It was great news 10 years ago that a majority of voters in our biggest ever election/referendum wanted the UK to be self governing again. We should put people elected by the voters in charge of our government, and should be able to get rid of them if they fail or displease. So many things were wrong or unhelpful from the EU, but UK voters could not vote out of office the people who made the decisions.
We have already enjoyed some big wins from leaving.
We are now saving around £17 bn a year as we no longer have to surrender some tax revenues to them and no longer have to pay a large membership fee.
We have reached agreement with India and the TPP for new trade deals, and improved some of the trade deals we had via the EU when we rolled them over.
We have been able to improve animal welfare standards by for example ending the export of live animals.
We have been able to cancel tariffs on 24% of our imports where we buy things we cannot make or grow for ourselves, making products cheaper.
We switched from Erasmus to Turing to give more help to UK students going abroad, with more choice of university outside the EU as well as just within the EU under Erasmus. It also cut the bills for UK taxpayers as we did not have to pay for EU students to come here.
We regained our seat on the World Trade Organisation, giving us more influence to shape world trade policy
We have avoided a large number of new rules and regulations the EU has passed since we left, giving an advantage to our AI and services industries.
We have made regulatory changes to help our pharmaceutical and plant development research based industries
Migration into the UK for lower paid jobs has been reduced from the EU with the ending of freedom of movement
We have avoided any liability for the massive Euro 800 bn borrowing programme the EU is embarked upon. We could not afford more debt.
This current government has been able to offer huge subsidies to the steel industry, and to put VAT on school fees which the EU would have prevented. These would not be my choices but they show our elected government using Brexit freedoms.
There are so many more wins to be had
We can get rid of carbon taxes and emissions trading, EU originated policies which make our energy too dear.
We can negotiate trade deals with more places around the world with faster growing economies.
We can avoid putting the coming EU carbon tariffs or border taxes on our imports which will make things dearer.
We can cut migration from non EU further and get proper control of our borders now we are out of free movement. The last government was wrong not to do so.
We can cut and remove VAT from products, as we have with green items.
We can favour UK suppliers in public procurement
We can reduce the inherited regulatory EU burden on businesses
June 23, 2026
We can avoid governments sneaking back into the EU under the guise of a ‘reset’?
June 23, 2026
Peter precisely, I see 2TK will hang on long enough to sign the reset agreement which effectively makes us second tier members, with no input into decision-making. This is of course the idea because they will point out we take all the rules with no influence so we may as well rejoin.
Salami slicing i think they call it.
Burnham is in for a rude awakening if he tries the tax and spend route because many taxpayers are leaving the country.
I’ve never heard such a deluded speech as Starmer yesterday listing his achievements. I wonder if he actually believes them.
June 23, 2026
We are indeed well above the point that higher tax rates will actually raise any more tax revenue, it will just further further strangle the golden geese, drive them overseas, deter inward and home investment and increase the black market (while on benefits too sector). We are also fairly close to the borrowing limits are reasonable rates.
So what will Streeting I assume be doing in No. 11. Further currency devaluation perhaps. Replacing Bailey with someone half competent would be a good first step.
June 23, 2026
Probably not under Burnham.
People keep suggesting Starmer was an honest, moral & decent man. What planet are the people on, he was the total opposite. He arrived on a manifesto that was a pack of lies & did the complete reverse. He then left No. 10 on a speech of endless lies about his “achievements”. Almost everything he did was immoral, indecent & dishonest. Much of it was pure evil yet he talks about the country he loves – which one it that?
June 23, 2026
@Lifelogic – The grooming and rape gangs, the Chagos give away, the fishing giveaway, the Farming Industry, the UK’s veterans, Peter Mandelson, the cancellation of elections it is a massive list that highlights the Mans ‘hate’ for the UK and its people.
June 23, 2026
LL,
Starmer’s speech was along the same lines as Theresa May’s. Love of the country, achievements which don’t stand up to scrutiny and even the emotional breakdown when wife and family are mentioned.
I think the breakdown was acting to gain sympathy. Boys don’t cry though.
June 23, 2026
An Indecent Man
The truth about the most hated prime minister of all time.
Nick Dixon is about right today.
Jun 23
June 23, 2026
“We should put people elected by the voters in charge of our government”
I disagree. Brexit showed how this is exactly what we don’t want, because it turned out we can’t trust them to do what we tell them. They can manage the government, but must not be in a positipn to forget who is in charge: that’s the people’s role. Otherwise we have a dictatorship of the elected representatives., who are unanswerable to anyone between elections.
We need Swiss-style referendum powers to control the government.
June 23, 2026
+1
June 23, 2026
Indeed, just choosing the bus driver once every five years (with FPTP) is not democracy in any real sense. Especially when the driver chosen will be a politician who will generally promise A to get elected and then, once elected, not even attempt to deliver A but deliver B usually the complete reverse.
Then for five years there is nothing the public can do to direct the bus. Even after that they fine the only way to get rid of this driver is to replace them with someone like Sir Two Tier!
June 23, 2026
What about a Swiss-style constitution with parliamentary elections using a proportional multi-party voting system, executive elections by direct popular vote, and referendums on policy issues?
I’ll let you continue to argue for this system here in the UK with its population seven times as big as the Swiss is, with nothing like the fairly independent 26 ‘cantons’ some of which passing their local laws, nor 40% of the Swiss population with migrant background and 31% of foreign residents with some cantons giving these the right to vote.
June 23, 2026
I completely agree that for democracy we need to move to more referendums on major policy decisions to provide some control over not only errant, mischievous, devious, misbehaving politicians who do not follow their manifestos but also the Civil Service and the Judiciary.
June 23, 2026
SELECT YOUR OWN CANDIDATES.
That is all that is required, it worked for centuries.
June 23, 2026
@Lynn Atkinson – you are suggesting government for the people by the people, themain tenents of democracy. The UK Parliament doesn’t do democracy, its about the rights of the few to rule the many
June 24, 2026
We allowed them to take that right. We used to propose and select our own candidates, I remember! Take that right back from party machines and all this whining will stop.
June 23, 2026
the people who make most of the decisions are the senior layers of the UK public sector, and we still cannot vote them out.
June 23, 2026
+1 plus the often dire judges in the upper courts.
June 23, 2026
The types who thought 31 months for Lucy Connolly was not manifestly excessive and the 15 convictions of Lucy Letby (all clearly unsafe) were perfectly fine – no appeal needed. So that is 9 of them. Then we have the freedom of information appeal courts and their “judges”. The ones who will not let us know about annomised deaths and injuries of people by Covid vaccines status and dates. What possible reason for this …………. ?
June 23, 2026
It was great news 10 years ago that a majority of voters in our biggest ever election/referendum wanted the UK to be self governing again
And that’s were the EU argument should have stopped and not all this crap about rejoining like the lib/dims would have us do, but there again if you have a muppet in charge what do you expect, the people spoke we just need a party in to implement our departure and running of our Great Country to our needs and not to some foreign entity’s interests
June 23, 2026
@Mick – the people still fighting what they were asked to do, manage and govern, are the lazy rabble that sit on their hands take our money and think the job is about getting orders from the unelected unaccountable elsewhere.
June 23, 2026
They replayed David Dimbleby today on Talk Radio – announcing the result looking as if he had a lemon in his mouth. He said the decision taken in 1975 to joint the common market had been reversed. Not true Mr we were already in in 1975 we had been joined by the dire Ted Heath (without any consent of the people). Will Burnham now do the same trechury again with an in effective rejoining. He has his huge majority gifted to him by the dire Sunak and Hunt (six months early too, why on earth did Sunak do that JR?)
June 23, 2026
Good morning.
Yes I remember that day well 🙂
It started with me not knowing the result until I got to work. Funny thing was, I remember noticing that many Remain posters were gone.
It was a good day. The Sun was shining and warm. A new start and a rebeginning.
June 23, 2026
I remember too. I had a bet on it but went to bed assuming I had lost the bet. Only to wake up and discover I had won my £5K while driving to Gatwick for a very early flight to Malta – alas when I got to the Airport the flight was delayed by about 3 hours so I could have stayed in bed rather longer!
The friend in Malta I was staying with and his wife were rather depressed by the Brexit vote too.
David Cameron announced his resignation as Prime Minister on June 24, 2016, the morning after the UK voted to leave the European Union. He had promised to stay on an deliver Brexit but Cameron (in an act of gross negligence by him and the civil servants) had not even prepared the country for the rather likely Brexit outcome.
June 23, 2026
Such potential, such waste.
The myopia demonstrated by our masters over the need for the EU really does confirm the paucity of talent.
It must be due to civil service briefings and murmurings. Call me Dave was rabidly anti EU as was William Hague until they got into power. The a complete volte face which can only have happened when the captured civil service had no answers without EU. involvement
June 23, 2026
“There are so many more wins to be had”
And not one of them will be had under Labour. Not even with the new PM.
June 23, 2026
It doesn’t matter who they push to the front, the lunatic back benchers won’t let them do what’s needed for the country.
June 23, 2026
great
June 23, 2026
The difference between countries would maintain their interest and quality as individuals but the EU mixes and muddles them together like kippers, custard and curry. Ugh. We are better out of their ugly mess.
June 23, 2026
On one of the hottest days of the year you say ‘We can get rid of carbon taxes’. Just imagine for one moment you are wrong and climate change is man made.
Reply When are you going to get China, India and US to cut their CO2?
June 23, 2026
@Stephen Sharp – just image for one moment that the NetZero zealotry is wrong. Those that promote it fail, as they do NOT have the science to back it up. All opinions offered have failed to be ‘peer reviewed’ that’s what makes something a science.
What is wrong with removing ‘carbon taxes’ a tax changes nothing, a tax just removes money from the economy that could be spent on changing and advancing things, even a NetZero ambition. We cant afford NetZero, the trillions of ‘£’s needed are not there, because even if there is such a thing the money needed, the money creation was the first thing to be banned by the UK Parliament. All the UK Parliament has succeeded in doing with their banning and excessive taxes is to increase imports in the most polluting ways from the most polluting regimes – the UK Parliament has by design increased World Pollution
June 23, 2026
Just in case climate change is man made, we could eliminate immigration to do our bit. That would mean less fossil fuels burnt for winter warmth and less pressure on English meadow and woodland to rip them up for housing.
Why aren’t the Green Party putting this forward as a central policy? Oh that’s right, they’re hypocrites that only spout green washing.
June 23, 2026
SS:
There is no climate crisis and it would not have been invented if its “solution”, Net Zero, wasn’t sabotaging the West’s energy, economies and national security. Just look at the historical data for temperature and CO2 and ask how it was possible for the planet to warm out of the last ice age 11,000 years ago when CO2 was far lower than today? How it is possible that receding glaciers are now revealing 7000 year tree stumps which grew when CO2 was far lower than today? How is it possible that the Antarctic Vostok ice core data shows CO2 following temperature for the last 450,000 years when both temperature and CO2 have been at historically low levels? You may be interested in watching this very interesting CERN lecture given by Jasper Kirkby who worked on a cloud experiment at CERN:
Cosmic rays and climate.
https://youtu.be/6ygk98kEQfk
June 24, 2026
OR, the YouTube presentation was done before the CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets) was run. After it had been run one of its conclusions was ‘A fraction of cloud nuclei [around which condensation may occur] is effectively produced by ionisation due to the interactions of cosmic rays with the constituents of the Earth’s atmosphere, this process is insufficient to attribute all of the present climate modifications to the fluctuations of the cosmic rays intensity modulated by changes in the solar activity and Earth magnetosphere’.
Kirkby, J. et al., 2011, ‘Role of sulphuric acid, ammonia, and galactic cosmic rays in atmospheric aerosol nucleation’, Nature, 476, 429-433.
Dunne, E.M. et al., 2016, ‘Global atmospheric particle formation from CERN CLOUD experiment’, Science, 354, 6316, 1119-1124.
home.cern ‘CLOUD: What can cosmic rays tell us about climate?’.
June 23, 2026
UK temperatures vary between -3 and 30 depending upon the tilt of an axis and the relative position of the sun.
Perhaps the sun’s greater activity is causing more extremes in our weather. That seems more likely than people making the difference
June 24, 2026
I guess you know the time scales at which these changes in the axis tilt and ‘relative position of the Sun’ occur. 41kyr for the axis tilt.
nasa.gov 04/06/2026 Marshall Space Flight Center ‘Solar Cycle Progression and Forecast’.
For sunspot number and solar radio flux the maxima occurred mid-2024, the geomagnetic index is decreasing from a maximum that happened around 01/01/2026.
June 23, 2026
Stephen
If we eventually get to Net Zero can you tell us how mich will this reduce global temperatures.
June 23, 2026
China’s CO2 emissions are already falling (2025 was 0.3% lower than in 2024).
I recommend listening to Greg Jackson (CEO of Octopus Energy) and his views (as someone right in the middle of the energy business) about where technology is going and where countries like China (which already have things like battery swapping stations for electric trucks up and running) are going with regards to future energy sources.
The likes of China are investing heavily in the future whereas in the UK so many are still wanting to live in the past.
June 24, 2026
@Peter Parsons – Chinahas the luxary of being allowed to manufacture so as to earn the money to invest in their future. The UK Parliaments approach is to ban manufacturing in the UK and inport from China,so cutting off the means to earn while sending money out of the country never to return so ensuring there isno future
June 24, 2026
4.5 to 4.9 billion tonnes of coal burnt every year by China.
Over half of the world’s consumption.
PS
Do you really believe China’s figures Peter?
June 23, 2026
Well:- The climate has always changed and always will do so climate change is true, furthermore humans have an effect with crops, emissions, cities, urban heat islands in different directions. But far more things have far more effect orbits, solar activity…
Is there any climate emergency caused by a bit more plant crop and tree food? Almost certainly not. Anyway what the UK is doing does not even save any CO2 worldwide – it just exports it at best. On balance a bit more CO2 and even slightly warmer is a net good anyway. EV cars and vans increase CO2 on balance!
June 23, 2026
As the climate alarmists like to say weather is not climate. But climate is average weather the recent months have not been unusually hot at all. Whatever the BBC might endlessly push with their red paint weather charts.
A lightning strike setting alight to something is perfectly normal not an extreme weather event caused by CO2 as the BBC like to push.
June 23, 2026
If we really needed to cool the Earth then reducing manmade CO2 would be far less efficient than other methods.
June 23, 2026
Stephen
If climate change is really “man made”, then perhaps we should try and control the population explosion and people movement.
The more people in our Country the bigger the problem, that’s if you are correct. !
Perhaps it may just be due to variation in the Suns activity, which is not constant, and which we cannot control (as yet)
June 23, 2026
The UK contributes less than 1% of global Co2 (the bogeyman gas) But Miliband will continue to give us the most expensive energy in the world, whilst destroying our little remaining industry.
June 23, 2026
It was indeed a wonderful moment, but only a moment, because quite soon it became ever more apparent that our political ‘Servants’, of all major parties, were not prepared or willing to allow this great potential to be realised, and as far as I can see, not much has changed in that regard.
June 23, 2026
This should be compulsory reading for everyone in this country including those who cannot yet vote. The truth is not what we are hearing from this government, nor the opposition parties, i.e. Conservatives, Reform,Restore.
The rest especially lib debs are totally illiterate to the truth.
June 23, 2026
Oh the ‘irony’
“We should put people elected by the voters in charge of our government, and should be able to get rid of them if they fail or displease”
Have you tried telling the UK Parliament that?
I know I have yet again wandered off topic, but everyone but the UK Parliament sees the situation for what it is – A Parliament forever interpreting Democracy to satisfy personal ego and need. There is NO government for the people by the people permitted. Parliament just as with the Brexit vote disrespects the people that lend them powers and pay them.
June 23, 2026
I voted out in 1975, and leave in 2016 and am proud to have done so. The attitude of most MPs, the HoL and the Civil Service refusing to accept the referendum result appalls me. That the Remainers are still trying to drag us back in, by stealth, ten years after we voted out shows their contempt for democracy.
We need a Government that puts the UK first, uses our Brexit freedoms positively, and believes in the UK and its people.
The good news is that Starmer is going, the bad news is he will be replaced by another empty vessel!
June 23, 2026
+1
June 23, 2026
John,
Heard you on the radio this morning. You were angry and passionate, that’s great, that is what we need from our politicians anger, passion, truth, reality, that’s the way we all feel at the moment and hearing the bland stuff which mainly comes from politicians mouths is entirely inappropriate.
Thanks
June 23, 2026
If only we had a government with backbone to do these things. I voted leave and have never regretted it, but if I’d woken up on my daughter’s birthday to find we were staying I would certainly not have still been sulking 10 years later I’d have said that’s DEMOCRACY, something some people in this country can’t get their heads around. If everyone had pulled together it could have been a great success instead of half in half out.
June 23, 2026
Out of the woodwork ….A certain business woman unhappy with Brexit & initiating legal challenge at the time, now hopes that the next leader will have a plan & strategy for our relationship with ‘Europe’ – ie: the UK’s Reset with the European Union. It’s felt that Sir K S did not go far enough and a Swiss type relationship is opined as favourable. ( Free movement of course ) ( Euronews article ) And another – Nick Clegg article suggesting Brexit could be undone and we could be back in by 2036 ( Independent )
Is the 22 July UK/EU Summit definitely going ahead or postponed ? Remember some weeks ago, a senior EU official told us that our ” window of of opportunity ” would not remain open indefinitely.
June 23, 2026
‘Big wins from Brexit’ …
I may be very selfish but as a retiree since 2014 now widowed Brexit has brought me not even some slight but zero advantage, nothing in terms of pension, no better availability of food in the stores, much higher bills when I sometimes go to restaurants, much more bother when going abroad to the EU, no visible improvement in the NHS in terms of getting access to GPs and hospital operations. As for once I don’t think that ‘one can eat sovereignty’ and that ‘sovereignty’ has improved anything in the domains I care for (pension, food, NHS, travel) Brexit has been a negative for me. Some (like the multiple authors on Britain Unbound Ltd?) might have benefitted from it, but personally not.
And from family and friends who even voted for it their assessment is largely negative. Most of them have not seen improvements, some feel overall rather poorer.
But just wait a bit more, we’ll get a titanic success … soon.
June 24, 2026
Those disadvantages were brought to you by governments you can sack – thanks to Brexit.
June 24, 2026
I don’t understand your point. During our EU years Mr Heath, Wilson, Callaghan, Mrs Thatcher, Mr Major, Blair, Brown got to power then lost it. So governments could lose power and be sacked by the voters. It is only for Mr Cameron’s and Mrs May’s governments that Brexit had any influence. Brexit as such did not give the electors so much more power on the UK internal affairs.
June 25, 2026
But those governments were rule takers. We could not sack the law-makers in the EU.
June 24, 2026
We sacked plenty of governments when we were in the EU.
June 25, 2026
Did you sack any of the law-makers in the European Commission?
Sacking a government only matters if they are sovereign. Since Heath until Brexit, no British government was sovereign.
No wonder there are so many confused Remainers/Rejoiners. They have no concept of what happened to Britain.
Effective, according to the UN definition of a sovereign state which gains a seat at the UN, BRITAIN DID NOT QUALIFY FOR A SEAT, IT NO LONGER EXISTING AS A SOVEREIGN ENTITY.
June 23, 2026
And the UK Parliament still keeps ‘fighting’.
Reeves announced Professor Jonathan Haskel as her nominated candidate for the Chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility:
https://order-order.com/2026/06/23/reeves-selects-economist-jonathan-haskel-as-new-obr-chairman/
Haskel has long argued against Brexit – in 2019 he said 70% of any post-referendum fall in UK business investment was caused by Brexit and later in 2023 made a big fuss of his calculation that Brexit has dealt the UK economy a “productivity penalty” of £29 billion.
June 23, 2026
If only we had a parliament and civil service that would actually do these things. We have neither. And we are being so weakened by rampant socialism allied with Islamism that we are rapidly becoming too debilitated even to have the capacity to do any of it.
June 23, 2026
27 ‘illegal immigrants’ invaded the UK yesterday 21st June 2026 …only 27, the same size as an army infanty platoon
June 23, 2026
I see the Scottish government has subsidised bus fares in the highlands and islands to a maximum of 2 pounds.
No the wonder the UK national debt is at silly levels and going up every single day.
June 23, 2026
Thank God for the Brexit vote. We Boomers spent a lifetime battling up that particular hill. It was the third phase of the three attempts by Germany to build her European Empire. Our fathers and grandfathers were challenged physically and mentally, their wars lasted years. The attack against us was the most refined, the enemy came with smiles and lies, for decades only a few held the line while the rest of the population was oblivious to the attack.
We kept our currency by making sure the enemy always knew they would lose a referendum to abolish it. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom – we know, we lived it.
We have bequeathed an independent, sovereign country to our children. They have many and monumental challenges to overcome, but they have a chance because they have a homeland, because we won our ‘war’ too.
June 23, 2026
With two million young people unemployed or in useless training courses or else employed in the low wage economy with little prospects, I don’t know what we have to be Happy about. There was a time when young people could spread their wings, go to neighbouring countries for work experience and a get a start, they could stay as long as they wished and return home when ready. But it’s not so easy now and there’s not much else happening at home either where I fear they are all penned in with little chance for real work career. In my case when I was sixteen in the early 1960’s I went down the dockside and signed on a foreign- going ship with two year articles and didn’t retire from sea-going until I was aged sixty-five and that after sailing forty years as master. We had choice in those day’s and we had adventure but above all we had a chance.
June 24, 2026
So you took your opportunity before the U.K. was suborned to the EU.
Today’s youngsters are in the very same position as you were.
What’s the problem?
June 26, 2026
Not so Lynn the limits of where British people can go and cannot go today are more clearly defined because of Brexit and as a result the Europeans are not so welcoming any more.
Consider that back in the day I had two brothers who went over to France pre EEC and trained as cooks in kitchens and both reached high standards in qualification and experience then came back home and opened their own restaurants – young people cannot do that so easily today.