Author: johnredwood

When in China the PM is well placed to do something about the big increase in world CO 2 as a third of the CO 2 and much of the growth in CO 2 comes from China. He should ask to see one of the new coal power stations and ask when China is going to follow the UK example of closing all coal stations and blowing them up.
He should say the UK is not going to carry on importing manufactures from China that depend on coal power. It does not help world CO 2 for the UK to shut its car plants to import cars from China where more CO 2 is generated in their manufacture. He should remind the Chinese of the forthcoming carbon tariffs on China products the UK is bringing in.
He should ask to visit a big naval port to see the expansion of modern ships. He should ask why China needs such huge forces.
He should point out that China runs a huge trade surplus with the UK and ask what UK goods China would consider buying. Our exports to China are only 18% of our exports to the USA. Why?
He should worry about coming home empty handed.A 10% increase in our exports to China would only add 0.1% to GDP assuming no increase in imports to offset.Even that looks very unlikely.
There is no growth in UK GDP to be had in China. The UK needs to become a more demanding customer instead of a pathetic pushover.

The PM is widely criticised for travelling too much and doing too little to tackle the problems at home that anger and worry voters. He and friends claim he isa good diplomat or UK representative, yet his trips usually result in the UK giving money, powers, islands away in pursuit of friendship that he does not naturally command. The Chagos deal means losing crucial islands and £35 bn over 99 years. The EU took 12 years of our very valuable fish just to get into talks. France takes more than £500 m but fails to stop the boats for this border money.

The PM follows the Chancellor who announced a measly £600 m of deals for a 3,000,000 million economy, or O.02% of our GDP! He thinks he will generate some growth from more business. The UK runs a big deficit with China and is busy shutting down our energy and fuel based businesses in order to import more Chinese solar panels and wind turbines.

A weak PM has given in and approved a mega Embassy to China despite obvious security risks. The Chagos islands are being given away to a friend of China. How long before China is spying on the most important air and naval base the US and UK has outside home territory? How long before they have fishing rights to wreck an important protected marine area?

This trip is bad news for the PM and for UK taxpayers. The PM will not stand up for UK interests, will be out manoeuvred by China and will spend more time away from our pressing problems at home. Why?

The UK has not suddenly alerted the US to the problems posed by the give away of Chagos. Nor has the President suddenly read a brief and got command of the issues.In his welcome condemnation of the folly of the deal he assumed the UK is being paid to surrender the islands. He will be even more stunned by the stupidity when he learns the UK is paying to give them away.
Some contributors here seem to think one word from Nigel Farage and the President is persuaded. This is clearly not true as Nigel could have told Mr Trump a long time ago and may have done do but the US went along with the folly. Presumably they did so because they did not want to disrupt their relationship with the UK government. They sought and were given assurances there would be no cost to them and they could still use the base for 99 years.
Over the last year there would have been exchanges between the 2 governments over this. It is extraordinary that the UK government,full of lawyers , missed the obvious point that the UK/US Treaty requires the UK to keep the Chagos freehold. Or maybe the lawyers thought this was a technicality the US would
agree to repeal.Strange they did not pocket that early.
There have also been many exchanges between leading UK Conservatives and Republicans, urging the US ruling party to think again. People have raised issues including Mauritius being an anti nuclear country, what would happen at the base if Mauritius issues fishing licences for the Chagos, settles people on islands close to Diego Garcia, grants rights to China etc.
The flurry of briefings had a reprise last week with the US Speaker in London. Briefings reached Rubio and Bessent in Davos. Someone half tipped off the President who came out strongly against the deal.
I was the first person to put to the media the fact that the UK signed up for the International Court with express exemptions for Commonwealth matters and defence. The ICJ could not make us give up Chagos. Someone else put out the need to get US consent to Treaty change. We do not know whose briefing got the President to change his mind. Trying to influence a President 2000 miles away takes many attempts by many people to land a key message.
We should also recognise the importance of the Chagos government in exile and the independent group who took the UK government to court over failure to consider the views of the Chagossians.

Article published in Daily Telegraph

Mrs Von Der Leyen claims “the shift in the world order is not only seismic – but it is permanent”. “We now live in a world of raw power”. This seems to be a response to the possible use of force by the USA in Greenland which Donald Trump has ruled out. Where was she when Russia used raw force from 2014 onwards to occupy parts of Ukraine? Has she forgotten the use of force by the Soviet Union to suppress eastern European countries before the fall of the Berlin wall? Has she not seen how Afghanistan, Iran and other Middle Eastern states have been using raw power against their own citizens and neighbouring states? Has she missed the terrorist attacks of the recent decades? Raw power has often been a chosen means of more than half the world which is not democratic.

She also wrongly asserts that the answer to this outbreak of raw power is to speed up and strengthen European union. So how would more EU laws resolve the problems of Ukraine? Would the stronger EU have an army and navy capable of intervening against the abuse of raw power in the Middle East and its disruption of trade and energy? Of course not. The EU’s answer to every bad trend and crisis is more EU, when more EU has pushed the member states further and further behind the USA in growth and military capacity.

Mr Carney rightly observes if “the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself”. He comes late to this realisation. The rules of his idealised Davos world did not protect us from wars, hunger, poor economic policies prior to Donald Trump. When did the UN last negotiate a peace and enforce it? When did the WTO last intervene to stop unfair trade with China? When did the international order last constrain Russia? Why didn’t the UN COP s he so liked get China and the emerging world to produce and hit tough carbon targets in the way the UK and EU did?

Belatedly this globalist has come to offer the advice I have given for years to UK governments. “A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself or defend itself has few options”. Exactly. The UK needs to grow more of its own food, produce more of its own energy and strengthen its defences. The last 125 years of history shows us we could only rely on the USA to help us in brutal wars, and then only if we had the power and ability to fight alone for a long time until their national interest required them to join in.

What President Trump is exposing in his own provocative way is the so called international rules based system let us down. The UN cannot prevent conflicts and had to allow great powers to veto actions. The WTO allows China and emerging economies asymetric rules that rest easy on them. The COP UN climate change system is ignored or gamed by most of the world. The Davos consensus on how to run economies has delivered vicious cycles with banking crises and nasty recessions. The independent Central Banks of Europe, UK and USin the west in the last six years allowed or created high inflation whilst the politically controlled central banks of China and Japan kept inflation down.

Mr Carney and Mrs Von der Leyen are wrong to think a tilt to China is the answer to their prayers of how they can grow faster and have better defence.

The Environment Agency has a budget of £2.2 bn from taxpayer grants, fees, charges and fines. Its main duties are river and flood water management, waste management, clean air and good landscape and soil management.

Despite this largesse they have allowed many large illegal waste sites to spring up with illegal tipping in broad daylight and plain sight. They have the powers to tackle this. Waste businesses need licences, they need approved sites with planning permission, they need to be inspected and should pay their taxes. The state has every reason to enforce all this. So can’t the Environment Agency do so?

If independent Agencies are to keep their funding and independence they do need to exercise their powers in the public interest and do worthwhile jobs. Most taxpayers want the Agency to stop illegal tipping.
The Agency makes other bad mistakes. On a stretch of the Thames where the riverside path should go over a wooden bridge the EA closed the bridge claiming it needed repair. As the years pass so the bridge tumbles into worse repair and the weeds and brambles ensnare it. Why? Get on with maintaining it. Remember a stitch in time saves nine. The EA should get better at looking after public assets.

On a much bigger scale the EA damaged the Somerset levels by allowing too much flooding. Ministers did need to intervene to save people’s homes.

President Trump is clearly unimpressed by the UN’s record in trying to resolve recent conflicts and establish peace. He has referred to how he has had to assume the peace mantle in Gaza, Ukraine and many other hotspots around the world, faced with a UN that does not seem able to get the parties to the table or to enforce a peace once there is a ceasefire.
As a result he is setting up a new Peace Board for the world which he will chair, whose aims will be to establish and manage peace settlements around the globe. He is inviting world leaders to join him and claims that 35 have so far agreed to do so.
European countries and the UK are reluctant or unwilling to join because Mr Putin is going to be a member. President Trump’s point is you do not get peace unless the main powers and regional protagonists are round the same table. He could also point out that the presence of Mr Putin at the Security Council of the UN with a right to veto does not prevent EU countries belonging to the UN nor prevent the UK and France being fellow Security Council members around the same table as Russia.
What can this new body do? The original sketch seemed to be to get interested parties together to help stabilise and rebuild Gaza after the war, but the remit now seems much broader. It would be good to know if this is seen as a ginger group to show the UN how to get progress to peace, or a planned replacement for a UN adjudged too unwieldy and wrong headed by the US President. Will this body end up concentrating on Gaza? Does Mr Putin’s likely presence make settlement of Ukraine any more likely? As countries wishing to be permanent members are invited to contribute $1bn, what will they do with the money? Will this body soon have staff and a prestigious headquarters? Will this body carry on after the Trump Presidency? What are the succession plans for its chairmanship?
There are plenty of questions to be answered before you can come to a fair assessment of this initiative. Many of us want peace and will back ways that can promote it effectively. A UN that works better would be great, or an alternative to the UN that works would be good, but a contest between rival bodies dividing the democracies over which to support would not be helpful.

No surprise that the inflation rate is up to 3.4%, 70% above target and above the rate Labour inherited in July 2024. No surprise the unemployment rate is up to 5.1%, 23% above the rate they inherited in 2024. This site has set out consistently how their two large tax rising budgets coupled to their wasteful and excessive spending was bound both to produce inflation and to slash jobs in an increasingly overtaxed private sector. Indeed, they made sure of that by making one of the biggest tax rises an actual tax on jobs through National Insurance.

The Official opposition and this site have pointed out the large climb in the number of people on benefits and said the benefit bill is out of control, along with good ideas on how to control it. Putting many more people on benefits for life with no work requirement, and cutting job opportunities so more are unemployed is a big part of the disaster of the public finances.

The latest figures also reveal another reasons why they have run out of money and are squeezing the private sector too hard. On the latest numbers public sector pay is up 7.9% compared to private sector pay up 3.6%. The Public sector pay growth rate is 120% more than the private sector pay growth rate. No wonder the cost of public services has gone up so much, and no wonder why the government needed to tax the losing private sector more in order to reward the public sector more.

I am all in favour of better paid public sector employees, but have always stressed this needs to come from measures to raise productivity and improve the quantity and quality of service they produce. This may need better training and investment to back them, but is fundamental to having an affordable public sector that is well paid. Instead we have seen larger increases in public sector pay than private, whilst the public sector has still not overall got back up to 2019 levels of productivity, let alone achieved another 7-14% productivity gain for the missing years. Meanwhile the private sector has boosted its productivity but been unable to afford better rises. More of this delivers low or no growth, means business flees to other countries and leaves the growing public sector imposing unacceptable strains on tax demands.

When the Lords ended its consideration of the Bill to give away the Chagos islands the Conservatives decided to table a motion condemning the policy rather than forcing a vote to stop the Third Reading of the Bill.  Had they opted to vote against 3rd Reading instead they would have lost the vote and the government could claim the Lords supported their bad policy. Instead the Lords passed a very critical motion urging the government to change policy. The motion said

“the UK-Mauritius Agreement  does not secure the long term future of the Diego Garcia base, creates uncertainty over the continuing unrestricted use of the base, imposes £35 bn of costs on UK taxpayers, was signed without consultation with the Chagosian people”

Conservative Lords pointed out the lack of control over the protected marine environment, the anti nuclear stance of Mauritius, the right of Mauritius to issue fishing rights and allow settlement of islands adjacent to Diego Garcia and the unity of Chagosians that their islands should stay under the UK.

In yesterday’s Telegraph Graham Stringer, Labour MP, made a strong case to stop the give away, pointing out that it violates Manifesto promises they made about UK overseas territories and ignores the rights of the Chagosians themselves.

The President of the USA condemned the give away on Truth Social yesterday. The PM used precious political  capital in his early meetings with the President to reassure the US that the base would be safe and secure under new ownership. The President gave him the benefit of the doubt but has clearly now had second thoughts on getting more briefing about what could happen with the base under new ownership. The two main propositions of the PM that the UK could be forced to give up the islands, and that his deal would make them secure were both wrong.

At a time of tension between the US and UK, and between the PM and some of his  backbenchers, it would be a good idea to quietly bury this policy. The Chancellor should be pleased to save the money, the Chagosians pleased they have at last been listened to, the US reassured the UK could still make a key base available to them without Mauritius changing the rules and Labour backbenchers would have one less violation of Manifesto promises to explain. What’s not to like?

It was  very odd of Andrew Rosindell to complain the Conservatives were not reliable on Chagos when the Conservative peers had just delivered a critical motion and avoided a positive vote in the Lords for this wrong policy. Too many people have commented on this issue without reading what has happened.

There are some things Nigel Farage gets right. He has been a good campaigner highlighting the scandal of too much illegal migration.  He is right to say Councillors should not ask the government to  cancel elections they clearly do not want to hold for fear of bad outcomes. By the same logic Nigel Farage should say if an MP wants to switch from the party that helped elect him to a new party within the same Parliament they should request a by election. Voters should be given the chance to back their MP with his new beliefs and party allegiance, or to elect someone who will carry out their original intentions of supporting the party they voted for. Most people vote mainly for a party, with personal votes for individual MPs usually being a minor part of the candidate’s total vote.

As a Conservative MP who always stood whilst issuing  a related  personal pledge to work for an EU referendum and then exit  I was under endless pressure to switch to the Referendum party, to UKIP, to the Brexit party. I always made clear I had promised my electors to usually support a Conservative government whilst using my position to urge them to the Eurosceptic answer. I correctly argued that only by being a Conservative MP could I help secure a referendum on leaving the EU, and after doing that I could help make a Conservative government get us out of the EU in line with the vote.

So it proved. I would have felt honour bound to resign and stand in a by election if I had changed my view on how to secure exit. As history showed, the Referendum, UKIP and Brexit parties only succeeded in getting one MP elected between them in the various general elections they fought.It was Conservative MP votes that secured the referendum and secured the eventual exit from the EU.It was a few Conservative MPs including myself who prevented the civil service/ Mrs May terms being imposed on us on exit.

A week ago Monday I bumped into Robert Jenrick in a corridor at Westminster when I was going to sort out arrangements for my new role. I congratulated him on the work he had been doing on law, order and migration issues as a Shadow Cabinet member.  I said I thought Mr Zahawi had made a big mistake for himself  by joining Reform and speculated on how he would get on with Richard Tice and Mr Yousef who both have wishes to be leading on  economic policy for Reform.  Mr Jenrick seemed to agree with my remarks and added an unsolicited unfavourable description of Mr Zahawi. Mr Zahawi had not taken a more Reform style line on issues like immigration when he was in government with some influence though now claims to support the full Reform approach. Both Mr Zahawi and Mr Jenrick now  have to explain their recently discovered support for  removing  the two child cap, for proportional representation, for expensive pledges to nationalise big industries.

The public want their politicians to have principles, to say what they mean and do what they say. Whilst of course it can make sense to change a view on a particular policy or approach when the facts or circumstances change, it is more difficult to convincingly change views on things as fundamental as the desirability of large scale immigration or whether the UK should be an independent self governing country or not. Robert Jenrick was a Remain supporter.Mr Zahawi supported high rates of migration.

If we all agree Council elections must not be delayed for a year  to let people decide, we should also agree if an elected MP wants to change parties he or she should seek a new endorsement from electors as 2 Conservatives going to UKIP did.(Clacton and Rochester). Only one of them survived the subsequent general election so he did not help us  secure Brexit.

Tax this, tax that. It is all the government wants to do as it stumbles from budget to budget, from OBR forecast to OBR forecast. Tax employing people. Tax family farms. Tax small businesses. Tax motorists. Tax people who save. Tax people who buy food wrapped in hygienic plastic. Tax people who earn more. Tax people who dispose of their waste legally. Tax people for driving battery cars. Tax people more for buying diesel or petrol cars. Tax people with gas boilers. Tax companies with windfall taxes that sell us petrol and diesel. Put VAT on school fees. Tax rich foreigners more. Tax banks more. Tax landlords more. Tax people making capital gains more .

The reactions to this tax attack are predictable. Very rich people move to  one of their homes in a less hostile tax jurisdiction and take their savings and businesses with them. Younger people planning to work hard and set up businesses go elsewhere to do that. Employers offer fewer jobs. People are deterred from promotion or working longer hours by the tax traps higher up the earnings scale. People stop buying so many cars. Voters become angry about a  government that seems to want to stop them being better off. Consumer confidence falls leading to slower growth and less tax revenue. Landlords stop renting out homes. People with assets hold them for longer to avoid capital gains tax.

No one is happy . The government collects less tax from less activity, and from fewer better off people staying to pay. People are unwilling to take so many risks, to try new things, to build new businesses.

Lower tax rates can lead to higher tax revenues. If we halved our corporation tax rate to match Ireland’s we could grow our business base as they have done,. They collect 3 times as much business tax per head as we do with half the rate.

If we lifted the bans on new oil and gas and removed the windfall additional tax, just leaving in place double corporation tax, we would get a lot more tax revenue from the new oil and gas we would be producing for ourselves. We do not get anything like the same tax on all those imports this government prefers.

If we reduced taxes on capital more money would flow into the country, and more domestic savers would create more transactions and jobs as they rearranged their property and share holdings.

Instead of a gloomy outlook based on dividing up a shrinking or small cake, we could have policies that grew the cake giving scope for many more to be  better off. More cake would bring more tax revenue. Lower tax rates would assist in faster growth and a better financed public sector.