On Monday evening Jacob Rees Mogg interviewed me about my latest book, What do boys want?  (available on Amazon)

It is part social history, part a personal recollection. I was persuaded to write it as I have much earlier memories of life as a baby and pre school small boy than many I have talked to. I was living in a land of giants, mountaineering to get on one of their chairs, trying to cling on to high up chair cushions to practice walking  on two legs.Racing around on all fours was faster and less scary.

I try to recall which boyish characteristics were innate and which reflected the very strong adult view of the time that boys and girls were different and were to be prepared for different roles  in life. We were living in the old fashioned Teresa May’s world of boys jobs  and girls jobs.

I lived in my own imaginary world when I had  learned some language and mastered picture books of how others and animals lived. My soft toy lion was my companion. My dinky cars were exciting as I dreamed of one day driving the real thing. I had a running disagreement with my mother who wished to make clothes and dress my bear as if it was a doll. I got skilled at hiding the clothes. I told her that as the  small bear was off white in colour  it must be a polar bear. I announced the dark cold cupboard under the stairs was the Arctic so he had to live there. My Mum was not amused.

The government thinks it would be a good idea to have 12 more submarines and 6 new UK factories to make ammunition and explosives. They think the UK does have to take the Russian threat more seriously and commit to European defence.

They refuse, however, to spell out how they would pay for all this. The budget rises modestly this Parliament to 2.5% of GDP, to be part paid for by cuts in overseas aid. There is no firm promise to increase it to 3%, not even by 2034, yet the Review says it has to go to that level. The new submarines would be rolled out one every 18 months taking two decades to complete.

It is not in the UK’s  interest to get into a war with Russia. No sensible UK government would commit us to one unless we decided to join a general NATO response to some future Russian aggression which was against a NATO state. The states most directly potentially  affected by Russian aggression as with Ukraine today lie much closer to the Russian border .

The UK does need to strengthen the defence of our home islands to warn any possible future enemy off any idea of attacking us. This  needs the  extra spend identified on good anti missile and drone protection, on a stronger navy and airforce  and an additional way of delivering our nuclear deterrent.

The defence review is being sold by the government as a jobs programme for the UK. Of course the UK should make more of its weapons at home. It is also going to need  a stronger UK domestic steel, petrochemical and chemical industry to become more self sufficient. This requires an urgent change of energy policy.

We are assured by a desperate Defence Secretary that the money available for defence will be 3% of UK GDP in the next Parliament. This is a way of telling us he thinks it ought to be at that level but it will not be this Parliament. What is the point of saying that? He is very unlikely to still be Defence Secretary in 2034. The PM and the government might be swept away in 2028/9 if they stay this unpopular.

What he needs to do in his Review is give us an honest appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of our current forces, a statement of what they need to be able to do in the years ahead, and construct a budget of essential spending for the next three years. It is obvious we need to spend more on cyber activities, on drones, on ammunition stocks, on fast missiles and on an Iron Dome style missile and drone defence system for the home islands. We also need to improve the offer to our personnel, with better quality and more stable housing arrangements.

The Secretary of State has taken an interest in better housing. More staff could have a home base, and more could be given help to buy their own home near the base. They could even be allowed to buy a home on the base on a contract which required them to sell it back on leaving the service at a price enhanced by the general movement in home prices during their period of service. That way they would have a deposit or substantial capital contribution  for their first home in civilian life and the MOD keeps its property at base. This scheme would bring private capital into service housing to the advantage of the MOD budget, and would ensure people leaving service had some capital for a home of their own or already had a home of their own to relieve the stress and pressure of ending without somewhere to live.

  The PM claims a hat trick of wins with 3 international Agreements. They reveal a hasty set of concessions to overseas interests and a lack of control of the detail for the future.

He thinks his Chagos deal secures our joint base with the US in the Chagos. The small print does not prevent the new owners inviting in people to populate the other islands and pick disagreements with those operating the base. It does not protect the marine zone, and could result in Chinese and other fishing vessels coming into those protected waters. Surrendering the freehold for no good reason leaves us and the US exposed to what Mauritius wants to do. The PM told us China opposed the deal, only to see China come out and broadly welcome it. It was an obvious win for China, a friend, ally and financier of Mauritius.

He thinks his US deal protects us from US tariffs, at the price of higher tariffs on our exports and lower ones on US exports. That could be the best deal on offer. We now learn it has not come into effect and there is no agreed legal text we can read to see all is secure. The government is left having to ask the US if we are indeed exempt from the latest 50% steel tariff. They should be telling us we are exempt from it and showing the world the text they agreed to secure tariff free steel. That is what they told us they had secured.

The EU re set seems to concede the big principle that the UK will have to be a rule taker from the EU, at least in food matters, and concedes the principle that the UK will have to pay for this submission to cover EU costs. It does not secure the easier entry to EU Airports , the freer routes for musicians to go to perform nor the less friction for our food exports the UK promised. All these things have to be negotiated and put into EU legal text in due course. The UK has paid to play, conceded to get talks. 

Surely a lawyer should look after his client, the UK, better? Nothing should be agreed until everything is agreed. The final text needs to be in the UK’s interest. 

The welfare budget is rising fast. The £296 bn of 2023-4 is forecast to hit £378 bn or 28% more by the end of the decade. Sickness benefit is estimated to increase from £48.5 bn to £75.7 bn or 60% over the same time period. There is a surge in people claiming an inability to work. There are over 900,000 young people not in training, education or work. Mental ill health has increased substantially.

The government is alarmed by this development. They say some of the right things. They  want to get more people into work and are offering more support and back up. They agree with the Iain Duncan Smith reform of welfare to make it more worthwhile to go to work, and are completing the roll out of his universal Credit system. Yet without more reform and or tougher enforcement the bills keep rising.

Some of their backbenchers are pushing for a more relaxed approach to benefits. They regret the clumsy and unpopular removal of the pensioner fuel allowance, opposed by all other parties. They are concerned changes to PIP payments to the disabled could catch the wrong people, harming people with long term serious disabilities. Opposition parties want to see more the detail. Many are now pushing to remove the two child limit on the child payments under Universal  Credit going to the unemployed and low income families. That change was a modest one which now saves more than £3 bn. It would be odd to add a reform to spend more when parties find it difficult to identify easy wins in cutting costs.

All can see how much better off we would all be if hundreds of thousands of people not working could get jobs. They would also be better off . Any ideas on how to do that?

In the USA Elon Musk promised $2 tn off spending before the election and  a halved $1 tn of savings  when given the job of setting up DOGE. As he moves  on from that task Congress is busy agreeing a further rise in public spending with no sign of big savings built into the budget numbers. I do not doubt Mr Musk’s energy or determination to cut costs. He did expose some scandalous wastes. He assures us his process for cost down will now embed and bring forth more results. Time will tell. What he has done is made people more sceptical about those who promise to breeze into power to boost productivity and cut waste, as it proves difficult.

In the UK the government is seeking cuts in admin and back office on a more modest scale and seeking to turn round bad productivity. It too is finding that difficult to land. It is still adding stupid spending like the Chagos and more migrant hotel places. Reform has come out with bold plans to make major cuts in public spending to pay for some tax reductions and benefit increases, People will watch with interest how they get on in the 10 Councils and two Mayoralties they won in May. So far there is no sign of them cutting budgets below inherited levels.

The task of reducing public spending growth  is urgent. It needs  clarity about which things government should stop doing, with the identified costs that will cease. It requires careful negotiation with staff about how to use staff freezes, voluntary redundancies, better technology to allow smarter working. It needs good use of bonuses and promotions to transform quality, productivity and outcomes for public service users.

The headlines from the IMF were a relief to the government. By their low European standards for growth the UK is forecast to do OK, at 1.2% this year and 1.4% next year. No one seems to think Europeans can or should do anything about the ever growing gap between US and European outcomes. Because the large deficit is to do with increases in  spending rather than with tax cuts the IMF excuses instead of condemning. Their permanent bias to larger government and more state intervention shines through even though all the evidence shows the more of those you have the less well the economy performs.

The IMF does however contain some warnings in its text, probably recognising the likelihood they are being too optimistic. They say the risks to the forecast are “ to the downside” . They say the Bank need to watch stubborn inflation though they expect rate cuts. They accept that spending pressures are pushing up borrowing. They worry about the government’s scope to borrow. They praise the idea of the government borrowing for short terms given the way the cost of borrowing longer has shot up since the budget.

On the day of the LDI pension crisis in October 2022 the 30 year bond got to 4.8% and the 10 year to 4,38%. The Bank and Opposition blamed Truss but the big sellers of bonds driving  the bond prices down to drive the interest rates up were the bank of England and the Pension funds. Recently the 30 year has been 5.5% and the 10 year 4.7%. Both rates have been well above the October 2022 spike all this year so far. Markets are worried by the big increase in spending and borrowing the government put  through in the budget and are not in a mood to take much more increased spending.

According to Treasury and OBR numbers higher rates of inward migration boost growth and can lower the deficit . It is of course right that if you add in a lot of new low paid migrants GDP goes up. It is also true GDP per head goes down with the encouragement of more low paid employment.

The OBR we read is minded to increase their forecast of the deficit if we have fewer migrants. This is odd. Low paid and no paid migrants need subsidised housing. They need  a range of free and subsidised public services. They add to the need to build new roads, surgeries, schools, hospitals, power generation and sewers. Much of this has a direct public spending cost.

The OBR may need to revise its assumption about productivity growth down for other reasons. Public sector productivity is still well below 2019 levels and the public sector is out recruiting. Private sector productivity has the huge headwind of accelerated energy and industrial closures. Oil, gas, petrochemicals and the manufacture of petrol cars all deliver high labour productivity. All are being run down by bans, high energy prices and regulations. Current OBR forecasts say productivity will recover to 2% a year by the end of this decade, and average 1.25%

The government is rushing to accept a Sanitary and Phyto  Sanitary Agreement with the EU. They hope such an Agreement would allow the UK to sell more meat  and dairy products into the EU with less inspection and documentation of the products. These products are already tariff free under the TCA, whilst the non EU products in these categories face high tariffs.

There are many questions to ask before signing any such EU drafted proposal.

How wide will the reach be of present and future EU laws and regulations? All the time we were in the EU there was substantial regulatory creep into most areas of business and family life.

What is the proposed cost the UK would  have to pay to be regulated?

Will the UK have to stop researching and making new products that do not conform with EU rules? Post brexit we have developed new fertilisers and new ways of farming.

Will the EU  rules undermine any of the new trade deals we have negotiated with other countries? Which TPP, Indian and US products would the EU make us ban or impose cumbersome rules on?

What will the impact be on inflation as we become more dependent on dearer EU imports?

What is the likely increase in our exports to the EU and their exports to us? Given they  export more than 3 times the amount of food and drink to us as we do to them, will these measures further increase our trade deficit in food?

Will we have to go back to mainly  importing EU citrus fruit with high tariffs on citrus from elsewhere?

The Conservatives introduced a cap on Universal Credit of 2 children for two reasons. The overall benefits bill was rising too fast. The present government agrees and says it wants to cut it. It did not seem fair that parents going to work to pay for their homes and children should delay having another child or limit their family size because they cannot afford another mouth to feed whilst  people not working would be paid by the state to have another child.

As Kemi Badenoch made clear in her GB News interview yesterday, she thinks it is wrong to improve the benefits offer to migrants when most in the country and the government say we need to get migration down.

What do you think about scrapping the cap? If you support it how would you pay for it? What impact do you think it will have on migration? Do you think our benefits offer to migrants is too little?

Should a distinction be made between those on UC whilst being in low paid work, and those living entirely on benefits?