As the Lib Dems, SNP, Greens and Labour enter a competition to see who can propose the most commitment to more EU taxes, tariffs and laws we need to remind ourselves of why we voted for Brexit and how it has already brought us some important wins. This is despite an establishment of civil service, courts, universities and too many MPs out to prevent Brexit by tying us firmly to the EU.
1. Large financial savings on membership costs. Had we stayed in with the increased budget it would be running at more than £21 bn a year of extra gross spend on EU matters including taxes we had to pay to them. Clearly if we wanted to rejoin terms would be even worse, likely to be at least £25 bn.
2. Keeping all of our customs revenue and all our plastics tax instead of surrendering most of it to the EU, giving us £5 bn more.
3. Allowing us to sign trade deals with TPP and India promoting our non EU trade which is 59% of our exports. Trade has grown well since the vote.
4. Boosting our service exports, 57% of our total exports , by allowing us to insert service sector clauses into trade deals which the EU was reluctant to do. There has been great growth is service trade since we left.
5. Allowing us to develop the first anti covid vaccine and lift lockdown earlier
6. Allowing us to take VAT off green goods and female hygiene products.
7. Allowing us to take tariffs off all things we do not make or grow for ourselves, and off all materials and components needed by UK industry
8. Allowing us to reduce bad regulation of financial services to assist our successful financial sector
9. Permitted us to switch student support from Erasmus which mainly paid EU students to come to the UK and some to UK students to study in the EU, to Turing where all the money goes to UK students studying anywhere in the world.
10. We have been able to ban the export of live animals and improve standards of animal welfare.
December 11, 2025
Good morning
1. We should not be paying anything let alone ‘most of it’s. Plus. What was the point if the UK Government just pocketed the savings itself and not passed it on to us ? We should not be paying any tax that EU contrived.
3. Yeah, a trade deal with India that allows Indian’s to undercut UK workers.
4. Services not manufacturing because energy costs are too high.
5. Neither of which was necessary.
6. Yes, but not energy bills for some strange reason ?
8. But not for manufacturing.
All in all very disapointing. Shame you could not mention that we have finally taken back our fishing grounds.
December 11, 2025
O/T yesterday I accosted the guy driving a post office delivery van. I asked him why we’ve had no mail for over a week. We’re only delivering parcels he says due to staff shortages. You must go to thre sorting office if you want your mail. Now we’ve had no notification of this and people are due appointments etc. Yet another privatisation gone wrong.
December 11, 2025
IW,
A local post box just outside the post office in a local parade is taped up and out of service on the busy weeks before Christmas.
The excuse is that it is being updated. These boxes have been around for centuries without the need to close them for updating.
It is almost as if they are trying to deliberately annoy the general public.
December 11, 2025
Updated in the sense of Christmas being verboten? Don’t you know it is the Holiday Season, during which things not working is intentional rather than incompetence.
December 11, 2025
MarkB, I thing point 1 should read 2 and this is a benefit in that we were sending much of the plastic tax to the EU. Now we keep it. Better still scrap it and reduce customer bills.
You could have added our Government’s stupid changes to farming subsidies that encourage ‘wild-lifing’ of productive land and make food production less viable. Lots of other examples of the UK government using its new freedoms badly (no regulatory simplification, immigration, oil & gas exploration/green policy are the biggies).
At least we know it is our politicians making the decisions and can vote them out after 5 years.
December 11, 2025
Funny old world:-
“Supporters hoping to attend next year’s World Cup final face paying vast prices, with tickets in the ‘supporter value tier’ starting at £3,119 ($4,185).”
My younger brother went up to the box office in 1966. He bought us various tickets including the semi final and third/fourth place. We also paid ten bob plus half a crown each for quarter final tickets (against Argentina) to a tout outside Wembley Hill station.
I don’t understand the prices above or the prices tourists pay. It’s like every game is the FA Cup Final ( which is sadly not what it once was)
December 11, 2025
Good list, however in Sir J’s defence he WAS prepared, indeed proposing, an ‘no deal’ Brexit. We had a remainer parliament, with so called democracy supporting MP’s actively working against the plebiscite, the ultimate decision in a democracy.
I would ask Sir J, how many of his list apply equally in NI as in the rest of the UK? We are STILL subject to EU laws by virtue of the second ‘dear Rishi’ Brexit deal, that left NI, and hence our laws, subject to many foreign laws and courts.
Our only way to completely cut the chains that confine us under the EU is to elect a true Brexit party.
December 11, 2025
My recollection was Sir John advocated a free trade deal, and that no deal was better than a bad deal.
December 11, 2025
It’s not surprising that so many MP’s are regarded with contempt when they refuse to accept the verdict of the people they represent on EU membership.
December 11, 2025
Agree with point 4 Re. energy costs (thanks to net zero) and points 3, 5 and 6.
As for the fishing grounds, Starmer took it upon himself to hand them to the EU. Another policy not in the Labour manifesto.
December 11, 2025
You’re quite right we have made some significant gains from Brexit bit nowhere near enough due to the stipid Windsor which prevents divergence from EU rules because Northern Ireland is still part of the EU.
Boris and Sunak agreed that we would not go in competition with the EU so we still have a range of tariffs on goods we don’t produce
The biggest anomaly is VAT on energy
A quick way to reduce our bills but not done because EU permission is required. Something our politicians don’t wish us to know.
We still have EU environmental regulations which classes river silt as toxic waste when for centuries it had been used as a rich fertile material.
2TK has given away our fish for nothing in return and it looks like we’re going to import their youth unemployment for little in return. No doubt the agreement will give them access to housing education and NHS free of charge and provisions to bring their families here.
Yes we’ve made som modest gains but nothing on the scale we should have done.
December 11, 2025
There are also the big wins that we’ve forgone because our own politicians from all mainstream Parties have worked against us. Your list would be far more impressive were this not the case.
The biggest one for me would be retaining our sovereignty. The EU is a tyranny, the Commission bludgeons nations which demonstrate any independence. Ask Hungary, or Slovakia, or Romania etc. I would prefer us not to be a part of it but sadly our politicians are/have been completely bewitched by it. We can’t trust the Tories on this: Kemi may have changed but the vast bulk of their MPs have not. Our kind host is, sadly, an outlier on this issue.
December 11, 2025
congratulations on being elevated to the lords john, we are not worthy.
December 11, 2025
These are great wins for the UK by Brexit. I think they are all the more commendable given all the political obstacles thrown at it in its developing stages as well as the very challenging domestic and global economic conditions since its inception. I believe Brexit will always deliver big wins for the UK but for me the biggest win of all was ensuring British sovereignty.
I would also like to congratulate you Sir John on your peerage! I am delighted for you and your family. I am sure it brings a lot of joy especially over Christmas.
December 11, 2025
Congratulations , John Redwood on becoming a Lord – you will be able to proclaim perspectives such as this to a platform in Parliament once again. As one of the most forceful and competent advocates of Conservatism I blame the previous Leader for it not happening earlier – just one of his very many mistakes.
However it is really bad that the Liberal Democrats got 5 peers to swell their already considerable numbers in the Lords but Reform who got more votes at the last general election than the Liberal Democrats and have been leading the opinion polls for over 6 months now got none.
Geoffrey Berg
December 11, 2025
From Labour’s perspective it’s also allowed them to put VAT on private school fees – prohibited in the EU – to further their class war agenda.
December 11, 2025
The best win is that we are more independent and anything that goes wrong in our country can be blamed on our polices not someone else’s
Imagine how over worked our public services would be if we still had freedom of movement on top of all the other immigration we permit.
We barely left the EU, tying ourselves to a level playing field. But our current situation is better than being fully in and hopefully as time goes by we will assert more independence.
Had we voted to stay in, the EU would have tightened its grip on us. The die was cast when the referendum was announced.
We have been let down by our politicians fighting to stay in, but I am still delighted we nominally left.
December 11, 2025
Thank you for that list my Lord. We might also claim to have recovered our sovereign right to national priority though we still have far too much overhang and submission to EU control.
Hopefully that will ebb away as the years of our exit from totalitarian policies in the EU become decades.
Congratulations on your Peerage, a well deserved acknowledgement of service.
December 11, 2025
Afraid Too many Politicians sabotaged the real Brexit ideals by not allowing us to even think of leaving the EU without some sort of prior agreement being in place, thus we never ever had a chance to negotiate hard, and to eventually get a better deal, which probably would have been shaped with later discussions after the leaving date.
Thus they the politicians got the result many really wanted, which was to keep us tied to the EU in many areas, perhaps for a later re-applocation.
If we go back to the EU with a begging bowl (which is what it will be) then we will get hammered even more, because our negotiators will be undermined yet again by the EU Zelots who seem to think everything EU is wonderful.
Unfortunately the EU is failing, and starting to fail fast, because the German economy can no longer afford to keep all of their heads above the water line.
December 11, 2025
Lib Dems, SNP, Greens and Labour would take us back to the corrupt no say EU in a heartbeat because none of these parties know how to run a bath let alone a country, I myself voted out of the EU because I wanted my country back with sovereignty knowing that the people I help put into parliament do my bidding sometimes and not some nobody’s miles away dictating what we should be doing, I’ve said it before if you don’t like it here then bugger off to your beloved EU and take the bunch on morrons we keep seeing on college green with there EU plackhards
December 11, 2025
Congratulations on the peerage Sir John.
Does this give you any additional weight in public debate?
December 11, 2025
Congratulations on your ennoblement, a bigger chamber to promote your views. I do not doubt your ‘wins’. The question/problem I have is that overall the cost to our economy, I see various percentages, is stated as a negative by respected financial journalists and is increasingly gaining traction without pushback and indeed I cannot deduce from your piece whether you have netted off the pluses and the minuses.
So I hope the net figure can indeed be proved positive and that you can use your new role and the chamber to amplify the figure and persuade Badenoch, that if the Conservatives believe Brexit is to be protected, I have my doubts, she needs to start using her trumpet in the Commons.
December 11, 2025
I am delighted to see you and your family rewarded for your many, many positive contributions Lord John.
December 11, 2025
Congratulations on your peerage John , you clearly have much to offer and can now deliver it from an elevated platform. I trust the diary will continue
December 11, 2025
The Establishment deliberately hobbled Brexit so we have not really left the EU; we are semi-detached but our economy is still effectively controlled by the Kommissars because areas where we are “not allowed to compete” include the Environment and Energy.
The destruction of our manufacturing and industrial base is continuing apace because we are shackled to the EU’s Net Zero Insanity.
Without cheap reliable energy, it is impossible to compete globally.
I think I’d remove (5) from your list, Sir John.
The Clot Shot Astra-Zeneca produced is responsible for a great many untimely deaths and severe injuries …. which is why it was rejected by other countries (Denmark was first in 2021) and eventually quietly removed in the UK.
“The Yellow Card data for the COVID-19 vaccines was read out at the UK COVID Inquiry today (22 May 2024) by Anna Morris KC:
2,688 fatalities
468,250 reports
300,000+ serious reports
Anna Morris KC represents
Vaccine Injured & Bereaved”
December 11, 2025
Starmer has ruled out re-joining the customs union. The appalling Macron, in particular, was greatly miffed when we stopped propping up his basket-case French economy after Brexit – and has never stopped demanding yet more tribute from us.
Talks to allow UK companies to play a greater part in the EU’s €150bn defence loans scheme have broken down after a dispute over money. Macron is demanding that we pay €5.9 billion up front to take part. Without a further, separate agreement, British companies contracted to supply parts will be limited to providing 35% of the total value of a finished product. Hey ho!
Discussions on a further deal on electricity trading should begin in the new year, after EU countries agreed to draw up their instructions for talks by the end of January. The EU accepts that we are paying too much to import juice via the interconnectors (there are now no less than 10 of them) and if things go well exports of cheap British renewable electricity will increase and the revenues will be used to offset the cost of imports.
December 11, 2025
Good morning – and Congratulations on your latest honour.
December 11, 2025
Just think of the rewards to democracy and everyone’s future if the UK had left the EU’s control, didn’t have to fall in with EU Laws and Rule. Instead we still have a Parliament, the Blob creating every impediment possible to obstruct those we empower and pay to run the Country and doing what is asked of them. Instead all they desire to hand over this power to the unelected unaccountable that have no desire for free sovereign nation to prosper.
In their minds it is about creating a Socialist/Marxist super power of technocrats that feed of the minions for their free-loading and reflected ego. That sort of thinking needs expelling from all avenues of authority.
December 11, 2025
The very contrived efforts by libdem and labour MPs to get the ball rolling on getting us back into the EU and fully under it’s control, likely with no say in what laws are passed that we will have to comply with, shows just how ignorant and anti-UK these people are.
The trouble is that this is just the sort of thing that will allow Starmer to get talks going on this surrender – he has been looking for prompts to slide us back under the EU yoke. He is very willing to put aside all the gains we had from BREXIT to fulfil his mission, which could culminate in a new EU commission president in the next few years, called Blair.
Let’s not underestimate the deceit and under hand practices of this government, now clearly hell bent on reducing us to a subordinate group of regions ruled directly from Brussels.
Starmer’s latest treachery does explain his reasoning for cancelling elections and redefining local authorities into EU style regions.
December 11, 2025
Long interview with Clare Coutinho on Talk TV just now sensible stuff in the main but she is still sitting on the fence and accept wrongly that the insane war on CO2 is sensible. A touch on the brake and looking at world output rather than just UK’s and exporting jobs and CO2. She talks about reversing May moronic net zero lunacy saying – all policies have some negatives she suggests. Alas Net Zero is all negatives and zero positives yet it was nodded through by the Con-Socialists without even any vote.
At least Coutinho is fully sound on the insane and evil chemical castration of children trial! So beloved of Streeting and Two Tier. Does Streeting still want the 15 unsafe convictions of Lucy Letby to be denied any appeal lest it upsets her non victims?
December 11, 2025
The arguments these, and it is the majority in Parliament and within the Blob put forward are lame and self defeating. The one thing they cant answer is why is the US and China, even India etc can do all the things they need to do without the EU demanding that they accept their rule.
The EU imported from China €519bn, imported from the USA €347bn, imported from the UK €211.3 bn (giving the EU a trade surplus of €176 bn with the UK in their favour, we are their prime buyers therefore funders).
The UK not only has its Laws Rules and Regulations that apply within the UK dictated by the unelected unaccountable EU, the PM Kier Starmer has signed a ‘no compete’ clause on the UK not to make and sell anything (that is anything) that can compete with the EU.
The USA on the other hand is the UK’s Largest single-country partner and within our own country we don’t have to give up on anything, we don’t have to abide by US Laws, Rules or Regulations. The UK is ‘free’ to compete with the USA.
The UK runs a trade deficit with the World, these EU phobes want to worsen that by deeper integration with the EU so they also get to say who the UK trades with.
As with everything that squeaks out of the UK Parliament and its Blob, its about giving things away to appease ‘ego’ with never any questioning of how the nation is to ‘earn’ to fund a future
December 11, 2025
Yes, various Labour MPs, plus other Lib Dems including mine – ‘the fat bloke in a wetsuit’ won a chance to discuss rejoining the EU.
It’s as if they haven’t enough damage inflicted already.
December 11, 2025
And why do all these things get so little public acknowledgement?
Of topic, or in fact perhaps not, it was very good to read today that even after the forthcoming departure of the Hereditary peers, the House of Lords will still have at least one sane member – Congratulations!
December 11, 2025
“This is despite an establishment of civil service, courts, universities and too many MPs out to prevent Brexit by tying us firmly to the EU.”
These people are not engaged in managed decline, but intentional decline.
Your words and actions of support have always been welcome and why I always voted for you. But, with few notable exceptions such as yourself, the Conservative party neither vocally supported Brexit nor pushed exploitation of the opportunities from leaving the EU. Institutionally, the Conservative party aligned with the coalition of defeatism out to prevent Brexit and no amount of good words and promises mean anything.
In short they wasted the opportunities and utterly betrayed our country, our people and why it will be a very long time before I vote Conservatives, if ever.
December 12, 2025
+1
December 11, 2025
Our traitorous MPs have sought to thwart Brexit and undermine the will of British voters. Still, we have the Lib Dems and Labour politicians trying to tie us back into the corrupt, undemocratic EU. We see a continuous media barrage of fake negative stories about the damage Brexit has done to our economy. The sooner we clear out those in the Lords and Commons, the better for our country, except for JR, of course. Congratulations, by the way.
December 11, 2025
The desire to rejoin the EU, or closely follow its laws and policies, shows how ignorant the people who support/propose it are. The EU is steadily sinking as a trade bloc in its share of world trade, yet its UK supporters seem blind to that simple fact.
The EU is going backwards and becoming a protectionist bloc, and will eventually break up. Ignorance is bliss, I guess; these people don’t want to be confused with the facts!
Any MP, Civil Servant, or anyone in a position of authority in or out of Government, who supports the UK rejoining the EU, or aligning with the EU, is a traitor to the UK. If you don’t believe in, support, promote and seek prosperity for your own country, then leave and go and live in the EU you are so in love with.
December 11, 2025
From the Telegraph
‘Slowing the pace of net zero could save the British economy £350bn, an official report has concluded.
A new analysis published by the National Energy System Operator (Neso) said that aiming for an 80pc reduction in carbon emissions by 2050, rather than the current “net zero” target, could save £14bn a year on average.
The Conservatives claimed the estimates showed that “rushing to net zero” would lumber the UK with sky-high electricity prices for decades and leave Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, unable to meet his promise of cutting household bills by £300.’
Is that just another lie supported by Parliament?
December 11, 2025
Good morning Sir JR and congratulations on being elected to the House of Lords.
December 11, 2025
Freedom is almost always the best choice.
December 11, 2025
Socialsim depends upon making and keeping people poor and hence why the socialists in Parliament and elsewhere are keen for us to become members again of the EU as well as losing our sovereignty and the ability to elect and remove thse who make our laws and policies. As part of the impoverishment it it necessary for the UK to give away an asset as a joining fee as well as the regular annual membership fee. The last time the sociaiists gave away our fishing grounds. So what will Starmer be prepared to give away this time? He has already given away our fishing grounds. Perhaps our North Sea oil and gas? The EU still maintains that gas (methane) is green so giving away the rights to our oil and gas would please boh the EU, who are still buying hydrocarbons from Russia, and those like Miliband, Johnson, May, Sharma JSO, Greenpeace etc who want to see these assets put permanently beyond our use. A win-win for sure.
December 11, 2025
Well apparently we are about to rejoin Erasmus – not clear if Turing will go. Fishing – another 12 years before we get our grounds back (if ever). VAT still on energy thanks to Windsor? Export of live animals – will that be required as part of the reset? And now the “direction of travel” is clearly back to the CU. This all feels like rejoin Fabian style. By 2029 undoubtedly a future “anything” government will well and truly have its hands tied.
December 11, 2025
Congratulations on becoming a Lord
I agree with your comments on Brexit, it is a shame that still many finance people can’t see the benifits
December 11, 2025
If the EU delays sales of new petrol/diesel cars to 2040 does it mean they will be available in Northern Ireland until this date?
December 11, 2025
I and my family are very pleased to hear of your enoblement Sir John.
Highly deserved.
I have followed your career for decades and very much enjoy your excellent articles on this site.
You are a rarity, in that over all those years you been right in your predictions.
Many congratulations.
December 11, 2025
I agree with everything you’ve said except“Allowing us to develop the first anti covid vaccine and lift lockdown earlier”
The Astrazeneca vaccine was the first to be withdrawn, on safety grounds. Like the rest, the testing was completely inadequate compared to the normal 10 year timeframe for trials and authorisation of previous vaccines and many people who were encouraged or bullied into taking it have paid a heavy price. As for lifting lockdown earlier, given that none of the vaccines have been proven to prevent transmission, this reason for rushing the vaccine through was a falsehood and Sweden proved that we did not need the harsh lockdowns that our government imposed.
December 11, 2025
Australia withdrew the AZ vaccine very quickly as the clinical evidence mounted, as there were plenty of alternatives by then. The UK could have acted similarly. It didn’t because of toxic politics, not just the anti-lockdown brigade and anti-vaxers but also because of EU bullying and jealousy (probably also because of NHS incompetence, it couldn’t even distribute its own materiel and had to ask the Army to organise it). Nevertheless, despite the side effects, while it was the only vaccine available the AZ vaccine did save lives. It was an emergency measure and risks were taken. That is justifiable when the alternative – not vaccinating – is certain to be worse.
December 12, 2025
The alternative – do nothing – was not certain to be worse. The Hippocratic Oath is “First Do No Harm.” Not pick and choose who you’ll try to save and who you’ll risk killing and injuring.
The Government DOWNGRADED Covid from a High Consequence Infectious Disease 5 days BEFORE Johnson imposed the first Lockdown because by then they knew it would have low mortality rates. You can still read it on the Government website.
They had no right to bully, coerce – and in the case of Care Workers – mandate them to take poorly tested and experimental gene therapies. Thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands injured by them.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid#status-of-covid-19
December 11, 2025
Thanks for this as I have just taken on a resident who wrote a letter to the local paper putting Brexit down. Wish I had had all of your information too. Thank goodness you are finally joining the House of Lords. At last someone who deserves to be there. Well done and keep the fight for our freedom on course.
December 11, 2025
Britain could also govern itself more wisely outside the EU but it hasn’t. The EU threat is constant but it has been joined by another: the unholy alliance of the Woke Left with Islamists. This is far more pernicious than the EU itself, because this unholy alliance is embraced by 10 & 11 Downing Street and the AG, Lord Hermer, and all the Fabians who infest the Labour Party. They naturally favour the EU because it has proven to be a successful vehicle by which socialists who do not believe sovereign nation states should exist can bypass democracy.
December 11, 2025
Congratulations, Sir John, on your elevation to the Lords. There is much to revise and downright reverse!