they can?
JR your room Talk TV just now looks very bare indeed. Perhaps a book case full of your and other sensible books behind you and the odd well chosen pictures or paintings of England?
Reeves has of course already broken her promise to the electrorate by increasing employers NI. Which is National Insurance and is just the same as employees NI in effect too. Also by saying growth is her highest priority when her actions are all hugely anti-growth.
Reply I was not at my home for the broadcast so I arranged the room to have a blank background .
November 14, 2025
Perhaps get some clever software to insert an interesting something or other as background.
November 13, 2025
Morning Sir John,
I am sure our government will roll over on it’s back to have it’s belly tickled.
We voted leave and if the government had our nation’s interest and democracy at it’s heart, we would have had a clean break from the EU.
I really can’t understand why, a politician who goes to the trouble of getting elected to our Parliament, where they can make our laws and change things in our favour, then decides to give that power and influence away to a foreign power…. Please, make it make sense!
November 13, 2025
Self interest. There are so many, very lucrative post-Parliamentary opportunities, in the Globalist Quangocracy (UN, EU, IMF, WEF, WHO and organisations like the Bill Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Facebook etc).
November 13, 2025
Indeed and this also surely drives the Net Zero scam which is doing perhaps even more damage than a back door EU reset.
The damage this appalling government is doing is truly vast:- Chagos, tenants rights acts, workers rights bill, IHT on businesses and farms, the vast NI increases, the war on private schools, the war on Non Doms, the vast low skilled & huge net cost immigration levels, the zero deterrent policing, the war on free speech, Net Zero rip off energy and the war on plant food, housing policy, defence policy, criminal justice policy, encouraging health people not to work with a benefit and tax system that means work often does not pay, the dire NHS structure, defence procurement…
Can anyone even name one bit of UK government or institutions that works well?
November 13, 2025
Mad Zealot Ed Miliband is the most popular to replace Two Tier among Labour Members in recent poll!
November 13, 2025
Let’s hope he gets it. It will be the end of socialism in the U.K. period.
November 13, 2025
The last thing we need after 14 years of net zero, climate alarmist, tax, borrow, currency debase and waste Con-socialism from Cameron, May, Boris and Sunak is even more of the same and more EU!
Well done Robert Jenrick for highlighting tradesmen’s van and tool thefts which is rife. These then sold on at car boots etc. Once again we have virtually zero deterrents or police action. Like shoplifting and most other real crimes.
November 13, 2025
I received my renewed driving licence within two days of applying on-line, and … sorry, there is nothing else that works efficiently.
November 13, 2025
@Lifelogic. I had to register for self assessment with HMRC and send in a tax return. It was a nightmare. Useless IT systems with so many overlapping layers of security and need to register on government apps…giving up on that it was even difficult to get a paper tax form to fill out. You’d think that’s one bit of “public service” they’d want to get right.
November 13, 2025
But at least HMRC sends messages about Self-Assessment starting with ‘Dear Customer’. Isn’t it cute?
November 13, 2025
These are people incapable of doing the job. They are elected because the rotten party machines controls the gate. They CAN’T do the job, it not a choice.
November 13, 2025
The government must know that the eu has performed badly economically over the past few decades. Yet it still wants to get closer!
Mind you, Arthur Laffer was on the BBC the other day and he explained the basic truth that high taxes are bad for the economy and ultimately make the poor poorer. The presenter either appeared to not believe him or didn’t seem to take it in!
Why is there this mental block to common sense amongst the Left?
Reply Yes I heard that. It was a rare breakthrough for the BBC to allow such a view. Pity Laffer did not ram home the UK facts of how we are already losing revenue from higher rates. See my materials with Facts4eu on GB News website.
November 13, 2025
Indeed we are above the point at which higher tax rates generate less revenue for governments to waste.
We are well into doom loop territory Ms Reeves. A cut in red tape and ditching net zero would help hugely too but this government loves red tape and net zero rip off energy too.
Not the maximum tax take Laffer point is still way above the rate taxes should be for the benefit of the people. They should only tax sufficient to do the rather few thing the state can do better than individuals, businesses and charities. Defence, law and order, fair trade… not much more.
The United Kingdom government should voluntarily facilitate the return of former repentant ISIL (ISIS) member Shamima Begum and others living in Syrian camps and deprived of British nationality, a new report has urged.
The Independent Commission on UK Counter-Terrorism Law, Policy and Practice said the current stance of the government towards nationals and former nationals detained in Syrian camps was “increasingly untenable” as they were living under “inhuman” conditions.
She is our problem and was only a child at the time she was convinced to leave. The Dire Covid Vaccine pusher Javid should never have removed her British nationality. I suspect the new Home Sec will also get this decision wrong again for political reasons.
I hope she does do the right thing on this as she morally should do!
November 13, 2025
Begum is a Pakistani National. She displayed a level of viciousness alien in the native British population.
SHE IS NOT BRITISH. NEITHER ARE HER PARENTS.
November 13, 2025
As I understand it the purpose of the re-set is simply to try to get the OBR to forecast a higher future growth rate so the government can borrow and spend more now on the basis of that future forecast. So from their point of view it doesn’t matter what the actual impact of the reset is. This strategy relies on the OBR playing ball, as I assume it’s stuffed with left-wing remainers it may well work.
November 13, 2025
I agree with all of these reasons for avoiding any closer relationship with the EU. The UK is and must remain a standalone Sovereign country. The European Union is a fragile trade cartel that is frequently unable to agree its own internal rules and relationships. If the UK is excluded from arms sales to the EU then we should reconsider the UK supporting EU defence agreements. It is only recently that EU countries have become alert to the need for defence and historically have spent less than the 2% required by Nato membership.
November 13, 2025
If the government wants growth, then they should stop making it difficult for businesses and individuals to function. Stop wasting money on ideologies would help too!
Of course the EU will do everything on their terms, they’re worse socialists than our government!
November 13, 2025
The problem is that the EU can see how weak the PM is and will act accordingly.
November 13, 2025
I have no words
November 13, 2025
Both Reform and the Not-a-Conservative-Party should inform the EU that when one or the other is elected, any “deal” Two-Tier has agreed will be scrapped.
And they should also both pledge that when one or the other is elected we will, finally, LEAVE the EU.
November 13, 2025
+a considerable number
November 13, 2025
Sir JR. Everything you say may well be true. However, every day Starmer remains in power, is a day closer to becoming junior members of the EU.
We need him gone along with his shambolic party. Fortunately the plotting has begun. If Reeves’ budget attempts to raise tax rates as much as is being hinted at, I forecast another rebellion. Hopefully that will bring Starmers reign to an end.
November 13, 2025
I used to wonder what the establishment and many captured members of the political class, saw in the EU that attracted their support?
I am still puzzled, though Starmer with his endless call for ever closer relations gives us a clue.
He sees the EU as a gentleman’s club, as do so many others, Mandelson, Kinnock, Blair, Heseltine, Clarke, May, Major and so many desperate to be part of the ‘scene’, part of where they imagine the progressive attention is.
They do not at any time see the EU as an economic or social advantage, well not to the UK. Although it often provides social and economic advantages to them personally they simply want to be where it is at. They want to be seen, in with the ‘in’ crowd (or maybe that should be UN crowd) as they imagine the EU to be.
Like so many gentleman’s clubs the days of such establishments were coming to a close at the end of the last century, Some persist, but are set in a bygone era, very much like the EU.
We need the EU about as much as we need another round of Covid with all of its restrictions and flawed activities. The two make a perfect metaphoric pair.
November 13, 2025
But John they are “our Friends”…………………………….for as long as we pay them !
Other words fail me.
November 13, 2025
Not our friend seven when we pay them. That’s the truth.
Our eternal enemies.
November 13, 2025
Never here Keir Starmers words, not mine Lynn.. !
November 13, 2025
A government that traiterously hands over the Chagos Islands and its people to an unfriendly power will have no problem in ingratiating itself at great cost with an equally unfriendly power offshore. Labour are not fit to govern, end of.
November 13, 2025
They did the same to Britain. The Chagos was a mere detail after that.
November 13, 2025
The EU has never been fair when it came to asset stripping the UK – they always saw us as a cash cow, and milked us constantly.
It can only be ideology that keeps HMG creeping ever closer to the constraints of the EU, there is no logic, nor economic reason to do so.
Like the UK the EU is in destruct mode, so joining them in any way would just bring on our collapse even sooner than planned.
November 13, 2025
The EU defeated us. It treated us as any Victor would.
November 13, 2025
You have to remember, Sir John, that what Starmer’s Gang says is policy and what it believes and intends ae entirely different. Starmer i a passionate Remainer because the EU offers a path to an international socialist order ruled by people like Starmer and Hermer.
November 13, 2025
Can the UK afford Erasmus now?
We funded the loans and maintenance and free education in Scotland, where is all those millions going to come from. Plus no way to get the 9% grad tax back when they return to the EU. Just how many Polish students alone have taken their education loans from the UK student loan company and gone home? I know several personally.
November 13, 2025
Sir John
It would be a strange human-being that didn’t agree with every thing in your post. The list for incompetence and down right stupidity that could be added to your post, but as @Donna alluded to yesterday these malicious action against the UK Citizen and the affront to the Nations Democracy, must be part of the plan there is no other reasoning that could be applied.
What other Parliament on this little planet of ours seeks to damage and impoverish its people.
November 13, 2025
Sir John
One major imbalance in the theory the UK must pay. The EU is the supplier of steel for the UK submarine fleet, Boris Johnson and team banned the production of quality steel in the UK, so we now rely on imports. The French Government, and the whims of said Government control the electronics and the missile supplies to the UK armed forces. The so-called Storm Shadow missile in made in France and its production is controled by the French Government. The Spanish and the Polish are involved in supplying the ships for the Royal Navy. The Germans are updating UK Tanks and so on and so on.
The real point is how much was the EU forced to contribute to the UK defence Budget before they were awarded all those contracts?
November 13, 2025
Now for the latest…
We have had Farage, Covid, the Conservatives, Trump and Uncle Tom Cobley and all today we get the JLR ‘hack’ – Rachel Reeves has blamed a sharper than expected slowdown on a cyber attack that crippled production at Jaguar Land Rover. The Chancellor said the third quarter figures had been hit by the cyber attack on Jaguar Land Rover https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/11/13/uk-gdp-economy-budget-starmer-reeves-ftse-100-markets/
Forgetting the honest bit that JLR closed down a significant amount of its UK production the previous year. Although they did launch new a new ICE that they make in China to be sold in China.
What will tomorrows excuse be?
November 13, 2025
I’m looking at a YouGov opinion poll taken in June 2025, which says that 56% of those polled supported Britain rejoining the EU. But then it says only 37% saw it as a priority to do that in the next five years. Further down, it even says that 63% were in favour of loosening ties with the EU.
Can anyone help me to make sense of these apparently contradictory findings?
November 13, 2025
All very good points, Sir John, which is why Labour will employ the excuse of an EU re-set as a means to further sabotage our energy, economy, social co-hesion and national security. Remember that socialism depends upon making and keeping people poor. Anyway why would we want to get closer to the EU when membership meant we had a £100bn/year trading deficit with the EU?
November 13, 2025
Too many words again to simply say low level but arrogant plonkers.If they weren’t in the position they are we would just laugh.
November 13, 2025
Starmer’s Gang may say the UK would be efit economically but they don’t believe it any more than you do, Sir John. They passionately believe sovereign nation states should be replaced by a socialist international ruled by people like Starmer and Hermer. Starmer himself said he wants UK to be so close to the EU there is no difference.
Remainers do not respect democracy. They have never accepted the referendum result and have never ceased undermining Britain’s attempts to establish independence from EU regulation.