I was the only MP over Brexit who had voted to leave the EEC in the first referendum as well as the second, who voted 3 times with the Spartans against the unsatisfactory May deal, refused to vote for the 2020 Boris Trade Treaty over Northern Ireland and fishing, and who voted against the Windsor framework. I think I was the only MP who recommended we left with no Trade deal, to trade with the EU on most favoured nation terms under WTO rules which would have worked fine. I pointed out that simply threatening to do that would have improved the deal we were offered so it was silly the government did not try it. The EU was bound to want to avoid tariffs on their huge exports to us.
When I was 21 I won two elections which changed my life. In the autumn I took the examination at All Souls College and was elected to a fellowship. In the following May I was elected as a Conservative Councillor on the new Oxfordshire County Council and became a Committee Chairman or Executive Councillor. At All Souls I met Sir Keith Joseph and started advising him at his request when he took over as Margaret’s guru after she gained the leadership.
By 1975 I was a young investment analyst learning my trade in a leading investment company owned by a merchant bank. Knowing of my involvement in Conservative politics and of my fellowship they asked me to research the economic and market issues around the UK’s membership of the European Economic Community which were to be decided by the referendum. I saw other City commentators and analysts writing superficial material saying it was important the country voted to stay in, based on the government spin of the day that the EEC was just a common market which gave us economic opportunity by being tariff free. I took my research seriously, read the Treaty of Rome, examined our trading patterns and looked at the industrial and economic trends already apparent with the UK suffering closures in the face of EEC competition in everything from textiles to steel , from food to cars. I saw this was much more than a common market, with a general Treaty setting out ever closer Union across many government areas as its main point.
I wrote a draft report which concluded that our payments in or membership fees would escalate and place an unacceptable strain on our stretched public finances. I forecast that our balance of trade would stay in heavy deficit, and that more of our industrial base would collapse as it was not competitive enough once the tariffs were off. I saw that the CAP and fishing policies would also add to our trade deficit, with much reduced domestic production of food. I said staying in the EEC would be more damaging than leaving from the economic point of view. I felt pleased with my work which was clearly distinctive and provided a forecast of what was likely to happen inside the EEC, unlike others.
I was called in by a senior Director who told me they disagreed and thought the common market was a good thing. He asked me to re write. I said I would write anything he wanted me to as I was doing it in firm’s time for the firm but then the piece would have to go out in the name of the Bank and not in my name. Surprisingly he wanted my name to still be on it, so we compromised. I left in my pessimistic analysis but put in the alternative establishment view such as it was to provide balance. It was the first time I discovered a lot of the UK establishment held a semi religious belief in the need for the UK to be in the EEC/EU whatever it did and however much it cost. Most Remainers have not read the Treaties they adore.
I was asked to speak in the referendum campaign as a County Councillor and Conservative thinker. I went to the first meeting and explained why I was voting to leave and found that shocked my hosts who had just assumed I would support staying in. My case was both economic and was about sovereignty and democracy. I was not invited to give any more speeches in the referendum campaign.
After the defeat in the referendum I spent the next 20 years loyal to the result, but reminding people and governments that the majority had voted to belong to something they called the common market, on assurances that our sovereignty would not be undermined and that we would keep a veto over things we did not agree with. I watched as the EEC grabbed more and more power, as our balance of trade with the EEC remained mired in huge deficits, and as the cost of belonging climbed unacceptably.Our growth rate predictably fell a lot. I will explain tomorrow how I moved to recommending we leave.
April 5, 2026
Happy Easter to Lord Redwood. Easter blessings and joy to him.
April 5, 2026
Happy Easter John. Thanks for your efforts but you’re a straw in the wind.
Government, Civil Serpents, Quangos etc have all been infiltrated by the insidious leftwaffe EU zealots.
As with Milibrain and net zero, there is no liguc to their thinking. Destruction of this once great country is their aim and it has to be said, the tories have a lot to answer for.
April 5, 2026
Remember the few straws we had, like Boris, Nigel and Sir John, won the referendum to leave the EU when they were up against the establishment. We need to keep fighting to stay out of the EU and get Reform elected at the next GE.
April 5, 2026
Based on the 50-year period from April 1976 to April 2026, the Conservative Party has held the position of Prime Minister for approximately 64% of the time.
Alas all but Thatcher (who was far from perfect) and perhaps Truss were Climate Alarmists, Globalist, Big State, High tax, over regulating Socialists pretending to be Conservative then endlessly kicking their voters in the Face!
Reply You have told us hundreds of times you dismiss past Prime Ministers as wrong or useless. I will in future delete any post from you that repeats these generalised past criticisms.
April 5, 2026
Yes indeed, Happy Easter Everyone. You don’t need to take the Christian religion literally, but acknowledging it is a part of who the English are, and our social, and literal, structure; enjoy it, be part of it, or leave.
I look forward to Lord J’s next piece on Brexit. May I request answers to the following: who else in the PCP was an active opponent of joining and then expanding the EU control of the UK, both parliamentary and civil service, and what made Cameron allow the National Referendum, which he clearly didn’t know the national mood.
I do hope Lord J. will also find space to mention the independent forces working to leave the EU, Lord Goldsmith comes to mind.
April 5, 2026
Good morning, and Happy Easter to our kind host and all here.
April 5, 2026
Harold Wilson (Pro-Market/Remain): Faced with a party split over Europe, Wilson used the referendum to silence internal opposition, arguing that his renegotiated terms—targeting the Budget and Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)—met British interests. He promised to accept the “verdict” of the public.
Edward Heath (Pro-Market/Remain): As the leader who brought Britain into the EEC, Heath was a prominent campaigner for the “In” campaign, arguing that withdrawal would harm trade, jobs, and Britain’s international standing
Both telling porky pies so they could hand over our Country to foreigners to run and fleece us, Heath said in a interview that our sovereignty would never be handed over what a complete “load of baloney“they were in it for themselves like nowadays and to hell with what the people want in this country , so if Starmer thinks he can pull the wool over our eyes think again matey your not in a court room now we are the judges and find you guilty on all counts of betrayal to Great Britain
April 5, 2026
So if you aren’t giving the message the establishment wants given you should stay silent. That is the story of the UK for the last few years, whether it’s about economics, health or climate. And lord knows what else! (No pun intended, Lord John!). Happy Easter.
April 5, 2026
I commend this blog. I too voted to leave the E.U. in both 1975 and 2016 and I wanted to leave with no deal which would have saved the country a fortune in transitional payments from 2016 to 2020 and in exit fees as well as avoiding the mess in Northern Ireland. The E.U. is an economic madhouse with heavy and increasing and uncompetitive regulation but with neither the technological superiority of the U.S.A. nor the low labour costs of the East. The E.U. is indeed a semi-religion to many, especially in our ‘establishment’ and in Parliament and like all religions belief in it conflicts with reality and is indeed irrational.
April 5, 2026
Indeed I too would have voted to leave in 1975 had I been old enough to do so. The people for leaving were so much more convincing and logical than the emotional hold hands and sing Beethoven’s Choral remainers. Also you were one of the few who were against Major’s disastrous ERM and of the tiny few against Ed’s moronic climate change Act.
If only other MPs had taken more notice of you wise advice over 50 years. Alas irrational emotion (and often corruption and vested interests) rather than logic tends to win out in politics.
On BBC’s Any Questions on Friday everyone seemed to be behind the £60bn moon fly by and yet not one could even mention with any real benefit to humanity what so ever. That sort of money could easily have saved over a million lives on earth but instead we get some new pictures of the “dark” side of the moon. Which an unmanned mission could have done for 10% of the cost.
Still better than spending £ Trillions on doing huge net harms like Net Zero, Covid Lockdowns and the Covid “vaccines”. I see that a study of increase post COVID “vaccine” cancer rates in Japan has been forced to withdraw. Meanwhile in the UK we have all these death, injury and cancer figure broken down by Covid “vaccine” type, number and dates. But still refuse to release them – now why might they want to do that? Would they do it if they showed they had done net good?
April 5, 2026
I disagree LL.
Exploration is good and we will learn much from this trip. To infinity and beyond.
If i have a criticism of the coverage it would be that small boys and grown men must think that no men work on space programmes. Only women professors and engineers are invited to commentate.
How lucky we are that these women have saved the world
April 5, 2026
Voting “NO” in 1974 would’ve meant you voting with Tony Benn and the Left of the Labour Party, and against the Tories.
Also, how did you vote in the 1983 general election ? Labour stood on a platform of Leave, if you recall.
April 5, 2026
The amount of damage done by the BBC tax funded propaganda outfit (who have been consistently wrong on so much – Climate Alarmism, Covid Lockdowns, Covid “vaccines”, Net Zero, the EU, the Moon flyby, trip to Mars, Energy, the size of government, DEI, Greta Thunberg, open door to low skilled immigration levels, the economy and so much else.
April 5, 2026
“It was the first time I discovered a lot of the UK establishment held a semi religious belief in the need for the UK to be in the EEC/EU whatever it did and however much it cost.”
Yes. Because it is a political project, not an economic one. It has never been about economics; that has simply been the justification which the Establishment has used to demand our participation.
Only 27 countries are members of the EU; roughly 190 are not. Yet we’re supposed to believe that membership of an expensive, sclerotic, protectionist, micro-managing, mega-bureaucracy is better than governing our own country and trading globally. We don’t have to pay “membership contributions” in order to trade with the 190!
The EEC/EU It is about creating a United States of Europe. It always was and it still is. And as Two-Tier is demonstrating, the Establishment is determined to try and make us rejoin.
April 5, 2026
Well said, Lord Redwood. Happy Easter and to your family.
April 5, 2026
Britain is not Broken it is in a toxic relationship with big government. It’s making us miserable. People are working harder, paying taxes, yet see decaying public services and disorder in the streets. Says Kemi.
A toxic relationship with big government indeed. This ever since the foolish Thatcher appointed the daft as a brush John Major as Chancellor and allowed him to join the ERM against the wise advice of JR and her (by then ex) economic advisor! So the Tories were in office far more years than Labour over this period. The serial and deliberate betrayals by Major, Cameron, May, Boris, Sunak are responsible for us now suffering under the even more appalling Starmer.
I reed that the Government is paying doctors double to treat illegal migrants that to treat UK tax payers. Good old two Tier Kier and Streeting!
April 5, 2026
Since the end of WW2, the Not-a-Conservative-Party has been in Office for 48 years; except the only period where we had some genuinely Conservative policies was between 1979 – 1990 …. just 10 years out of 80.
During the post-WW2 period, Labour has technically only been in Office for 30 years but MacMillan and Heath did nothing to reverse socialism and Heath is responsible for destroying our independence and Sovereignty.
Major started the process of unwinding Mrs Thatcher’s legacy and, post Blair, every “CONservative” PM has effectively been Blu-Labour and has run a Blairite Government. They did NOTHING Conservative.
The “toxic relationship” between the British people and the government is the fault of the Not-a-Conservative-Party, and the conservatively-minded electorate has woken up to the deception carried out against them.
April 5, 2026
Thank you for all your hard work and good sense over the years.
Please continue, we need you.
April 5, 2026
How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place
Book by Bjorn Lomborg
A clue – not on a manned and one woman entirely pointless Moon Photo Shoot! Even if the BBC and there staff are huge fans.
April 5, 2026
Like many people, I use the internet to browse a range of UK and international news sources in an attempt to source accurate information about current events, political opinion, green issues etc
With a handful of Conservative-supporting billionaires controlling most of the country’s national newspapers, the BBC in the firing line of Reform and the Tory right, the arrival of two openly reactionary broadcasters, and the launch of more right-wing populist news websites, Britain’s media is shifting to the right
Consequently, one has to read their news through a lens of anti-net zero, anti-renewables, pro-fossil fuel propaganda – which frequently quotes figures which are demonstrably false and biased.
For the fossil fuel industry, the energy transition is an existential issue. The more market share that is being lost to wind, solar and battery storage, the louder their protests.
This Easter weekend I have cancelled all my news subscriptions in favour of the Independent online newspaper, which puts both sides of the argument. The BBC and Sky News also provide unbiased and impartial views.
April 5, 2026
“The BBC unbiased” Comedy gold …..
April 5, 2026
+1
Sakara batteries are just a way to store energy not to generate it so cannot really take market share. A very expensive way to do this too. The best and cheapest way to store “electricity” is as a tank of gas, oil, nuclear fuel or as a pile of coal then produce the electricity only as needs.
On demand electricity and energy is what is needed and is thus far more valuable than random intermittent and expensive to wire up and to back up “renewables”.
April 5, 2026
Complete the set, terminate your membership here as well.
April 5, 2026
But then we would miss the comedy SG provides.
April 5, 2026
Sounds to me like you know you’re losing the argument and you are reverting to your comfort zone.
April 5, 2026
A sole voice in the darkness.
You might want to touch on that historic meeting set up by Harold Wilson to basically establish a common agreement within the big political parties, to sell the EEC as something wonderful. That was the beginning of what we came to call the liblabcon.
It seems that the establishment, having made up it’s collective mind to be a part of Europe could see no wrong in what happened to the UK.
The other thing that persuaded many was the state of the country under labour, failing and getting worse.
April 5, 2026
Politics, at both local and national levels, is a quagmire. Consistency is rare, seeking personal advancement is common. You have been persistent in this EU debate, and almost uncannily correct. Shame that people don’t listen!
April 5, 2026
Whatever you Sir JR or I think. The longer Starmer stays in power the deeper back into the EU we will go, via the back door this time,
April 5, 2026
“England is not governed by logic, she is governed by Parliament” :- Disraeli
The UK has always been torn between the swashbuckling economics of America and the rather more careful/tiresome processes and machinations of Europe. An odd-man-out not quite fitting with Europe nor with America. A difference not resolved even now.
I thought the Brexit project was a daft idea driven by ideology rather than realism. Never likely to deliver an economic or political freedom Nirvana. I had severe doubts regarding the true intentions of those who wanted a Hard Brexit. Shades of turning Wales and NI into something like Alabama and adopting the social bear garden that is America, but keeping quiet about the intention and consequences.
As things are the world has moved on. Brexit is irrelevant and down the drain. The Far East is the new America on the up and up and the old America is falling into disrepute and foolish adventures.
BTW, the Artemis project reminds us of the Goonhilly space antenna. Built by the GPO in 1962 for £650,000 – about £12 million today. Nowadays £12 million would hardly pay the lawyers and consultants. Why – because we need all the makework schemes we can find – from Parliament to the dustcart.
April 5, 2026
We may remind ourselves of how Ted Heath sought to give the impression that when he and Geoffrey Rippon began the joining process, they claimed that “our sole commitment is to negotiate, nothing more”. In turn, as Enoch Powell put it when the truth began to emerge, barely was the ink dry on the Treaty before Heath was pledging economic and monetary union before the decade was out. We may all feel thankful for the lone contemporaneous voices in the wilderness – Enoch and our esteemed host, among others – who eventually led Margaret Thatcher to proclaim “No! No! No!”
April 5, 2026
You are fighting a religion Lord Redwood and one with entrenched vested interests.
Galileo Galilei was eventually able to show the clergy that he was right.
April 5, 2026
As the old lady used to say when the parade passed by “they’re all out of step except my son John”
April 5, 2026
“I was called in by a senior Director who told me they disagreed and thought the common market was a good thing” by the wording, by natural definitions a ‘common market’ is an entirely different animal to a Political Union.
One is about trade the other is about ‘rule’.
I was going to say it is surprising for businesses, industry, being for a political union. Then you reflect by there very nature business for the most part are not democracies. Although the Board, the shareholders can remove the failures, democracy by who hold the purse strings. They are single entities striving to beat the competition and earn money for their owners. They work as a result of the ego of the man at the top, not a bad thing, it just is.
They also get to fail when they get it wrong, they get swallowed up by more powerful egos. Businesses and Industry are not tied to geographic zones, they move, they look for the most lucrative domicile to trade from.
Wishing that on Nations is at odds with the intension.
April 5, 2026
I admire that you put your career on the line for your principles. You are a rare breed indeed, and we appreciate how much you care for this country. You would have made an excellent PM. If only your advice had been heeded, I’m sure we would be in a better place. I too read the EU treaties and proposals, which is why I’ve always been a staunch leaver. The Remainers I’ve done battle with have all been ignorant of the EU, so they have been easy to win arguments against.
April 5, 2026
Off topic piece that surfaced yesterday from the OBR income tax receipts £331bn, welfare spending £333bn.
We are in a good place because the UK Parliament and its Government don’t do maths.
Its the same Math used to equate the EU & the UK. The UK pays, sorry gives, and the EU says cheers – not exactly the EU says give us more and we will talk so more.
April 5, 2026
Labour has handed taxpayers a £3bn pensions bill for a gold-plated scheme that could have paid for itself.
The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) pension scheme, set up for workers who produce Britain’s nuclear warheads, holds enough assets to cover 92pc of its retirement promises.
“Under the watchful eye of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the Government has few ways in which it can increase spending without borrowing or taxing more. But finding and grabbing ‘forgotten assets’ like the AWE pension fund is a way to circumvent these constraints and spend more ‘pain-free’.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/pensions/news/labour-stacks-another-3bn-of-pension-debt-on-taxpayers/
The UK Parliament is about spend, spend, spend – earning, growth and paying is not their thing
April 5, 2026
Don’t quote that ad nauseum
£180 billion of the welfare bill is pensions which is contributory (as opposed to pension credit which is a benefit).
National insurance take is £220 billion so offsets some of the state pension and some of the NHS.
The figures that I would be more interested in are employers’ contribution to public sector pensions and how much we pay in benefits to those not born here or their second generation dependents
April 5, 2026
Voters will not stand for being lied to by the Government and MPs. The lies started with Heath and Wilson, and with the exception of Thatcher, pretty much every PM since the 1970’s. I voted to leave in 1975 and 2016, and I am disgusted at what has happened since.
What an absolute shower the PM, MPs, HOLs and Civil Service are. They are anti UK, anti democracy and deserve to go ontrial for treason.
April 5, 2026
A very happy Easter to you and your family, reading this today has given me some hope that surely you can’t be the only person in Parliament that thinks more of our country than the ridiculous EU. When I ask remainers what the benefit is of being in the EU the first thing they invariably say is we don’t have to queue through passport control, so that’s ok then we can give our country away so you can get on holiday faster, beggars belief. Keep up the good work and although they haven’t listened to you for 50 years maybe there will be a break in the rot that is slowly eradicating our once great country.
April 5, 2026
Congratulations to Lord Redwood and Happy Easter to all.
I would be interested to gain some understanding of the reality of the effect of the Good Friday Agreement on a no deal Brexit and the Irish border.
Having read the Agreement several times I failed to understand the arguments being made at the time.
What would have been your proposal, Sir John?
Reply I proposed with the ERG no hard border NI to R of I, with UK agreeing to police no exports to R o I of products not meeting EU rules. Free trade no barriers GB to NI
April 5, 2026
My memory is that Guy Verhofstadt, the arch EU federalist (and Aston Martin lover and vineyard owner!) would have agreed with your position. He said UK would have been better able to play all its cards in the negotiations if it left first without a deal, on WTO terms and then proposed something better. If I remember correctly, he said this to Parliament’s EU Committee and was laughed at. In essence, his message was that while still a member the EU rules apply. Outside the rules would not apply and the EU could meet the UK as an equal and could be flexible.
One can blame only the Tory Party for the fiasco that was Britain’s departure from the EU. It campaigned for Remain and when it lost the referendum, instead of accepting the result it elected Mrs May as leader, a Remainer and a person less suited to the task of negotiating terms with the EU it would have been hard to find. She was obsessed with detail, could not understand the big picture, adamantly pro-EU in her speeches, notably in Florence, immediately after whichs she set up her back channel to Brussels through Olly Robbins, by-passing her own ministers and parliament to bring about Britain’s continuing subjection to the EU. She was vindictive and petty (the car kesy at chequers!) and when defeated she inflicted the amendment to the Climate Change Act on Britain as her revenge for being ousted. This change made the UK the first major economy to legally commit to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The Remainers of all parties including the Conservatives continued to sabotage negotiations until the WA was finally agreed – a surrender administered by Labour’s odious Hilary Benn with his act forcing Britain’s negotiators to accept whatever the EU offered.
April 5, 2026
And of course it was Conservative Edward Heath who took Britain in, promising sovereignty would not be affected. Cabinet papers released since prove he knew very well sovereignty would be lost. He took Britain into the EEC on a lie.
April 5, 2026
John you are second only to the minister for the nineteenth century – and being in or out of the EU will not materially affect you either way – It’s the hopes and well being of the next generation that you should be addressing.
April 5, 2026
Unable to provide any advantages for its tributary nations (other than ladling their taxpayers’ money towards subsidising EU projects) the only strategy the EU has left is to show any doubters within its ranks how malevolantly it treats those who are outside the project. No wonder the people of Norway and Iceland are rethinking whether to join/rejoin. Their politicians are longing to join the EU gravy train.
All credit to the Swiss for their principled resistance. If it were left to their politicians, they’d have been coerced into joining shortly after Maastricht.
John R is a rare politician who actually believes in helping to govern an independent nation. Peter Lilley is another. How many more? Not many, apart from the Spartans.