The Telegraph published an article of mine on line yesterday explaining why the trade figures disprove the Remain forecast of economic damage from trade friction. This is the trade story of the last ten years.
In 2016, the year of the vote, the UK exported £542Bn and imported £581 bn, a deficit of £ 39 bn. Last year the UK exported £894bn, an increase of 64%, and imported £937bn, an increase of 61%. The deficit was £43 bn. These were good increases, and were led by large increases in our exports of services to non EU countries. So much for all the predictions that our trade would be badly hit by Brexit. Our exports particularly of services have taken off in recent years.
Last year the EU counted for just 41% of our exports, with the rest of the world at 59% and increasing. Services also accounted for 59% of our trade and is rising. Our trade in goods with the EU is experiencing declines in our exports of some key items, not thanks to Brexit but thanks to the net zero policies. Our largest exports to the EU have included oil, gas, and refined oil products, but the UK is set on closing down its oil and gasfields and has just shut two large refineries owing to dear energy and net zero bans. Export of diesel and petrol cars has also been an important contributor and that trade will stop by 2030 as all those new cars are being banned in the UK. We should expect our export of goods to the EU to fall as a result. Meanwhile we should expect our imports from the EU to rise as we come become ever more dependent on them for our electricity and our food, whilst we will also import more vehicles from the EU and China who will fight for market share. The EU last year already accounted for 49% of our imports compared to 41% of our exports.
In 2024 our trade with the EU showed a major deficit of £97 bn whilst our trade with the rest of the world produced a healthy surplus of £53 bn. This shows the UK is not uncompetitive worldwide, but does have an unfair trade issue with the EU. They are reluctant to buy our services in the same quantities as elsewhere with language, legal and protectionist barriers against us. They use their rules and continuing influence on us through the Northern Ireland Protocol, Windsor Framework and our reliance still on inherited EU law to allow them unfair advantage in food and farm products, to allow them a disproportionate share of our fish, and to give them a big advantage in exporting electricity to us.
So after Brexit our exports to non EU flourished, our imports from EU continued to expand and our overall trade rose substantially, contrary to all the forecasts from Remain. The tragedy is some of our exports to the EU are being hit and will be hit more by the government’s passion to throttle back the energy, oil products, and petrol and diesel cars that used to be important lines for us to sell to the EU. It almost looks as if UK policy is designed to cut our exports to the EU to be able to claim Brexit did not work. Given the way government is deindustrialising us and making us a big energy importer, it is great news our liberated trade in services is now advancing rapidly and is providing most of the cash for us to be able to be import dependent on an unfriendly EU for much of our food and energy. We could change the damaging policies that bring that about, but lack the will or the ability to do so.
October 2, 2025
‘ We could change the damaging policies that bring that about, but lack the will or the ability to do so.’
Indeed. You never see or hear Miliband being questioned over Net Zero. This despite the reversal of such an approach under the Trump administration in America.
October 2, 2025
Badenoch did a Truss this morning. Ie, contradictory action.
Truss cut taxes and refused to cut spending. That’s why she was dismissed by all of us.
Badenoch announces that ‘climate change is real’, but she is cutting Net Zero. So she is now proposing that we destroy the world as Conservative Policy.
It’s NOT credible. She is unelectable. Has not got the guts to say Trump and the whole world outside the west is right, Climate Change is a hoax and THEREFORE we can safely ditch net zero.
October 2, 2025
Not necessarily. She could quite honestly declare that climate change is real, but deny that man made CO2 emissions are the reason.
October 2, 2025
She did not do that.
October 2, 2025
Exactly, some people are too thick to see nuances.
October 2, 2025
Some people are determined to hear what has not been said.
Self delusion beyond repair.
October 2, 2025
Well obviously the world’s climate changes, it always has always will do – so long as the earth exists.
Obviously mankind does affect the climate with land use, crops, buildings, urban heat effects, CO2 and other emissions – but millions of other factors too.
Is there a man made “climate emergency” caused by fossil fuel CO2 no real evidence of this. We have had far colder periods even with far higher CO2 levels!
October 2, 2025
Truss was however undermined by the appalling BoE. Her big mistakes were not announcing cuts like HS2, net zero at the same time, not dealing with the incompetent undermining BoE and her energy price subsidy polices policies. She should have just let people wear more jumpers or heat only one room as they chose not subsided everyone!
October 2, 2025
Her critical error, at the despatch box, was to refuse to cut spending to pay for the tax cuts.
Plain stupid.
October 2, 2025
Tax cuts alone don’t work. That’s like the Finance Director of Apple running Apple instead of Steve Jobs. You need an entrepreneurial approach to the economy in politics as well. Such as smart investment in High Tech sector like we saw with US government in Silicon Valley and Israeli government in Tel Aviv and other examples.
October 3, 2025
@ Ed – What is needed mainly is government spending cuts and for them to spend what they do wisely and cuts in red tape too. Alas we got the complete reverse from Major through to Sunak and now two Tier. With the appallingly damaging Net Zero lunacy on top too.
October 3, 2025
@Lifelogic, I strongly agree with you about tax cuts (I agree with vast majority of things you say). But a government has to offer more than just tax cuts from a PR POV but also from genuinely improving the economy. Look at how US government helped create Silicon Valley. And Israeli government played key roll in development of Tel Aviv as major high tech hub. So the economy needs the approach of an entrepreneur not just thd approach of a finance director (which is obviously key too but not enough).
October 3, 2025
Ed if you think the Govt can bring about the ‘white heat of technology’ by pumping money into a chosen area or industry, then you are a Socialist.
You are in the wrong party and on the wrong blog.
October 3, 2025
PS the Prime Minister’s Official title is
‘First Lord of the Treasury’.
October 2, 2025
Trump was 100% correct. Climate change is the biggest con trick ever foisted on man. Badenough would never repeal the CCA as she would never leave the ECHR. After 14vyears of lies, no one believes a word she says.
October 2, 2025
An interview with Coutinho on Mike GRAHAM today (she has a half maths degree from Oxford so cannot be that daft) but still she refused to admit that the war on CO2 plant, tree and crop food is bonkers! The Kemi and Coutinho line is we support net zero but with a touch on the brakes they will remain invisible with this misguided line – there is and never was any CO2 climate emergency. A little warmer and it would be very little indeed even with a doubling of CO2, and more CO2 is a net good on balance. Time to get real!
October 2, 2025
Trump is foisting right-wing authoritarianism on USA (right-wing version of Starmer’s IDs card). And the USA will sadly pay for this in the future when there is a backlash in the USA voting for the Democrats and that will spread to Europe to a degree where the socialists / WOKE will get a firm hold in politics again. Trump’s politics breeds socialism whilst not actually being that effective (except in borders and getting Europe to spend more on defence – granted)
October 2, 2025
I have never encountered anybody since Gauke, so politically clueless.
You get nothing right Ed, and you refuse to listen to wiser heads.
You had the temerity yesterday to criticise JR. You are as lost as Starmer. Nowhere near the starting stalls
October 3, 2025
Lynn, so you disagree with some of the main points I make:
1) Get tax right down
2) Get immigration right down
3) We need to focus on protecting UK from drones / hypersonic missiles
I also make other points too in particular we need to help High Tech sector more.
These are the main sort of points I make.
October 3, 2025
‘You had the temerity yesterday to criticise JR’ – I’m strong supporter of Sir John on lots of things. But I do NOT put anyone on a pedestal. Not my girlfriend. Nor my family. Nor friends. Nor Sir John. Nor my political / military hero Cyrus the Great (he had many flaws but still great). It’s wrong and boring to put people on pedestals. And I get things wrong a lot.
October 3, 2025
@Lynn,
Also, my three favourite politicians since Thatcher are Ken Clarke, Heseltine and Sir John. But I also take issue with some things of Clarke and Heseltine as well. In particular, their pro EU stance. Which just doesn’t make sense to me. To me it just seems completely obvious that a country is better off being sovereign (although I do take issue with Brexiters, such as Johnson and others, how to get there – I think we should have focused on building up our economy, first, to pay for it by tax cuts, yes, but also helping to build up our high tech sector, and lastly by making more friendly arguments to get more Remainers on board Brexit, as well as staying close with Europe but OUTSIDE the EU / single market etc instead of being really rude to it like Nigel F – then Brexit would have been a clear success).
October 3, 2025
Lastly, if you want to achieve ‘greatness’ in anything you have to put God first. Does Trump really focus the ‘greatness’ of USA on God?
The Bible is clear about greatness. Joseph of Egypt achieved greatness (power and money) in becoming the second most powerful man in the world, through his devotion to God. The Bible is clear that God is NOT against greatness of a nation (and in general) but must always be focused on God, humility (not same as being a wimp) and on the welfare of others (not just oneself – so love God and neighbour). Similar for s-x (look at the hugely erotic Song of Songs in the Bible).
Look at how Bach achieved greatness in music but always glorifying God. Or Newton in science (Biblical scholar – studied the Bible more than science perhaps). Or Cyrus the Great, intuitively following his conscience (and described as ‘anointed’ in the Old Testament).
Not judging Trump personally but he needs to make sure that the ‘greatness’ he is trying to achieve for the USA is in line with God and for God’s glory as opposed to his own glory (and for the welfare of others – not just for himself). Otherwise, Trump’s ‘greatness’ and his ‘great’ America will crumble like Shelley’s Ozymandias in the desert (and our political world landscape throughout the ages is littered with Ozymandiases).
October 3, 2025
‘Joseph of Egypt achieved greatness (power and money) in becoming the second most powerful man in the world, through his devotion to God.’ But Joseph’s primary goal was to follow God (not greatness – ‘greatness’ came as a byproduct of following God.’ To put power and money before God is idolatry and always ends in tears – like Ozymandias in the desert – like Lear in the storm on the moor (it is here, after he loses his kingdom, that he discovers wisdom).
October 2, 2025
I wonder what her views are on ‘fracking shale gas’ ?
October 2, 2025
To you, is Trump more of a Cyrus the Great or a Mussolini? A Marcus Aurelius or a Commodus?
(Cyrus the Great was a real hero of Napoleon, Caesar, Alexander the Great, the Jews, the Christians, and more).
October 3, 2025
Try thinking of Trump as Trump Ed. In 2025, dealing with issues that the great warriors did not face I.e USD 37 trillion debt.
October 2, 2025
I still haven’t read anywhere that the tories are to repeal the quango committee know as the climate change committee and the united nations Paris agreement, and all associated laws & targets …until this is comfirmed in writing as party policy and pledged in manifest, her words mean nothing
Reply Yes she is stopping the targets so the rest follows
October 2, 2025
Targets can get ‘reintroduced’
October 2, 2025
The bitter disappointment of the British people is palpable. Because of an aggressive political class we retain damaging law, suffer massive imported violent crime which leads to loss of capital tied up in assets, and face power cuts which will cause much loss of life and treasure.
I live at the same latitude as Moscow, and I am halfway up this island, with 500 miles to the south and 500 miles to the north.
We cannot survive without fuel.
We cannot work our way out of this.
What is left?
October 2, 2025
I think circa 11 people died directly due to the rather limited power cuts in Spain. These caused by the drive for ever more unstable “renewables”. A major power issue in the UK might kill 200+. Still less than about 1/1000 of those killed or injured by the Covid Vaccines so far!
October 2, 2025
Spain is warm and the power cut was in summer.
Our power cuts will be in winter and this is a ‘mast year’ – looks like a super cold winter.
Just because the covid shots were lethal does not excuse more vicious attacks b6 the Govt on the people.
October 2, 2025
Despite our (economic / social) problems, UK still GREAT country to live in overall! The best. Seriously. Don’t forget that.
October 2, 2025
The Net Zero insanity; refusing to actually LEAVE the EU; watering-down Brexit so much that we’re effectively an Associate Member of the EU ……… you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Establishment WANTS, and is deliberately ensuring, that the UK won’t thrive.
October 2, 2025
I agree, the evidence is now clear. May, Johnson, Sunak did the absolute minimum to (nearly) leave. Why didn’t Bunter repeal the law that we had to have ‘a deal’ to leave? Starmer (he of the most recent fisheries give away) has made it clear, he wants to rejoin and is working on how to creep under the EU duvet without us noticing.
Can we get a change of government before we get a putrid blue and gold flag over our country again?
France looks like it’s going to ‘fail’ even quicker than us, so Germany might have a reason to leave the EU before they have to pick up a very large bailout bill.
October 2, 2025
Germany can’t leave, it shares the Euro with the rest of the bankrupt EU. It’s stuck with its share do the debt.
October 2, 2025
Major (under Thatcher) joined the disastrous ERM with a view to joining the EURO which very nearly put the UK in this appalling position too.
This against the wise advice of JR, Patrick Minford, Alan Walters…
October 2, 2025
….. and many more including me. We had enamelled pins made with the £ logo in the centre overlaid 28th the Union flag and at the top and bottom:
‘The £ is Britain ……….the Euro destroys the £’.
We have given a sample to the Brexit museum.
October 2, 2025
Germany can leave and possibly will
The Tier 2 payments are never going to be paid and it will be a case of cutting your losses
The Germans won’t take kindly to bailing out a profligate France which refuses to stop spending other people’s
October 2, 2025
Germany is OWED all the money by the rest. So when the debts are written off, Germany finds it has already paid for profligate France etc.
That on top of the very real deindustrialisation goes some way to explain why the Germans are not marching with flags but clenched fists.
October 2, 2025
We are ALL the establishment (if you’ve got some money in your pocket)! Nothing necessarily wrong with that either. Can be. And the opposite.
October 2, 2025
🤯
October 2, 2025
Yesterday yet another Rochdale grooming gang was sentenced for unbelievable sexual cruelty to two underage white girls. The sentences given were notable for their leniency; the ringleader got away with a mere 35 years incarceration. Of which he will probably only serve 1/3 with good behaviour. Some of his associates only got 12 years. None of them received deportation orders for when they would be released.
So what about those servants of the state who enabled this abuse for years? None of the social workers involved were prosecuted, or even censured. No council officials who were running the care home where the girls lived were disciplined. The police involved described the children as “prostitutes”, victim blaming them – and making no attempt to get the over 200 other men who were involved in the abuse. Several police officers involved in this case are now themselves being investigated for direct involvement.
This whole prosecution smacks of yet another cover up. The system which allowed the abuse of these vulnerable children is still in place. The social workers involved are still in post. The police officers are suspended on full pay.
The law needs to be changed to allow the deportation of the men involved. We do not need hundreds (thousands?) of paedophiles walking the streets here. If their home country will not accept them back, then refuse it any further visas.
October 2, 2025
+1 time those in authority who facilitated this crime were brought to justice. Police, social,services personnel, Councillors, MPs who knew and refused to Act (that includes PMs and opposition front benches).
October 2, 2025
Public sector staff will never be held accountable. You’ve only got to look at the surgeon who left the operation to have sex with a nurse; he kept his job. Rayner will be back in three months, and the red head phone woman.
October 2, 2025
What those grooming gangs did was allowable according to their culture, where the girls didn’t have valid human rights. The authorities couldn’t do anything about it without being accused of racial discrimination. I suspect they also held the girls somewhat in contempt.
October 2, 2025
and people with the same cultural similarities are being allowed in to the country and placidly accepted by the Government.
October 2, 2025
The girl from yesterdays court hearing age 10 was in care. So much for care.
October 2, 2025
….are doing….
Why do you use the past tense?
October 2, 2025
The guy imprisoned for his attack on girls in Epping said he didn’t know we were so strict on this sort of activity in the UK. Shows what they are and the culture they come from, yet we keep letting untold numbers of undocumented young men come in and roam around at will, even doing blackmarket jobs which no-one seems to get a fine for. I don’t want to keep hearing ‘don’t blame the many for the sins of the few’, there are too many of them as the grooming gangs show, or that UK males do more rapes then imports. Comparing apples with oranges does not work.
October 2, 2025
It is extremely rare to hear anyone in the media refer to Balance of Trade these days (if ever) all the focus is on GDP growth (which is simply achieved by importing people). BoT is never mentioned in discussions of North Sea oil for instance, just inane comments about “it won’t bring down prices” etc. People need to realise that with negative BoT we are also ‘busy exporting’ our national wealth abroad and impoverishing ourselves in the process.
We’ve had a negative BoT with the EU for decades and paid for this ‘privilege’ on top. The EU re-distributed these gains as part of it’s “largesse” – even having the cheek to give us a little of our own money back but always under it’s control & direction.
October 2, 2025
From the Telegraph
‘Refugees will have to earn the right to bring their families to Britain in a major shake-up unveiled by Sir Keir Starmer.
Announcing there will be “no golden ticket to settling in the UK”, the Prime Minister will set out plans to scrap refugees’ rights to bring over their families as soon as they have been granted asylum.
The automatic right to permanently settle in the UK after five years is also being withdrawn in an effort to end the UK’s “overly generous” reputation.’
Is it just about a week ago when some one other than 2TK and his group of dictators suggested this they were labelled extremists, the far-right, fascists and racists – all at sea without a rudder comes to mind.
I still have a problem with the idea that those that illegally enter can be seen as asylum seekers when even in UK Law they are first and foremost Criminals. Or is TwoTierKier only referencing those that legitimately enter the UK?
October 2, 2025
Sir John
Just think what would have happened if Parliament under the Tories allowed the UK to leave the EU and not just become one of its Colonies, if the Tories hadn’t entered into a so-called Windsor Agreement causing the UK to pay and protect EU Borders. Become a cohesive Nation in its own right.
If the Tories had allowed the UK’s Democratically Elected pseudo-Parliament to be the Nations Legislators instead of accepting the EU is always right and the UK must embody EU Law. Mainly because it hurt someone’s brain to have to think and do the job they were paid to do.
That’s not letting the other Socialist faction of the Uniparty of the hook, Labour, they have the full right to rescind all their other factions miss-steps.
October 2, 2025
You can feel the rejoin/conjoin ramping up ETAIS visas for us. Is it reciprocal? Are we checking who is coming in from Europe, not just the boat people?
The trade imbalance they are orchestrating through power problems, it will be we will freeze if we doing conjoin with Europe and give them more rights. We’ve already seen capitulation on EU students and under-30s.
The public still have more say though and we need to promote buy British better. It’s ironic that Aldi does that.
October 2, 2025
It is ironc to remember, back in 2016 prior to the vote to leave the EU was taken, the vote remain side claimed our trade with the EU would suffer if we left.
I pointed out at the time our trade deficit with the remainder of the EU was some £80billion/yr so if trade with the EU did reduce it would be overall fiscally a good thing as out trade balance would improve.
That line of logic did not go down well with the remainers, needless to say.
On a more positive side, if we actually charged the remainder of the EU for the fish they poach out of our waters under the one sided trade treaty agreement designed to favour the EU, we would be some £5billion/yr better off and could use the money to redevelop our own fishing industry and support activities.
Just a thought.
October 2, 2025
Net Zero & Trade: CBAM (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism): How it works: 1) Make energy so expensive that UK energy intensive industries such as cement, iron and steel, aluminum, fertilizers, hydrogen and electricity etc, close down and move to China and elsewhere. 2) Add a carbon tax to the imports of these items. 3) Extend to all products. Starts 2026 for the EU and 2027 for the UK, unless our current administration decides to match the EU “to enhance co-operation and trade”.
October 2, 2025
But the BBC, or the rest of the MSM, will not put these figures out as proof that Brexit is working. We are fast reaching the point when we can’t believe what the BBC or MSM tell us. They enthusiastically support Net Zero, despite the damage it is doing to the UK. Isn’t it amazing that we don’t have a single senior BBC or MSM person who is prepared to challenge this nonsense?
The Conservatives had the opportunity to make Brexit work and make it irreversible, but they did not. That, combined with uncontrolled immigration, led to their GE result. This Labour Government is headed the same way, led by a PM and Cabinet Ministers who don’t have a clue how much damage they are doing.
October 2, 2025
The GE result was due to vast low skilled immigration levels, the net zero, rip off energy, economic vandalism, the borrowing and spending of £400 billion on net harm lockdowns, test and trace app, net harm Covid vaccines, a vast increase in taxes and the state sector, vast increases in red tape, woke two Tier zero deterrent policing, restrictive planning and so high house prices…
October 2, 2025
I read that the Conservative Party have announced their intention to scrap the Climate Change Act. At an ES&NZ Select Committee oral evidence session on 03/09/2025 on the subject “Building Support for the Energy Transition” Dr. Harrabin (Cambridge, English), a former energy and environment analyst for the BBC, told the Committee: “Things changed when Fran Unsworth, who was then head of [BBC] news [in 2018], made a declaration with a rather odd phrase which was, “The referee has blown his whistle, and the game is over, and we no longer have to have an oppositional voice on climate change.”” Does this mean that the Conservative Party will henceforth no longer be given airtime by the BBC?
October 2, 2025
It seems there was no single meeting where the BBC “decided to ditch balance” on climate; rather, the shift was a gradual process following a 2011 BBC Trust review and a 2014 debate that exemplified “false balance”, leading the broadcaster to issue internal guidance in 2018 to report climate science more accurately and not give undue weight to skeptical views.
The BBC became pure propagandists and cut out all the sensible and honest climate realists. “Not give undue weight” to sensible climate realist view is what they quite appallingly did. Roger Harrabin read english at Catz, Fran Unsworth drama at Manchester it seems and doubtless the BBC trust was hardly stuffed with competent scientists. Anyway science is never really settled. They were also wrong and hugely biased on the EU, on lefty big government, anti-landlord, anti-business, pro-ever more red tape, on the net harm Covid Lockdowns and the vast net harm Covid Vaccines… the BBC has done vast damage with it’s lies and propaganda over many years.
October 2, 2025
An astonishing number of families have stopped paying the TV licence since the lockdowns. I certainly the real bad news is that they are no longer listening.
The prancing idiots, including Johnson-the-Destroyer reciting the number of daily deaths was apparently a serious turnoff.
No PM has ever had the opportunities lined up for Johnson. That’s why his unmitigated failure on all fronts ranks him as the worst PM Britain has ever, and probably ever will have. The millions of pounds handed out to any young baroness for unusable rubbish is only just coming to light. None of it will be repaid. The House of Lords must go and all be hereditary peers must lose their titles.
October 2, 2025
138 criminals were illicitly shipped, into the UK yesterday on the 1st October from France…
October 2, 2025
To be given free 4 star hotel accomodation or a house, free health and social care, £50/week pocket money, free entertainment and the fredom to roam our streets taking black market jobs if they want. Do we even know it was only 138 or have the details of many more been hidden by a judge granting a super injunction?