I see no evidence that the EU wants to offer anything by way of a reset. They see the UK asking for one as another opportunity to make the deal worse. Nor do I see the Uk asking for much that would be worth having.
The EU wants to impose more of their laws on us, take more of our money, take more of our fish and send us more migrants.
The UK seems to have asked for easements on rules for EU import of some foods and easier access for our musicians.
The UK should be finding a way to end the sea border in the Irish Sea, and to end putting Northern Ireland under EU laws. There is an easy technical answer to the EU’s alleged problem. The UK would promise to enforce EU laws on any exports from UK/NI to Ireland but would not need to have any additional checks on trade between GB and NI than there is betweenLondon and Birmingham,
The UK should be proposing the same kind of relaxations for services trade with the EU as we now enjoy through trade treaties with other parts of the world.
The UK should end our links with the EU carbon trading system and remove the threat of the carbon border tax.The UK should end the rights of supertrawlers to hoover up too much fish from our waters and put in a policy to rebuild thee UK fishing industry.Much of what we need to do can be done by ourselves making our own decisions as a sovereign country.
April 28, 2025
We don’t have ‘sovereign’ politicians anymore.
Before anything can be fine, they all need to be changed so that those who remain do not ‘infect’ the new intake.
There is a pandemic in the current political class. They should be isolated.
April 28, 2025
Correct Lynn. The uniparty is dedicated to One World Government which the EU is a major pillar. As Mandelslime said we are in a post democracy World and the likes of him actually believe that.
No longer do Western government’s govern for the people bit kneel at the altar alof UN and WEF dictat
Climate Change is a prime example of the people being scammed by their leaders.
The EU is modelled on the Soviet Politburo system and is beyond redemption.
Trump and Farage are about to break up the cosy consensus together with the likes of Le Pen and the Afd.
It can’t come soon enough.
April 28, 2025
@Lynn Atkinson – so true
I would guess that 90% of them are ‘free-loaders’ that would prefer a higher authority took over their thinking completely.
April 28, 2025
They certainly do not seem to have any concern about the interests of their voters. NHS waiting lists are clearly being manipulated on a grand scale. The native population pushed and/or priced out of rented accomodation for boat arrivals. Hotel prices up hugely too, crime up, shoplifting and phone thefts up hugely…
I have no faith in Starmer whatsoever especially on the EU nor on anything else. I expected him to be even more dire than “unequivocally safe” Sunak and he has been even worse than I expected.
April 28, 2025
Well we do have some ‘sovereign’ politicians: Nigel and his team.
I think that’s why Reform is doing so well in the polls.
2TK Starmer and Co are deep Europhobes and we can guarantee we will never get a good deal from them – any deal would be even worse than we got from Teresa May.
April 28, 2025
Sorry, I meant Europhiles !
April 28, 2025
Impossible to know what you mean. You got your Brexit, so you got sovereignty back, you get to vote for whoever you want to represent you at Westmisnter. If you mean you don’t like the decisions taken at Westminster, well, welcome to democracy
April 28, 2025
Westminster Democracy – a superb antonym.
Also – Pravda Truth.
April 28, 2025
We need to SELECT those we want to vote for. That is the scam we have yet to undo.
April 28, 2025
⚡️A massive power outage has occurred in Spain and affected almost all of Western Europe.
📍There is no electricity in Seville, Barcelona and Pamplona. Power outages are also reported in Valencia, writes El Pais;
📍The metro is not working in Madrid and Barcelona, passengers had to get out of the cars and walk;
📍Telephone lines are out of order throughout Spain. The airport in Madrid is without power;
📍Portugal, Andorra and France are also reporting power outages, reports La Vanguardia;
📍The Spanish state grid operator said that a failure in the power grid could have caused the power outage.
April 28, 2025
An amazing amount of chaos just because of a little energy provision problem – Imagine what a problem like that will do to the UK when our system ‘fails’
April 28, 2025
net-zero baby net-zero
April 28, 2025
Could happen here, should the Interconnectors be disabled, withdrawn, refused to provide essential addition for our demand.
April 29, 2025
If our demand was resourced via and only by fossil fuel power stations, …we wouldn’t have a problem
April 28, 2025
Good morning.
We should be planning to be self-efficient in many areas especially when it comes to energy generation. We should tell the EU that we will no longer allow them access to our fishing grounds and deny all EU Citizens access to our jobs market. A recession is coming and we need to take as many foreigners off the State teat as possible.
We won’t though as there is no will to do so.
April 28, 2025
This government will do none of the suggestions of our host and in the comments. Stop wasting your time on trying to get ‘UK First’ into Starmer’s thinking.
What we can do is support the ONLY party that wants real separation from the EU, and encourage them to state publicly and often that, when they come into office, all arrangements with the EU will be reviewed and ALL that are detrimental to the interests of the UK WILL BE terminated.
April 28, 2025
What a timely post Mark…
Mr Miliband needs to be sacked and somebody put in charge who understands the precarious situation that the UK is currently in with regard to electrical power security. So, SMRs can’t be delivered and commissioned overnight but any destruction of currently operating or mothballed power stations needs to stop right now.
April 28, 2025
But you have to realise that Starmer is a civil service EU stooge and they are leading us black into the EU civil service dictatorship asap. Everything they do, such as the censorship bill apes the EU legislation. In fact they aim to exceed it. It will take a Ceuscescu solution to halt it.
April 28, 2025
The Establishment has never accepted the result of the EU Referendum and has refused to implement it.
They don’t seem to realise that, in the words of JFK “those who make peaceful change impossible make violent revolution inevitable.”
April 28, 2025
The result of the referendum was implemented over 5 years ago when we left the EU.
April 29, 2025
The terms they agreed for “Brexit” means we remain controlled by the EU across large policy areas and we are not allowed to compete with them.
We are semi-detached; we didn’t LEAVE.
April 28, 2025
+1
April 28, 2025
We can help by lending support to the newly launched UK Fisheries Campaign. Read about it in Facts4EU.org
April 28, 2025
Mary M: Correct. The scandal that is the plundering by EU factory fishing ships continues and still needs action.
” The UK Fisheries Campaign (UKFC ) is calling for an outright ban OR the very strictest controls at least on the largest of these factory ships, as well as a rigid system of monitoring and inspection on the remainder. Furthermore, given that the catches can be valued at more than £ 1 million, it seems appropriate to start charging significant annual licence fees for the privilege of being able to fish in the UK’s Exclusive Economic Zone” – Facts4eu website article 23/4/25.
EU commentators have already stated that the UK will be unlikely to get anything at all without its agreement to the so called youth free movement scheme they crave, or whatever they want to call it tomorrow or the next day. And not forgetting that the Defence issue is linked to Fish.
I would like to see some sensible action with regard to easing the situation & regulations for our musicians and bands etc., to perform & tour in the EU. Mad that this was not sorted out way back.
April 28, 2025
Mary we have been ‘lending support’ for 40 years. It has not worked. As usual the British will wake up to the urgency of the situation 10 minutes past midnight.
How many miracles can we produce? How many Barnes Wallaces are there? Our big shots these days are actors!
April 28, 2025
The biggest problem we will have to face in the coming years is Ireland. Overwhelmingly, Ulster voted Remain in the Brexit referendum. The fact that the rest of the UK narrowly voted leave has caused all sorts of difficulties, leaving NI still under EU rules and though there is no hard land border, there is a sea border.
Dissident Republicans in the Londonderry/Derry area have banded together under the “New IRA” banner and have carried out armed attacks against PSNI officers, shooting the journalist Lyra McKee dead in April 2019 during a riot instigated when Biden was visiting Eire. Once again, they claim they are fighting for a united Ireland
The “New IRA” numbers less than 150 activists and compared to the Provisional IRA – which fought the British Army to a standstill during the latter part of the Troubles – remains a fringe organisation. They have formed a pro-Brexit far-left political group (Saoradh) The PSNI describe the party as the “political voice” of the New IRA and indicate that there is much membership overlap between the two groups.
Sinn Fein, now a mainstream political party, has achieved a measure of electoral success on both sides of the divide since the Good Friday Agreement. The British Government should be very careful over changing the current border arrangements
April 28, 2025
Speaking as an Ulster Unionist, I am furious that the Conservative party betrayed us by agreeing Brexit for GB, but not for Northern Ireland. It seems some subjects of the Crown matter less than others to the Conservatives. The Tories never had a plan for Brexit, and I am as angry as ever when I read John Redwood now proposing a ‘solution’ which the EU has repeatedly said it will never accept. You should never have voted for the deal in the first place Mr John Redwood
Reply I did not. I and a few other MPs presented an option to solve the alleged border problem unilaterally but the government refused.
April 28, 2025
If NI mattered to the Tories they would have presented a plan to deal with the border BEFORE the referendum. But they never did, and never have
Reply Some of us did.
April 28, 2025
Appeasement never works.
April 28, 2025
And here today is a commentary in the same unionist newspaper:
https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/opinion/columnists/owen-polley-steve-bakers-contemptible-attack-on-unionists-and-his-hypocrisy-does-not-mean-that-labour-is-a-better-government-5101679
which warns:
“The astonishing thing is that Labour’s masterplan seems to be to voluntarily conform with all sorts of aspects of the EU, without asking for any guarantees or anything in return. It is an astonishingly naive strategy. And, after so many years of broken promises, you would expect unionists to be sceptical about its chances of success.
Baker’s point was that it would be wrong for unionists to support a solution for NI, if it reversed Brexit for the rest of the UK. This argument was contemptible from someone with his backstory. At the same time, there are few reasons to believe that Labour’s groveling attitude to the EU is actually going to repair our place in the Union.”
April 28, 2025
Harrogate also voted to Remain. It left with the rest of the U.K. why do you think NI is any different?
April 28, 2025
Because NI has a land border
with the EU
April 28, 2025
Excellent point
April 28, 2025
PS have you not seen the hundreds of thousands in the ‘Free State’ marching against Sinn Fein? They chant “Sinn Fein are traitors’.
Everything comes to those who wait.
Had the U.K. left the EU the Free State would have been begging to rejoin our Union.
April 28, 2025
According to express.co.uk 06/05/2024 (yes, 2024) ‘Anti-immigration protesters in Dublin shout ‘Sinn Fein are traitors’ in asylum row’. And the following text starts with ‘Hundreds of anti-immigration protesters …’.
So the ‘hundreds of thousands’ were just hundreds and it happened last year.
April 28, 2025
Here is a letter that I have sent to the Maidenhead Advertiser:
“I noticed this interesting headline: “EU to remove major obstacle to bring softer Brexit one step closer”.
Let us hope that is true, and that the EU will then remove more unnecessary obstacles to good relations.
For example, the EU could choose to eliminate some of the frustrations it has inflicted on our exporters.
When people complain about extra paperwork that is EU paperwork, created by the EU – not by Brexit.
Which problems also beset American exporters, one reason why President Trump is fed up with the EU.
EU protectionism impacts on goods produced by the 94.4 per cent of mankind who live outside the EU.
The EU itself, and each of its member states, have ratified the 2017 WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement.
So having accepted that treaty obligation to make trade easier, why does the EU make it more difficult?”
I find that I first mentioned that WTO treaty in a letter published in January 2019, when there had been a ridiculous story that Theresa May might have to stop imports of the insulin upon which she herself depends.
April 28, 2025
If we had a government that was seeking a genuine Brexit the Irish border question would be solved, with Northern Ireland wholly within the UK and the border with the Republic being the border with the EU.
The EU claim that goods arriving in NI could end up in the Republic. The UK is used by many lorries travelling from the Republic to mainland Europe. How can we be certain that their contents aren’t unloaded en route? It sounds like tougher checks are required, with more paperwork, which would cause a delay that could simply be eliminated when the EU agrees that NI is not subject to EU rules. Without the UK land bridge a great many more ferries would be required to join the Republic to the EU.
The SNP want to be independent from the UK but subservient to Brussels, how do they imagine the border will operate?
April 28, 2025
We should fully Leave the EU.
Then we should invite European countries to join the United Kingdom, to follow all our laws and to pay us a large annual fee.
April 28, 2025
+1
April 28, 2025
Perhaps Germany will see that they would be better off leaving the EU, trading under WTO.
Supporting the cosy lame ducks is no longer of value with US pulling away, and Putin eyeing the recent joiners.
April 28, 2025
SG
It’s your line of thinking which promotes trouble
Always surrendering to the minority. I assume you are a rabid remainer and would concede anything Brussels asked for.
April 28, 2025
The point of Labour’s plans is to pretend UK is getting something from the EU whilst in reality sneaking UK back under EU rule. As for migrants, Labour sees nothing wrong with Islamists and any who hate UK as much as Labour’s Woke Hard Left do, coming to UK to join the fight.
April 28, 2025
It is notable that not a single one of the renegotiation areas briefed to the press are a net benefit to UK. Aligning food standards will benefit EU exporters who already have a large trade surplus with UK, free movement will benefit low wage economic migrants to UK from East Europe and those granted asylum in the EU is return for a fewer number of middle-class UK students who want holiday jobs in the EU, maintaining fishing quotas just means maintaining the current grossly unfair splits (eg. the EU has 97% of the quota for sandeels in UK waters, UK has 3%), the carbon border tax is just more net zero costs on UK industry to drag them down to EU level and ensure UK has no advantage. Seriously, where is the benefit to UK in ANY of this ? Apparently UK gets the “chance” to bid on EU defence projects – we can guess how many of those UK will win.
April 28, 2025
We don’t need a reset.
We should tell them that we are implementing the result of the EU Referendum and will be LEAVING the EU …. and all its control mechanisms. Because We DO compete with friends ….. as well as “not so friendly” nations.
April 28, 2025
The short answer is we should not agree to reset the EU rules
We voted out of the EU and out means out.
To try to reset a deal with EU would be a waste of time because any deal would involve us taking a large share of the EU debt and giving up fishing rights which are not negotiable and at the same time show us up as a weak governed country
It is almost certain we won’t get as good as we give as the U.K. have become weak negotiators and we are too keen to get back to Europe whereas the EU are not so keen to have us back
Don’t let’s waste time on a futile renegotiation to get back into the EU
Do deals on individual products and tariffs that benefit the U.K. but not wholesale renegotiateion
April 28, 2025
So “The EU wants to impose more of their laws on us, take more of our money, take more of our fish and send us more migrants.” – ’twas ever thus – and Starmer et al can be relied upon to help it succeed.
April 28, 2025
Your post today John is pure common-sense, and that’s unfortunately why nothing along the lines you outline will happen.
Most politicians do not seem to have any common-sense, let alone practice it.
If there is a complicated and expensive fudge of a solution that will let them off the hook for being responsible, that will be the path that is chosen, no matter how much it costs, or if it inconveniences those who have to work with it !
Who on earth would want to be a fisherman, farmer, or own any sort of commercial business these days.
April 28, 2025
Remoaner Starmer urged on by his coterie of North London Brexit haters will sell us out. He wants to rejoin the EU. He knows it would electoral suicide to do so openly; so he will do it be stealth.
April 28, 2025
The rule should be as President Kennedy once said – ask not what your country can do for you only ask what you can do for your country – and the same applies to the EU. If you’re only ever thinking about what’s in it for me then you’re thinking about the wrong club.
April 28, 2025
We don’t want to have anything to do with the EU even if we were beneficiaries, and we were never that! And it’s not a ‘club’ – it’s a prison.
April 28, 2025
‘I see no evidence that the EU wants to offer anything by way of a reset’.
The leadership of neither main political party (Lab & Con) wants to reopen the issue, and the EU is unlikely to revisit the question until Labour, Conservatives, and now Reform are willing to consider it. I would guess no one in the EU wants Britain yo-yoing in and out with every change of government.
According to commonslibrary.parliament.uk 22/04/2025 ‘Statistics on UK-EU trade’, in 2024 exports of services to the EU were 19% above their 2019 level in real terms, while exports to non-EU countries were 23%. So, not that bad. What is the justification of the fifth paragraph?
April 28, 2025
What nonsense hefner.
It is obvious that the PM and the Government are very ambitious for realignment with the EU.
Closer relationship is the motto.
May 2, 2025
I wonder who’s talking nonsense. Do you really think that each of the EU27 countries will agree to have UK back? Any decision by the EU takes years with multiple meetings to get some kind of majority and allowing the Commission to decide. Do you think that Macron would agree with Orban or Tusk with Fico on reintegrating UK?
There might be some agreement on the defence package being discussed right now, allowing UK companies to bid for contracts within the €150bn SAFE agreement.
More than that, I doubt it very much.
April 28, 2025
None, other than leave
April 28, 2025
Regarding the UK and the eu, does anybody know why the government is keen for youngsters to be more mobile?
April 28, 2025
There is only one thing that would satisfy – and that is a No-Deal reset.
We don’t want any EU rules or obligations – we owe them nothing. They owe us plenty for their numerous dirty tricks. We certainly do not want their brand of bureaucratic democracy.
We so badly need to float free of the suffocating EU influence.
April 28, 2025
The majority of the Unionists voted to leave.
You are describing the aftermath of Blair’s capitulation, the Belfast Agreement. The IRA had been roundly beaten and comprehensively infiltrated so they could not operate, yet Blair gave them everything they asked for.
April 28, 2025
Doesn’t matter what we as the public think, say, or do, the only political ‘will’ is that of Starmer wishing to put us back under EU control by whatever means he can find, whilst saying he is not. This is the most dishonest government of my lifetime and we will lose out. The EU are suited fine by the current arrangements and see no reason to make things easier for us. They never did when we were members, so what chance now? We need an honest PM and government who treat the national interest first and foremost, which this shower of incompetents never will. Looking forward to Friday to see the results of the elections (which we have been denied here).
April 28, 2025
We’ll get nothing from the EU. They know Starmer wants to rejoin. A process that has begun.
April 28, 2025
Leave and work on WTO rules. Re-engage in areas that benefit us as well as them. Push Free Trade Agreements with Australia, NZ, Japan and Canada.
If the EU want a wall built between Northern Ireland and Eire, let them build it.
If we re-negotiate with the EU from WTO rules we can begin slowly – not negotiate on a million things all at once, we have demonstrated complete incompetency in these huge “everything covered” deals.
Stop paying the French hundreds of millions of £s to escort illegal immigrants over here.
Let’s negotiate lot’s of different agreements with the EU that benefit us both. They want sell us cars, we’d like financial services.
They want fish, well they can’t have any.
April 28, 2025
+1
April 28, 2025
We have no idea what EU trawlers are taking out of our waters; what we do know is that their fishing methods are totally non-discriminatory over what they catch. How can we have a trade agreement over fish with the EU when we have no idea what we are offering them other than carte blanche? We do not need a trade agreement with the EU over our fish. Trade is a mutual arrangement whereby one party agrees to sell goods or services at a price and another party agrees to purchase at that price. Anything else is piracy.
The EU is hostile to any European country that does not agree to be ingested by it. That is why it has been stirring up trouble in Northern Ireland for us. It has the backing of globalists whose perverse ambition is to abolish all national borders preparatory to ruling over all despite their ultimately failed bloodthirsty coup in Russia. This is why the globalists who have lost control of Russia have been engineering mayhem in Ukraine supported by the EU which also wants to take it.
April 28, 2025
Any re-set wth the EU is wishful thinking without removing the majority in Parliament and the Civil Service who are supporters of EU membership, Net Zero and mass legal and illegal immigration. This will require a series of referendums by a totally new incoming administration.
April 28, 2025
247 criminals arrived in the UK yesterday; from the safe country of France…escorted from france and picked up mid channel by british government
April 28, 2025
GC – That makes 1821 people in 33 boats – April 13 to 27 ( 15days )
and 1422 people in 26 boats the previous 15 days – March 29 to April 12.
Total 3243 / 59 boats in 30 days ( Official stats )
Who’s delivering the life jackets back to France I wonder.
April 28, 2025
So they are the ‘gangs that must be smashed’!
April 28, 2025
GC:
Why are we inviting undocumented young men of fighting age and with deeply misogynistic cultures into the country with the offer of free accommodation (now includes houses), free health and social care, £40/week pocket money, free entertainment and the complete freedom to roam our streets, including around girls’ schools?
April 29, 2025
…and once here, you can send for your family, according to ECHRs right to family life
April 28, 2025
We are to be the EU’s refugee dustbin.
Britain is literally collapsing before our eyes.
April 28, 2025
“The EU wants to impose more of their laws on us.”
No, it’s the other way round. Our Civil Service wants us to be under EU law, and not just EU law, any international, UN or transnational law they can find even if it doesn’t apply to us, such as the Chagos deal.