Author: johnredwood

I have not yet decided who to back in the leadership election. I want to see who does put in Nomnation papers, and want to hear their answers to two simple questions. I would also like to hear from Conservative members in Wokingham which two candidates they would most like to see on the final ballot paper at the end of the MP phase of the race.

The questions to candidates are

1. How will you get us out of the EU by or before October 31?
2. How will you develop a programe to expand our economy, raise living standards, raise our reputation in the world and restore our self confidence as a nation, using all the new freedoms we will have once out of the EU?

I will also write a few blogs on progress in the race. Today I will assess Rory Stewart’s offer.

Mr Stewart has provided the most persistent advocacy of the May deal which has just gone down to the most crushing defeat in the history of the party. The only Conservative plank for the Euro election was that Withdrawal Agreement and it was opposed by more than 90% of the voters.

Mr Stewart thinks 17.4 million people were wrong to vote to just leave. He spent time in recent weeks telling me I was wrong not to understand the brilliance of the Withdrawal Agreement. He being a very intelligent man and an important part of the establishment exudes confidence in the Remain view and seems to think those of us who disagree lack understanding. He has an old fashioned last century view of UK politics, defining pro EU Libdem voters as centrists Conservative need to attract, whilst ignoring the 17.4 m Leave voters. He says he wants to unite the Conservative party yet he also says he could not serve in a Boris Johnson led government.

If The Lib Dems had won most seats in the Euro election would the BBC have spent the evening saying how well the Brexit party had done by coming second?

I congratulate the Brexit party on their win. I of course agreed with their central proposition that we should leave now without signing the Withdrawal Treaty.

The derisory vote of under 10% for the Conservatives is a fitting epitaph for the Withdrawal Agreement. Only the Conservatives offered the Withdrawal Agreement. Anyone who wanted it would have voted Conservative. Some who didnt want it voted Conservative out of loyalty or for other ressons.

Whenever I have said in media interviews that the public have rejected the Agreement by a large majority this has been queried. This election provides more proof of the obvious. Mrs May united the country against the draft Treaty she wrongly proposed.

The Brexit party on the majority of results so far announced as I expected won more seats than the three Remain parties, the Lb Dems, Greens and Change UK combined. These new MEPs need to come to Westminster to tell MPs there how to be popular, by just getting us out of the EU with no lock back in Treaty.

The BBC seemed to think the main news of the night was the Lib Dems coming second! Once again they missed the obvious and made little of the winning view.

I am expecting a surge of support for the Brexit party in the results of the Euro elections. Now the polls have closed sfter 10 pm our time all across the EU we can look forward to some results.

I expect the Brexit vote and the residual UKIP vote both in favour of a so called No deal exit to be ahead of the combined Lib Dem, Green and Change UK Remain vote, parties disliking Brexit and pledged to try to reverse it in a second referendum. I expect the Conservative and Labour votes to be greatly squeezed. Whilst both these parties said they wanted to honour the referendum result Labour was still flirting with Remain, saying it backed both sides, whilst Mrs May dominated the underwhelming and brief Conservative campaign with her Withdrawal Agreement.

Assuming this is what happens we can conclude

1 The UK meant its decision in the referendum and wants us to leave. We need to do so by October 31 at the latest.It would be good if a new PM agreed an earlier departure with the EU.
2. Mrs Mays Withdrawal Agreement has tiny support and needs to be binned immediately. The fact that she made the WA central to her leaflet and speech put off millions of former Conservative voters. It lets us say the Conservative vote in this election is the limit of support for the Withdrawal Treaty. Anyone who wanted a negotiated way to a so called comprehensive partnership with the EU on these terms would have voted Conservative.
3 Both main parties have a big task to get back into favour with a majority of the voters. Only a clean and early Brexit will buy them that right.
4. The current Westminster Parliament by delaying and seeking to dilute or reverse Brexit has gravely misjudged the public mood. It can only start to redeem itself by getting on with the earliest possible WTO Brexit. The UK should offer free trade talks and no new tariffs and barriers which the EU might well want, but we should just leave anyway. There are already important agreements reached to ease our early departure without signing the draft Treaty.

One of the advantages of Mrs May’s resignation is it will allow a rethink over the government’s economic and enterprise policies.

Mr Hammond has continued to tighten the fiscal and monetary stance , squeezing and slowing the economy. He has continued with Mr Osborne’s tax attacks on particular sectors and groups of people, damaging the housing and car markets in particular. Some of the tax hikes as with Stamp Duty and vehicle Excise Duty have done such damage to transactions and output that it has hit overall revenue adversely.

The world economy is slowing. The Fed overdid the tightening late last year, shocking the markets. That in turn is forcing a rethink at the Fed, who are spending the summer on a kind of study leave to think through a new approach to monetary targeting and interest rate selection. The Chinese authorities also erred on the side of toughness, slowing their economy. Mr Trump’s trade war has added to the gloom. World governments generally have hit out at the production of diesel and even petrol cars, taking actions which have created a car industry recession. As the UK economy has a large overseas trade sector, where the majority of our trade is with non EU , we need to be sensitive to changes of mood and growth rates worldwide. The UK needs to offset some of the gloom and slowdown elsewhere.

Instead we have seen a Treasury very hostile to Brexit spread gloom and negative stories whilst running a policy designed to slow things down anyway. The new government needs to take a sensibly positive view of our prospects on exit. We can afford a stimulus now to our economy, with more spending on priorities like social care and schools, and lower taxes, especially where the current rates collect less revenue. France has just had some tax cuts. France and Italy are trying to woo rich people away from London to their jurisdiction to invest and spend with them instead by offering a better tax deal. The USA has enjoyed a major tax cutting programme which has boosted that economy to be the fastest growing advanced economy in the world. China has offered some tax cuts to boost consumption. The Italian government is trying to expand its budget to help reduce unemployment. Only the UK seems wedded to the Maastricht EU rules to get the stock of government debt down as percentage of GDP to the 60% level.

It was symptomatic that Mrs May in her exit speech claimed reducing the debt was a great success of her Administration, when she should have said reducing debt as a percentage of GDP. If you are going to claim something like that as a success, then do show you understand the numbers. Success to the rest of us is higher living standards, more growth in real incomes, with low inflation.

I talked to a meeting of Conservative students at Oxford yesterday about the themes from my book. I mentioned the growing strength of public opinion and engagement, and suggested the current polls are underestimating the numbers of voters, especially former Conservative voters, now giving support to the Brexit party for the future. A large majority of Conservative members want us out of the EU in accordance with promises made in the 2018 election and afterwards, and have no fears of leaving without signing the dreadful Withdrawal Agreement. The Conservative party can only hope to woo back lost voters once it has got us out of the EU properly.

I found, contrary to the views of some senior Conservatives, that the students loved a clear Conservative message based around ownership, free enterprise, lower taxes, and opportunity for all. They either welcomed or accepted we needed to just put Brexit behind us by simply doing it. There was particular interest in the sections of my book on the revolt of the motorist and how to handle green issues, and on opportunity for home ownership. There was no agreement about future leaders, with a majority undecided, but the most pro Brexit candidates got the most favourable mentions.

Yesterday sterling and the stock market rose after the resignation of Mrs May made leaving without the Agreement a bit more likely. That’s a blow to those who think No deal is bad, or those who think markets mainly respond to the endless Brexit wrangles rather than more normal considerations about interest rates, growth etc

The next Prime Minister has one immediate and urgent task – to get us out of the EU. Unless the Conservative party delivers soon on its promise in 2017 to take us out the substantial loss of votes to the Brexit party suggested in recent Westminster polls will be confirmed or may accelerate. We are long past the position where we need a new leader to find a compromise between Leave and Remain, or who thinks that a few tweaks to the Withdrawal Agreement will enable it to pass. Only getting us out by October 31st at the latest is going to get the government and the party the right to a hearing again from voters, and the space and authority to press forward with all the many policies we can then offer based on the freedoms Brexit delivers.

Any new Leader has to understand the depth and range of feeling in the country that the outgoing government and the official opposition have let the country down badly, by delaying, diluting and querying the whole idea of Brexit. We have just witnessed a huge tidal wave of support for getting on with leaving, and against signing the Withdrawal Agreement. Mrs May’s Agreement was designed in Brussels by the EU, and met with great opposition from Leave and Remain voters alike.

I tried hard over many months to persuade her to go back to the EU and tell them the Agreement could not be sold to UK voters and had to be changed. I argued with her to stand up to the EU and tell them if necessary we would just leave without signing the Agreement. In the later stages of her tenure as PM I urged her to do herself a favour by dropping the Agreement, to ease the obvious strains on her of the repeated disagreements and negative votes. I was amazed at her resilience in defence of a proposal which the country had already rejected by a large margin, and which this Parliament was unlikely to accept.

Some say we cannot leave without signing the Agreement because Parliament will not allow it. The only hope this Parliament has to reconnect with voters who have left both main parties in droves is to leave. A new PM can do so. Best would be to go to the EU, say we have messed them around for too long and we wish to leave immediately. If the EU agrees it can be done as the delay in our exit was done by agreement between the new UK government and the EU. We should offer a comprehensive free trade agreement which would enable us to leave with no new tariffs or trade barriers whilst over the months after exit we seek to work out and sign the detailed proposal.

If the EU would not agree to an immediate exit, then we need to wait until 31 October. Parliament has legislated for our exit then. A new PM just has to ensure Parliament does not legislate to keep us in. Government has plenty of powers to do just that, which Mrs May declined to use last time because she had herself decided she wanted to delay our exit if she could not have her way and sign the Agreement.

According to the media she will resign this morning. Comment here if you wish. The sooner we get a change of policy on Brexit, which clearly needs a change of leader, the better.