Author: johnredwood

So the government has failed to negotiate a settlement with the Chinese owners of Scunthorpe blast furnaces and the nearby rolling mill. The UK does need to keep a steel industry.

The government should buy the whole works and land for a token £1, sparing the current owner closure and redundancy costs.There might  need to be recourse to them if a new operator did need to make redundancies.The Chinese company would remain responsible for its debts and past losses. The assets would be unencumbered.

It should put out to tender a contract to operate and manage the works, accepting the least cost/ best bid.

It should encourage the nationalised Network Rail to carry on buying track from there. It should encourage the use of steel for its  construction  projects to use steel from there. It should use UK steel for all main defence purposes.

The government was wrong to water down its proposal of local enquiries in just five towns into the scandal of the rape gangs. They attacked children in the most disgusting way. It is thought this happened in  at least   50 towns and cities.

One of the issues is did senior local Councillors and Council officers help cover this up? They should not decide whether to hold an enquiry, and should not conduct it.

Katie Lam MP spoke for most people when she challenged the  Minister seeking to smuggle the dilution through an almost empty House of Commons. Rupert Lowe has also done good work on this issue.Bring on a proper enquiry with full powers of independent investigation.

This year the ten year government borrowing rate has always been higher than the brief spike top rate under Liz Truss. This  is the result of a very bad budget killing growth and an April of the government putting up managed prices, taxes and inflation. Still Rachel  Reeves talks of the disaster rate of 2022 without stating her rates are always higher. She says she has brought stability . She has brought no growth and rising inflation.

The turbulence brought by Trump’s tariffs and the US/ China tariff war sees UK bonds  and the pound falling as well as US Treasuries and the dollar. This is not surprising. The budget and the Spring statement left little  margin in the figures compared to target. Events of the last week hVe probably eliminated the margin in the numbers. Reeves is back to looking for spending cuts and fending off Labour demands to hike taxes more. With thousands of rich people  heading for the exit her revenues will now be squeezed. With

During the last two Parliaments I pressed the Treasury to make it more difficult for Councils to borrow large sums of money. As so often it took time to persuade Ministers and their department that waste was afoot and spending was too lax. I watched as various Councils went on a buying spree for commercial property, and renewable  energy projects.

Prior to 2020 some Councils were buying up shops as they thought with rents  exceeding the low interest rate charged on government loans they could gain more income to spend. They did not realise the private sector and the property agents were thrilled to sell out to them as many in the private market thought shops overvalued and thought rents would fall  as online shopping reduced shop turnover. Covid lockdowns came along and accelerated that trend leading  to large capital losses on the shops Councils had bought.  Rents fell. When interest rates rose the disaster was complete with heavy losses.

Nottingham invested in its own energy company. It ran up large losses and put itself into Section 114 bankruptcy.  Woking made too many bad property investments whilst Thurrock came a cropper with buying solar farms. They too went into Section 114. Birmingham underpaid its female staff and faced large back pay whilst also losing on its investments which took it to Section 114.

The government has undertaken a round of expensive bail outs. Birmingham was granted £1255 m, Woking £331 m, Bradford £220 m and Southampton £122 m with others getting multiple millions. Far from Councils being starved of money some have lobbied for huge sums to dig them out of financial difficulty or bankruptcy of their own making.

Taxpayers do not want Councillors and their officers playing at being investors in real estate and energy only to lose them a fortune. A well run Council keeps Council tax down and concentrates on providing good service in core areas. Too many bad Councils grandstand, over reach, add services they should stay out of and land up in a financial mess. Too many want to wreck our roads at great cost and dabble in business in ways that prove costly.

It is rumoured the government decided to renegotiate the Scunthorpe deal they inherited to close the blast furnaces and subsidise an electric arc furnace to make recycled steel. It would clearly  be better to keep  the blast furnaces. Instead we read they may lose everything as the Chinese owners have rejected their  revised deal as inadequate.

The UK needs basic steel making, and the nearby rolling mill. The PM recently initiated  the  construction of a new naval submarine, but we hear we will need to import French steel to build it. In 1940 we did not have that opportunity when we needed plenty of steel to defend ourselves.

The main reason we are losing our steel industry is the crippling price  of energy here. Start getting more of our own gas out and we could build high energy using industries on that supply.

Car output in the UK has halved since 2017. Government and the industry has largely ignored this, as the main reason is the government policy to ban the manufacture and sale of all the popular diesel and petrol cars the industry has been making by 2030, with aggressive phase out and factory closure from last year.

You read it here first. It is official government policy to close all petrol and diesel car factories and sack all their workers over the next five years. They would like to open new battery car factories with new jobs instead, but have reported little progress in doing this. To replace what they are definitely closing would take many more approved projects with contracts underway to build the factories and new production lines it would take. Like most UK net zero policies it looks like a policy of close our factories and import the new cars from China.

Honda  has left the UK and the EU altogether as it could not  sell enough cars. Mini plans to switch most of its production to battery models made abroad, and is delaying an investment in production of two dearer low volume battery variants here.  The  Jaguar brand is losing market share fast and is planning a small battery range of very dear cars that will likely mean a tiny market share. It wants to lose most of its past customers who want a more traditional Jaguar. Ford no longer makes cars here. Stellantis ( includes Vauxhall) is negative on investing here. It has decided to close its Luton  works. It is making electric vans at Ellesmere Port but no cars. Even Nissan is concerned about volumes as it seeks to roll over a large loan it borrowed and considers the pace and scale of its commitment to new battery car capacity.

To save the car industry the government must stop the £15,000 a car tax on “excess” petrols and diesels. It must relax its electric timetable, allowing the industry to carry on making petrol and diesel cars people want to buy.

The UK government found out the hard way that raising taxes on businesses for daring to employ people  leads to fewer vacancies and more job losses. Still it refuses to cancel the damaging tax. It does not seem to have learnt that increasing the already high taxes on people with savings and investments drives millionaires as well as billionaires abroad and will result in less  tax revenue, not more. Under the 1970 s Labour government it became a damaging brain drain as it was called. Our pop stars joined entrepreneurs in the rush for the exit. When the following Conservative government made major cuts in tax rates on the better off many rich people came back and revenues from the wealthier soared.

The government does understand extra taxes imposed on our exports to the US are damaging and like me would like to get these  taxes called tariffs down. It could start by offering to take our tariffs off US exports in return for the US cancelling tariffs. Played right Trump’s tariffs could be an opportunity for freer trade from lower taxes through a deal.As the government  knows US tariffs are wrong it should  see UK tariffs would be even worse. They are a direct hit on UK consumers.

The last few months have shown just how much economic damage higher taxes by the UK government can do with growth extinguished, inflation up and new jobs cancelled. The US tariffs have led to a big market sell off as investors fear reduced growth and disrupted trade. The Uk government needs to use the excuse of the Trump tariffs to reboot its own approach to growth. As it knows US taxes on our exports are harmful and need reversing it needs to see its taxes on jobs and wealth have already proved to be destructive. Remove these taxes.Take up ideas for saving wasteful public spending from this site and elsewhere without robbing from pensioners and people on disability benefits.

The adoption of lawfare  by the US Democrats backfired badly in the US election. Instead of getting Donald Trump banned as a candidate they boosted the support for him and made it a more divisive  contest.

All democracies have some agreed rules over who can stand and how elections are to be conducted. There can be rules on age, past conduct, nationality, residence and other relevant matters. It is important that all parties that can win seats agree these rules are fair. The rules should  not be changed in order to disadvantage one party.

Judges when asked  to judge cases  should be careful not to debar popular  candidates that significant numbers want to vote for. Of course if a would be candidate commits a serious crime like murder or rape and is found guilty they  should like anyone else have to serve a prison sentence which would stop them being an elected  official. If the crime is related to their conduct as a politician the punishment should not normally prevent  them standing again to let the electorate judge them.Rules on campaign funds and office expenses need enforcing and conduct should be exposed, but they also need to be enforced on all parties. One party’s idea of abuse is another’s flexibility. Public debate and transparency are the best limiters of bad conduct.

We now have a situation where Romania, Germany and France are taking action to prevent two popular candidates for President and one popular party from standing. This looks bad,with an establishment running scared. The whole point of democracy is  to give people the option to change government. Many people  in Europe dislike the prevailing orthodoxies on net zero, austerity, migration and other matters. They need to be able to vote for candidates and parties who want to change these matters.

The UK needs to close a deal with President Trump now he has given the UK an opening with talks and the lowest rate of tariff. He recognises that UK trade with the US is a lot fairer than EU trade and judges it on tariffs, bans, regulations and taxes imposed.  He  also sees it in the wider context of the overall US/UK relationship.

President Biden always made clear he did not want a trade  deal with the UK. Donald Trump would be happy  to have one. Biden’s people imposed maximum pressure on PM Sunak to sign up to the bad Windsor Agreement, a one sided deal wanted by the EU and the Republic of Ireland. President Trump is extremely critical of the EU and welcomes being able to deal direct with an independent UK. The UK has already taken EU style tariffs off one fifth of product lines and should remove more.

PM Starmer should keep the Chagos islands, saving us money and reassuring the US about their crucial naval base, He should not impose any  retaliatory tariffs. These are taxes on overtaxed UK consumers. The US would retaliate and hike their tariffs against us . That would lose us the advantage we currently have that our goods into the US will be 10% cheaper than EU goods and 14% cheaper than Japanese on proposed tariff levels.

The UK should remove the digital tax which does hit mainly US companies. We should let in US beef and chicken with suitable  labels and let consumers decide. We should offer a zero tariff trade deal.