The Draghi Report highlighted the way the EU economy is falling badly behind the US this century. Sky high energy taxes and prices, and an anti high tec company set of law codes and taxes have kept the EU in the slow lane. US GDP per head is growing faster and is now 80% higher than the EU. The UK has been dragged down by EU laws and taxes, and has only grown a little faster than the EU since Brexit owing to its failure to change suffocating EU rules and charges.It has managed to avoid some of the latest unhelpful laws of the EU but is stupidly putting itself into the carbon taxes, emissions trading and carbon based tariff schemes which help make energy so dear.
A study by the European Centre for international political economy in 2023 set out how US GDP per head 47 % higher than EU in 2010 surged to 82% higher by 2023 based on cheaper energy and better technology.It showed how the major economies of Germany, France, Italy and Spain were falling further down the league table compared to US states. It is getting worse as the US accelerates its highly successful data centre and A I investments. The EU is becoming a digital colony of the US whilst protesting and seeking to constrain and tax the US companies it relies on for so many purposes.
The story of this century shows UK voters were right to vote to leave the damaging EU which has been holding down growth and living standards. This government’s wish to bind us closer to a failing economic model is bad economics and worse politics. We need much cheaper energy and we need to liberate our tec sector.No to cbam, no to EU emissions trading, no to EU net zero madness, no to the digital tax, no to more tariffs on non EU imports, no to energy dependence on EU imports, no to the big fish give away to the EU.
August 3, 2026
You know that, we know that but our masters in Westminster see the EU as sime sort of Nirvana.
India has recently pulled out of hosting the next COP summit and has denounced the whole Net Stupid tarragon. They will no doubt overtake Europe very soon.
It beggars beliefs that our so called betters cannot see the repressive nature of the EU.
The next big problem is going to be mass immigration from the Maghreb driving down living standards and increasing welfare.
August 3, 2026
The US seeks to free up innovation whereas the EU’s first instinct is to regulate and constrain.
Not for protection but for control.
Gas and electricity prices, already high in the EU, is prohibitive in the UK.
Not helpful.
August 3, 2026
In short too many people working for the state sector – producing very little of value (HS2 for example poor defence procurement), or in the case of Covid “vaccines”, lockdowns and May’s net Zero, the workers rights act and Tenants rights act, things clearly of negative value. All sucking the life and money out of the productive sector. A doom loop economy made even worse by vast, net cost, low skilled immigration, high crime levels, DEI, no deterrent and misdirected two tier justice and policing.
CBAM stands for Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.
August 3, 2026
CBAM Covered Sectors
Cement, Iron and steel, Aluminium, Fertilisers, Electricity, Hydrogen
August 3, 2026
Good morning.
The EU has many problems but the central one is the EURO. Having a common currency like the US Dollar or Sterling where transfers from richer parts can be made to poorer parts is an advantage. The EU deals with any disparity through subsidies raised from richer member states and fines. This form of wealth transfer when properly spent delivers you a Poland whereas, monies that are spent either unwisely, as in the case of Spain, or corruptly (EU wide) delivers little to no growth at all.
The EURO is not a complete project. For it to work all member states have to use it and, all fiscal control is managed by the EU, including taxes. This the richer states like Germany will not allow. So they are stuck.
August 3, 2026
Mark B
“The Eu deals with disparity through subsidies..and Fines”
The Uk deals with the so called disparity of its people with a High Taxes and Benefits approach, thus crippling the strivers with ambition, self sufficiency, savers, and investors, in favour of many of those who simply cannot be bothered.
A disaster policy of self harm if so called re-distribution, limiting future growth and creating a “why bother” attitude.
August 3, 2026
Burnham the other day suggested the “more safe and legal routes will disrupt the people traffickers business model”. Is he really so moronic he actually believes this drivel? How will taking a few thousand more by legal routes disrupt the many millions who want to come to the UK illegally when most would never qualify for legal routes anyway? It will just means even more net cost migrants.
August 3, 2026
Burnham will talk tough when he has to. Like his predecessors there will be no effective actions on the issue. He is gambling on there not being violent disorder in the country. So far there hasn’t been.
On the economy, he is also gambling that older people and the better off, who are affected by tax rises, will just put up with it. These are a different sector to those who turn out for protests against illegal migrants. There is some overlap between the two groups but they are different.
August 3, 2026
Safe and legal routes is the way to go. Set up an office in Calais where anyone who wants to claim asylum in the UK has to register. If they cross the channel without permission their asylum claim is void and they are put in a secure detention centre awaiting removal.
How long do you think they will fester in Calais waiting for the UK government to approve their claim? More likely they will give up and go home first.
All claims must be supported by a guarantor who will assume responsibility for looking after the migrant and paying costs if they go missing or offend. A deposit of £0.5million should be about right.
August 3, 2026
But the Tories/Mrs Badenoch have not, should they take office, undertaken to undo Labour’s new EU commitments. Ms Coutinho is talking sense on Net Zero but was a firm advocate of it when working in the Sunak government.
People don’t believe what such politicians say. Where is the hope? The likelihood is another low turnout at the next general election resulting in further entrenchment of these damaging policies by a Left oriented administration.
Reply The Conservatives oppose the EU re set and will publish a policy on how to restore our powers when we know how much they have given away and how it has been given away. There are clear energy policies to stop the current net zero self harm
August 3, 2026
The dreadful Nigel Farage, fresh from the latest Reform electoral failure at the Manchester mayoral election, has – laughably – declared that a “Reform government” would use the Royal Navy to “detain and send back” the boat people in the Channel
Yet again, Farage demonstrates his complete ignorance of the realities facing the RN. There are not enough serviceable ships to intercept Russian vessels running the Channel, let alone the wily and very wealthy people smugglers.
How curious that the French gendarmes are always looking the other way when the rubber boats are being launched
August 3, 2026
SG
Who can blame the French really, they get rid of the people in the Country they do not want, and get well paid at the same time for just going through the motions, looking on, and/or turning a blind eye.
The UK government are the fools for allowing and funding it.
Problem is it is the UK taxpayer who funds this fiasco, and the on going cost when they arrive here, as well as the cost of any legal help to stay, and the eventual expulsions.
The illegals are taking a ride, and we are being taken for a ride by paying for it all.
August 3, 2026
And your solution is ?
August 3, 2026
The French gendarmes are effectively ensuring that we take our share of migrants admitted into the EU, as the other countries do. In this respect, as in others, we never really left the EU.
For info, the middle part of the Channel is international waters. We have no right to ‘intercept ‘other vessels using it, any more than France or Belgium has. I would have thought you lot at 77th Brigade would know that.
August 3, 2026
The curious thing is voters are not saying ‘no’ to those things. 50% or so of them say they support left wing parties which most certainly want to say ‘yes’ to all those EU integration measures, and more. The only possibility of a renewed free market / low tax redirection in the UK is a unification of the right. We need, at least informally, a sophisticated tactical voting programme so those people who don’t want more and more socialism know what to vote where, in order to get rid of it.
August 3, 2026
The Latin-speaking civil serpents running the Ministry of Defence have decided that the best way to save money is to make about 150 military base caretakers redundant. They have launched a four-week consultation on plans to remove 125 caretaker roles across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, covering the Army Reserve and University Officers’ Training Corps estate
About 90% of those affected currently live in tied accommodation, meaning many loyal and long-serving staff would be forced to leave homes they have lived in for years as a direct result of redundancy.
The MoD employs about 55,500 civil servants at a time when we have only 74,000 British Army soldiers. This means that for every 1 full-time civil servant, there are approximately 1.33 regular army soldiers (or roughly 3 civil servants for every 4 regular soldiers).
Time for the new SoS Defence Wes Streeting to identify the civil servants responsible for this redundancy proposal and sack them instead
August 3, 2026
Rather incredibly given the current climate UK is a world leader in AI technology and investment (behind only USA and China) and in gene editing for example for agricultural and medical innovations. Both these areas would be killed stone dead by aligning with EU laws which explicitly restrict those two areas. I expect Labour’s EU reset will do exactly that.
August 3, 2026
Yes I agree 100%
August 3, 2026
Japan’s public debt towers over 200% of GDP, making it the highest in the G20. To prevent the crippling costs of servicing this colossal burden, the Bank of Japan has been forced to artificially suppress domestic interest rates. This extreme policy divergence against high global interest rates triggered a continuous, multi-year slide in the yen, plunging the currency to 40-year lows.
This critical economic situation prompted a historic, rare intervention by the US Treasury Department to directly purchase yen (for the first time in 30 years) alongside Tokyo to stabilize the market. Washington stepped in because an unmitigated currency collapse would force Japan – the largest foreign holder of US debt – to aggressively dump its vast reserves of US Treasuries to independently raise dollar liquidity. Preventing such a destabilising sell-off protects the American economy from a dangerous spike in its own borrowing costs
Japan’s holdings of US Treasury debt equal roughly 26% of its own GDP, with total investments sitting at $1.14 trillion. Simultaneously, total US public debt stands at roughly 124% of US GDP, or approximately $40 trillion.
It looks like this might be the beginning of the end for governments that routinely borrow money to pay the interest on their sovereign debts
August 3, 2026
That’s Socialism for you drag and keeping dragging everyone future down to the lowest common demonstrator. How else do you gain control and dominate?