Why is US GDP per head more than double the EU’s? Why have the EU economies including the Uk grown only half as fast as the US all this century so far? The EU and the UK’s pro EU establishment have been content for this disaster to unfold, watching US GDP per head reach $92,000 with the EU limping to $44,000. Why do they rarely ask what European policy makers are doing wrong and why double up on all their policy mistakes?
The present UK government won with an attractive pledge to make the economy the fastest growing one in the G7 , which it just happened to be for the first half of 2024 after a long period of slow European derived growth.
Since getting into office it has gone about destroying jobs with high taxes and high energy costs. It bans new oil and gas investment and soon will stop the manufacture of all new petrol cars. It has furthered a productivity collapse in the public sector. It has launched a series of attacks on farmers, small businesses, landlords and others who try to make something happen and seek to serve the public. Predictably unemployment has surged, young people cannot get jobs, growth has stalled and the cost of living crisis rumbles on.
The growing gap between the US and the UK/EU owes a lot to the US policy of cheap energy and more domestic fossil fuel extraction compared to the EU policy of dear energy and closing down fossil fuels. The UK has seen an accelerating spate of closures of high energy using businesses under this government, with two refineries, petrochemical plants, ceramics factories, steel blast furnaces, a big fibreglass plant, vehicle manufacturing and others sacrificed in the name of net zero. The UK then imports these products adding to world CO2 rather than cutting it. US industrial gas is one quarter the price of Uk, so it is no wonder we cannot compete.
The UK is sitting on big reserves of onshore gas which could be extracted with suitable environmental protections. You can drill and install well heads far away from homes and can reward local communities with royalties. The government even refuses to get out readily available gas in the North Sea where there are underused pipes and available platform production capacity to speed up delivery of new sources and cut the costs. Gas is a crucial feedstock for chemical production as well as an energy source.
The growth gap grows as taxes rise in Europe and fall under President Trump. Only Ireland in the EU bucks the trend by having a much lower corporation tax rate, giving it GDP per head twice the EU level and filling its Treasury with so much more business tax as a result. Investors are drawn to low tax places. The rich list of world countries alongside the USA is mainly a list of low tax or energy rich small states like Singapore, Norway and Bermuda.
Another key to US faster growth is technology. The US has produced the leading giants of the digital revolution, whilst the EU has specialised in regulating and taxing them more, jealous of US success. The US has a positive entrepreneurial culture, spinning more great businesses out of universities. The UK shares some of that but this government wants to tax and regulate them so much that the talent is now fleeing the country in large numbers. Common law systems are more fkexible and friendly to innovation. Codified EU law can block new ideas. Aligning more with EU rules is putting us in a slow growth prison. .
Lower taxes, cheaper energy and fewer regulatory restrictions are a simple formula for growth which the UK establishment has no intention of allowing and spends much of its time denying. The Bank of England and the Treasury add to the misery by favouring boom and bust policies which disrupt investment. The Exchange Rate Mechanism EU boom bust of the late 1980s to 1992 did much damage. The lurch from Latin American style money printing this decade to the Bank losing us a fortune selling bonds it paid too much for is very costly and destabilising .
The planned EU re set reinforces all of the old failings of EU/UK policy making. Higher carbon prices and tougher emission trading schemes will accelerate the decline of energy using industry. More regulating of digital and media industries will reinforce US domination. Large contributions to EU coffers mean higher taxes and more people and businesses with money leaving. More young people and migrants coming to the UK will lower average incomes and exacerbate shortages of homes, water, power and roadspace.
The EU re set will make the UK a colony of the EU again with no rights to change or object to their laws and taxes. The EU system makes Europe a colony of the US technology giants who control so many things about our lives and businesses. Not a great policy and not a good time to fall out with the US. There is no willingness by the government to do any of things we need to do to reverse the widening growth gap between us and America.
April 26, 2026
All that can be said John is everything is going to plan. UN Agenda 30 details the route to deindustrialising the West in favour of the BRICs, America under Trump has reversed this decline but Europe and Australia march on regardless.
There us nothing inevitable about what’s happening, it’s all minutely choreographed in the various 5 year plans of the CCA.
The low hanging fruit has been picked and now we are heading to the more serious stuff, closing regional airports, banning ships that don’t comply, forcing ICE cars off the road through pricing and regulations.
We’re heading for a revolution and the idiots in Westminster won’t know what’s hit them.
April 26, 2026
CCAC is that?
April 26, 2026
Prof. John Underhill (formerly Heriot-Watt University) and Cuadrilla founder Chris Cornelius have stated that the geology is too complex and that fracking will not work here in the UK.
Reply There are better ways of getting the gas out which will work.
April 26, 2026
Fracking will work perfectly well in some parts of the UK (or would do if the government got out of the way and stopped forcing people to pour concrete down drillings in acts of idiotic vandalism.
“There is no willingness by the government to do any of things we need to do to reverse the widening growth gap between us and America.’ No they are making matters even worse and in all directions three more years of scorched vandalism (at least) still to go!
April 26, 2026
It needs a 180 degree turn in this net zero madness.
It needs a 180 degree tilt towards swapping no skill immigrants for high skill immigrants.
It needs lower taxes and fewer benefits.
It needs a meritocratic education system and repudiation of diversity.
Conservatives instigated all these mistakes, and now Labour is piling more on top.
In the present setup only a Reform government has a snowball’s chance of correcting the situation.
April 26, 2026
+1
Except it wasn’t Conservatives. It was LibCONservatives.
April 26, 2026
@Sir Joe Soap +1 so very true.
But we have a UK Parliament that has not yet done with dishing out malicious punishment and retribution for daring to suggest they should step up and manage, govern the UK
April 26, 2026
high skilled immigration at the moment is mostly Indian grads who spent their years at college plagiarism and corrupt allocation of marks coming here undercutting locals with the massive tax perks they get. more of that is the last thing we need.
April 26, 2026
We need to train and examine our own graduates. Then we know what we have.
April 26, 2026
the US spends more on drones than the entire UK defence budget
April 26, 2026
@iain gill – on the face of it it world appear the US defence Department spends more US taxpayer money with UK Defence Companies and creates more jobs in the UK Defence Industry than our own UK Parliament and its Government does on Defence.
April 26, 2026
+1 but will this continue with Starmer’s wrecking of relations with Trump?
April 26, 2026
But the Defence Budget seems not to be spend on Defence.
Maybe Admirals are expensive, Ukraine certainly is and our troops are there, we KNOW this, we are related to these people who have done several stints on the front!
April 26, 2026
We are being “levelled down” – in accordance with UN Agenda 21 and UN Agenda 2030. The USA isn’t.
We are complying with the UN’s Net Zero “redistribute the world’s wealth” policy. The USA isn’t.
We are being forced into a post-democratic Surveillance and Control State, with a Social Credit System (like China). The USA isn’t.
Unless we become more like the USA and less like the EU we will continue to decline.
The British Establishment, from Charles Windsor down and currently fronted by Two-Tier, wants to achieve the opposite. It wants us controlled: poorer, colder, less mobile and less “free” – in accordance with UN Agenda 21 and UN Agenda 2030.
April 26, 2026
It was Jean-Claude Juncker, Ex-commission president, not so long ago, who told us in no uncertain terms that the EU was not only in decline, it would find it hard to compete in world markets.
Our PM has to be aware of that prediction, but he should also be able to see what is going on in front of his eyes. The EU is pricing itself out of being competitive, and they are heading exactly towards the same fate we will suffer under net-0 nuts.
Who in their right mind would merge our basket case economy with that of the EU. Makes no sense, but if he was expecting some shiny presidents job for all of his treachery there won’t much of the EU grandeur left, and he will be sorely disappointed.
Reply See the Draghi Report setting out how far the EU has fallen behind the US and why
April 26, 2026
+1
April 26, 2026
publicsectorexecutive.com 13/04/2026 ‘Great British Energy-Nuclear signs contract to deliver first Small Modular Reactors’.
Rolls Royce SMRs were selected and £2.6bn was allocated as part of the 2025 Spending Review. GBE-N also got £350m in contracts to the relevant supply chain.
So not everything is as bad as some Cassandras would like you to think.
April 26, 2026
hefner
You missed out that the official target for having an SNR actually producing any energy into the grid is mid 2030’s.
Let us all hope this target is better controlled than other Government tagets like HS2 completion.
April 26, 2026
Well if we has a sensible planning system and government that could half organise things we could build large scale reactors as quickly and more cheaply than modular ones per MWH delivered. Cheaper to run, connect up and protect too. But alas we have 10 years of pissing about with paper work, politicians, bat tunnels, fish disco plans and lawyers before a spade hits the ground.
April 26, 2026
The modular ones have few engineering or cost advantages unless on boats or subs. But they might help get round red tape (far better and far cheaper to get rid of all the misguided red tape). Releases all the lawyers, regulators… to get real productive rather than obstructive jobs too.
April 26, 2026
I cannot see any physics or engineering reasons as to why building ten small modular reactors of £200MW electrical output each would cost less to design, build, maintain, connect up, protect or be safer than one large 1000 MW one or even be quicker. Other than the entirely artificial reasons of getting rounds the OTT red tape and planning obstacles. Get rid of those and go for the larger, safer, cheaper, easier to connect and protect one. This is surely the better way to go.
Unless you do not need more than the 200 MW as you are on a ship, sub and small island perhaps.
Reply I think you mean 2000 MW . The SMRs are not very small, at 470 MW each.
April 26, 2026
Yes the larger RR ones seem to be circa 470MW so six to give the same power as one Hinckley C. No real engineering or cost reasons to opt for modular other than to get round artificial red tape barriers and does modular even do that in practice?
April 26, 2026
Everything is bad Hefner. It might be OK for continental countries who never really did much, but for Britain it’s a disaster.
April 26, 2026
The EU is not a country it is a region where countries pool their resources for trade reasons it is a project at an early stage of development yet and is not a disaster as described – some countries like Ireland and Poland have made the best of it but some others are lagging behind and some others have dropped out completely and whinge. The EU doesn’t guarantee everyone prosperity it up to each to project and carve out what it can for itself within the rules – it is not a prison it is the badge of age old European identity within this increasingly hostile and chaotic world and I for one am completely happy to be part of it. Jason Dublin
Reply It is a legislative prison dedicated to strangling enterprise and innovation and advancing the power of the Union and its top officials. It struts the world stage with its demands and views and then expects others to fight the wars and to defend it.
April 26, 2026
It’s a mega-bureaucracy with no democratic mandate whatsoever. The Lisbon CONstitutional Treaty was forced through by ignoring its own ratification “Rules.”
We voted to LEAVE it. Not to become a semi-attached colony.
April 26, 2026
You’ve left it. You don’t like it, you were warned you wouldn’t because they, the much bigger and powerful party, held all the cards. It’s what you voted for. And by the way the EU is a lot more democratic than the UK – its laws are made by elected politicians, in the Council and in the Parliament, but who ever voted for the House of Lords?
April 26, 2026
Did you ever vote for the EU Presidents or the mighty EU Commissioners Finlay?
They have far more powers than our House of Lords
April 26, 2026
In reality the EU is a consensus based organisation which states choose to join so that they can co-operate in addressing matters of mutual concern, like trade, climate change and migration. “Legislative prison”? “Dedicated to strangling enterprise”? “struts the world stage”? I am a doctor and I seriously advise you to get help. Your psychotic hatred of the EU is not healthy
Reply Plenty of examples of strangling enterprise – shutting down coal and gas burning plants to import from Asia/America, banning petrol and diesel cars, regulating and taxing digital businesses, code based law that makes different ways of doing things illegal etc. EU pontificates on Ukraine and Iran wars without engaging Russia or Iran and without committing forces to create a peace.m
April 26, 2026
“code based law that makes different ways of doing things illegal ” – could you try that again in comprehensible English? Laws make things illegal – in the UK, the EU, China, USA, etc. What’s your point?
As for the EU Army, you Brexiters ran scare story after scare story about how it would come to exist, now you complain it doesn’t exist.
Again – your ranting hatred of the EU is really not healthy
Reply Code law only allows you to do what they set out and permit. Common laws lets you do anything not made illegal by law.
April 26, 2026
We CHOSE to leave it. Which part of that don’t you understand?
April 27, 2026
We’ve left it. Which part of that don’t you understand?
April 27, 2026
You’re comment shows, not all Doctors are of sound mind, scary.
April 26, 2026
Ireland is in full revolutionary mode.
The nation is standing together and screaming for Irexit, they are isolating those who work in the Gardai and army, they are not providing services or food!
If Ireland has made the best of the EU then you can see what an unmitigated calamity it is.
April 27, 2026
There are minority extremist groups in Ireland just the same as there are in Britain who would change the political order by violence if they could but they are well outnumbered by the good decent middle of the road people. You can easily notice these unhappy extremists they are the ones carrying the extra large clean almost pristine national flags, all with the same dimensions, and with flag staffs same size and then following the demonstration the flags are gathered in by the organisers and kept safe and minded ready for the next Demo where they will be handed out again – all to do with choreography and for TV effects.
April 26, 2026
Our current political class have a collective death wish. They are actively promoting policies that will see the end of democracy because state authority will become absolute thus why bother with elections or politicians?
The time and need for political change has never been greater than today here in 21st century Britain.
The state has convinced itself it has the right to take any amount of wealth from individuals via taxation and spend that sequestered wealth wherever it pleases.
The old saying, “socialism is great until it runs out of other peoples money” could not be more apposite.
This Labour government are fixated on wealth redistribution but have no idea how to create wealth to distribute.
Perhaps someone can let the treasury know, you do not increase wealth by increasing debt, i.e. borrowing….
April 26, 2026
Why do we allow corporations to offshore their profits to Ireland? The tax regime needs to be changed so that tax is paid to the country where the profits are generated. For too long, we have allowed these parasitic countries to reap the benefits from our economy.
April 26, 2026
More to the point, why do we tax and spend so much we aren’t competitive with other countries?
April 26, 2026
@Christine – only Ireland?
Corporations are not offshoring by simple choice, they HQ were they receive less punishment. Look around the big operators that earn in the UK they are protected in what they define as home markets, have large administration fees paid to their home base so as not to show a taxable income in the UK. That includes some of what most would consider so-called UK Companies. Dyson, JCB and many, many more. they have been forced to be homed in foreign domains. Successful Corporations play on the World stage, create world wide earnings as such have to compete against the best in the World. If they were taxed in the UK it would be like shooting yourself in the foot
It is the UK Government that has forced them out and keeps them out, they(the UK Parliament) have some weird notion that by having a disproportionate tax system it earns the exchequer more money.
The Question is why is the UK Parliament and its Government punishing enterprise and achievement?
April 26, 2026
The points you make…have a point. But would you prefer to be a relatively poor person in the US, or Europe? I don’t mean a benefit scrounger, I mean a lower middle income person who pays their way but for whom unexpected bills mean sacrifices.
I think the healthcare issues in the US mean it would be less appealing, at least economically.
So we are back to the issue of whether a higher gdp at all costs is something to aim for in society.
April 26, 2026
@Wanderer – and health care in the UK
The means to be permitted to earn money, create wealth. The UK a Government running National Insurance were has the money gone? The UK Government running hands on National Health?
There are of course systems that work, great systems, but they are not permitted in the UK as it is the Parliament, its Government that knows how to spend your money better than you. The UK Parliament its Government thwarts attempt of the individual. Brown robbed the private pension pots, then along comes Reeves that now want to dictate how pension pots earn money.
The USA on balance, not perfect but is ahead
April 26, 2026
To be fair, Rachel Reeves has been successful in making UK gilts profitable for annuities.
April 26, 2026
Clearly not at all costs, but the UK has fairly low gbp per capita PPP, absurdly high taxes and energy costs, housing shortages and rather abysmal public services too. A rather dire combination.
April 26, 2026
Plus a doom loop government for three more years.
April 26, 2026
Why? Because the UK and the EU have had socialism for 3 decades or more and socialism depends upon making and keeping people poor. Just look at the history of communist countries as to where we’re eventually heading. Hence the twin policies of Net Zero to sabotage our energy, industry and national security and mass immigration to destroy social cohesion and nationhood.
April 26, 2026
Who could possibly believe that cheap, abundant and reliable energy was the key to a prosperous growing economy? Unfortunately, there is a green virus infecting both Europe and the UK affecting the left wing mindset. It is really quite frightening that the Labour government’s recent response has been to double down on wind and solar power with more carbon taxes and that many disillusioned with Labour are moving to support the Green Party.
What will it take to convince people to behave rationally? Trump Derangement Syndrome has stopped them doing fair comparisons with the USA economy. The mainstream media still blame everything bad that happens on “Climate Change” despite all the countervailing evidence.
April 26, 2026
‘will make the UK a colony of the EU’ Always the ‘Plan’ by the UK Parliament and the Blob from when the people voted to have them take charge manage and govern the UK for the people that pay their wages. But no, that suggested they would have to work, do a job so they have resisted and fought against, it the sole reason way the UK has never left the EU.
Of all the Countries the EU trades with how many take their orders on how the operate in within their own domain from the EU?
Of course while keeping quite it was the only ‘Plan’ 2TK had, to get the UK back fully under the EU yoke, he sends them UK taxpayer money, he gives them our fish – what has he got the UK in return?
April 26, 2026
2TK is the worst of the worst an appalling limp coward. His ‘coalition of the willing’ to keep the Hormaz Straits open his partnership is said to be led by Germany, France and the UK. Germany will take on the minesweeping operations, France already has 8 Warships in the area to police the straits, the UK? The UK is now flummoxed, 2TK working with ‘partners’ to keep us safe and secure has nothing to offer. He doesn’t know what that means. He should ask who will come to the UK’s aid when it cant aid itself?
The UK’s Parliaments, their Global Statesman that they keep in power is an embarrassment to Parliament its MPs and a malicious punishment for the people of the UK. They need to wake up, Sir Keir Rodney Starmer hates the UK and hates the UK people even more. It would appear Parliaments MP’s are retaining this man as malicious punishment for us wanting to have them and not the EU manage and govern the UK – etc ed
April 26, 2026
They are retaining Starmer because he is the best they have! Honestly. That’s the level of trouble we are in.
April 26, 2026
Communism doesn’t come cheap
April 26, 2026
The US has generally experienced higher sustained growth rates than UK since 1916. The US has consistently held a higher GDP per capita than the UK since the late 19th century.
Trying to match the US is what’s called a ‘stretch target’ that is by definition unlikely to be met, but would be headline good news if it were ever met. UK can’t even meet a slightly challenging target.
The point seems to be that whether in or out of the EU the UK just isn’t and never again will be the thrusting, dynamic, high growth economy it was in the nineteenth century.
April 26, 2026
@Peter Gardner – for no other reason than the UK Parliament needs control, Poliburo control. Their version of an economy is that because of their overwhelming business experiance it is the only way they can boost their personal self esteem.
Allowing others to flourish, contribute is not in their Socialist mind set. The proof is writ large in everyones daily life, Starmer & Reeves keep telling everyone how great they are and we are lucky to have them.
April 26, 2026
In the US, if a state goes too socialist they run into money problems and won’t get bailed out by federal government, so they have to run competitively. In the UK, a poorly run county gets more government money because it’s deprived, so they can afford to be inefficient.
April 26, 2026
122 ‘illegal immigrants’ invaded the UK yesterday 25th April 2026 …and it still only spring
April 26, 2026
The EU and The U.K. are picking up the funding shortfalls due to USAID stopping throwing money to the criminal enterprises.
Going to be expensive, the WEF alone requires $80 million pa.