Author: johnredwood

A Respected pollster has tested opinion in Makerfield ahead of Re Set.This is taken from the press release.
Conducted by Survation (member of UK Polling Council)
Designed by Dr Richard Johnson (Senior Lecturer in Politics, Queen Mary University of London)
Representative sample
Telephone interviews with 500 voters in the Makerfield constituency
Previously surveyed during the Makerfield by- electio n
Conducted: 21 October – 4 November 2026
Weighted sample to reflect demographics of constituency
Margin of error: 5.8ppts
Content: UK sovereignty
Poll on 10 policies which are wholly or partly outside of UK government control in the EU/Single Market
Who should decide these policies?
Innovative design

The  purpose of the poll was to establish if the Prime Minister’s policies would meet his own “Makerfield Test” – whereby policies should not be introduced across the UK if they would not be acceptable to the electors of Makerfield.
The poll asked voters who should decide UK economic policy on ten different issues. It followed the design of a 2025 YouGov poll on British voters’ attitudes towards sovereignty run by Dr Richard Johnson, Senior Lecturer in Politics at Queen Mary, University of London. The poll deliberately did not mention the EU in order to break voters out of so-called Brexit ‘tribes’. Instead, the poll is designed to test core attitudes on where decisions are made.
In every case, a clear majority of the voters polled in Makerfield said policy should be decided by UK governments alone, with a range between 67% (medicine approval for the NHS) and 80% (state aid for regional development). This range included 69% support in the case of animal welfare standards, 74% for food standards, 75% for refusing criminals entry to the UK, and 78% for the setting of VAT rates.

So Re Set failed the Makerfield test with a huge majority wanting UK control  of trade, borders, laws and taxes.

The threadbare case for the great EU give away is based on three false statements.

1. The UK has lost 4% ( or in some variants 8%) of GDP following the Brexit vote. GDP went up after the Brexit vote, and GDP behaved like EU GDP over the covid period. As the government tells us, our growth is currently faster than Germany, France and Italy in the EU. The  4% figure was an OBR forecast that productivity growth might be 0.25% a year less for 15 years so by 2035 productivity might have gone up 4% less. They never said we would lose 4% GDP as soon as we voted out or when we left.

2. Despite having a Free Trade Agreement with the EU bought at considerable expense the Re setters say we have lost exports to the EU owing to non tariff frictions. We need to adopt their extra laws and taxes to avoid this. Our total exports to the EU have risen since Brexit by 22%. Goods exports have grown slowly in cash terms as they did when we were in the EU. This is mainly due to UK high energy  prices , de industrialisation and farm grants to give up food production. The UK mainly exports services which have surged in recent years, and mainly exports to non EU where we have been able to enter Free Trade Agreements the EU never achieved for us. They think goods exports are the main driver of growth when our total goods exports to the EU are just 5% of GDP.They will burden the big majority if companies with extra rules and taxes who do not export.

3. They claim there would be good growth opportunities from adopting EU laws and taxes.There never were between 2008-20 when we were fully in the EU. How come dearer energy via their emissions system, dearer raw materials via their carbon tariff, and more regulatory cost via their restrictive rules would make us  better off when it would increase costs and make us less innovative and competitive?

These are the questions they will not answer

1.Our time in the EEC/EU gave us a growth rate two thirds  the rate we enjoyed in the 20 years before entry. Why would going back in be different?

2. This century the EU has fallen further and further behind the US in growth, so EU GDP per head  is now only one half the US.Why join the losers? Why not be independent , global and choosing the best laws and tax rates for success?

3. The UK buys much more food and goods from the EU than we sell to them. Aligning with them will boost their exports more than ours. GDP goes down if import growth exceeds  export growth. It means more UK closures and lost jobs on our side of the channel.

In their rush to remove the Winter Fuel payment from anyone over 66 who is earning  or receiving more than £35,000 a year Ministers have forced HMRC and pensioners into a lot of extra work.  They have decided in their haste to pay everyone the £200 who is over 66, then  to get the money back by a variety of different ways. So the state has to find the money, and  has to spend money on getting the money back with a delay. HMRC is burdened with a new chore to use the tax system for something which should have been sorted out by the Benefits department.

I have no problems with the idea that people on comfortable incomes do not need fuel subsidy even when living at home all the time because they are not working. There will be arguments about what is comfortable these days. I do have arguments with this clumsy benefit as amended.  Now a large number of people have to declare to HMRC their £200 which they are not entitled to so it can be  clawed  back in an awkward and delayed system. The system does cope with some other categories of people who do not qualify for Fuel benefit.

I have seen the letters the DWP  is sending out to everyone over 66  this year.  It tells them all that they “will get £200 for Winter Fuel payment” as before.

It then states their new policy “If your personal income is over £35,000 HMRC will take your payment back. You can find more about this under the heading “Check if HMRC will take your payment back”. There is no explanation of why this new policy is coming in and under what powers.

It goes on to say “This is your personal income only. If someone you live with will also get a payment, HMRC will look at their income separately. You can check if your income is over the threshold at www.gov.uk/guindance/payingback the winter fuel payment…..You will need to include the Winter fuel payment on your tax return. If you file your tax return on line where possible HMRC will include the Winter Fuel payment for you. You should check that your payment is automatically shown on your online return and include it if it is not”.

Why can’t DWP Ministers design a scheme that does not involve sending £200 to millions of people that are not entitled to it and then having to ask HMRC to recoup it sometime somehow? Why do they lack any ability to explain this cut in benefits in a friendly way? People who do not want to receive a benefit if they are not entitled to it  have to take responsibility for paying it back. Why?

The government tells us that UK electricity prices are amongst  the highest in the world because our electricity is priced from gas generated power on many days and this is now expensive. They claim that as we add more and more wind and solar to the grid, so the price of electricity will come down, replacing the dear gas generated energy. This has not happened so far, with our electricity prices climbing as we add large amounts of new renewable power. It also leaves open the question why the government does not change the pricing arrangements if the cause is as they describe. The result of days of shortage of wind when gas is a larger part of the mix and also  pushing up the prices of every other type of generation  could presumably be adjusted by different pricing methods.

         How can I put this tactfully to the government?  It is likely to be dearer to  rely on increasing amounts of renewable power when you have to allow for all the capital and running costs of a duplicate back up system for when the wind does not blow. Whilst it is true that the costs of the gas fuel can be high when world markets are disrupted by wars, the costs of the windfarms do not stop with just the costs of putting in the turbines and blades. The investor in new facilities would need to find the high up front capital costs and the debt service. They would need to pay for maintenance and accept a shorter active life for the wind farm than for the gas power station. They  would need to pay a gas power station to be on stand by for days when the wind did not  blow. They   would have to pay premium prices for the gas power when they  did need to rely on a gas power station . It would have  to charge more as it stands idle for long periods of time and so needs a higher price when it can run.  By definition it is likely to run most when gas prices are dearest, as it runs when all else has failed in the system leaving us short of energy. It is true just building  a new gas power station  would also  have a high capital cost and also have higher running costs as it needs to buy in gas.  It is difficult for renewable power to be cheaper all the time there has to be a duplicate gas system on stand by as well.

           The extra costs for the country do not end with the issue of capital cost and running costs of the different generators. The renewables system needs considerably more grid capacity. Much of the wind power is generated many miles away from the electricity consumers so the grid needs to be enlarged. In order to keep the system balanced when more renewables are destabilising the grid  the operator needs to add expensive big investments to create  inertia  to avoid  problems with  system stability. They may need as a cheaper answer old gas power  stations to keep spinning without the boiler. There are black  outs if the system is driven outside its safe power ranges. It is true the country could move to battery or hydro storage of power, so the system can store electricity when there is plenty of wind and run down the stores when the wind drops. All this extra storage capacity has a capital cost. There are losses of electricity from storage and issues about how much storage is needed. The technology of long duration storage is still developing. A longish period of high pressure with little wind especially in a cold winter with high demand for power could stretch the system and would require major storage investment to be safe.

One of the important continuities in British life is Bonfire night. I remember well the excitement as a young boy being allowed the stay up late to watch the fireworks. I enjoyed helping put together the bonfire pile. It was good when the heat came through from the flames on what was often a cold night.

The commemoration has often been a muddled very British one. The official reason for encouraging bonfire nights was to remind people of the dreadful terrorist crime Guy Fawkes proposed to commit, as he got ready to blow up Parliament. He wanted to kill the whole assembly of peers, MP s and the King himself as they gathered together in the Lords chamber for the state opening. He wanted to murder  the whole governing establishment, clearing the way for a new King and Ministers. Burning  Guys on thousands of bonfires around the land was to remind people of what could happen  to such evil criminals.

For others Bonfire night can bring  disparaging remarks about Parliament and government in the British tradition of challenges and jokes at the expense of authority, whilst not approving of mass murder. I have seen one civil fireworks where a mock up of Parliament itself was  enveloped  in flames rather than a representation of the plotter bomber.

I celebrate tonight Parliament’s survival thanks to vigilance and intelligence about the actions of the plotters. When I had to leave my room in the Grand Hotel Brighton following a bomb which did go off, we learned that most of the government escaped but five  were dead. The wish to murder governments can still haunt our Parliament which needs to be vigilant both for  those who would kill to replace a government and  to uphold our precious liberties.

I agree that the current fiscal rules system set up by the previous Conservative Government, and extended and modified by this Government, cannot possibly achieve its main aim, which should be to control debt better. Whether there is a five-year target or a three-year target does not really make much difference. Some people thought that that was a welcoming tightening, but the underlying truth is that year 3 or year 5 never comes and there is no pressure on the Government to make sure that they meet it. By the time they get to that year, it is no longer year 3, so it no longer has a biting target. That is clearly absurd.

I also agree with the committee saying that the OBR’s role has to be that of an independent forecaster and that the Government should be able to talk to it but should not be bound by it. Obviously, a good Government would wish to explain why they disagreed, or should explain how they intend to handle debt and deficit if they do not like the figures that are being produced.

In 2010, when this family of targets first started after the banking crash and the explosion of debt and expenditure over the period of that crash, public spending—that is, total managed expenditure—was £760 billion. This year, according to the latest forecast, it will be £1,449 billion. That is an increase of 90% over the years. I cannot remember a year, until we got to a Labour Government, when I was not told that we were cutting public spending, but spending is up 90% in cash terms. The inflation check from the Bank of England says that there was 62% inflation over that period, so there was a fairly substantial real increase, which occurred in most years. Some individual programmes were cut, and some priorities could not be pursued, but it is difficult to see that we have had a rigorous set of controls over either spending or borrowing.

If we look at where these targets came from, ultimately, they are derived from our Maastricht targets, which we were meant to obey when we were a member of the European Union. Noble Lords may remember that there were two treaty-driven targets. We were to keep debt at 60% of GDP or lower. Every country bar one, I think, broke that—including the United Kingdom—so it was transposed into something saying, “As you are over 60%, you should start getting your debt down towards a 60% target”; that was transformed into our fiscal rules after we left. There was also the 3% running deficit ceiling, which, again, has been often broken; it was broken by us in our period of membership. This Government have revised and tightened that by saying that there should still be a 3% deficit ceiling, but only to allow 3% of GDP borrowing for capital purposes, and that the aim should be to have a current balance. That is a good amendment to a target that does not work.

Where one needs to go from here is to say, as the committee does, that we are close to running out of money—and the people who lend it to us are close to running out of patience—for us to carry on spending at the rate we are doing. We have had three very big spending increases over the past 20 years: over the banking crash, with a big increase in debt; over Covid; and post Covid. I do not think that enough was done to control the spending coming out of the Covid exceptional expenditure; the extra borrowing was complicated, with a massive programme of quantitative easing. We then had, of course, a very substantial policy decision to go for more spending and more borrowing by the incoming Government in 2024.

I think that we would be much better off if, on a cross-party basis, we could agree on two overarching aims for the UK economy, based on one of our targets at the moment and some of the American experience. We should have as our aims 2% inflation and 2% growth, so that all policy and Bank of England considerations recognise that there can be trade-offs between those two, and we should embed the 2% inflation target on the Government as well as on the Bank of England, because inflation in public sector costs is one of the main forces of inflation at the moment; that should be taken much more seriously by the public sector.

In the brief time I have, I want to mention two expensive quirks in our figures, which I have highlighted and in which I would like other people to get interested; I find them fascinating, and they might be of use to those conducting public policy. The first is that Rachel Reeves made a decision, which I and my party condemned as being anti-jobs and anti-vacancies, to increase national insurance. The curious financial thing about it was that, of course, the bulk of the national insurance revenue has to be paid into the National Insurance Fund. That is now accumulating a surplus of £12 billion extra each year and has a surplus of £100 billion already, so I am not quite sure why she wanted a bigger surplus in the fund; it has to be lent back to the Government at the base rate.

The second funny money is the dreadful situation with the ownership of bonds by the Bank of England. The latest OBR figure says that the losses will come down a bit: it now thinks that, from 2022, when the losses started, until 2033, the losses will be £228 billion. Can we not get that figure down a bit?

The UK governing establishment can be both wrong and nasty to anyone who dares to suggest a different way of thinking. I seek to change their approach to inflation, growth, energy and public sector management. In order  to do so I have to argue within narrow parameters they lay down, as they seek to condemn or ignore anyone who disputes their consensus follies.

They say the Bank of England is independent and that is essential to control inflation. The Bank’s policy since 2008 has been dominated by buying up £895 bn bonds at increasingly absurd prices, all needing the sign off by the Chancellor. They then in 2022 switched to selling them off at big losses. They needed a Treasury guarantee to pay the losses. The Bank is on taxpayer life support needing more than £10 bn a year subsidy. The government appoints the Governor and the Bank has to report directly to Parliament as well. That’s not a definition of independence. Meanwhile inflation has been well above the 2% target for more than five years but no-one is meant to blame the Bank.

They say UK growth will come from higher public sector investment in infrastructure and utilities with more nationalisation and regulation needed. They ignore the disasters of HS 2 and Post Office computer investment and suppress the records of the loss making employee sacking polluting nationalised industries of the 1970s.They overtax the private sector leading to an exodus of talent and money that could generate faster growth.

They make the UK race to net zero, forcing our energy prices up and closing down our oil,gas and high energy using industries through high taxes and bans. This forces us to rely on imports and increases world CO 2 as a result. It is the worst form of economic self harm adding to the carbon problem it says it wants to solve.

They preside over a public sector in denial about poor productivity  and poor quality of service in many areas. Why have there been so many hospital avoidable deaths and hospital transmitted infections? Why did the Post Office send many good staff to prison  on false charges? Why does the railway have so many  cancelled and delayed services? Why are the roads riddled with potholes presided  over by Councils out to make life difficult for van and car drivers?  They always blame lack of money and hide behind cuts. Instead in recent years there has been a surge in public spending, borrowing and taxing which they deny. Where does all that money go?

In each case trying to hold a public debate requires care in what can be said as the main response of the Establishment  is to  attack the critic whilst perpetuating the common lie they hide  behind. Question net zero strategy and you are a “ climate denier”  who is causing droughts and floods. Question Bank independence and you are regarded as an ill informed danger  undermining economic stability. Question public sector mismanagement and you are said to be covering up spending cuts and wanting to privatise.

One cheer for the government approving the Jackdaw field. We need the gas, We need the well paid jobs. We need the tax revenue. It will mean less world CO2 as imported LNG which home gas will replace generates much more CO 2 when compressed, transported and regassified.

One and a half cheers if and when the government approves Rosebank, as the OBR expects it to do. That brings more jobs, much more tax revenue and will displace other oil that would be produced elsewhere for the world market. Producing more in the UK does not mean more oil is used worldwide.

Two  cheers if the Chancellor means what he wrote yesterday in the Times. He said it makes no sense to sign up for more windpower with expensive contracts and grants if the grid cannot handle the extra electricity. We are already paying a small fortune to wind power providers when they produce more electricity than the grid can handle. It makes no sense to commission more power which would incur yet more of these crazy payments.

To make it three cheers there need to be many more changes of policy. If the PM is serious in saying we need to get the prices of power down, and we  need more national supply then these too need to happen

1. Allow drilling for more oil and gas onshore and offshore. Encourage tie backs of oil and gas into existing North Sea production facilities and pipelines to use them for longer. Decommissioning them prematurely means extra costs and extra CO 2 generated for no good reason, which is what Mr Miliband wanted to do.
2. Extend the lives of our existing fleet of nuclear power stations where the safety case allows. We are about to lose all but one of our stations to old age.
3. Extend the lives and contracts for our existing gas power stations as they are crucial to keeping the lights on.
4. Place a price cap on how much we are prepared to pay for imported electricity other than in an emergency when we have otherwise run out of power. Avoid importing power other than renewable given the government’s environmental concerns.
5. Acknowledge that an aggressive net zero policy in the UK closing  down our energy using industries to rely on imports is not only bad for our economy, undermines our national security and increase world CO 2.