The government is wrong to consider locking us into EU SPS rules. The EU when we were in it designed rules to keep out better value safe food from our previous supply sources in Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Argentina. It used regulations and tariffs to limit imports.
At the same time it rolled out policies to disadvantage UK farms and get us more dependent on EU imports. They refused to give us sufficient milk quota , forcing us to buy value added products like yoghurt from the continental countries who were granted bigger quotas. They used disease in UK cattle to have a long and comprehensive ban on UK beef. They gave grants to get the UK to rip out orchards so we could import more continental fruit.
The current argument is about SPS regulations. The EU insists under its Sanitary and Phytosanitary rules that all meat and dairy export consignments into the EU require a new vet certificate to say the animals were in good health. This is an added cost and slows things down. Previously it was sufficient to run compliant animal husbandry and to notify immediately if a farm had an animal health problem. The UK can of course insist on similar controls to those the EU imposes . If we did so the EU would be more interested in reducing the burden.
Uk exports of meat, cheese and butter to the EU have always been modest. We import three times as much food and drink from the EU as we export to them. It would be wrong to give away our ability to shape our own food safety rules and import from places other than the EU where the product is better value.
May 1, 2025
A voice in the wilderness john. 2TK sees alignment with EU rules as a cheese paring excersise to slowly readmitted us to Brussels law.
Reform will of course cancel any agreement he makes with Brussels which disadvantages the UK and I’m sure they’re aware of that.
Starmer wants to sabotage any chance of an FTA with the USA because he’s a rabid Europhile.
Today should be interesting
May 1, 2025
IW,
Today may be interesting but it will not be a game changer.
Labour will just carry in parliament as before. This site may highlight numerous areas where Labour is going wrong, but it does not indicate a way it can be stopped before the next general election.
Even Lifelogic cannot say Allister Heath is surely right in todays Telegraph :-
‘ I can finally see how Labour’s abominable misrule will be brought to an end’
A huge defeat in local elections will not do the trick.
May 1, 2025
@Ian wragg – yes 2TK will do what ever is required to block the UK from engaging with the USA at any level. He is anti UK first, fully paid up WEF disciple. The UK and its future is not on his radar
May 1, 2025
Today wind is supplying 2.1 gw of electricity whilst gas and nuclear are supplying 60% of demand. For the whole month of April the maximum wind has provided is 4gw
Will this ideological government learn from the Iberian experience. I think not. It’s goung to take a full scale revolt by 2TK s government. Again today will be interesting especially for those liebour MPs with small majorities. Nothing to lose.
I hope my leaflet distribution and canvassing for REFORM has been woth it.
May 1, 2025
How much electricity will be needed on a cold January day after we are all forced to use heat pumps and EVs? We might need 20 times+ current wind capacity (Solar will not help much in short winter days) plus this increase in grid capacity and in Gas/coal or imported wood buring back up for when their is little wind. A patently insane agenda.
May 1, 2025
LL : “A patently insane agenda.”
Not, if you either believe the hoax that CO2 controls temperature and that we must show the way to save the planet from its current warming of 0.14 degrees C per decade according to UAH satelliet data, whilst everyone else carries on emitting CO2 regardless, or you wish to sabotage the UK’s economy and national security.
May 1, 2025
Even if you “believe the hoax that manmade C02 is a climate emergency” it still makes
no sense as you also need the rest of the world to cooperate AND for the things you propose to reducte CO2 significantly. Neither of these are likely or true anyway!
May 1, 2025
Please could you always also report the percentage of our electricity that we are importing from foreign powers via the interconnectors? I vaguely recall a French politician suggesting that they should cut off our electricity to punish us for something … oh yes, it was over how much of our fish they should be allowed to take:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/05/france-uk-jersey-eu-energy-supply-fishing-row-channel
“The EU could hit Britain and Jersey’s energy supply over the UK’s failure to provide sufficient fishing licences to French fishers, France’s EU affairs minister has said.”
It makes a mockery of Ed Miliband’s claims that he is trying to free our energy supplies from foreign control.
May 1, 2025
Sir John has previously provided this:
https://grid.iamkate.com/
May 1, 2025
Miliband has always claimed that UK energy security requires a percentage of EU energy mix via interconnectors (its the EU long term plan ie an EU grid)
May 1, 2025
IW :
Correct. It’s going to take at the very least social unrest before the Civil Service call a halt to Net Zero. Never forget all the pain of Net Zero is to save the planet, the ultimate excuse for any unpopular policy. So even planned and unplanned blackouts, food, heating and transport rationing and de-industrialisation and consequently impoverishment are considered to be absolutely necessary. Stalin didn’t end collectivisation despite it being unpopular with the peasants, caused social unrest and led to the deaths of millions. And even if it makes no difference to the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere or the average global temperature the pain is necessary to persuade others to follow, and also because, as Borealis Johnson announced to the World at the UN, “we were the first to send the great puffs of acrid smoke to the heavens on a scale to derange the natural order”. So we deserve the pain.
BTW the average global temperature, according to UAH satellite data, is currently increasing at 0.14 degrees C per decade.
May 1, 2025
if one looks at the drroyspencer.com (the site with UAH satellite data) and click top right on ‘Latest v6.1 Global temperature update for March 2025’ one gets to the first figure showing the evolution of the global temperature for the lower atmosphere between 1979 and beginning of 2025. Over these 46 years it goes roughly from a -0.3c to +0.5c (averaging ‘by eye’ over 10-year periods), so a potential 0.178C/decade. So already out of the 0.14C/decade (reported repeatedly by our august contributor herein) by roughly 25%.
Then going to the Table immediately below showing the temperature departure of the last 15 months relative to the 1991-2020 climatology, month by month, and for different parts of the globe. For the globe the values goes from +0.45C in 01/2025 to +0.94C in 04/2024. So well above the 0.14C/decade or 0.014C/year that OR keeps repeating. And that using the UAH data he is so fond of (and that I guess he has never looked at, or if he has, does not understand them).
Roy Spencer is a proper scientist and shows his measurements as they come to him. He does not try to repeat ad infinitum arguments that he knows are not correct anymore.
I don’t know what your background is, but I doubt very much he had anything to do with dealing with figures, or maybe a long long time ago.
May 1, 2025
I assume there has been no alterations in the measuring stations during the periods you refer to hefner.
No changes in the mixture of satellite versus ground stations.
No alterations in the placement of older measuring stations.
No ending of measuring stations in some countries or the introduction of new measuring stations in new countries.
May 2, 2025
Sam, I quote UAH, a satellite system that has been up since 1979, and the very same satellite system that OR quotes.
So no impact whatsoever of measuring stations at ground level.
Please, for once, go to the website and read for yourself. There is a ‘discussion … of the dataset located here’. Click on it and you’ll see how those satellite measurements are made and processed (‘Calculation’, ‘Monthly averaging’, ‘Diurnal cycle’).
May 2, 2025
I was only asking hefner.
So no change in the satellite system their overall numbers and positions over the last few decades?
Whilst you are arguing about a warming difference of approx 3 tenths of one degree measured as a global average over a period of decades.
It is such a tiny figure of difference as to be a probable rounding error.
May 2, 2025
Obviously you didn’t bother to go on the site and read the information there.
The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer has been part of various NOAA satellites, and none can be on the exact same orbit than its predecessors. So taking the raw radiances (that’s what AMSR measures) there are corrections applied to them when deriving the temperature from these radiances. But that is part of the algorithms that all satellite measurements have to go through. It has been like that since the first meteorological satellite at the end of the 60s, and these algorithms (which account for the type of channels where measurements are taken (UV, visible, near-IR, IR or microwave), the potential effect of the diurnal cycle of insolation depending what parameter is to be retrieved, the height of the satellite, its orbit (and how much of the Earth it covers in a day, whether it is an ascending or descending orbit (as the geometry/distorsion under which a scene is seen is different) … have been worked out for each new satellite before launch and checked and checked again either regularly ‘manually’ or automatically.
There is now more than 50 years of experience in doing such things shared between NASA, NOAA, ESA, the Japan, Indian, Russian, Korean meteorological satellite services of the meteorological agencies.
0.3 deg on a point measurement is huge, 0.3 deg obtained after averaging over the surface of the planet at an original horizontal resolution of a few square kilometres is statistically robust. I’m afraid that’s statistics 101.
If it were not one should not bother to run elections. What is one person’s view on politics worth? But what if a couple of thousands are involved in a poll? What if some millions have voted?
May 3, 2025
Gosh you sound really clever there hefner.
Thanks for your long essay
What happened to the rapid and terrible predictions
of warming promised after 2000 that never happened.
The rate of increase has reduced even with changes to the methodology of measuring.
Maldives still above sea level.
Snow still in Europe ski resorts and Mount Kilamanjaro still has snow on it.
PS
You now say that 0.3 over a decade as a global average is a huge change but your original claim was that it was 4 tenths of one degree more than that.
Have you dropped that claim?
May 5, 2025
Sorry Sam, I had answered your questions but Sir John must have thought my comments were not worth your time.
May 5, 2025
Oops sorry, it appeared further done. Apologies.
May 1, 2025
Seems like the authorities are hiding the cause of the Iberian blackout, though they must know what caused it. – no surprise there. Heard an expert say she thought it was too much sun and wind in the grid which apparent has no brakes when things go wrong, and quickly escalates whereas conventional production with huge turbines etc. can limit escalation. Something to do with DC from renewables instead of AC from conventional production which the grids were never designed to cope with. Above my head, but seems very plausible and would hope it would give Milliband and the government pause, but doubtful with such ignorant zealots.
May 1, 2025
graham1946 :
I recommend reading : Limitations of ‘Renewable Energy” by Leo Smith MA (Elecetrical Sciences):
http://www.templar.co.uk/downloads/Renewable%20Energy%20Limitations.pdf
It was very useful for the understanding of electrical energy.
May 1, 2025
Indeed also the free on line https://www.withouthotair.com/ written by a climate alarmist (sustainable energy without the hot) WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES, but he was also a sensible realist & Cambridge physicist.
May 1, 2025
No similar risks for us then. We receive about 20% of our demand most of the time, even with solar and breezy wind contributing up to 45%. That means they will have to add about 50% more to stand a chance of eliminating the undersea cable power. And that assumes we won’t need more electricity. Of course with the present Cabinet doing their best to reduce use of electricity it might make that target slightly easier.
May 3, 2025
Sam, you have not checked recent pictures of Kilimanjaro, have you? Over the last few years there are pictures of Uhuru Peak (the top at 5,895 m) snow-free, and that for several weeks.
Kilimanjaro was still permanently snow-covered in the ‘90s-‘00s.
0.4 C ++ was not my claim but what Dr Spencer has put on his website. You still have not looked at his website, have you?
When you stop considering that I am responsible for the data produced by various scientists in different institutions, I’ll go back answering you. In the meantime …. …
May 1, 2025
I’m confused. If the SPS says vet certificates are needed to import products into the EU, why would that stop us from importing (non EU) products into the UK (given we’re not part of the EU)?
Reply The EU would stop us importing non compliant products if we sign an alignment agreement.
May 1, 2025
Reply -reply
The utter madness of some politicians knows no bounds.
I am afraid this what you get when people with no experience of running anything in their lives before, other than perhaps a bath, try to run a country ,
Words fail me.
May 2, 2025
Alan, why isn’t Kemi, Farage, et al. shouting about this SPS sellout? I hadn’t heard of it until I read this.
As John Redwood suggests: “The UK can of course insist on similar controls to those the EU imposes . If we did so the EU would be more interested in reducing the burden.” Can’t the other party leaders say they will do this?
May 1, 2025
Reply to reply. Thanks for explaining.
How very depressing that we have a government that actively seeks to restrict our freedom om choice in food, energy and so much else.
May 1, 2025
Education, Healthcare, Transport, Heating systems, Cars…!
May 1, 2025
The Windsor Framework embodies a kind of alignment agreement just for Northern Ireland, where EU rules apply for importation of goods, including from Great Britain, and also for production of goods. That is why a truck with fish from Scotland was sent back there because some of the serial numbers on some boxes within the shipment were found not to match their paperwork.
https://www.newsletter.co.uk/business/major-fish-supplier-says-irish-sea-border-disastrous-after-big-shipment-is-turned-back-at-belfast-port-over-protocol-paperwork-5098767
“Major fish supplier says Irish Sea border ‘disastrous’ after big shipment is turned back at Belfast Port over Protocol paperwork”
The EU should use the risk based approach laid down in the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement, and so should we. I do not believe that we should create unnecessary obstacles to imports in retaliation for their actions.
May 1, 2025
So, we’ll be back in the EU then.
May 1, 2025
Seems So
May 1, 2025
Yep. In this critical area. They can starve us out if they choose.
May 2, 2025
….and cut off the power
May 1, 2025
The Establishment has never accepted the democratic instruction to LEAVE the EU.
They know they can’t win the argument with the public so they won’t dare hold another Referendum. Instead they will use lawfare and agreements to lock us back in. Sunak started the process with the Windsor Treachery.
Both Reform and the Not-a-Conservative-Party should announce that any laws or “deals” Two-Tier and the EU sign which drag us back towards the EU will be cancelled by the next Government.
May 2, 2025
We left the EU five years ago
May 1, 2025
Much of the food that we import from the EU is seasonal produce that we can’t grow here in the winter. We also import fresh food from Guatemala, Egypt, South Africa, Senegal, Kenya, Vietnam etc
The issue is can the British housewife do without fresh mangetout/sugar-snap peas/green beans in the winter? Or cauliflower? Or celery, lettuce, radishes, cucumber etc?
British farmers can’t produce apples as cheaply as the French because of the high costs of energy here, which is due to us having to import so much expensive gas. Running cold stores is not cheap. Smart farmers have installed cheap solar panels on their buildings to exploit the free electricity that they generate. They only have to import them from China once – and they last up to 25 years.
Many British farmers are now adding value to their fruit by juicing it and selling the product in branded fancy bottles into the high-end foodie market.
Reply We used to be almost self sufficient in temperate foods, only to lose market share in the EU. The UK can now grow a wider range for a longer season with polytunnels and glasshouses.Why import from Holland and France?
May 1, 2025
Sir John, I think the first thing I heard about heat pumps was about 25 years ago and from one of our local UKIP members, an engineer. He had written to the government suggesting that heat pumps would be suitable for providing the gentle warmth in polytunnels needed to extend the growing season. The government’s answer was that we did not need to extend the growing season because we could simply import produce from Spain.
May 1, 2025
Ask the main supermarkets why they don’t buy from British producers, and if/when they do why do they force prices as low as possible on the producers.
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk 26/07/2024 ‘Competition and profitability in the groceries sector’. Look in particular at figs.2.3 and 2.5 and point 2.29.
May 1, 2025
They are Corporations, they are NOT British.
May 2, 2025
What are you saying Lynn? Tesco, Sainbury’s, Waitrose, Asda are British companies.
What is this BS about ‘Corporations’? You seem to have a late 1960-ish left-wing view on companies.
May 1, 2025
And you think the Continent – with its extreme Continental weather – can grow these products in Winter😂🤣.
Why do we import ‘costly gas and oil’ why don’t we import cheap renewable energy which is plentiful on the Continent as Spain, Portugal, Andorra and parts of France have just proven?
May 1, 2025
The EU have a mutual recognition agreement with New Zealand which means that each side recognises the other’s food standards without any need for them to be aligned. The fact the EU won’t implement such an agreement with UK (and that Starmer won’t ask for one) proves that this issue is not about food standards at all.
May 1, 2025
False. The EU has no such agreement with NZ, or anywhere else. If the UK wants privileged access to the EU market (and it should, given its size and proximity) it needs to align with EU rules – as does any other country. This is your Brexit in action
May 1, 2025
Which country outside the EU has decided to dynamically align its national regulations for food production and processing and distribution to all the corresponding EU regulations? If you can identify any such country outside the EU can you also give a numerical estimate of the economic benefit it gains from that dynamic alignment of all its national food regulations with the EU regulations. And can you also say how a company in the EU can manage to export any foodstuffs it produces to a country with national regulations that differ from the EU regulations?
May 2, 2025
Sure, Denis, thanks for your questions. Norway, Iceland and Switzerland dynamically align national regulations for food production to corresponding EU regulations. Many other countries globally adopt EU rules too, if not dynamically. The economic benefits are immense – a point or more of overall GDP. And finally a company in the EU exports foodstuffs it produces to a country with national regulations that differ from the EU regulations by setting up a separate production line – though in fact that’s often unnecessary because EU standards are recognised worldwide as the market leader, as I mentioned above
Reply
May 2, 2025
Yes, and we decided that we did not want to be like any of them, not least because it would involve freedom of movement of persons as well as goods. Beyond which, no other country you can name has chosen to surrender its sovereignty and become an obedient rule-taker in order to squeeze out a paltry one-off gain of maybe 1% of GDP, and nor should we. Even with our trend rate of growth dragged down to 1.1% we could get the same gain by waiting a year and remain an independent sovereign state.
May 1, 2025
Scallion
Try a simple Internet search entitled…dies the EU have a trade agreement with New Zealand.
And then come back and give an apology for your false post
May 2, 2025
The EU has a trade agreement with New Zealand – it emphatically does NOT involve each side recognising the other’s food standards without any need for them to be aligned.
May 2, 2025
A simple piece of paper added to consignments is all the difference in complecity between New Zealand and the EU trading foodstuffs.
And New Zealand remains a happy and independent nation.
Using words like aligned and dynamically aligned is just your Euro code for having to give up sovereignty.
May 1, 2025
We do NOT want privileged access to the EU market. That’s why we voted for BREXIT. This is NOT Brexit in action, the EU continue hoovering up our fish and will do so until the sea is dead, as it is off the African coast, which the EU destroyed with the same ships.
So much for ‘loving the planet’.
May 2, 2025
true – all about punishing UK for resigning from the old boys club, and the cheek of it, expecting to stop being ripped off for fees with no participation.
May 1, 2025
Sir John
Thank you, it appears that people must constantly be reminded of the damage the protectionist EU has done to the UK.
UK food standards had to be reduced as the smaller entities in the EU couldn’t catch up. Taxpayers had to fund smaller part time producers to flood them with money. All the while other suppliers were kept out. By keeping out we are relating to the UK’s long term safe suppliers as you say, Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Argentina – we had to kick them in the teeth and harm our own traditional supplies.
May 1, 2025
And we no longer have drinking water in our taps. EU standards! Third world. But Britain had to be dragged down to their level.
May 1, 2025
Mr. Redwood – doesn’t matter what you say, democracy is dead and pointless in this country.
May 1, 2025
It’s not that the EU has gone about ripping off Britain in an entirely innocent way. Their intentions and methods should have been obvious to even every last europhil PM we’ve had over the last 4 decades, but still they gave way, surrendering our money, our freedoms and so much more – all for the benefit of WHAT?
If the EU no longer represents freedom of choice, integrity and prosperity, and it doesn’t! — Just look at how certain individuals and groups are being unjustly persecuted in Germany and France — then what is the point of it!
We would have to be more than half crazy to align ourselves with a crooked bureaucracy that destroys people when they protest or speaks their mind. What does that say about our PM who so badly wants to join us to the EU.
Let’s not listen to the weasel words of a PM dedicated to our destruction, the EU will do nothing for us but make our miserable lives worse while demanding ever more money and fish from us!
May 1, 2025
Bullseye!
May 1, 2025
Since the ‘referendum’ democracy has been weaken day by day by the tories & labour …..this back-door approach to the EU is just another kick in the teeth to the people
May 1, 2025
@glen cullen +1 – the confederated Uniparty all lie and cant be trusted, to much ego at stake.
May 1, 2025
Dear Sir John,
I was firmly opposed to this country’s entry into the Common Market in 1973 and consequently took some interest in the price of vegetables before and after entry. I remember being shocked by the increases in prices particularly of apples and potatoes on market stalls which my mother confirmed.
My understanding was that before entry to the Common Market, farmers received a subsidy from the state based on the quantity of meat and vegetables produced which enabled them to compete with cheaper Commonwealth agricultural products. This worked because the UK could not produce enough for there to be surpluses. After membership, UK prices had to rise to reach European levels. Then we had butter mountains and wine lakes. Eventually, because of Europe wide overproduction, UK agricultural production had to be restricted because we had to have a Europe wide common agricultural policy. So British farmers were paid to produce wildflowers and weeds instead.
Could we not go back to the pre 1973 system, and start importing cheaper agricultural produce from the USA and Commonwealth?
From a former constituent in Wokingham.
May 1, 2025
the supermarkets will drive down prices from EU (and other places) in order to add margin to their profits…..not a care for growing in UK. Patriotic? not a jot – the 2 german entrepreneur run supermarkets strive to use British as much as is sensible.
May 1, 2025
Off Topic.
The directors of Moorcroft Pottery (Burslem)have announced the firm has stopped trading after more than 100 years, which the GMB Union says means the loss of 57 jobs. Moorcroft had warned in March of possible redundancies and at the time cited rising costs and falling sales, stating their energy costs had gone up almost £250,000 over the past two years. In February, Royal Stafford, also based in Burslem, called in administrators. The firm’s collapse followed the closure of Dudson in 2019, Wade in Longton two years ago and Johnsons Tiles in 2024.
May 1, 2025
😭
May 1, 2025
There are none so blind. I despair at the clowns who are running the country
May 1, 2025
We lost our orchards of so many wonderful apples, pears, plums etc., when we were lined up with the EU (Common Market was the lie it was sold to us under) and then our steel industry had to exist with no state help like the EU helped their own. Surely we have woken up by now to how we were led up the alley by these people. My Father spent 6 years on active service in the 2nd World War and my Mother served at the War Office. They got no thanks for this from those on the continent they gave time for so we should go our own way as we voted in 2016. We also reneged on the Commonwealth who had been on side in two world wars so I think we have a debt to them to make up and that means trade for one area which they lost. I read that Senator Robert Kennedy is stopping chemical additives entering the food chain and clamping down on cloud seeding. As we have Bill Gates relocating to Britain with his evil ideas on blocking out the sun and other worrying ideas isn’t it time we dealt with him as well?
May 1, 2025
Gates relocating to Britain? Do you have a reliable source for that info?
May 2, 2025
No Bill Gates whatsoever. The project of dimming the Sun is funded by ARIA (Advanced Research and Invention Agency, an independent government funding agency, independent from UKRI, UK Research and Innovation) and involves various scientists, some thought to be from the U.Cambridge’s Centre for Climate Repair.
May 2, 2025
:No bill gates whatsoever” you claim hefner.
Try an Internet search….”bill gates and sun dimming” to see articles showing bill is enthusiastic and involved.
May 3, 2025
No Bill in ARIA, which was my original point.
May 2, 2025
A total waste of the initial £58 million of funding.
Spending huge sums on a project to dim the sun whilst at the same time spending huge sums on solar panel farms.
Madness
May 1, 2025
These moves to rejoin the eu by stealth will bring us no end of problems.
As with mass immigration and higher taxes, this is against the wishes of the People.
May 1, 2025
Seems like we never applied any non tariff barriers in the EU sellout. Not surprising as our politicians always wanted to ignore the referendum and 2Tier actively campaigned for a re-run, so how can this zealot be stopped? I have always said that too much power resides in too few people – an elective dictatorship really and especially hard to take with such a big majority obtained from such a low support base.
May 1, 2025
What is the advantage to us to lock ourselves into EU rules when our trading deficit with the EU is £100bn/year, which it certainly was during our years of EU membership, if not still today? Is it to further impoverish the UK in addition to Net Zero? Could it be that our Civil Srvice is looking to the EU to supply all our food and electricity with China our goods, in order to zero our territorial CO2 emissions so we become the world’s Net Zero superpower? Of course, CAGW with its Net Zero “solution” is the pefect policy for Socialists as socialism depends upon making and keeping people poor. Even if unpopular, for what can be more important than saving the planet?
May 1, 2025
Yet another manoeuvre on the part of the political class to have the UK back in the EU in all but name whilst neglecting British interests and well-being. Such treachery should be punished unrelentingly..
May 1, 2025
Views on punishment would be enlightening!
May 1, 2025
294 criminals arrived in the UK yesterday; from the safe country of France…
May 1, 2025
Its being reported on all news channels, the record temperatures yesterday and today
Be aware of the met-office weather stations that are considered junk (class 5)
St.James Parks London was quoted yesterday by the BBC, Sky and GBNews ….however what they didn’t tell you was that, that particular weather station is JUNK, giving false readings
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/04/30/when-you-thought-the-met-office-could-not-get-any-more-dishonest/
May 1, 2025
‘Pay to play!’ EU punishes British taxpayers for £127bn defence deal as Macron plunders fishing waters
https://www.gbnews.com/politics/eu-fishing-rights-keir-starmer-emmanuel-macron-brexit
May 1, 2025
It’s really depressing to go back seven years to a fatal error made by Theresa May, that we may see repeated by Keir Starmer: from her Mansion House speech on our future economic partnership with the EU:
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-on-our-future-economic-partnership-with-the-european-union
“businesses who export to the EU tell us that it is strongly in their interest to have a single set of regulatory standards that mean they can sell into the UK and EU markets.”
So EU regulatory standards must be imposed on all businesses at the behest of that minority of businesses.
How small a minority? It depends on how you do the count or the calculation:
Taking an extreme view:
https://facts4eu.org/news/2020_oct_truth_about_UK_exporters#
“99.3% of all UK businesses do NOT export to the EU”
While looking at it more broadly:
https://briefingsforbritain.co.uk/the-government-should-ignore-the-special-pleading-from-business-by-john-longworth/
“Only 8% of UK businesses export to the EU. These exports represent just 13% of the economy. In fact, 17% of the economy is related to exports to the rest of the world and 70% is domestic.”
May 1, 2025
This is completely unacceptable and goes against the majority will of the British people who voted to leave the pernicious grasp of the European Union. Starmer is clearly intent on rejoining as many of the EU’s institutions as possible causing our farmers and food supply irreparable damage, furthermore this is underhand, undemocratic and a total waste of taxpayers money.
May 1, 2025
It is not only ‘wrong’, it is treason: giving away UK markets to manipulative continental over-producers so they can offload their subsidised EU fruit and veg of plausible appearance but innocuous flavour, and meat and dairy of very poor value, while our own stock remains neglected and its producers taxed and hounded to blazes by Defra.
Two supermarket chains I see have enormous difficulties in selling e.g. Irish beef and Dutch tomatoes, cucumbers and mushrooms. They get round this by stocking only EU produce at small local branches where the customers have no choice but to buy them, or boycott the produce in general, as many customers do.
May 1, 2025
+1
May 1, 2025
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14668371/Labour-minister-swipes-Brexit-trade-policies-based-post-imperial-delusion-hint-Keir-Starmer-make-big-concessions-Brussels-reset-EU-relations.html
“Mr Alexander, who backed Remain and was previously a trade minister in Sir Tony Blair’s Labour government, warned UK firms had been ‘buried under red tape’ since Brexit.”
So who is producing this red tape? It will not just appear spontaneously, somebody must be producing it. If it is the UK government they should cut their production back to the minimum, whatever the EU may do. If it is the EU then say clearly that it is the EU, that this is “EU red tape”, and there is far more of it than they actually need to protect their precious EU Single Market. What a pity we do not have a government that is on our side.
May 4, 2025
It isn’t about trade. It’s about gaining the shelter of the EU for bad political decisions by Westminster and Whitehall.