Some contributors here and many in the Remain parts of the media seem to think every day should be Groundhog Day. Each day they warm up some old Project Fear myth from the Referendum campaign, or parody themselves by inventing a new one. In doing so they damage their own position, bore much of the nation rigid, and try to undermine the UK’s negotiating position. I wish to tackle a variety of issues that matter to my constituents and the wider nation on this site, and many of them have nothing to do with Brexit. Those that do have something to do with Brexit are public services which need more cash, which should come as soon as possible from cancelling our contributions to the EU. Getting all our money back remains one of the biggest wins from leaving the EU.
In the run up to the June 28 Council the government needs to assert the UK position. They should tell our EU partners that we are ready to leave without a deal on March 29 2019, and ask them if they want a Free Trade deal with no tariffs or not. If they do then we sit down and agree it. If they don’t then we leave without a deal.
Meanwhile I am amazed at the crazy stories that some take seriously as Project Fear moves into its more extreme versions. How about Airbus will be selling planes without wings on? Don’t they realise there are binding contracts to supply, and Airbus needs the current wings made by the current supplier in order to carry on selling the planes? Some say without a deal the port of Calais will seek to destroy the port of Dover by blocking exports from the continent. Doing so would of course damage Calais not Dover, as many other continental ports would rush to take the Calais business. I read that we would be unable to levy customs dues on EU trade or handle it coming into our ports, yet I see we handle the majority of our trade that comes in from outside the EU and levy customs without delays or problems. I hear they think there will need to be border towers and detailed checks on every lorry at the Northern Ireland border. Have they not heard of electronic manifests, Authorised Economic Operators and the rest that ensures we do not need to stop each lorry at a port or point of entry and calculate the VAT , Excise and customs whilst the lorries queue?
This week some seemed to suggest the French would seek to starve us back into the EU by refusing to sell us any more Camembert and the EU would want to deny us medicines! Can it get more ludicrous? If they really think our continental neighbours hate us that much and would break the law and damage their own businesses in this way, why do they want to stay attached? Have they not realised there is plenty of supply from the rest of the world if the EU did want to cut up rough.
June 8, 2018
John,
The comments and the facts are so not worth while commenting on, because like the so-called remainers you keep raising the same objections and unrealistic solutions, like a technological solution on the NI border, which we all know, does not work for the moment.
(NI Select Committee)
All rather boring
June 8, 2018
Boris hits 20 nails on the head.
Trumps doesn’t like her, because she had no clue that Trump was a true friend of Britain.
Merkel doesn’t like her, despite 2 years of grovelling from May.
Macron doesn’t like her, despite 1 year of grovelling from May.
Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini … “My God, you had be given a licence to leave the EU completely and you blew it.”
Most Tories would like a combination of Churchill and Thatcher as leader. Theresa May aspires to be a combination of Angela Merkel and Christine Lagarde.
June 8, 2018
I do not like her because she has entirely the wrong policies essentially LibDim policies and she is an electoral liability likely to lead to dire Corbyn/SNP government.
“Theresa May aspires to be a combination of Angela Merkel and Christine Lagarde”. More like a cross between Harriet Harman, Shirley Williams, Natalie Bennett with John Major’s level of IQ and with a similar electoral appeal to him in his second election after the public had sussed him.
June 8, 2018
Hammond claims the U.K. should compromise! He means capitualte further so his modest changes comes to fruition when we technically leave. This idiot has not been following events, May has capitulated while the EU has not compromised or given ground on anything.
This does tell us however how well he thinks things are going because the momentum is behind May to capitulate to keep the U.K. as a vassal state to the EU through a punishment extension and now an extension to that and a possible extension to that if a solution cannot be found to the Irish border! Hammond is confident because of the weakness of all the Leave MPs in the Tory party who just keep giving and remain silent.
Clue to Tory Leave MPs: oust May, call another general election with a new leader who believes in leaving the EU and get our nations’ self respect back. The U.K. is more important than May or the Tory party. Labour voters will not remain with Corbyn’s double crossing of Brexit. If he had a brain he would have stuck to Brexit knowing the Tory party always divides on the issue. He would have or could romp home on a Brexit ticket that he always believed in.
May’s vanity got the better of her through poll ratings, analyses incorrectly and advised poorly she thought she would win an election while striding left based on her appalling record! The polls only showed the dislike of the looney left.
June 8, 2018
JR, May went hard nosed forward on a manifesto without the considered opinion of your party. She was appalling, your party paid for it. May in December she again unilaterally made deal with the EU but was caught out by the DUP. This week we read she has a white paper written and the cabinet, other than Hammond, has not read it! Davis opposed to it! Do you and your fellow MPs think there is a pattern of unilateral underhand behaviour here? She has failed all key points of her speeches to leave the EU, she failed all her red lines, given away territorial waters and fishing stocks, ECJ to continue to apply, welfare to EU people not living here or not yet born, she gives Ā£100 billion leaving gift not owed or legally liable while taxing us at every opportunity, she has given away more than any country in the world for an alleged trade deal, and will do all this before a trade deal is agreed! Trade is only a small part of leaving, she has taken responsibility for the Irish border knowing under her terms it would keep the U.K. tied to the EU in perpetuity because they will never agree to any term other than remaining in as a vassal state.
I am not sure who is worse May’s underhand determined agenda to keep the U.K. As a vassal state to the EU or you and your colleagues for letting it happen. Your party is on the road to extinction. Hold your head in shame
June 8, 2018
The fact that you get no reply, nor does anyone else who asks for the Tory MP’s to oust May says it all really and this is mostly a Tory supporting blog. They don’t even have the guts to say what they are doing. Their heart is not in it sufficiently to inconvenience the Tory Party.
Labour are even worse and only see Brexit as a means to try to score minor political points. Brexit and the national interest is very much a secondary consideration.
How have we come so low in our politics. After more than 50 years of voting, always hoping for the best and usually getting the worst, I am done. I will not vote again.
June 8, 2018
@ Hope
Your party is on the road to extinction.
In the real world perception is all there is and nearly the whole country has the perception that May and Hammond for that matter, are totally at a loss what to do and how to fight for this once great country. Nobody is filled with confidence by their actions and it is time before we totally capitulate to the inevitable of remaining within the EU albeit in another format for them both to be removed. If not May on her return from Canada, may as well go back to No 10 by the scenic route and drop in to see the Queen and hand over the keys to be passed over to Corbyn and prevent us having to suffer the embarrassment of her actions through the ballot box.
I cannot believe that there is not 60+ CONSERVATIVE yes real true blue CONSERVATIVES not new world tories who cannot set up a challenge to her lack of leadership and the way she has handled the whole Brexit process. Push has go to go to shove and very quickly.
June 8, 2018
Let us be clear here JR, there is no negotiation going on. It is an agreement how to keep the UK in the EU by deceptive means and last it out long enough to change the public mind. In the interim the EU must look dominant the U.K. Punished to prevent others leaving.
Two years have passed and May has failed to deliver any key point in her speech, other than an unnecessary punishment extension and delivering the letter for article 50. Name any key point or red line she has kept?
June 8, 2018
Dear Sir/Madam,
I find your posts to be interesting and well-reasoned, though the content is unlike the username. It is rarely hopeful.
You raise the issue of collective responsibility at the end. That may be unfair on the true Brexiteers who fight their corner. I donāt know how much those individuals can do to change things though the ERG does seem to be more of a talking shop than an active player.
I donāt know how things will pan out. Maybe Barnier will overplay his hand and May will be reluctantly forced to go for No Deal. I suspect at the moment she is frantically looking for a form of words to disguise BRINO.
June 9, 2018
May made it clear in her Mansion House capitulation speech she would not walk away or resort to WTO terms. Having publicly stated she will not use her strongest bargain chip followed by her taking responsibility from the EU to find a solution to the Irish border to keep the U.K. in the single market and customs union have in perpetuity, because the EU will never agree as it keeps the U.K. Uncompetitive and unable to make trade deals better than he EU!
Leave MPs know she unilaterally skuttled off in December to give away N. Ireland until stopped by the DUP. They know she was central to the failing at the last election by her unilateral left wing taxing manifesto and they know last week she was going to give an unlimited period of time to hold up he U.K. In pertuity to the EU as a vassal state in her white paper that only Hammond and HMRC read! There is no need whatsoever of any form of punishment extension, none. No need to capitulate on sequential talks rather than parallel talks which has put the EU in the driving seat with Davis capitulating on May’s behalf.
Davis should have walked after the first failure over sequential talks. He should have resigned when Green left. He is out of his depth. If he had any self respect or national pride he would resign because he knows he is not up to the job. May on the other hand has never had any intention of honoring her word in speeches, red lines, strap lines. She should be ousted. What else does she have to renege on, capitulate on or be underhand about to get sacked?
You have to wonder why all these highly educated Leave MPs appear to lack a back bone or ounce of courage to rid us of this PM. Howe, Heseltine etc had far less to put the knife in the back of Thatcher.
June 9, 2018
They might think
1 May could survive a vote of no confidence and then do more damage if she was so emboldened.
2 A Leave PM would have problems with a Remain majority Conservative party.
For those reasons I can only see a General Election addressing the issue properly. If Arlene or something else could bring down the government we might get somewhere and, if not, so be it – the Samson approach.
June 8, 2018
So if the EU want border posts between NI and the republic, what’s stopping them?
June 8, 2018
bob,
They exactly don’t want them so do your home work
June 8, 2018
Hans, How odd, because if the EU doesn’t want a “hard” border, and we don’t want a hard border, where is the problem?
June 8, 2018
Apparently it’s up to us to stop them, by giving them whatever they want.
“Nice open border you’ve got here, be a pity if anything happened to it.”
June 8, 2018
Hans, if a technological solution works on other EU borders, why not Northern Ireland?
As you say all rather boring because in fact there is no NI border problem. It is an EU scam.
June 8, 2018
There are no “invisible” technological solutions on the other 40 EU land borders.
All the UK’s “Authorised Economic Operators” including third country (non EU states) supply chains; mostly come courtesy of the EU’s numerous MRAs (Mutual Recognition Agreements) with those countries tax and customs authorities; including the US and China. They all disappear when we leave the EU.
June 8, 2018
acorn
Not they dont
June 9, 2018
the technological solution does not work on other EU borders like the one between Sweden and Norway, lots of paper work involved.
June 12, 2018
hans
So…. It works very well on other non EU country borders so I guess the problem ( once again) is in fact the …………. EU
I agree, you’ve convinced me, you’re right the EU hasn’t a clue how to operate a successful border
June 8, 2018
Hans, So why do you comment on facts and comments which you say are not worth commenting on? There are two sides: Remain or Leave. If you continuously, and only, peddle Remain propaganda, even if you don’t recognise it yourself, you will be regarded as a Remain.
Borders in modern first world nations are almost entirely dependent on the technological solutions you sneer at. Only a tiny fraction of imports are physically checked by the state, even for imports from outside the EU. It is simply absurd to pretend that the UK cannot be independent of the EU. As such, the UK will choose its own borders strategy. The UK doesn’t want or need a hard border, the EU does. It’s your problem, not ours.
June 8, 2018
NickC,
For the last time it is not my border and the Eu like Ireland does not want a hard border in NI, so as usual you get the facts wrong, but what is new
June 8, 2018
Hans, The UK wants to leave the Eire/N.I. border as it is. We’ve said so. The EU? – well, since you’ve just been appointed the EU’s Borders Spokesman, I’ll take your word for it that the EU also wants to leave the border “soft” as it is now. Therefore there is no problem. Next?
June 8, 2018
hans
As usual your posts are entirely fact free. You’re right you’re boring
Either post something factual with evidence or dont bother to comment. Technical borders work all over the world but not in Ireland according to you…
June 9, 2018
Liberatarian,
Read the mail again before you start yelling from the mountain top. (According to NI Select Committee, source)
You can do better than this
June 12, 2018
hans
I am certainly doing better than you.
The UK wants a soft border, we have very viable technology solutions to cross border goods . Its the EU who are being difficult about what they think is their border. You really must try harder to get some facts together
June 8, 2018
This is pure ignorance. You really think tariffs are a problem in international trade? You really think border checks are about customs dues? You are sixty years out of date. It is differences between technical standards that clog up international trade and it is differences between technical standards that are the main reason for checks at the border. All these problems are solved in the EU’s single market, but outside it they lead to very costly checks. Your Brexit fantasy is simply going to make all British exports more expensive and therefore uncompetitive. You are the enemy of free trade
June 8, 2018
Nonsense. Technical standards do not seem to harm Chinese exports.
June 8, 2018
How can offering the EU an ongoing free trade agreement be the enemy of free trade?
June 8, 2018
No, it is you who are ignorant. So, we currently have the same standards as the EU and could continue to do so to sell into that market if we so wish. The stupidity is that remainers think that the day after leaving suddenly standards are unacceptable. What nonsense! Call it what it would be – sanctions, a trade embargo, a new Napoleonic Continental System.
It has nothing to do with reality just stupid EU prejudice and their ridiculous four freedoms which are sacrosanct and without which nothing moves. Have you ever wondered why the EU is rapidly losing its share of the world market. It’s staring you right in the face!!
I also do not comment as much on this subject now unless provoked by particularly ignorant comments, because all the arguments have been had already.
zorro
June 8, 2018
As we are planning to be in the EU in all but name, our standards will match EU standards for,at least, the much-debated transition period. If we do decide to diverge from these standards, it will be by evolution, rather than revolution. In all markets, you produce to the customer specification. If the EU feel the need to introduce checks at the border (even out of spite) they have every right to do so, whether necessary or not.
June 8, 2018
Strange there are not terrible delays at borders all across the world when goods arrive in those nations not in the fabled single market.
What are these “very costly checks” you are telling us about?
There are random checks done at ports of entry all over the world (and in Europe) but that is more to do with customs checking for contraband.
Technical product conformity is proved by electronic paperwork which precedes the transportation of the goods.
Same as non EU countries do now when they import into the UK.
June 8, 2018
Two clever boys here^.
Irish and British customs have stated that the new EU system for electronic checking and trusted traders will be ready. The Irish said this in 2016 and that it will take 3 years. The electronic checks will do the same as non-EU checks do now and have to reveal standards as well as tariffs. If a lorry full of car parts or hoovers passes into the EU, those goods will be manufactured to EU standards in order to sell into the EU. Are Dysons going to send stuff that they can’t sell? Is every French official going to want to open every crate of vacuum cleaners or headlamps? If they did, we could do the same and have lorries of rotting French produce stretching from Calais to Boulogne.
What is more of a problem is the lack of installing of electronic checking equipment at Calais and Dover, probably deliberately to make sure that we cannot say ‘no deal’ in the negotiations and then vote down a bad deal and swing a second referendum with project fear and the whole media backed by Soros money and the rest.
French officials can be very obstructive, even when it damages France, as I found out last week when 2 customs officers on go slow action interviewed one airline passenger every 3 minutes and the planeload got through, drenched in a rainstorm, way after Ryanair had loaded and left. Apart from hearing the Irish brexit spokesman on Politics telling us what to do and persuading me never to buy anything Irish again, the French customs officers have ensured that I will not be taking that route again. During my holiday, I bought only one expresso and that was from an Englishman.
June 8, 2018
what?! 98% of trade from the EU passes into and out of the UK without inspection despite diverse regulations around the world. the cost of trade friction between the EU and Switzerland (which is outside both the customs union and the single market) is estimated at 0.1%. there may be arguments for remaining in / returning to the EU and being under the emerging common government, but there is no necessity to do so due to trade.
June 8, 2018
Sorry I meant 98% of trade from OUTSIDE the EU passes without inspection.
June 8, 2018
William Rex, This is pure ignorance. Buyers from the continent will ensure that what they buy from the UK complies with the technical standards they require. As they do now. None of those problems are solved by the EU’s single market, they are solved by the buyers and sellers.
Since our exports currently comply with EU standards by definition, there is no change there. But the bulk of our exports go to the rest of the world, and must comply with RoW standards. As they do now. So the bulk of our exports (to the RoW) will be cheaper because they will no longer have to comply with EU standards as well.
June 8, 2018
NickC,
No manufacturers want to deal with two standards, but you have probably forgotten
June 8, 2018
hans
You win funniest deluded post of the day. The are many standards that manufacturers get to deal with, even within the EU. Try plugging in a British Toaster in France.
I even posted you a quote from the German Chamber of Commerce the other day saying that they are quite used to working to multiple standards around the world.
ASTM International publish and consult on more than 12,000 global standards in manufacturing
Blimey mate you might want to have a rethink on this
June 9, 2018
Do you need one of your engineers to change a plug for you?
June 12, 2018
Georgy
Oh dear , you do realise that electrical products often require a slight redesign depending on the country of use… No of course you dont… doh
June 8, 2018
Hans, British manufacturers who export to multiple countries already have to work to two or more standards. But you have probably forgotten.
June 9, 2018
not if they do not have to
June 10, 2018
They have to meet the requirements of every market they sell into.
June 9, 2018
Apart from manufacturers like this one, actually held by Sky News as the example of how small companies will suffer from the loss of sales to the EU:
http://www.seetru.com/products/
“Seetru are manufacturers of safety relief and other special purpose ancillary valves for a wide range of compressed air, industrial gas, refrigerants, powder, steam, liquid and liquefied gas applications. These valves meet important international standards which include: BS 6759 Parts 2 & 3, AD-Merkblatt A2, ISO 4126 and ASME Section VIII design codes as well as type test approvals from TĆV and the National Board. The products comply with the requirements of the European Pressure Equipment Directive (PED) and are available with both the CE mark as well as the UV stamp, and have wide international approvals such as the EAC customs union certificate of conformity (Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan) and the Canadian CRN.”
June 8, 2018
And you think that technical standards are not considered when an item is manufactured? You are talking nonsense.
June 8, 2018
It isn’t of course any discrepancy in technical standards that would be the problem – exporters are well used to following importers’ technical standards.
The only problem is entirely artificial – the EU’s nannyish and hypocritical claim there must be a discrepancy if the exporting country (not the exporter) is not part of their legal entity.
It is complete nonsense, and it is the EU countries that will lose out. Brussels does not however care about them, only its own babu ‘anti-system’.
June 8, 2018
It is complete nonsense. At the moment the EU trusts the UK to use its best endeavours to ensure that goods which cross the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic will comply with EU standards, and so they do not need to be intercepted and inspected at the border. That has been done by the UK passing and enforcing domestic laws to implement the EU Single Market, therefore prohibiting both the importation into the UK, and production in the UK, of goods which the EU would regard as contraband. But it could equally well be done by the UK passing and enforcing domestic laws to prohibit the exportation across the border of any such goods which the EU would reject, with the same effect of rendering it unnecessary for the Irish to intercept and inspect goods at the border.
June 8, 2018
William Rex
Come back when you have like a number of us on this forum actually traded internationally and have skin in the game..
Sick of remainers telling us the wonders of Customs unions etc who’ve never run a whelk stall let alone traded internationally
June 9, 2018
Libertarian,
Get down from your high horse it is really getting rather boring, just because you have done like lots of us have done for years, you are on a morale crusade.
All rather sad
June 9, 2018
Hans,
One more morale crusade this is really like an old record, disingenuous.
June 10, 2018
It’s not a moral crusade Hans, it is simply telling people that their ridiculous statements on exporting administration and product compliance are completely wrong.
June 12, 2018
hans
Sorry to offend, but I’m really fed up with people such as yourself who post pompous posts, entirely fact free and with no evidence and often entirely laughably wrong.
Why dont you people think before you post?
Whilst you were being such an ultra successful international businessman its a shame you didn’t pay attention to the admin and procedure of the companies you purport to have managed, typical “iceberg management”
I will continue to champion British business in the face of the total ignorance often displayed by remainers and their apologists like you.
June 8, 2018
And vice-versa for them.
June 8, 2018
Good morning,
Dr. Redwood, let me clarify what SCARES me; it is our own government. Simply, the Timid May Government talks a good game, then walks off the pitch!
Correction: we will not be getting ANY of our money back, we will, hopefully, not be throwing more away. However again, what is T. May’s position? Nobody knows.
If Timid May wants to stay in the customs union, do we also stay under the ECJ, do we continue to have free movement, do we continue to pay?
Please, get the 1922 to replace her and get someone who believes in our nation to take us out of this mess.
June 8, 2018
Peter, absolutely agree, Mrs May has to go and go NOW.
June 8, 2018
Couldn’t have put it better myself Peter. Think you speak for many of us. John and his fellow Brexiteers need to show some courage and put the people before party by GETTING RID OF MAY. She is weak and indecisive and the EU know it. Boris was right when he said Trump would have sorted it by now if he were in charge. What we need is someone like Mrs T to get the job done but unfortunately no such person exists in this pathetic EU loving so called Tory Government!
June 8, 2018
The Tories are doomed if they keep her.
June 8, 2018
Indeed and Thatcher actually won elections. Whereas Heath, Major, Cameron and May are/were complete electoral disasters. Cameron & May even against totally hopeless, open goal oppositions from Brown and Corbyn + the SNP.
Why can these daft Libdim high tax pro EU Conservatives not see this?
Going to the middle for the Tories loses them votes. May is an absurdly left wing interventionist and Hammond is hugely over taxing while wasting money all over the place.
June 9, 2018
The posible problem with removing Mrs. May and sending her to the back benches is that she will then be voting to cancel Brexit.
June 8, 2018
Yes but it is not very clear that under May & Hammond (assisted by people like Oliver Robins Oxford PPE yet again) it is quite clear that Brexit means absolutely nothing. Indeed as proposed it is worse than nothing. The ‘aspiration’ date end date of 2021, that Davis had inserted yesterday is totally worthless.
You sensibly ask:- “If they really think our continental neighbours hate us that much and would break the law and damage their own businesses in this way, why do they want to stay attached?” But then rational thinking is not how remainers work. They are nearly all emotion over brain types.
BBC keeping up the remain agenda bias every single day. Not a single Brexit person on last night’s Question Time. They do usually have one (who occasionally manages to get a word in edge ways while the other 5 interrupt) but not last night 6 to 0 last night.
Is the generally appalling NHS still funding homeopathy, vanity treatments and quack medicine? It certainly should not get anymore money at all while this absurd waste continues.
Just 96 months to save World (already expired) alarmist Prince Charles now supports homeopathy for his Cows I see (in The Spectator). This is an example of how remainers (and indeed climate alarmists) tend to “think” in general. Logic, science, sound economics and engineering a complete mystery to them in general. Rather like most at the BBC.
June 8, 2018
It’s become almost impossible to know what’s happening but there is a general sense developing that unless decent Tory MPs (those who believe in doing the right thing ie upholding and adhering to the result of the EU referendum vote) threaten May then the dream of an independent and free UK is dead
Most Tories I speak to despise May. I mean they really despise her. They despise her politics and her pandering to liberal left sensitivities. They cannot understand how someone so liberal left could become a leader of their party. They know this PM will betray them and the result of the EU referendum vote
In many ways, the fundamental problem isn’t the EU, it’s May and her allies. They are determined to keep the UK in the EU by fair means of foul. It is incumbent on those who are able to influence events to take action before it’s too late.
There are so many capable Eurosceptic Tory MPs and yet our party ends up being led by May.
I would like to see a Eurosceptic leader replace May who then goes to the country on a platform of leaving the EU. I believe we will secure many traditional Labour voters in addition to our normal core vote.
Leave voters are silent because they and their views have been silenced by the Remain establishment (BBC and the pro-EU state).
We are constantly fed a diet of pro-EU trash by the idiots at the BBC. The Leave platform has been targeted by organised lobby fodder and almost shut down
Depose May and get us out of the EU
June 9, 2018
@Duncan
Judging by what we’ve seen so far and the people involved (Osborne, Blair, Campbell, Soros, AC Grayling etc.) it will be the latter.
Paul Dacre has now been replaced as Daily Mail editor by a EUrophile.
Remainers are rallying their troops while Theresa May stands down the Leavers with assurances that it’ll be alright on the night. Don’t believe her.
June 8, 2018
Well-stated, JR. Our Govt has acted as if having our own preference needed EU approval!
It is we who decide what we want. If EU members want to incur tariffs, they shall pay.
Freedom lets us choose what is best for us.
‘Brexit’ shines brilliant light through the Exit door. We go straight there.
June 8, 2018
Ardent Remainers are strangers who tie themselves up in Cannots.
June 8, 2018
Adam,
I am not even an remainer but you seem to be the one tying yourself up in Cannots
June 8, 2018
Hans, If you are not a Remain you give a pretty good imitation of it.
June 8, 2018
NickC
hans is being disingenuous , he didn’t vote at all because he wasn’t eligible to vote in the referendum. He is very much on the lets stay in the EU side though even though technically he isn’t either a Remainer or Leaver
June 9, 2018
Libertarian, I stand corrected: Hans is an Imitation Remain and not real.
June 9, 2018
@libertarian & NickC
We see deceitfulness from the remain side all the time.
They seem to have no scruples.
June 9, 2018
Amber Rudd’s brother Rowland being interviewed on LBC last night complained that the NHS hadn’t yet seen a penny of the Ā£350m /pw. Frustratingly the interviewer Andres Pierce failed to point out that the money was still being paid to Brussels.
Drip drip.
June 8, 2018
“I am not even an remainer but”
Super, then tell us why you want to leave the EU. It’s a binary choice.
One we’ve already made, as a people.
June 8, 2018
Indeed John, as much harm would be done to both sides it these things were to manifest. What I font understand then is why Mrs May is appearing to dance to their tune. She seems to have got around the Davis problem for now. What will it take for ministers to take action and get a new, more capable leader?
June 8, 2018
And what difference would that make?
June 8, 2018
Rien, Both the UK and the EU would have to trade with each other, and the rest of the world, using WTO rules? Because at the moment the EU only wants to offer trade in exchange for control over the UK. And the UK can only be independent – by definition – without being controlled by the EU.
June 10, 2018
It is not about trade, it is about preferences between countries. If the UK wants preferences, it will have to make it worthwhile. If not, goodbye. It does not matter who represents the UK in those negotiations. They are not about how to keep the UK in, but about what to do with the UK once out. For both sides that is a damage limitation exercise, and for the UK, sa some politicians claim a greater opportunity than staying in. Simple. Nothing to do with negotiating style. You may not like May’s objective: to minimize harm and maximize opportunity. But assuming that objective is the most popular, who would -honestly- disagree.
June 8, 2018
We could get someone who will simply get us out of the EU which is what we voted for. Not something where we have our hands tied behind our backs and are not free to trade around the world as we please and invite in who we please. Is that really too much to ask?
June 8, 2018
Particularly as,if the Telegraph is to be believed,Trump has said he is tired of her “schoolmistress tone” and refused a one-to-one with her at the G7 meeting…..also indicating he wanted Russia there.
June 8, 2018
Yawn. Here we go again.
Brexit whinge whinge whinge – itās the Remoaners fault.
Brexit bitch bitch bitch – nasty EU.
Brexit whine whine whine – itās the BBC or the Lords or the Treasury!
Seriously – grow a pair and admit this mess is down entirely to people like you.
We told you Brexit was a lousy idea.
You said it wssnāt – weāre being proven more right every day.
You all lack the balls and integrity to admit YOUR Brexit is not what you hoped.
You are now trying to blame others for your mess.
It wonāt work.
You WILL own the blame and the long term electoral consequences will be devastating.
June 8, 2018
Politicians (some of them old people) are thwarting the choice of the majority of the British electorate to leave the EU.
You are not being āproven more right every dayā. You have simply failed to acknowledge the realpolitik.
June 8, 2018
Nonsense, trading that way works for the rest of the world.
zorro
June 8, 2018
This style of response is infantile and rude. Maybe that sums you up. In any event when anything headed Andy appears, I move on so you are certainly wasting your words and effort on this correspondent.
If you communicate with family, friends and colleagues like this I feel sorry for them. Maybe you havenāt any.
June 8, 2018
I suppose that Dr Redwood must allow posts such as yours, Andy,to bring a little harmless entertainment to the Blog – something to lighten the mood, so to speak. Because you really do talk some drivel – unless, of course, you are just doing this deliberately to mock remainders in a convoluted and rather clever way!
In which case – well done! Keep it up!
June 8, 2018
@Andy,
I note that some of your favourite Remainers are attending this week’s Bilderberg meeting, namely:
Mark Carney
George Osborne
Amber Rudd
Michael O’Leary
The word is that the rise of populism has them spooked.
Clearly more needs to be done to
brainwashpersuade people of the Benefits of Agenda21.June 8, 2018
the Corbyn govt you are hoping for looks less likely by the day. your core supporters will not forgive the humbug and betrayal of Labour once they realise what you are now proposing – no immigration controls, carry on handing over Ā£12bn pa, accept all EU laws and regs, no cuts in tariffs so food & clothing etc become cheaper, & all now with no votes in setting rules and trade protectionism. You have no chance with such a programme!
June 8, 2018
Andy, Yawn. Here you go again.
The LibDems want us to remain in their fantasy EU (the 2015 version, which doesn’t exist anymore).
Labour want us to remain in the EU’s single market with its customs union – all part of the treaties – and hence will have to accept uncontrolled migration and the CJEU.
The civil service want the same as Labour. The Tories – well, who knows? – but the bulk of them want the same as Labour. Continuity Remain is desperate to keep us in the EU at least as much as Labour. You want us remaining too.
None of that is Leave, by definition. Remaining partly in the EU is absolutely not what we voted for: it wasn’t even on the Referendum ballot paper.
Remaining partly in wonāt work. Remain WILL own the blame and the long term constitutional and electoral consequences will be devastating.
June 8, 2018
“Some contributors here and many in the Remain parts of the media seem to think every day should be Groundhog Day.”
Andy proving your point.
June 8, 2018
I think I get it, if I rise early enough I can get on to Mr Redwoods site and put as much poison down as I like, and people will read the usual empty rhetoric of the Remainers. Why don’t you try putting reasoned arguments as to why Mr Redwoods claims might not be justified?
June 8, 2018
I cannot vote for a party led by May.
If we cannot leave the EU then there is no point in voting on anything ever again.
Clearly there was never any point in voting before either. It was all a sham. The EU is democratic so long as you do what it tells you to.
June 8, 2018
Groundhog day indeed. You come back with the same old unsubstantiated garbage time and time again in the hope you might convince the gullible, except perversely, your biggest asset is a spineless leadership that turns a process that should be simple, into something frustratingly difficult.
We leavers have proven time and time again that the remain argument is seriously flawed. Yet by her actions, the dithering Theresa May is just giving the remainers a hint of a lifeline and they keep rearing up like those inflatable men at football matches that wave their arms about, but have nothing but hot air inside.
June 8, 2018
What you and your fellow remainers fail to distinguish is process from principle. Yes, the government have made an unmitigated hash of the process, but this does not invalidate the principle. Brexit is everything those who voted for it hoped for – repatriating control of our budget, laws and borders. Any negative electoral consequences will be the result of inept process management rather than of flawed principle. When you provide credible argument why the UK should not regain its independence, I and others will listen to you.
June 8, 2018
On the contrary. The government is making a hash of the Brexit process because the principle is incoherent, contradictory nonsense. You do not even agree with each other and your policies contradict each other. That is your fault, not mine.
And as Iāve said time and again I donāt have to put arguments to Remain. You won. Weāre Leaving. It is you that has to try to justify the monument mess you are making of our country.
June 8, 2018
Andy, The principle of Leave is independence. That principle cannot be “incoherent, contradictory nonsense” unless the entire rest of the world is so. All the benefits of Leave flow from independence.
And yes you do have to rationally justify your Remain position if you engage in debate and make comments on here. If you can. Which I doubt. If you can’t, it means your position is incoherent nonsense, and authoritarian with it.
June 9, 2018
The principle is entirely coherent: the UK leaves the EU including the single market, customs union and ECJ. We take back control of our money, laws and borders. There is nothing difficult to understand about this. What is incoherent is Mrs May, abetted by Remainers, refusing to accept the democratic will and trying to sculpt a proposition that will mimic leave but in reality be remain.
June 8, 2018
Andy
Grow up. You have ignored every piece of evidence showing you that you are wrong on absolutely everything except late evening neighbours bonfires
Why dont you give us an update on how your multi million business is coping, with some facts to back it up. Theres a good little lad
June 9, 2018
Libertarian,
One more morale crusade this is really like an old record, disingenious
June 8, 2018
The same Brexit arguments on a daily basis do become tiresome. We must have heard them all by now.
How things pan out on Brexit is of more interest – but even here there is more talk than action. It is not looking good for a clean Brexit though. Only a general election would now break the impasse
June 8, 2018
Dear Peter–Yes we need a General Election but with Boris in charge
June 8, 2018
Postscript–Why aren’t the Tory MP’s seeing the obvious which is that in another General Election, with a Manifesto close to the opposite of the unbelievable last one, the popular Boris as leader would blow Corbyn away? Why don’t they write the 48 letters?? Can they possibly think that May is doing an effective job??? Lock Gove up meanwhile of course.
June 8, 2018
Follow the Money, ignore the smoke and mirrors.
Like the Church and Government Brussels bureaucrats want money to pay themselves and to guild the cake they dangle before us peasants.
The Euro was designed to foster Economic Control, as is Tax Harmonisation.
I have some faith in the intelligence of our Mandarins and Ministers. A child of three wouldn’t consider the Backstop, with or without a time limit.
We have bodies in Brussels discussing VAT.
It is inconceivable that Brexit wasn’t essentially decided by last Summer.
Broadly we keep Brussels afloat (Ā£49Bn) and don’t disrupt the mainly European Businesses that rely on our workforces to make things for Europe, and our Japanese Investors.
Money wants us to stay in, or as close as possible, what’s good for us peasants is irrelevant.
Thanks to being outside the Euro we may escape some of the Annual Contribution but we will most probably continue to pay (90%ish) VAT on Ex EU imports to Brussels.
The Status Quo will be maintained until such time as new Customs procedures are implemented.
We loose any say over EU Standards but that’s little loss because Brussels lobbyists for Money/Business have it in hand.
We will probably be kept in BRINO & Vassledom until at least the next election.
We will then have a chance to elect a Brexit Government, but we probably won’t.
A Brexit / Conservative Coalition will continue to battle with Brussel’s hopes to pull us back into the Federation.
or we screw the Pooch, take a hit on European exports, keep our Ā£49Bn, save 90% of our VAT in perpetuity (that’s only about Ā£13 Bn a year)
BUT Brexiteers HOW TO FORCE “NO DEAL”, that’s the question we need to ask.
June 8, 2018
Alas we’re still fighting to win the referendum, despite having won it technically.
June 8, 2018
All very true every day thereās some sort of fake news or project fear being peddled, but what is this backstop nonsense were as this sprung from every week thereās something new that keeps coming out to confuse the public, my thought is this is a ploy to take us near to a GE and Mrs May saying keep us in power and we will leave the Eu, but because we will still be tied to the corpse of the Eu in 2021 the conservatives will do a labour back track on a manifesto pledge and keep us in the Eu for ever
June 8, 2018
If May & Hammond remain in office we will certainly not get a real Brexit. That is now every clear indeed and even after 2021. But we will probably get Corbyn, Mc Donnall and a Venezuelan economy from then.
Thanks to Gove’s knifing of Boris, for inflicting this socialist, high taxing, dithering, robotic, green crap pushing, interventionist, PC, lefty electoral liability on the nation.
June 8, 2018
The way they are silencing so-called alt-right organisations and locking up certain people with the “scare-effect” on others shows you the Establishment is indeed going to keep us in the EU.
It is removing or silencing people with courage albeit some of them have less noble traits perhaps. But that is of course, in our free society, a matter of opinion.
If the Establishment is terrified or little tiny organisations which openly proclaim their opinions then they must be in the last gasps of a epileptic-like death fit about groups about which they know nothing.
June 8, 2018
All these scares are indeed ridiculous, as is the suggestion from a senior civil servant that itās going to cost Ā£32 to fill in forms for each export consignment to/from the EU due to new paperwork (= Ā£20bn pa). But there really is no sign the Govt are prepared to adopt the strategy you suggest. All the briefing to the media points to an indefinite period effectively in both the customs union and the single market – with Mrs Mays latest model requiring the EU to agree at some point that the technology is adequate to move away from this (do we imagine that point will ever come?). The EU have surely now concluded that the U.K. Govt are not serious about no deal is better than a bad one, and are of course aided by Labours humbug as they move 180 degrees from their general election position in favour of virtual single market and customs union membership. Brexit supporters need to be clearer that such a policy is worse than staying in the EU. If need be it would be better to have another referendum in future with a clearer choice if it comes to that.
June 8, 2018
In the civil service filling in a small form probably costs them ever more than Ā£32 as they are so inefficient or off sick. Usually the forms they fill in or send out are fairly pointless anyway!
June 8, 2018
Yes perhaps that’s how he calculated it
June 8, 2018
I think the Macron Law 2015 on freight movements that he created but got held back on by the EU when the Brexit referendum came about may just come about but it was always thus, the French insisted anyone driving on business in France must earn at least the French NMW, that documents must be created in French to accompany the transport and the British would have to pay to create them.
June 8, 2018
āthe government needs to assert the UK positionā…
Unfortunately Theresa May cannot either formulate a UK position or asset one. She is incompetent and has appointed a Chancellor who everyday does his utmost to undermine Brexit. She has appointed a remainer UK negotiator Olly Robbins to bypass the Department for Exiting the EU which is to wound up when the standstill transistion begins. And the current UK position is that when the standstill transition ends it will be replaced by a ābackstopā that locks us in the single market and customs union with no Article 50 type mechanism to ever escape it. These Remainers are not trying to leave the EU but keep everything as it is and it is time that MPs initiated a leadership contest to stop what they are doing. If brexiteers stand by in silence or waste their time agreeing for a āmax facā customs arrangement that ha sheen usurped by the backstop then they are de facto conceding a Brexit in Name only and are part of the problem. You have to bring down May and do it now
June 8, 2018
Freeborn John, I agree with you, the PM has been given time and her decisions have been found wanting.
I think a leadership challenge producing a new leader followed by a General Election is what is required. I think that the Conservatives would easily win that provided they have a decent leader.
June 8, 2018
Quit right John, many of these stories and certainly the ones you outline in you post today are simply ridiculous.
If we were handling the negotiations as you suggest, then indeed there would be no problem, but the simple fact is we are not are we, when was the last time you heard our side say they would walk away, indeed have they ever said it !
Day after day, delay after delay, our Prime Minister tries to find a so called solution to the latest EU’s demands.
Time after time, we are told to return and do better, and certainly the outward appearance is that we try and comply by giving more, and more, and more, it all seems very, very one sided.
What have the EU given us so far, for all of our so called co-operation, Diddly Squat !
I absolutely agree the time has come (indeed it came about a year ago) for us to say enough is enough, but the Politicians who are representing us do not have the courage, common sense, foresight to do exactly that, because they have found some advisers who simply do not believe, and they would rather support them than the people. !!!!
We have done our bit and voted out by a majority, your lot are doing their best to thwart that decision it seems by almost any means possible.
Mrs May should hang her head in shame, she/ we are becoming/have become, the laughing stock of the World with the way we are handling this. !
Total and utter incompetence.
June 8, 2018
All planned in a conspiracy by traitors, not incompetence.
June 8, 2018
Alan, agree with you. Considering Mrs May is supposed to be a devout Christian she is not doing well on some of the 10 commandments! Enough said.
June 8, 2018
Not incompetence Alan. This is deliberate to keep the U.K. In the EU and make the U.K. pay and be punished for daring to leave. May has accepted this by her continued servitude to the EU. Any right minded person would have walked away by now. May has never, never, corrected or confronted the remain scare stories or slapped down Hammond or any other remainer for speaking against govt policy. Duncan this week saying there might be a second referendum!
This is not incompetence it is to erode our will. When we read she is not sharing a white paper with her cabinet t should ring alarm bells. The election w a disaster, her deal in December with the EU was a disaster, she would have given more if not for the DUP. The DUP made clear it had asked her several times for the text in advance she gave it to them within a few hours of her announcement!
June 8, 2018
And we are handing over 39 billion for the privilege of being made to look a laughing stock.
June 8, 2018
I listened to rather long statement from the QC acting for the fire service yesterday saying:
“It is a fundamental misunderstanding of the events of the fire and of fire service capabilities to assume that the building’s stay-put policy can be changed to simultaneous evacuation at the stroke of a fire incident commander at whatever time.”
So what is the point of the incident commander if he cannot do what was patently obviously the best coarse of action (obvious from about 20 minutes in)? Surely his job is to make rational, real time judgements and do whatever he can to save lives given the circumstances and information he has.
Do the fire service really have such an idiotic system that ties the hands of the incident commander to preventing him doing what was very obviously needed to save lives? If so this system needs to be changed very urgently indeed.
He went on “but there remains no obvious and safe alternative strategy …” (to the stay put and wait until the fire to gets far worse – then you certainly will not get out advice).
Of course there was an alternative – it was to tell everyone to get out. This was blindingly obvious and very early indeed (even to me just from seeing the flames starting to run up the outside of the building on TV).
June 8, 2018
Too right LL, there was a short clip video from a fire engine approaching Grenfell from the A40 and it was clear from the comments of the fire crew on board that they released that the fire was well out of control from an early stage.
June 8, 2018
Indeed, but no one sensible was really in charge it seems. I am sure many of firemen behaved heroically and that many could see early evacuation was needed. This really was very clear indeed and very early on. People should clearly have been told to leave and there was plenty of time to do this before it became impossible.
Lions let by dithering donkeys it seems – yet again. The five services QCs argument seems to be:- “had the cladding not be on the building our advice would have been fine”. But is was on the building and this was clear and it was also clear the fire was going up the outside through the cladding and it was out of control very early indeed.
Anyone even watching on TV could see this.
June 8, 2018
The inflexibility you write of, if true, is terrifying.
I wonder now if fire officers do have breathing equipment for the public in sufficient quantities for high rise blocks to help people down the smoke filled stairs? When they went up several times to tell people to stay why didn’t they bring a couple back down from the highest levels with them each time (even if just to a flat below the fire floor) or is this just what we see in American films?
June 8, 2018
Well done Boris and the person who recorded and leaked it. We desperately need leadership, someone with guts and a compass that is about 180 degrees out from the duff May/Hammond one.
This on Brexit, the economy, the green crap, the size of the state, the endless regulations, the gender pay gap drivel, unreliable expensive energy, the tax till the pip squeak lunacy, the attacks on the self employed/personal allowances/child benefits/tenants/landlords/the prudent/people who insure anything/the elderly/the young, the middle aged and indeed the dying and dead.
June 8, 2018
Boris should be saying this in public, not private. The country needs to wake up to the treacherous behaviour of our government.
June 8, 2018
I hopefully hear what you are saying. I would consider also that fire incident commanders on the spot and firemen are in war-time-like battle and they need psychologically to follow set procedures, orders, rules.
No fire fighter must be left after fire deaths that he has made an incorrect decision, that he did not do his duty as he would wish, that his personal view caused death. He needs to live and work again in other battles.
June 8, 2018
Dear John–So according to Mrs May, The point about the backstop is it may never be used. Wonderful! Actually I for one worry about what would happen if it were used, likely or not. She implies unlikely but I wonder how many believe that. As usual, what she has to say is unconvincing and uninspiring. Of course the backstop, if there has to be one (a story in iteself), should have a backstop date–anything else is crazy. I agree with Boris. What would Trump do? Of course there will be some short term disruption.
June 8, 2018
Leslie,
Mrs May is now reported as refusing to confirm that this backstop, which may never be used, has a definite end date.
June 8, 2018
Leslie, Agreed.
I don’t think Mrs May could even get a good price for a second-hand car…”my backstop price is Ā£xx” would you expect a buyer to offer more…No.
June 8, 2018
If a solution I not found now why does she or anyone else think the EU will not continue to be intransigent to stop the U.K. Being a competitive neighbour? The alleged backstop is no such thing it is incremental stealth to keep the U.K. As a vassal state u till we change our minds not the EU. Oust May she has a record for being untrustworthy on all matters EU.
Davis should have gone when he failed to secure parallel talks rather than sequential talks. From that moment he was at a disadvantage, and every time the EU made a demand he caved in under May. He knew he was being squeezed by May and Robbins. If he was unable to be heard he should have left and shouted from the roof tops instead of smiling like a buffoon each time, enjoy the kudos and accepting the dreadful incremental phases. He has been a useful idiot to the EU remain cause.
June 8, 2018
“What would Trump do? He would have done it!
The EU 27 would have agreed an early exit for us from the EU with much massive pressure and simultaneously equally massive incentives put on the EU smaller nations and, we would already be out.
June 8, 2018
It’s often worth listening to what the Irish Europe Minister Helen McEntee has to say, and in particular what she has to say to one of the Remoaners’ favoured mass media outlets, Sky News …
She was the one who told Sky News on November 24th 2017:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2017/12/05/no-agreement-to-talk/#comment-905307
āWe have been very very clear from day one, there cannot be a physical border and that means ruling out cameras, that means ruling out technology, that means ruling out anything that would imply a border on the island of Ireland, it is not an option for usā.
Note this was not just āruling out reinstatement of customs posts at the borderā, the false impression conveyed by many media reports, it was
āruling out anything that would imply a border on the island of Irelandā,
and yet the UK government chose to ignore this clear warning and went ahead with increasingly daft proposals which the Irish, and so the EU, would obviously never accept, and we even had Boris Johnson musing that it should be no more difficult than collecting the congestion charge in London.
And what did the same Helen McEntee have to say to Sky News just hours after the UK government published its latest barmy, weak-kneed, formulation?
“Until something else is put in place and really you can’t put a timeline on that so any suggestion of 2021 or any other date is for us not acceptable”.
So in effect the Irish government has already rejected the UK government’s latest proposal, as indeed has Michel Barnier with his three criteria, and Verhofstadt this morning as well; but I don’t suppose that will make the slightest difference to how the UK government proceeds until it is finally brought up short.
June 8, 2018
Oh, and the Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar rejected the UK plan before it was even published:
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-ireland-pm/irish-pm-says-time-limited-brexit-backstop-would-not-be-acceptable-idUKKCN1J31MR?il=0
“Irish PM says time-limited Brexit backstop would not be acceptable”
June 8, 2018
And now, unsurprisingly, Michel Barnier has rejected it … why oh why is our Prime Minister allowing her advisers to make her look like a complete bloody fool? Is that what she wants, for her own subtle reasons? So that we will start to think that leaving the EU is just too difficult and build up pressure on her to plead with the EU to allow us to stay in after all? Is that it, JR?
June 8, 2018
Well, JR, I remember that at first you weren’t interested in what she had to say last autumn, or in what Professor O’Rourke had to say either:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2017/12/06/comments-to-this-site/#comment-905832
and now look at the mess we are in through Theresa May being deliberately misled into ignoring the Irish version of reality … as I said the other day, this nonsense really started a year ago when Leo Varadkar took over:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2018/06/02/populist-challenges-to-the-euro/#comment-938465
“… That changed soon after Leo Varadkar took over as premier in June 2017, when the Irish government moved to its present absurd extreme and intransigent position, with the backing of Michel Barnier … ”
and basically our government has wasted that year.
June 8, 2018
That’s the real story this week. Mrs May restricted sight of her white paper exclusively to her fellow remainers > a clear indication that she is trying by-pass Mr Davis, and the other Brexiteers. When he threatened to resign (again) she added the phrase
. The reason for that ambiguous wording is obvious. Mr Davis is being played for a fool.
June 8, 2018
All the leavers are being played for fools. Do they even notice? Maybe not, they are fools. What say you about Ms May, Redwood?
June 8, 2018
Read Trump’s speech at Davos and compare it to the pathetic, wet, visionless, PC drivel that we get from T May. She sounds like a patronising & dim primary school teacher lecturing some dim 5 year olds’.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/01/president-donald-trumps-davos-address-in-full-8e14ebc1-79bb-4134-8203-95efca182e94/
June 8, 2018
You are preaching to the converted or certainly the people who voted to leave and didnāt believe the Fear rubbish then and still donāt, indeed even more so as we have the evidence it was āliesā.
Your problem is the vacuum caused by a seemingly total lack of leadership from Theresa May as evidenced by her inability or refusal to make the kind of clarion calls that a leaked Boris Johnson made the other evening, her performance at PMQs a couple of days ago was, frankly, pathetic.
Boris also made it clear what we all suspected, namely that Hammond and the Treasury are still in the Remain camp and if even more evidence was needed, we have an EU apparatchik, Ollie Robbins doing our negotiating.
I notice that even you are too embarrassed to mention the Customs Union fiasco yesterday which apparently needed DD to threaten to resign to even get the meaningless fudge albeit there is a date, but again, this is further out than TM has promised in the past.
Finally we have all the prominent cabinet ministers, even JRM, publically spouting the loyal tosh that they are confident she will get a good deal/in her leadership etc whilst viciously briefing and leaking against her as are the other side.
It looks a shambles and for the first time I am thinking an āides of Marchā happening during the summer would be a political risk worth taking.
June 8, 2018
Its a British trait to constantly re-fight battles that have been lost. It seems to me that there is a segment of our society that refuses to accept the will of the people and go hard heartedly for Brexit. Like civil servants who have spent their careers inEU membership administration, barley barons in the House of Lords who benefit hugely from agricultural subsidies, legal eagles who specialise in EU law etc etc….it is entrenched in our current system.
I’m more concerned over their spiteful decision to shut us out of the Galileo GPS system, especially as our high-tech space sector has contributed massively to it’s development. This is a strategic defence issue and a solution should be given high priority buy our negotiating team
June 8, 2018
You voted to Leave Galileo. Contracts awarded for Galileo full under the jurisdiction of the ECJ – and that is a Brexiteer red line. Thereās no spite involved – it is just one of the very many negative impacts of your vote.
June 9, 2018
The negative impact will be on the EU if the UK leaves the project.
The UK is a big part of the projects finance and technical expertise.
The UK hasn’t voted to leave it.
The EU are just playing up.
June 8, 2018
Brexit presents an opportunity rather than a threat.
1. It’s untrue that business must have tariff-free access to the European market. The rest of the world exports to the EU and deals with the levied tariffs. The impact of the tariffs can also be balanced by floating exchange rates.
2. It’s not critical to be in the European internal market – most of the rest of the world deals with the EU successfully. WTO rules already governs much of our trade with many other countries. We also deal successfully with countries where there are no existing trade deals. There is no trade deal between the UK and the US yet it is our largest single country trading partner.
3. The EU may be a large trading bloc but its growth rate has been relatively weak and the importance of it continues to decline. It’s easy to forget that the UK has grown more than the eurozone since the introduction of the Euro.
4. The Irish border discussion is baffling. Switzerland is landlocked by EU countries, trades successfully with them and has fluid movement of goods across country lines by making use of electronic manifestos and TIR. The volume of goods movement is considerably higher than what we could expect in Ireland.
June 9, 2018
“The Irish border discussion is baffling.”
Well, since last June when Leo Varadkar took over the Irish government has taken an increasingly absurd extreme and intransigent line, backed up by the EU, and the more Theresa May accepts bad advice to appease them the worse it will get.
June 8, 2018
We have a Ā£70 billion deficit with the EU, we pay them Ā£12 billion a year , millions of their people work here, yet our brilliant British establishment have managed to fashion a losing hand out of it . In exasperation you feel like shouting at the radio and TV when being given our daily dose of defeatism…’for goodness sake put in your backbone’ ….but in reality they lost their backbone a long long time ago. Our whole EU entanglement was the the British establishment losing faith in us and our country, they considered their role to ‘manage our decline’ as it was said at the time, and though we might have hoped that Mrs Thatcher knocked some sense into them, in reality she failed, for their defeatism has yet again come to the fore in Brexit.
If we ever leave the EU, one of the first acts has to be to change the culture and the people running our country, for we will never succeed while we have a group whose expertise is in negativity and defeatism, and who would manage to suck the life out of a Vampire gathering.
June 8, 2018
Serious free trade deals take quite a number of years to negotiate. One MP in one country is not going to change that reality. So it would be bye bye on the 29th. Maybe that is your goal anyway.
June 8, 2018
PvL, If an RTA between the EU and the UK is at all possible in principle, then it can happen now – based on the FTA which Remain claims we have now. Just without the UK being a vassal state.
June 8, 2018
Remind me PvL who said “no deal is better than a bad deal”…
It was our beloved Mrs May and certainly as we stand today walking away is much much better than the rubbish deal that May & Co have cobbled together.
We can only wish for “bye bye” on the 29th…
June 8, 2018
P vL
Only if the EU is involved , the rest of the world does the majority of deals quite quickly USA FTA’s average time 18 months
June 9, 2018
@libertarian: I was indeed referring to an FTA with that voluntary club of 27 sovereign nation’s AKA the EU.
Might it still take less time than the internal government negotiations about it’s Brexit position? š š
On this side of the North Seattle we’ll wait in patience, taking minimal precautions (avoiding too little EU content in our export products and preparing for an increase in custom officers)
June 8, 2018
Not true. The US-Australia deal took 14 months from start to finish and that was only because of a long hold up as the US insisted on protecting their sugar beet industry. I think the Australia-NZ deal, which is really comprehensive, was even quicker. I think what you meant was serious trade deals involving the EU take years. This is certainly true and is a reason to be out of both the customs union and the single market.
June 8, 2018
What ever confidence and support your party may enjoy is ebbing away rapidly as Mrs May says one thing and does the opposite. The whole thing has been badly handled. Boris Johnson was correct in suggesting (either seriously or not) that President Trump would have negotiated in a much more robust and effective way. Mrs May was the wrong person to lead a government determined to carry out the will of the people as expressed in the referendum. We regularly read that she is balancing her government (normally weighting in favour of Remainers). There should be no Remainers in government. It should have one purpose as far as the EU is concerned which is to get us out properly and not just in name only, as some would like. Failure to deliver will do tremendous damage to our democracy and your party will be decimated.
June 8, 2018
I agree that the arguments are ludicrous but they are given weight by many civil servants, the BBC and other remainers.
June 8, 2018
It is absolutely pathetic, but no surprise there we have a pathetic PM.
June 9, 2018
Dear A.S.–It always was “absurd” (the word correctly and publicly used by mild-mannered Jacob Rees-Mogg immediately afterwards) to have Remainers as 1. and 2. Beyond me how the Tory Party could even have begun to allow this to have happened and to subsist. Can anyone be surprised at where we have arrived? Get Boris in charge pronto and broom every single Renainer from the Cabinet. If that proves immediately impossible then General Election forthwith and then do it.
June 8, 2018
The Media isnāt the problem. Even the Remain lobby isnāt the problem. The EU isnāt the problem. None of which you can do anything about anyway. The problem is May. Simple. And you CAN do something about that.
Off topic; the BBC ran a series of fairly good features about England. (Strange, I know.) Any plans to capitalise on that? Highly unlikely Iād say.
June 8, 2018
How to put some strength in…..Call in President Trump, of course. See how he has dealt with Macron and Trudeau’s latest pathetic attempts at grandstanding. He is on a roll, whereas the UK is just sinking further and further into the mire with our apparently Remainer PM determined to keep us locked in a stranglehold with that apparently corrupt and dying bureaucratic monster, so that we go down with it.. What a legacy of this PM and Conservative government. History will not be kind to you.
June 8, 2018
Worth checking out last night’s “This Week” –
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0b62910/this-week-07062018
Some good pertinent comments and analysis from Michael Portillo & Alan Johnson
June 8, 2018
I think we’ve had it. Europe’s had it too. A ruling elite that wants a fungible population under its heel. The utter irradication of national identity and national ideals – the Brexit revolt was a last hurrah.
They are not going to let us have it.
June 8, 2018
‘ Getting all our money back remains one of the biggest wins from leaving the EU.’
Yes but not for years until the bogus transition ends, and if regulatory alignment continues on the Irish border (due to probably deliberate fudges in in the final agreement) we could be paying in for many years after that! On top of that there is the issue of accepting ECJ, EU law, freedom of movement etc. All because of the contrived problems on the Irish border.
I have said this before but all we may be left with is a concerted campaign to stop buying EU goods wherever possible. I already do this.
June 8, 2018
It is perhaps strange to reflect that the intense debate around the subject of Brexit may seem relatively inconsequential a few years down the road. The E.U. is fundamentally and I suspect fatally flawed.. I doubt that the Eurozone can survive in the long or even the medium term. It requires reformation but the political will to undertake this reformation does not in reality exist. The exact nature of this collapse is impossible to predict but when it does happen I sense it will be sudden and violent and its repercussions radical in nature not least in their impact on the E.U itself. I see this as dangerous but inevitable
June 8, 2018
Brexmoaners are indeed boring us rigid.
It was elite people on the Brexit side that mislead people in believing that leaving the EU would be easy.
You may wish to have a ‘No Deal’ Mr. Redwood which is fine for you and all of your wealthy Brexiteer chums, because none of you will suffer financially.
Very easy to go through all this when you will bear no pain.
June 8, 2018
Actually, leaving is easy.
The challenge is leaving in a way which is not disruptive to business (and, as a consequence, the economy), and doesn’t come with a significant cost in terms of new staff, new systems, new IT etc.
“Short term economic disruption” is a euphemism for some people losing their jobs, struggling to pay the bills, put food on the table and keep the roof over their heads.
It’s also interesting that the solution to taking back control of our borders seems to be for the only land border to be one that allows anyone to enter the UK without being either checked or recorded.
June 8, 2018
Peter Parsons
Less than 8% of UK businesses do business in the EU, explain again why this would crash everything . Give just one example of why we would need new systems and new IT. Oh dear look another remainer ties themselves in knots trying to scare people. According to you we are going to lose our jobs oh and we will require lots of new staff too. Lol you people are so funny
Ive told you this so many times but you dont like it because it screws up your arguments but here we go again.
WE HAVE MASSIVE SKILLS SHORTAGES in the UK.. There are 716,000 unfilled full time job vacancies right now. Exports are up 9.8% YTD, wages are rising faster than inflation
As to borders, I guess you’ve never travelled abroad? I own a small business in France , i visited a couple weeks ago. I had to show my passport 4 times and we are currently still in the EU.
The Common Travel Area is an open borders area comprising the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands. The internal borders of the Common Travel Area are subject to minimal controls if any, and can normally be crossed by British and Irish citizens with minimal identity documents. It has been in operation since 1925
June 8, 2018
B& G
As I asked before and you totally failed to provide ( because you can’t because you are talking drivel) Give ONE example of how Free trade will make the less well off suffer financially. If you can’t then I suggest you stop posting because all you are doing is posting made up garbage
June 10, 2018
Libertarian,
I respect your experience and commercial sense, but there is no point in arguing the way you have begun to argue. It is like an arrogant head-t3acher, your good and valuable arguments and facts are lost due to your underlying arrogance and comments.
I will therefore no longer be commenting on your various input
June 8, 2018
No one said it would be easy and the greatest obstacle was always going to be the Remain ruled establishment at home.
I’m all for going headlong into the EU. I’m even more for leaving it completely.
What I resent is being ruled by a puppet Parliament which purports to govern but which is totally ineffective at filling potholes and stopping street crime.
Westminster is this century’s coal mining industry. It needs to be closed down.
June 8, 2018
Good morning
It is good to read subjects other than BREXIT, the EU and the Labour Party. Our kind host likes from time to time talk matters transport amongst other things.
The EU knows we will be leaving on that date. So no need to tell them. Sadly our kind host and others have to be told that the EU will not do a trade deal with us until AFTER we have left.
Once again I have to say, leaving the EU is about governance, not trade and not money. Sadly it seems we will not be self governing so the referendum has been totally ignored.
June 8, 2018
How is your quick & easy Brexit going now eh Mr Redwood ?
You have killed any reputation for competence the Tories might have enjoyed for a generation at least.
June 8, 2018
Simon, The UK leaving the EU could be quick and easy provided both sides wanted it so. However with policy set by Remain on the UK side, and a combination of pride and a visceral loathing of “Anglos” on the EU side, it won’t happen. As I foresaw many years ago when I said: “If you think the EU will be fair or reasonable, you haven’t been paying attention for the last 40 years”.
June 10, 2018
NIck C,
Loathing of Anglos, what a load of absolute nonsense
June 8, 2018
I think people are now questionning the point of the Commons and the Lords. Perhaps Royalty too if the Clooney’s get too involved in it.
If we’re going to be ruled by the EU then let’s dispense with all the hangers on.
June 8, 2018
“If they really think our continental neighbours hate us that much and would break the law and damage their own businesses in this way, why do they want to stay attached?” – quite so and the member states no doubt do look for a mutually fruitful relationship post-Brexit.
The same does not seem true of the Evil Empire itself for its aim is as ever to preserve and advance itself whatever the cost to member states and third states.
When the history of Brexit is written, it will be the UK government’s failure to recognize the Evil Empire for what it is that will account for much of the failure.
June 8, 2018
None of these issues would arise at all if the UK did what it should have done for the longest time namely scrap duties, customs and excise, tarriffs, Vat collection ad nauseam and embraced free market Capitalism. When it comes to the EU we are Pot calling out the Kettle.
Trump is right -never thought I would say those words – but we and the EU are a protectionist bloc. The only thing is if Trump looked in the mirror he would see an arch protectionist and anti capitalist staring back at him. We are all guilty men….
ps of course we need border checks for terrorist suspects and those with communicable diseases but Nothing else.
June 8, 2018
Ah…..all is becoming clearer.
Mrs May’s real aim is to leave in March 2019 without a deal BUT making sure that she has been seen to have tried really really hard to have got one.
June 8, 2018
Oldwulf, If that were true she would have prepared for a WTO deal exit. She hasn’t. I am afraid it really is down to Remain incompetence.
June 8, 2018
It’s good to see Boris standing up for the UK.
Like him or loathe him he calls it how it is.
May and Hammond are a disgrace and will destroy the Tory party.
June 8, 2018
We need to face up to the fact that the government is not going to deliver BREXIT . We will end up with BRINO. The government has been incompetent. No deal is better than our current destination.
June 8, 2018
Michael, exactly!! Whatever happened to no deal is better than a bad deal? What a load of tosh. From what I can see this is going to be one hell of a bad deal and we all know who to blame. We could have had a bright future but that’s been binned for eternity now. We will probably get a Labour government and then the country has had it. All thanks to the weak PM. I cannot express in words how furious I am.
June 8, 2018
All would be ok if only Liam Fox would indicate where these new deals with trading partners overseas are going to come from. If we are to get our medicine now from say India what protection of safety and standards will apply? If we sell produce or services to Argentine what currency will we used? If we make a deal with the US under Trump how do we know that it will not be reneged on next week? and as for carrying fresh fruit and veg in large refrigerated ships from New Zealand and South Africa..where will these ships come from..what flags..what ports will be designated and upgraded because this stuff cannot be all landed at Dover? If we are to go to WTO rules..then we should be dusting off the covers of the old files in Geneva by now..but we’re not..probably still hoping to get a bespoke arrangement with the EU..but we won’t..cherry picking by another name..will keep us half in, half out as Boris says..in orbit to the EU..and forever more..All of the questions but no answers..a shambles..even by J R-M standards.
June 8, 2018
Dear Mr. Redwood,
“The government needs to assert the UK position…that we are ready to leave without a deal…ask them if they want a Free Trade deal…if they donāt then we leave without a deal.”
I reproduce below three paragraphs of a letter in today’s Daily Telegraph.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchardās piece (āBrexiteers must gloomily accept that weāre heading for vassal statusā, Business, June 7) was sobering. He has voiced what we are all thinking.
It is becoming ever clearer that there is no intention of leaving the EU. And the fact that the Tories are sitting there, allowing Theresa May to make disastrous mistakes, shows that the party has no future either.
It will be interesting to see what happens at the next general election. None of the three main parties has the faith or respect of the British people.
What has happened to David Davis, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Liam Fox AND the rest of the Brexiteers who are sat on their hands and have allowed the Brexit talks to develop in such a one-sided way where the EU asks May & Co. to jump and she says how high? Where is Rees-Mogg and the much trumpeted ERG?
Does not anyone in the Conservative Party understand the consequences for the party for failing to deliver the referendum result? Do they even care? Or is life too comfortable as it is?
It is a pity that UKIP is no longer a force to be reckoned with. At least the voters would have an alternative come the next general election.
June 8, 2018
Could ukip really be any worse than the three useless parties we keep voting for? We bite the same way all the time. Why not try something different. At least ukip actually want what the country voted for.
June 9, 2018
Alan Joyce..what has happened is the fog has lifted and like the rest of them Gove, IDS, Boris, Fox and Rees-Mogg we are finally staring at the cliff edge,
June 9, 2018
I think UKIP under Gerrard Batten are slowly reviving. If they stand in my constituency I will certainly vote for them. My Leave voting Tory MP has a majority of 45! However the Conservative Party can go to hell as far as I’m concerned.
June 8, 2018
I agree with everything you suggest but I have always believed that the Brussels establishment is determined to punish the UK and are so disconnected from the lives of EU workers that they don’t care what damage they do to Trade and business. Put simply, for them, the only thing that matters is The Project. We have seen numerous examples of this – the treatment of Greece being the most obvious example. Only if the member states start to exert their influence will a decent deal emerge.
June 8, 2018
They should tell our EU partners that we are ready to leave without a deal on March 29 2019, and ask them if they want a Free Trade deal with no tariffs or not. If they do then we sit down and agree it. If they donāt then we leave without a deal.
Should have been the posistion from Day one after the vote and would have been if the Conservative party didn’t put a remainer in charge.
Leavers should have controlled the narrative and it would be us sitting there batting away every EU suggestion to Square leg. As it stands the EU know we are not serious about a no deal and thus act accordingly.
We should have been planning for a no deal from Day one. Olly Robbins and his gang should have been told to plan for a no deal from day one and instructed that this was their task and not allowed anywhere near the negotiations. Instead of May allowing him to run rings around Davis.
By not making it clear from Day one that we want a no deal. It has allowed Labour to sit on the fence and produce unworkable alternatives that makes them look good.
What is very clear to me is the Conservative party didn’t want a referendum and don’t want to leave. Otherwise they would never have put a remianer in charge. If they think they can fudge this thing they will be destroyed at the ballot box.
June 8, 2018
Ken Clarke has clear ideas on negotiation:
Speaking with City A.M., [yesterday?] Clarke urged ministers to “grow up” and return to “responsible politics” or quit.
“We need compromise. We desperately, urgently need a clear negotiating position. If members of the government don’t agree with it they will have to resign. There’s no shame or disgrace in that – you either accept collective responsibility or you resign. You don’t go through the motions of agreeing to government policy and then brief against it to the press.”
The former minister added: “If I were in her shoes I would be having ferocious rows with them…. She makes far too many concessions to this noisy minority in the government and on the backbenches. [But] she herself can be quite stubborn and tricky – I didn’t call her a bloody difficult woman for nothing.”
He slammed efforts by “headbanging Brexiters”, led by the European Research Group, to “push members of the Cabinet into positions that I would view as very harmful”.
But he rubbished the idea that the group, led by Jacob Rees-Mogg, could depose May, saying she would be “backed by an overwhelming majority” if they forced a vote of no confidence,
“They are hopelessly outnumbered in parliament,” he added.
.. He called for transition to be used as a standstill period “until we have grown-up people who can carry out a proper international negotiation” are in place.
June 8, 2018
Mrs. May, a Remainer, was elected and tasked by the Establishment to collaborate with the EU to delay the UKās departure in the hope that that either an āeventā will occur, or that the UK will change its mind.
The Irish border issue is simply a very convenient excuse as there exists already not only a border for VAT, currency, excise duty and other taxes but the border is already monitored with the necessary number plate recognition cameras to electronically handle any import duties or regulatory issues.
As a result the UK is heading for a complete mess.
But the good news is that had the referendum result gone the other way the Establishment would have taken it as a mandate for further EU integration including joining the Euro and the EU military and the acceptance of FoM of not only EU nationals but also all the ME and African migrants that the EU intends to bring into the EU over the coming decades.
The referendum result has made this a lot more difficult.
June 8, 2018
For this reason alone I was compelled to vote Leave.
June 8, 2018
I very much agree.
June 8, 2018
Theresa May has been my MP for two decades and while I have always disagreed with her over the EU, even standing against her on behalf of UKIP in the 2001 general election, I do not believe that she is a wicked woman in the same way that some of the more fervent advocates of the EU are genuinely wicked people in my view.
However we are seeing much the same pattern here as with David Cameron, who was very noisy about how he wanted to reform our relationship with the EU until civil servants and his other pro-EU advisers got to work on him, after which he duly went off to Brussels and asked for very little and came back with even less.
Which was actually a rather similar pattern to the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1974, who had promised a radical renegotiation but then accepted advice that he should not seek any treaty changes, as mentioned some three years ago here:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2015/03/08/no-to-a-grand-coalition
“… after the election of the Wilson government in February 1974 the Foreign Office mandarins easily persuaded him that it would be a tactical error to seek any changes at all to the EEC treaties; so he didnāt, and the 1975 referendum was in fact about staying in on exactly the same treaty terms agreed by Heath … ”
The difference is that Harold Wilson successfully duped a majority of the British people while David Cameron lost his referendum, and so now the object of Theresa May’s deceit has to be how to keep us under EU rule even after we have left the EU.
June 8, 2018
The points you make are indeed trotted out by remainers on a regular basis. It does seem to be a feature of those people that threats carry the greatest weight whether they are of British or Foreign origin. It was refreshing to hear yesterday that the CEO of Audi has announced publicly that the EU ‘must have free access to the UK market’. I am sure BMW , Mercedes, and the French automobile companies are bending the ear of Barnier at all opportunities.
June 8, 2018
No recourse to public funds.
Tell the EU we will implement that in full.
EU migrants have to pay Ā£12,000 a year as a minimum tax so that they have no recourse to other people’s money – which is public funds.
June 8, 2018
Spain thought they could bully Gibraltar into submission when they closed the boarder for decades. It didnāt work because they just turned to Morocco for their supplies and became stronger and more self-sufficient in the process. Stop allowing the Irish border to be used as a political weapon. Just stop using it for goods and compensate supplies for their losses. No need for a physical border to be put in place if nothing is crossing it. Just send any goods via the ports. The amount of goods crossing this border is miniscule. Stop allowing the tail to wag the dog.
June 8, 2018
With regards to Calais. We know from past experience the willingness of the EU and particularly the French to self-harm. We need to make sure that contingency plans are in place to obtain essential goods from the rest of the world and that the capacity to receive these goods is in place. The UK needs to get on a war footing. It would be irresponsible to do anything less. We cannot allow the country to be held hostage.
June 8, 2018
It is being held hostage – by Brexiteers.
Fortunately I am richer than most of you. When there are food shortages as a result of Brexit my family will still eat.
Will yours? Good luck.
June 8, 2018
Andy
Thats disgusting . You are throwing all 30 of your staff onto the dole whilst waving your wedge in the air and telling us all how rich you are.
I think we’ve got your measure fella.
June 8, 2018
You should build an underground bunker Andy.
Start by storing tinned food, survival equipment, torches, batteries and first aid kits.
June 9, 2018
Edward2, When the food runs out in his bunker, he’ll have to eat the carpets!
June 8, 2018
People still ate in Britain whilst being bombed from the air, cut off from Europe and attacked in the sea.
If things get that bad with food shortages we’ll come and take yours.
You think the old rules will apply in your dystopian fantasy ?
June 8, 2018
I am afraid that although you are right in your comments the action to be taken does not flow on .
May is heading for a disastrous Brexit which will run from the date of departure next year till the end of the transition period and then for ever and a day while we remain a vassal state in orbit around Brussels .
The electorate will be constantly reminded as the anniversaries slip by of what might have been achieved ,but was not because of May and Hammond.
The problem is that by going along with May you and the sound minded Brexiters in Parliament will forever be associated with the unfolding disaster of a missed opportunity and disregard for the referendum result .
Surely the time has come to get all the letters in to the 1922 Committee and have an election for new Tory Leader .
There is no guarantee that we Conservative voters will even get a Brexit candidate for election as leader ,crazy as that might seem but we will have the comfort that having seen the future and that there are still MPs in whom we have confidence .
The next GE will result in clearing out many Remainers who will have to defend their position in public .
June 8, 2018
Brexit Negotiations Proceed at Breakneck Speed:
BARNIER: Tell me, do you speak French?
DAVIS: Oui, un peu.
BARNIER: I never think that’s enough, do you?
June 8, 2018
I do wonder if sometimes Dr Redwood feels as though he is shouting into the wind, as, it seems, do most of us here (saving your presence, Andy). At least our host is in a position to DO something about this situation, with the support of like-minded colleagues, as most of us here are not.
Yet.
June 8, 2018
If only the government would recognise that the EU negotiator is a Frenchman for a reason. We are not negotiating with Estonia or Bulgaria, but with France. And their aim, as always, is to what is good for France and damn the rest. Our biggest and best lever is MONEY. They want ours and we have to make them pay a price. Just get on with it.
June 8, 2018
The talk of David Davis resigning and the PM interpreted as saying there is potential for an extended cross over period until 2021 is worrying.
June 8, 2018
Davis said negotiations had scarcely begun that he intended to resign from politics after March 2019.
I recall thinking at the time that it was a mad thing to say at that time or indeed ever. A more skilful politician would have kept it to himself.
June 8, 2018
In the past two years I’ve reached the conclusion that these Remainiac fanatics are deranaged.
I myself no longer bother even addressing anything they say.
Although moderately Eurosceptic, I was never particularly enthusiastic myself about aiming for Brexit, and didn’t want the Referendum in the first place. But given that the question was asked, and having listened to the embittered and hysterical Remain campaign, I felt that on balance the best answer to give was ‘Leave’.
In retrospect, had I realised all along how fanatical, baseless and downright dangerous these Remaniacs, and the case for Remain was, I’d have been agitating for it myself years earlier.
With all due respect to John Redwood, and the long standing Brexiters, it wasn’t they who converted me to voting ‘Leave’, it was the conduct of the Remainiacs themselves
They converted me from being a moderate Eurosceptic, who neveretheless enthusiastically voted ‘Remain’ in 1975, to voting ‘Leave’ in 2016. Their conduct since June 2016 has now gone on to lead me to believe that we would be safer with ‘No Deal’ Brexit, and absolutely convinced me that none of them should be let anywhere near public office again, even after we’ve left.
The irony is, that after years of being wrong about everything to do with the EU, they might, just, be right about something one day. A stopped clock does, after all, show the correct time twice a day.
But their total lack of credibility or integrity, means that when they are, no one will take blind bit of notice of their warnings.
June 8, 2018
Read Andy if you want your opinion further entrenched.
He bangs on about hatred in Brexit yet he and Newmaina are the only ones who actually foment it on these pages.
(I too was compelled to vote Leave because of Remainers and their rudeness.)
June 8, 2018
What you say should be transparently clear to Mrs May and those around her including top civil servants. Import/export mechanisms used with the rest of the world are already in place, and all the government has to do is to arrange continuity of agreements with third parties if they mutually wish for them to continue. Simple.
Instead an increasingly untidy deceit is being played upon us by much of the political class, which clearly does not reflect public opinion on this important topic of sovereignty.
I am concerned where we go from here, and to start with I would like to see action against Mrs May and her shenanigans.
June 8, 2018
The referendum was always a plot by the establishment with bankers to stay out of euro, the EU armed forces and not to have their intelligent service taken over by them and of cos other things that they saw coming from the EU.
Their plot was to always have a bust-up with EU and stay in the customs union, which has backfired on them by losing the ref, If they had won the ref the media would have been all against the EU in every way with remain supporters saying, we do not want the euro and a load of other things with the lords and the UK parliament saying that what the people wanted and really voted for, would have been all against the EU and the ECJ to get the establishment and bankers what they wanted.
In other words, the establishment and parliament did not want to do their own dirty work and have a busted-up with the EU so they used the people’s ref as their way out but did not think they would lose the vote and have now left themselves in no man land with the majority of the people against them instead of everybody for them.
That another reason why I did not vote in the ref and I do not vote in GE cos the establishment, parliaments MPs and bankers with big business are always plotting against the people of England and paying themselves huge sum money at the same time.
It was the establishment that orders the ref in the first place to get their plot underway against the EU by using the people as a scapegoats.
June 8, 2018
Seeing the back of Mrs May might be a good start. And why does Project Fear always get the headlines?
June 8, 2018
I’m so bored of this. You need to stand up and be counted and remove Theresa May! If you’re being loyal to the Conservative Party then this is also the correct course of action.
If we don’t leave the EU then your party is finished.
I have already informed my local MP that I’m now campaigning against him.
Ex Conservative Party member & voter!
June 8, 2018
The Remainers are cross because the furture hasn’t happened yet.
June 8, 2018
“How to put some strength into the UK negotiation of Brexit”
By surreptitious gene replacement therapy of the negotiators, drugging them each night, and implanting Anglo-Saxon genomes gifted by just about anybody in Yorkshire. We are here to serve!
June 8, 2018
J, I think we probably need to wait for the outcome of the two BIG DAYS 12/13 next week. Let’s see how the great and the good regard 17.4m voters…thou shall hear herald no more until the 14th when a considerable amount of shit may well be flying around from every corner of the UK. If it goes well for the Lords then Laura Kuenssberg will be in her element and espousing copious amounts of glee and delight as Brexit starts to grind to a halt…
GOOD GOD, WHO WAS THAT WHO SAID MELTDOWN!
P.S. You were mentioned on the LBC airwaves today and JOB doesn’t like you!!!
June 8, 2018
Mr Redwood,
You and many others in the UK seem to think that the EU members (the EU bureaucracy is not the same) want to keep the UK in or at least friendly. Unfortunately, over two years of very poor communications and complete lack of clarity, culminating in nosensical relarks about changing things agreed only months ago, hjave made those governments very wary of any deal with a country that refuses to negotiate within the space available and is unlikely to keep any bargain that might seem costly in the future.
Hence I guess the response to your proposal would be: “so what?”.
June 8, 2018
Rien, And you “EU members” seem to think you can bully us (that’s how it looks to us**) without consequences. I do not know how to put this any clearer: the UK wants a trade deal (a deal about trading, ONLY), without compromising our independence, or integrity (any more than the WTO does).
Partly your negotiators are better than ours, partly our establishment is on your side anyway, and partly our cultural style of negotiation is markedly different**. But the problem with you “winning” so much and so easily, is that subsequently we feel we have been conned. That’s why we have kept coming back in the past.
Now, of course, almost none of that is your problem. Except neither of our cultures will disappear anytime soon.
June 8, 2018
Another perfectly reasonable comment from RH. (Take note Andy.)
June 9, 2018
The UK pro remain establishment are the problem.
They do not represent the people, who voted clearly to leave.
The people understood the binary choice and made the choice leave.
Our establishment cannot accept the EU position which logically means a “No deal” or fallback WTO deal is the easy goto option.
They should be plans which are published which enable all the options we have outside the EU!
June 8, 2018
Well, it’s quite amusing to see Philip Hammond speaking in Berlin and urging that the UK must “compromise” and recommending a “collaborative” approach to the EU:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6478207/boris-johnson-philip-hammond-heart-of-remain-brexit/
Clearly he has forgotten what happened to collaborators at the end of the war.
Theresa May has foolishly allowed these people to drag her, and the whole country, down so that we are rapidly becoming an international laughing stock.
June 8, 2018
DELAY, STAY, PAY, DITHERING MAY is an apt description and almost sarcastically rhymes. There is now open discussion of civil disobedience and mass demonstrations on the horizon. I also believe, as do very many, this is the sad future that will unfold if Brexit is thwarted under T. May’s pathetic inept stewardship. Boris mentioned that Trump could do a better job…how right he is!
Brexit is the final stand for the common people against the old guard, who are trying so desperately to keep the status quo, with all its tangible benefits, and their iron grip on the strings of power! Conjure up a vision of the UK’s indigenous hardworking (all their lives) pensioners scraping a living on Ā£164.35 a week, with declining post-retirement healthcare, or the poorest of our society needing food banks to survive, while the Establishment, Corp. Businesses, Celebs, senior Public sector management, Champagne Conservatives/Liberals/Labourites wallow in avaricious wealth!
There are no political parties working for the common person today. They are all as one – self-serving elite Parties for the rich! Therefore, this is a once in a generation opportunity, to undo the wrongs perpetrated on common people by the ruling classes over many hundreds of years. I trust and hope the real people will not give up this epoch-changing moment in history easily!
June 9, 2018
Off with their heads !
June 8, 2018
John,
You repeat your discontent with the EU negotiations. The only way to break this log-jam is by recalling Theresa May. Apart from being a remainer – she is gutless, visionless and incompetent. Her graphic stupidity in dealing with the EU is damaging Britain and the Conservative Party. What will it take for you and your colleagues to get rid of her? Enough of words – action please!
June 8, 2018
Dear John,
Your version of Brexit is never going to happen because the UK as a whole is too scared to go down that path, as we are not ready to leave in March next year without a deal. In any case, the EU has a huge incentive for Brexit to crash and burn. Remember, that from the EU’s point of view, Brexit must be seen to be a failure to hold the rest of the EU together. The EU will do whatever they have to ensure the UK cannot succeed after Brexit, as it is too much of a threat to the entire EU project.
You seem to keep forgetting that trade between the UK and the EU requires both parties to allow it to happen. You are well aware that the EU has a lot of non-tariff barriers (for example phytosanitary checks, chemicals regulations and various other approvals before any trade can take place and if they are so minded, they can make it virtually impossible for us to export to them. The legal consequences of Brexit are laid out for everyone to see in the EU’s notices to stakeholders – I don’t see anyone saying that they are wrong or that the EU will not do what it says it will in those notices.
The EU doesn’t need to negotiate with the UK, as it happy to let us fight amongst ourselves whilst the public becomes increasingly worried about what happens next year. You are going to find your position increasingly discredited, as you have no acceptable answers to the EU’s questions on keeping the Northern Ireland border open and in compliance with existing EU laws.
Meanwhile, Theresa May will do whatever she has to in order to avoid a disaster next year. I predict she will sign whatever agreement the EU puts in front of her. We will then go into Brexit in Name only and struggle to ever get out – We’ll pay like a member would, but have no democratic representation at all. Everyone will wonder what we have achieved and you will be blamed for suggesting a version of Brexit that has proven to not be achievable. We will have been better off staying in than accepting the form of Brexit that we will end up with. Alternatively, parliament might try and stop the whole process as they will be able to see how unfruitful Brexit is going to be.
I wish I was wrong on this, but I can’t see it playing out any other way. We should have stayed in and waited for the EU to collapse under its own contradictions instead of trying to pre-empt the EU’s failure by walking away now. We are just going to damage ourselves in the process.
June 8, 2018
Weak May has to go. She is a coward. Can we have a real LEAVER in charge please? Someone who will appoint a LEAVE cabinet amd LEAVE Chancellor (JR?). Get shot of the quisling civil servants doing Brussels work amd get us out of the EU /CU/SM pronto keeping our cash in the process. It is obvious what Brussels is up to aided by the traitorous MPs and Lords. Make Brexit impossible and bog us down until we lose the will to live. Be obstructive and difficult. Offer the people a truly crap deal and then finally a second referendum which Brussels hopes will result in the correct decision.
This will be the end of the independent UK as we would never get another chance to escape and we would be pushed towards the German ccontrolled federal superstate.
I can’t believe so many people don’t see this and are happy for the country to be given away. It’s truly depressing.
The only hope now is a strong Brexit leader who believes in it and gets us out of this mess. Stupid me thought Treason May might be another Thatcher. What a fool I was! Everything she touches fails and she hasn’t won a single concession from the corrupt cartel. Trump knows exactly how to stick it up the EU. We need a similar spirit leading Brexit.
June 8, 2018
Thatcher created the single market. She would be shocked at the economic illiteracy of people like Rees Mogg
Reply She did not, and the so called single market was just an EU power grab with many new laws
June 8, 2018
Terry, Read Mrs Thatcher’s Bruges speech 1988. The single market was the EU’s doing; Mrs Thatcher tried to make it work by mutual recognition rather than EU centralisation. She failed.
June 9, 2018
Well, I just read that speech. Here is what Mrs Thatcher said – “Britain does not dream of some cosy, isolated existence on the fringes of the European Community. Our destiny is in Europe, as part of the Community”.
So sad to see Mrs Thatcher’s legacy rubbished by intellectual pigmies like Jacob Rees Mogg and John Redwood
June 9, 2018
William Rex, Despite the occasional conciliatory remark about the EC (like the one you quote), and the circumspect praise of Europe (ie not the EC), the tenor of Mrs Thatcher’s speech in Bruges was clear. Clear enough for the EC, and Tory europhiles, to dislike it immensely.
Mrs Thatcher had few kind words for the sort of centralising EU that was already apparent from the EC’s direction. She distinguished Europe, its culture and its history from the almost incidental EC. She criticised the EC (the EU is worse) for suppressing nationhood. She was wholly opposed to a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.
She moved from being in favour of the EEC/EC/EU to outright opposition. That was why she was knifed in the back, for goodness sake. The 1988 speech was a significant step on that journey.
June 8, 2018
Dear John Redwood,
You are a good man who, having already told Theresa may to “get on with it” over Brexit must surely be tearing your hair out at the apparent incompetence of a Conservative Government allowing Brexit to be messed up by both the European Union and the Remainers who have a Majority in both the House of Lords and House of Commons. We should be in view of leaving the European Union properly by now and with a good deal (or plans to trade on WTO terms given EU intransigence).
I find it galling- truly galling (as you must)- that Jeremy Corbyn has succeeded in totally wiping the floor with Theresa May in PMQs several times in the last couple of months- over Brexit and incompetence in the handling of the trains, NHS pressures, Windrush. Each week sees fresh embarrassment as Marxist Jeremy Corbyn tears our Conservative Prime Minister to shreds. This feeds into a wider narrative of Conservative Incompetence that will have us fall behind in the polls, always on the back foot and a resurgent Labour Party given confidence by their leader’s new- found confidence at the Despatch Box.
Next week, the House of Lords’ EU Wrecking Amendments return to the Commons: Just what is YOUR Backstop Plan if the Government is defeated and the Wrecking Amendments- meaning really no more Brexit- are foisted on the hapless Theresa May Team?? Labour would be cock-a-hoop and Jeremy Corbyn will be using every PMQs from next week to berate and humiliate the Government. Decent Conservatives CANNOT allow the haplessness, incompetence and failure to dominate a Government that reflects very badly upon the Party.
The time has come to remove Theresa May. Get a proper Brexit- supporter in place who will go to the country with some popular policies (i.e. leave the EU ASAP, don’t pay them a penny, slash foreign aid- use the proceeds to cut taxes substantially to help Britain trade on WTO terms and build millions more homes for younger families). That way you get back a Brexit- supporting Majority and even if you do not, Jeremy Corbyn is unlikely to get anythong like a Majority (and Labour then can- rightfully in my view- carry the can for betraying the Majority who voted to leave the EU on 23rd June 2018). The Conservatives can then re-double to constrain the worst of Jeremy Corbyn’s Socialism, develop some decent policies of their own (i.e big tax cuts) and then win outright in the 2023 General Election.
We cannot go on like this, otherwise the Conservatives will definitely lose the next Election with Labour getting a majority to wreck the economy and do irreparable harm to the British Constitution. Please Sir, chat with your colleagues about what is at stake- there needs to be a concerted effort to oust Theresa May and have her replaced with a proper Brexiteer before we end up like John Major’s Government just before 1997!
June 8, 2018
āUse the proceeds to slash tax substantially.ā
Have you got any idea how much an average income tax payer contributes to foreign aid and the EU budget combined? No, it seems not.
Itās about Ā£1 a week. Combined.
Yes – if you are on an average salary of Ā£27k a year around Ā£54 of your tax each year goes to foriegn aid and the EU budget – and, obviously, some of the EU budget comes back to us anyway.
So what will you spend your weekly Ā£1 windfall on? A third of a pint?
PS – the really big items of UK government expenditure are welfare, pensions, health and debt interest. If you really want a windfall these areas combined make up 43% of your taxes – compared to the 1.8% the EU and foriegn aid do. Slash pensions.
June 8, 2018
Thats just income tax.
You should consider VAT NI Stamp duty capital gains tax council tax TFL car taxes insurance premium tax corporation tax and many many more.
The government spends 60 billion a year more than it raises in total taxation.
The rest it borrows or prints.
Therefore the billions we spend on overseas aid could all be borrowed money and an avoidable expenditure.
June 8, 2018
Andy, The EU costs us a whole lot more than the fee we pay. Prof Minford estimates that a WTO deal Brexit will net the UK about Ā£640bn, whilst costing the EU about Ā£500bn.
If we take your figure of Ā£1 per week for both the EU and DfID and multiply it by the number of income tax payers (30m) = Ā£1 x 52 x 30 million = Ā£1.56bn. Our net cash contribution to the EU alone is about Ā£12bn.
So who am I going to believe, a distinguished professor of economics who gets most of his forecasts right, or a Remain commenter who can’t even do simple arithmetic?
June 9, 2018
My problem with Prof. P.Minford is what he said to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on 11/09/2012 (accessible from parliament.uk): He did not seem to consider it a big deal if the UK car industry were to go the way the UK coal and steel industries had gone. Donāt you find that frightening?
June 10, 2018
His point was that service industries, tourism and the financial sector make up the vast majority of the modern UK economy.
Could it survive without manufacturing, yes it could.
He wasn’t calling for that to happen.
June 11, 2018
Andy, when you suggest the UK slashes pensions do you mean the pension credits paid to people who haven’t accrued their state pension through their 39 years or more working national insurance payments and those of their employer or are you suggesting the State Pensions that the majority have been paying their insurance into, created, costed and designed we are told by the wonderful Labour party should just be cancelled like some Ponzi scheme just as some of it’s initial opponents were concerned about from its inception.
June 8, 2018
DXon’t we make our own Camembert and Brie in the south west of England? My experience is that most of this is cheaper and usually better than the French varieties
June 8, 2018
Indeed, Tesco sell a very nice proper goat’s cheese – Kidderton Ash, made in Lancashire – which is quite as good as the French equivalent in Asda and elsewhere.
June 8, 2018
Agree with your last paragraph Mr Redwood, it amazes me that the people who want to keep us in the EU publish nothing but tales of EU Spite towards us.
And I agree with every, and there are many, commentator above who has said the time is long past to get rid of May. I have more gumption in my kitchen than she has. Seems the only people she is happy to slap down are her colleagues who supported Leave and WON the referendum. Her argument lost, the whole party needs reminding of this.
June 8, 2018
Well the way to strengthen the UK negotiation position is above all to be realistic about where we want to go and also to what we can and cannot achieve
Barnier had been very clear from the beginning..’backstop’ has to be allweather..it cannot have a time limit on it..as yestetdays mrs May’s UK paper would have it
If we cannot agree to this EU rule then talks as to our future with them will not preceed any further..we will be out..march 2019..and that’s it….
So cheer up brexiteers you’ve almost reached your goal
June 8, 2018
You can’t have a strong negotiating position if what you are are asking for is so daft that no one is ever going to accept it. That is your position.
This is simple: as is set out in the nice EU diagram with the steps in the EU have said that they are happy for us to have any deal between remaining in the single market and exiting without a deal.
The rights and obligations increase as you go further up the steps. This works both ways: the rights and obligations are mutual. Each step means a different border arrangement.
However you continually pretend that we can can have the rights without the obligations and that, whatever we do, whatever changes there are to the border are immaterial. It’s so obvious unrealistic.
Nor would we want the EU 27 to have unfettered and uncontrolled access to our market: that would be inconsistent with the vacuous soundbite of taking control of our borders. Again, the greater the mutual obligations accepted the greater the rights granted.
People aren’t stupid, we can see that outside a single market there are harder borders and, yes, although trade passes across them easily enough in most cases it as not as frictionless as the current arrangements.
Personally I really don’t care what we chose: I think the benefits and drawbacks attached to all of these options are massively overblown.
I can not understand why, having spent so many years campaigning to leave, you are now so afraid of spelling out the consequences. If you don’t we will be back in the EU before we know it.
June 8, 2018
Charles V, So you’re saying the EU wants a harder border the more likely we are to exit with no deal (“Each step means a different border arrangement.”)?
You need to have a word with Hans, the EU’s new Borders Spokesman, on here. He insists that the EU doesn’t want a hard Eire/N.I. border at all.
June 9, 2018
As I understand it the EU and ROI are happy with a border at the Irish sea, leaving Britain to chose the border it wants with the Ireland of Ireland and the rest of the EU.
Given that our host basically says it will make no odds to border arrangements whether or not we are in the Single Market and/or a Customs Union, assume the view is therefore that it doesn’t actually make a great deal of difference if NI is in and Britain is out? Presumably we wouldn’t even have to bother with any extra infrastructure at Hollyhead or Fishguard?
June 10, 2018
NickC,
Please, do me a favour and grow up
June 9, 2018
Well said! John Redwood has been campaigning to leave the EU for years, yet he seems baffled that this results in us no longer having the advantages of membership!
Reply Not so. I have repeatedly said we may leave without a deal and that will be fine. I want out of the single market and customs union
June 8, 2018
John,
If you want Brexit other than ‘in name only’ you know what you and others have to do. You MUST get rid of that blo*dy useless woman Mrs May. She is incompetent and frankly stupid. By using Robbins she is very effectively destroying the whole Brexit process. Amongst the circles I move in most of the Tories are seathing with rage at what they see unfolding. May might think she is being very clever and playing a good game, but that is not how it is going down with the grass roots. Let us have done with her: write your letter.
I’ve already written to my MP and got back a wishy washy reply. I’m told ‘there isn’t a majority in Parliament’ for Brexit, being a reason why some of the wrecking amendments will probably be accepted. Isn’t it time that YOU and other Brexit supporters, who have been in the Commons for decades, used the same procedural devices that have caused so much aggravation recently against the Remainiacs ???
The damage that is being done, not just to the Conservative Party, but to politics in general, and to the economy will take a generation plus to heal and recover. The longer Mrs May is allowed to play silly games the worse the outcome will be. Let us have done with her now, today, immediately.
June 8, 2018
It seems Barnier has thrown this backstop proposal back into May’s face . They must know their demand, the separation of NI from the UK is, unacceptable to any UK Government. Surely Mrs May must now see that more grovelling to the EU won’t achieve anything. Its long past the time May instructed Whitehall to plan for WTO.
June 8, 2018
Hear, hear, Ian. You have summed it up perfectly.
June 8, 2018
Barnier now holding the UK to ransom over N. Ireland.
I am speechless at the sheer stupidity of this PM. Her incompetence is beyond satire. She is deliberately setting out her stall that guarantees the UK will never leave the EU
She will betray the UK and its democracy.
Why is she still the leader of our party?
John, Have you any idea how close we are to being betrayed?
How can the DUP hold the UK to ransom? Why can’t Eurosceptic MPs threaten to depose May?
There are millions who are angry at what is happening to the UK. We are being humiliated on the international stage and treated like a screeching upstart
Tory MPs who believe in the UK and its sovereignty know what they must do. Depose May and do it now before we are trapped forever
June 8, 2018
Hysterically funny. Trump is leaving the G7 a day early while they spout on about Climate Change to see the Northern Korean Leader, negotiations with whom may change the course
of Asian and World history.
I see Putin is out of Russia just now visiting China. I wouldn’t surprise me if Trump, Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un are secretly meeting up while Trudeau, Juncker, May, Macron and Merkel chat about how sweaty its getting down under and up and over and how we should burn more dried cowpats to save polar bears and the planet
June 10, 2018
Trump leaves the TPP Ā āto protect America and its citizensā (23/01/2017).
Trump leaves the Paris agreement because it is a ābad agreementā, signed by Obama (01/06/2017).
Trump leaves UNESCO because they are anti-Israeli (12/10/2017).
Trump leaves the Iran nuclear agreement because it is a rotten agreement and has ādefinitive proofā (provided from 3 old documents by Netanyahu) that Iran iscontinuing its nuclear activities (08/05/2018).
Trump has found NATO obsolete (25/05/2017).
Trump has denounced NAFTA.
Trump is trying his best to block WTO.
Trump does not even have the courage to say he disagrees with other G6 heads of state, and tweets afterwards from his plane en route for a meeting with Kim and says the first minute will be enough to convince him of the issue of that meeting.
The Art of the Deal, written by a ghost writer … whoah, how is it possible that so many people are taken by such a character, the one who said in a primary election meeting on 24/02/2016 āI love the poorly educated. Weāre the smartest people, we are the most loyal peopleā.
And to finish, how comes a lot of people complained about the GDPR and nobody mentioned the CLOUD Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data) signed by Trump on 03/04/2018, which gives an extraterritorial right to the US agencies to snoop on any electronic communication if they so wish.
June 10, 2018
He is popular in America and odds are he will be elected for a second term.
Growth is up.
Taxes are down
Employment is up.
Apart from your incorrect claim about his attitude towards the WTO the rest of his decisions about foreign policy have been bold ones putting right 8 years of neglect by Obama and they are good for America.
He wants to force free and fair trade and he is exposing the Chinese Canadian and EU’s unfair trade tariff policies.
June 11, 2018
Good luck to the UK when dealing a FTA with the USA, hopefully with another POTUS.
June 11, 2018
Edward2, Are you sure that Trumpās claiming that car imports are a national security matter is not an impediment to WTO?
June 8, 2018
Most of us here (I will guess) will fully agree with your article, but we are not the decision makers, we are JUST the concerned citizens.
What YOU and your friends should be doing is getting this message to the Treasury and to TM.
The probelm is that our real decision makers are piloting us into a BRENO, and you and your friends must, if you ca, prevent it.
It is do or die time for Brexit, make your mark or we are doomed to life under the EU fotoo many years.
June 8, 2018
And we may also be doomed to life under a Labour government – which will certainly rub a lot of salt into a very painful wound.
Why oh why can’t our Government see where all this is leading? They may not care about their own jobs, but they certainly SHOULD care about the welfare of their country and its future.
June 8, 2018
Mrs May has no intention of us really leaving the EU. Until sufficient Conservative MPs call for a leadership election, she will get away with it. The time has come to act. Please get on with it.
June 8, 2018
Well I guess you John like us will be disappointed in the fact we are not leaving the EU. How can you stand working with such a bunch of incompetent fools? It has been your lifetime ambition to get out of the EU so why not take the bull by the horns and take the initiative to get rid of May?
June 10, 2018
You just make a ridiculous straw man argument over the ‘Project Fear’ stories. Everyone knows that certain potential issues have been reported without proper analysis, but the argument against a hard Brexit has recently coalesced around the REAL consequences of leaving and the vital needs of the country. That is indisputable. And I just want to ask you one question. Are you truly proud of the Leave campaign? Do you really think it explained the different possible scenarios for leaving? Do you think it presented established facts in an intelligent manner? Sorry – that’s three questions, but as numbers aren’t your strong point, you probably won’t notice.
June 10, 2018
Presumably the Remain campaign with it’s negative Project Fear was all perfect and you are proud of it.
June 10, 2018
No, both campaigns were so bad that there’s no point in comparing them. I was merely asking Mr Redwood if he’s proud of the Leave campaign, given that he was part of it. Everything he’s demanding derives from the outcome of a referendum that barely contained a verifiable fact. We’re already finding that people are amazed at the debates over issues that never surfaced in the referendum. You could have a further problem with the possible Russian links to the Leave campaign. Legitimacy doesn’t just depend on bare numbers of voters – but on honesty and things being done properly.
June 10, 2018
There was a referendum campaign.
It went on and on for months.
Some of it was based on dodgy statistics and claims for the future.
But it is all irrelevant because UK voters are not as gullible nor easily swayed as you think.
Most had decided years before.
June 10, 2018
ARRON BANKS
Apart from in Euro Elections, and in rare instances in other elections, I wouldn’t usually advocate voting UKIP. This page is not supportive of UKIP.
I recommend voting for whatever candidate offers us the best chance of the best deal on Europe.
Usually that means Tory (or Unionist), very occasionally Labour, (who for example among us would have needed to have held our noses at voting for Gisela Stuart or Kate Hoey), occasionally UKIP, and (rarely) someone else.
I do no agree with certain elements of UKIPs social attitudes, and don’t necessarily like them
However there’s no doubt in my mind that Remainers are conducting a Witch Hunt against Arron Banks and others who supported Leave.
This Kangaroo Court of MPs who have demanded that Banks appear before it, has no ‘Leave’ supporters whatsoever on it. This sort of thing is abuse of the processes and powers of the House of Commons.
It’s like the politburo.
And despite the fact at that some of them have been fined for serious expenses violations in the referendum, MPs are not conducting any ‘investigations’ into Remainiac activities.
Furthermore:- so what if Mr Banks has ‘Russian connections’? It’s not illegal to have ‘connections’ with foreigners. Russia is member of the UN Security Council.
Whatever anyone says about Remainiacs, they are definitely fully paid up members of the Xenophobic tendency. Their attitude to foreigners is that we must either cow tow to them or act as agents for them, or alternatively to or wage ‘cold war’, or even actual war on them.
Remainiacs have ‘connections’ with all and sundry everywhere, to help them to finance their Remainiac campaigns. At the moment a foreigner George Soros is financing their campaign to overturn the Referendum result.
At one point Remainers even had the US President and the EU itself making threats on their behalf. That only stopped, when it became clear it was losing them votes, rather than winning them any.
Why shouldn’t Russia try to influence the political decisions of other countries? The EU, by threat, hook, and by crook, does so relentlessly.
It’s only an issue if they do something illegal.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44428115
June 11, 2018
HAVING YOU’RE SWISS ROLL and EATING IT
Switzerland is nowhere near as vital a bi-lateral partner for the EU as the UK will be, whereas trade with the EU is even more vital for Switzerland than it is for Britain.
Switzerland is entirely land locked within the EU’s borders and has hardly any trade with anyone, save with the EU itself, or via it.
Yet Switzerland and the EU have Free Trade Agreements which would satisfy most Brexiters in this country. They would certainly satisfy me.
Switzerland is a member of EFTA but has resolutely refused to join the EEA or the EU.
Over the years intermittent threats have been made to Switzerland, by the EU, to the effect that this ‘case by case’ bi-lateral approach must end and that they must enter into an all embracing ‘deal’ with the EU.
Despite the fact however, that such a ban was in violation of the existing bi-lateral agreements, and in legal terms invalidates all of them, Switzerland, in 2014, voted in a Referendum to ban freedom of movement.
The EU took no adverse action. Why would they? They have a Trade Surplus with Switzerland. But not as big the one they have with the UK.
On 22 December 2016, Switzerland and the EU concluded a yet new bi-lateral agreement, whereby a new Swiss law (in response to the referendum) would require Swiss employers to take on any job seekers (whether Swiss nationals or non-Swiss citizens registered in Swiss job agencies) whilst continuing to observe the free movement of EU citizens into Switzerland thus allowing them to work there.
Freedom of Movement into Switzerland is is not like it is in the UK. It does not create entitlements to in ‘work’ or various other State Benefits.
This latest agreement largely removes all effective provisions which allowed for free economic migration into Switzerland. The preference given to Swiss people in the jobs market, is more effective than any of these quota arrangements being mooted for the UK.
The Swiss have now voted in a Referendum to ban foreign (including EU) betting firms from operating On Line in Switzerland.
This is just about as serious a violation of any Single Market Rules that anyone can imagine. It even amounts to censorship of the Internet. It’s not something I would suggest that the UK does.
How is it however, that Switzerland can have these highly favourable arrangements with the EU, but Remainiacs in the UK say that we have to do as we’re told?
Switzerland’s secret weapon is Referenda. The EU knows full well that there’s nothing Swiss politicians can give the EU, unless they can get it through a Referendum. And Swiss like British people will not budge if they think they are being blackmailed.
Would that it were the same in the UK. Here Remainiacs however, offer Britain up to be blackmailed. And even when we are not being, they invent scenarios telling us that we are, and must give in anyway and scheme all sort of scheme to circumvent the referendum result or to hold another one with a rigged question.
We’ll get a ‘deal’ from the EU which will be better than being in it. But we’ll only do so, if we hold out for one.