Our food trade with the EU is tariff free. This helps EU exporters compete in our market. They sell us 3.4 times as much as we sell them in the wider food and drink category. Whisky is our biggest export. Our sales of meat, dairy, fruit, vegetables and cereals are low. Years in the CAP with small milk quotas, beef bans and grants to remove orchards led to substantial reductions in UK farms home market share. We cannot now produce nearly enough temperate food to meet our own needs.

Some now argue we need to adopt again all the rules and controls the EU places on farms and food producers so we could export more to the EU without some of the border frictions the EU imposes . So what could we produce more and what would they buy?  Our sales did not fall post Brexit.

The main reason the EU wants more controls over UK farming is  their wish to keep out cheaper non EU food from competing with their exports to the UK.They also want to block innovation in the UK that could lead the UK to cheaper and better food at home. They veto genetic modification.

The EU has been pressing the UK to accept a Youth Mobility Scheme. They want anyone under the age of 30 in any  of the 27 member states to have a right to come to the UK for up to four years  to work, study or travel. The UK would automatically grant them a visa for entry.

The UK so far has turned this down, pointing out that is effectively freedom of movement for a large number of people. It is not clear how the UK could force people to leave at the end of the four years. It is suggested they would not be entitled to benefits but they would presumably receive  NHS treatment when needed and might need other types of state assistance.

Where the last government said No, the current government is exploring options. They are looking at a lesser  time period and at some limitations on what kind of work they could take. It is difficult to see how even a lesser scheme is compatible with the government’s  aim of a major reduction in legal migration.

The EU also wants the UK to subsidise the fees charged continental students in UK universities. It would like to revive UK membership of Erasmus. That would mean we had pay for the  full fees for continental students to attend UK universities as well as pay for some UK students to study in the EU. When we were in Erasmus there were many more continental students coming to the UK than UK students going to Europe.

The post Brexit UK Turing scheme spends the money all on UK students going abroad. It gives UK students the choice from many Universities all round the world. It would be wrong to cut our support to UK students and to prevent  them studying in places. like the US and Australia.

Ten months on a government with a large majority presides over record levels of illegal migration by small boat. They watch as if powerless observers as thousands more chance their lives to get here on illegal dangerous overloaded small craft. Why?

They scrapped the Rwanda plan which was starting to deter illegal travellers. They have offered friendship and money to France only to see the French accompany boats to the middle of the Channel . In France migrants survive in tents, freely talk of getting an illegal boat to England and make contact with the people smugglers.GB News showed all this on Tuesday in good reporting.

The UK offering to rescue people at sea and to ferry them to hotels, often leading on to their establishing  a right to stay even though they came here illegally encourages this evil trade.

Why doesn’t the UK arrest and prosecute the men who organise and steer the boats  to the UK?  Why don’t officials mystery shop for boat transport so they know where and when boats will leave? Why cant they find out who takes the money? Why cant the French authorities stop boats putting to sea? Why hasn’t France traced the supply of new boats to the traders?

Why are the standards of accommodation and treatment for illegal migrants so different in the two countries? How can France be abiding by the same Human Rights law which demands much higher standards in England?

Why does France tolerate so many illegals near the coast, and  allow so many small boats to launch? It must be quite obvious which inflatable is an illegal people smuggling boat by the number of people assembling to go on it.

The government wrongly thinks removing some non tariff barriers to EU trade would boost UK growth. It is more likely to boost  EU exports to us more than our exports to them, subtracting from our GDP. The UK already runs a huge trade deficit with the EU

The government sounds keen to align us with EU food regulations. They have failed to notice we only export 15 bn euro of food and drink, with whisky an important part, whereas the  EU sells us Euro 51 bn or more than three times as much. The UK keeps high tariffs on food items we import from the EU which limits our consumer choice and keeps the import prices high. Reinforcing this by forcing us to accept all their new rules on food would reinforce the trend we suffered in the EU of losing food market share as regulations including insufficient milk quota and beef bans left our unprotected market on to a surge of imports.

The idea that the UK should once again give its fish away is a disgraceful proposal. Our fishing grounds gave been overfished for 50 years thanks to EU membership and the decision to put off taking back control of our fish to 2026.We should cut the total quotas allowed next year, ban the foreign  ultra large trawlers and allocate more quota  to the  UK industry. Government should make capital available to build a bigger fishing fleet in UK yards.

We do not want a re set which makes us subservientb to the  EU again. We should not accept their laws  or out ourselves under European Court jurisdiction. We should  not  allow freedom of movement for the under 30 s. We should rebuild  our food and fish industry as we need to produce more of our own food.

The government should not make May 19 Surrender day.

We are getting close to May 19, the date of the UK/EU summit. The UK has asked for too little in a re set and is likely to give away too much.

There is talk of a Defence partnership.       This would entail sending our forces into EU wars when they asked. So few EU countries have sufficient defence so of course they would like us to help out. We already offer this to NATO members who are under an obligation to spend more and to look after their own defence. Some new EU legal structure to erode our control of our own military is a bad idea. Anything that undercuts or seeks to supplant NATO is also abad idea, as US membership of NATO is crucial to its forces and credibility.

There is talk of the UK government giving money to secure access for UK defence contractors to the planned Euro 150 bn borrowed fund to boost EU country armaments. There is no need for the UK to pay anything. The EU will need our defence contractors  where they have the best kit or are part of existing European. consortia. Any extra money we have for defence must be spent on our own forces, where it will generate orders for UK defence companies.

There is also suggestion the government will give away our fish, open our borders  to the under 30 s and  align us with EU rules. All bad ideas.

Such a deal would be a humiliating surrender

Today we are promised a paper from the Home Secretary to reduce migration. She has the advantage that last year the Conservative government raised the amount you needed to earn to get a work permit and cut back on student dependents.

The two largest categories of migrants remain people getting work permits and students. The numbers get swollen by allowing dependents,  by granting students a transfer to a work visa, and. y people failing to return home when their visa runs out.

We hear the government might ask for a degree level qualification, cutting out lower pay and lower skilled jobs. There might be an A level requirement for English. These changes are unlikely to make much difference to numbers. Las t year brought a net increase of 728,000. It would be good to get net numbers down to near zero to relieve pressures on homes and public services. It is going to take tougher controls than are likely from this Home Secretary.

I am fed up with the idiot soundbite that says the  UK lost 4% of GDP thanks to Brexit. This is based on a long term Remain forecast that said the  UK might lose trade with the EU after Brexit which in turn over the longer term could mean 4% less productivity gain than otherwise.

This was always wrong. We now know our trade with  the EU has risen since 2016,not fallen.We know our GDP has followed a similar  path to the EU, hit by covid lockdowns. It has not fallen 4% more. We have not been allowed many of the gains we can now make if we use our freedom to run a more pro growth policy than the EU does.

The idea that productivity would underperform was based on the idea that as trade fell so there would be less international competition to drive cheaper and better. This was based on a wrong view we would not be able to trade more with non EU, which of course we are doing. Trade Agreements with the TPP and now India will help, but trade anyway is growing faster with non EU and is the majority of our trade as it was prior to the referendum. 

So wrong on all counts. Brexit did not reduce GDP. Trade with EU has not fallen, Trade with non EU has continued to grow faster. There is plenty of competition.

Meanwhile UK public sector productivity has slumped through bad management. Government has been busy banning or forcing out of business highly productive  sectors like oil, gas, oil refining and ICE cars which have been big exports to the EU.

Far too many more people come to live in the UK every year. It is the main reason we are short of homes, and leaves us struggling to provide enough NHS appointments, large enough waste water pipes, sufficient roadspace for all the cars. Most of them come legally.

It is quite  easy to cut the numbers. The last government tightened rules last year. They need to be tightened further.The government should say to get a work visa the pay should be at least £50,000 , cutting out most jobs. We need to make more efforts to get the large numbers of people not working into jobs.

Student visas should only  be available for reputable Colleges offering approved  courses. Students should not be able to stay on after the end of the course. They should not bring in dependents.

The government needs to do much more to stop illegals. They should not be put  in hotels. They should be questioned about how they got here and who they paid. The boat drivers should be arrested and prosecuted. They should not be allowed to start a claim to stay here if they have entered illegally.There are plenty of legal routes to claim asylum.They should need to show their passport or other ID document.

There were three wrong propositions behind the Remain  campaign :

1. The EU was primarily a free trade club which we had to belong to to trade with them.

2. Trading on most favoured nation terms with countries under World Trade rules did not allow much trade.

3. Their gravity model forecasts assumed you could only  trade extensively and successfully with near  neighbours. They still use false forecasts from this system instead of now using the outturn data which was so much better.

The EU was and is a European union gaining ever greater powers and controls over all aspects of member states governments. It is a currency union, has a common foreign and security policy, shared frontiers, integrated transport systems, mandatory environment policy and much else. It is not a free trade area. It is a highly regulated customs Union.

Trading onWTO terms has produced big increases in trade between WTO members as barriers and tariffs were brought down. Our trade with the US has grown well with no Free Trade Agreement to supplement WTO membership.

Trade has expanded greatly with faster growing economies on the other side of the world, as with China.

Over the last week the UK has been able post Brexit to negotiate a Freer Trade Agreement with India and a trade deal with the US. Since leaving we have rolled over all the EU trade deals with third countries and gained improvements in some. We have joined the big and important TPP .

Since 2016 our trade has expanded well. The fastest growth has been in services and in the larger share of our trade which is with non EU countries.

The impact on growth and GDP is assessed at just an extra 0.1% from the Indian Agreement next decade. The US deal abates the damage done by higher US tariffs on our exports but still leaves us with a negative on growth this year.

My first memories of the impact of the war as a pre school child growing up in Canterbury were of a  bomb site. The city had been badly damaged in a Baedeker raid. By the time I was born  the shopping centre area by the Eastgate had been completely rebuilt. It was only one day when my mother walked me past a large piece of wasteland beyond the city walls that I asked about it. Why full of weeds, and why were there remains of low brick walls?  My mother was reluctant to answer, told me it was a bomb site and wanted to change the topic. Understanding nothing I asked more and got out of her that some people were so nasty they blew buildings up , dropping bombs out of aircraft. As I tried again a worse truth was half peeking out. These people were so nasty they blew them up with people still inside them. I could not fathom why anyone would want to do that. A fear gripped me. Could it happen now?

As I went to primary school grown ups would share a bit more with me about the war that had dominated their young adult lives for five long years. They were still talking to each other about it as they sought to digest what had happened to them.  I was shown the ration books they had to rely on, told of the shortages and the limited meals.

My grandparents and father grew food in their gardens as if still part of Dig for victory. They would say careless talk costs lives. Waste not, want not was a favourite phrase, encouraging thrift and careful use of limited resources. My grandmother still had her black out sheets that were used to stop the light at the wartime window. My father told of his evacuee experiences  being sent to Stafford from Ramsgate and  how he enlisted in the navy as soon as he could. My mother showed me photos of herself as a young woman in Wren’s uniform.

When I did my junior school local history project I heard how the great cathedral had been saved from  the fire bombs and saw the work still going on to restore all the precious medieval glass.

( for more childhood memories see What do boys want?)