When the Chancellor went to China to promote the UK and UK exports she associated herself with just £600 m of deals. That would have been a poor result for a junior trade Minister. It is under 0.03% of GDP.
As the Chancellor tells us an improved EU trade deal could boost growth, their main idea to promote UK dairy products with a revised SPS agreement is seeking to boost something that at best could add less than the China deals. It seems she has no idea of significant figures.
When it comes to spending she is good at underestimating the huge costs of the large public sector and the impact of inflation busting wage settlements without productivity growth. Her willingness to borrow £15 bn more than planned in her first year makes a nonsense of her lectures on prudence. It makes the mean cut in pensioner fuel payments more difficult to defend. The OBR were out by £15 bn within a month of their forecast. So why does the Chancellor trust them and believe their five year forecast. Last year’s deficit came in £65 bn higher than the OBR forecast of it a year ago!
A growth strategy will not be boosted by the kind of giveaway EU reset she has in mind, nor by giving away the Chagos with a dowry, nor by doubling down self harming net zero policies.
May 2, 2025
Could well be a ‘billion – trillion’ confusion. She understands that 600 is bigger than 15.
I’m afraid your book ‘The death of Britain’ did not serve as a warning.
I have just received a list of instructions to prepare for blackouts. My telephone is fibre ‘powered’ because the old reliable copper wire system is being phased out, so I am advised to have a ‘wind up radio’ to hand.
May 2, 2025
Why a wind up radio? These or actually powered by human food unless you get your pet gerbil to wind them up. That is wrong with a battery radio rechargeable or otherwise. Mobiles etc. will have to be charged in the diesel or petrol car – if we have a long power cut I suppose!
May 2, 2025
@Lyn A. +1. I was going to say she has no feel for the significant difference between millions and billions. I really do think many of them have no clue of finance, except when it comes to their own personal situation.
There was an interesting post by Eugyppius recently about stupidly and politics. It was not really poking fun, but in earnest.
The now traditional path to government (Arts/PPE graduation, Party aide/NGO, MP, Minister of anything) fills it with people who have vastly inflated and unmerited beliefs in their abilities, along with a loathing for anyone who isn’t grateful for their efforts.
May 2, 2025
PPE, Law, Social Science or Politics and preferable with no science post 16. Pleasant but totally scientifically ignorant Classics graduates seem to be preferred for heading up the Committee for Climate Change! Law graduates of sorts for their Energy Mission Control!
May 2, 2025
So Runcorn is Reform. Will this make any difference to the slash and burn policies of 2TK. Not a bit of it. Knowing he’s on borrowed time he’ll have to double down on his ruinous policies.
Surrendering to Brussels will now be turbocharged before he’s unceremoniously kicked out.
Will the back benches with nothing to lose let him and his cabal continue.
May 2, 2025
@Ian wragg +1
Because the UK gives the political class un-healthy amount of time to pursue crash and burn terrorism on a people without seeking confirmation of the direction they have taken us, 2TK has more than enough time to trash the country – permanently!
Even Trump and the USA will have mid term elections in under two years, and will face the Country and itspeople long before 2TK even gets to think about elections. That’s how democracy should work
Unholy ego is corrupting the UK
May 2, 2025
I fear that you’re correct
May 2, 2025
Thinking bigger is the problem.
We need smaller tax rates, smaller regulatory intervention, smaller public sector and less government control.
May 2, 2025
The problem is they are not “powered” by the fibre which just sends data as modulated light down the fibre they are powered by your house electricity which converts this for you – but only if it is on or has backup battery.
Reeves just needs to think? What in my budget was anti-growth? Was anything pro growth at all? Will my vast tax increases raise more tax or less, will more employment red tape, NI and min. wage increases encourage companies to take more people on or more to close. What is pro-growth about net zero and energy at 4x the cost it should be?
Her budget is anti-growth in virtually every respect it will raise less tax not more too!
May 2, 2025
I’m not sure if you are being serious. If you are, who sent you the list? And a clockwork radio? Seriously? I used to make crystal sets when I was a kid. Time to find a diode, a variable capacitor and a 100’ of copper wire to string up as an aerial.
Mind you, if there is no power, will radio still. E broadcast? Seems unlikely that the government would have the ability to plan for a national emergency and have generators ready for critical infrastructure. I think it more likely the government will tell all councils to equip themselves with a megaphone and a bicycle. Electric, natch.
May 4, 2025
The Council sent the advice. I wish I was joking but unfortunately I reported accurately what was sent. I’m too stunned even to comment on it. Presumably they think blackouts could last a long time, they advised that they would broadcast instructions (on how to survive) but I should have a ‘wind-up radio’ to ensure I can receive the instructions.
May 2, 2025
I already have quite a powerful petrol generator which I could easily connect to our power system to run the boiler, lights, internet and phones, however, plans are well advanced to install a near-silent encapsulated diesel generator which will power the whole house. It will run on red diesel costing £1 a litre or less and the internal tank will run it for at least 56 hours without refilling.
I don’t expect to need it before the winter of 2028 so I am holding off buying one just yet.
May 2, 2025
If your house uses gas for heating, cooking, hot water, kettles… and has efficient LED lighting and no EVs you need hardly and electricity anyway. Just for refrigeration, lighting, tv, internet, phone, laptops. You can probably manage on about 100w (average use) but if forced onto heat pumps, EVs etc. it might well be 50 times this on winter days. So a vast increase in generation, backup and grid capacity will be needed unless they drop this moronic net zero insanity.
Hard to believe Miliband is so thick that he and his experts cannot see this – so what is their real plan and why?
May 2, 2025
Good morning.
If only it was about growth.
Governments cannot grow an economy, only private enterprise and capital can. But this and previous governments have pursued policies more in line with growing the size of the State via QUANGO’s and the like. High taxes and regulation, coupled with high energy costs is strangling the economy.
As for the sums mentioned – They are indeed small but, to someone like her who has little idea they do seem rather grand.
May 2, 2025
Well governments can grow the economy – they just have to stop strangling it, halve government in size, ditch net zero, cut taxes, control the borders, reverse the doom loop Reeves anti growth budget, make work pay, ditch the workers rights bill, relax planning, ditch the wars on motorists, the self employed, small business, private school users, no domiciles, the hardworking, business owners, farmers…
May 2, 2025
Sunak has still not corrected his the ‘Covid Vaccines are “unequivocally” safe’ assurance to the House. The evidence the were not at the time he said it was overwhelming and it gets more overwhelming by the day.
See the worrying South Korean study:-
The association between acute transverse myelitis and COVID-19 vaccination in Korea: Self-controlled case series study Eunsun Lim, Yoo Hwan Kim, Na-Young Jeong, Su-Hyun Kim, Heehyun Won, Jong-Seok Bae, Nam-Kyong Choi, COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Committee (CoVaSC).
May 2, 2025
@Lifelogic – stop fighting the people, release them, work with them and the country will thrive. Something this cabal and the uniparty in general cant grasp. Personal self-esteem and ego overrides logic and practicalities.
May 2, 2025
Scrap all quangos and return democracy back to parliament (also elected lords)
May 2, 2025
It seems odd that the Chancellor is tryto promote dairy products when the ecoloon side of government is trying to close dairy farms in case the cows overhead the planet.
May 2, 2025
Not in China ….its farm baby farm (net-zero is only a european disease)
May 2, 2025
Stred :
Good point. In fact the whole reason for Net Zero is to de-industrialise, de-grow the economy and clamp down heavily on consumption through the rationing of food, energy and travel for socialism depends upon making and keeping people poor. It should have been obvious to the Conservative Party that this was the real reason for the CAGW scam/hoax and its “solution”, Net Zero, but unfortunately this party was infiltrated by socialists.
May 2, 2025
Idiotic indeed as that market will already have been addressed by Australia and New Zealand at prices we could not match. Chinese are also largely lactose-intolerant so much of the cheese sold in our supermarkets would probably give them a bellyache. Possibly try them with black pudding; they like peculiar grub.
May 2, 2025
I don’t think she understands the function of the decimal point.
You don’t get growth by killing the private sector. Approximately 60% are employed in SME’s – and she stuck the knife in with the Employer NI increase and twisted it by halving the salary level where it became payable.
And Red Ed is attempting to apply the coup de grace to those that have somehow managed to survive Rachel-from-Accounts by loading them with the most expensive energy in the G20 and the threat of Spanish-style blackouts.
Welcome to the 1970s. Labour isn’t working (again).
May 2, 2025
Its worse than what you suggest, in the 1970s Labour was against the EEC, pro UK jobs and pro patriotism….where did they go so wrong
May 2, 2025
Wilson/Callaghan/Healey.
May 2, 2025
So the Reform limited company has won the Runcorn by-election by 6 votes, after a full recount; the Conservative candidate came a distant third. Overwhelmingly, the news from the doorstep was that voters were very unhappy about soaking the disabled, the pensioner’s winter fuel allowance and immigration. Apparently, very few voters were complaining about net zero.
Labour won three mayoral contests – North Tyneside, the West of England, and Doncaster. The weekend press will make interesting reading once the full results are in
May 2, 2025
”Apparently, very few voters were complaining about net zero”
So why isn’t the Green Party doing any better ???
May 2, 2025
“Apparently, very few voters were complaining about net zero.”
But Blair is …. so he knows it has traction with households whose budgets are being obliterated by the Eco Lunacy. And one major blackout, Spanish-style, will have massive ramifications for the SCAM.
May 2, 2025
“Apparently, very few voters were complaining about net zero”
I don’t think they are very happy to see their energy bills going through the roof or being forced to drive EVs going forward either SG.
Apparently there is currently a fuss about Angela Rayner wanting solar panels on all new new builds. Perhaps people should be more worried about new housing estates (being built here in Wokingham) that have no gas mains connected – e.g. they will be solely dependent on electicity. I wonder if that will effect their resale value over time? I do know it effects rural properties with no access to the gas mains (and they can use oil or LPG for heating) but not so these local new builds. I hope they are extremely well insulated…
May 3, 2025
Do they all have designated space for BBQ equipment and propane gas tank?
May 2, 2025
SG : “Apparently, very few voters were complaining about net zero.”
That’s because as yet so few people even know of Net Zero let alone realise it is designed to destroy their standard of living. They’ve been brainwashed by incessant false information from the BBC regarding climate. All through summer we will continue to hear that we have the hottest day so far….I’m sure the BBC said the same on January 1st.
May 2, 2025
I read the main parties are trying to figure out how to deal with Reform!
Does nobody stop to think their success and appeal is merely down to recent governments’ policies and even made worse by this slash and burn economy? Perhaps a return to common sense laws, an electricity run world, a light foot on the personal tax pedal, and a recognition that the UK leaders have been ‘played’ by USA, China and Russia for what is becoming decades. Given that they turn out to be frauds as friends is it any wonder the electorate looks at any dealings with the EU aghast guessing correctly that we are about to shake hands but can expect to find 2 fingers are missing as a result?
May 2, 2025
They could ban them like AfD in germany
May 2, 2025
GC :
I’m expecting to see a co-operation/coalition/merger between Labour, Conservative, Lib Dems and Greens to keep out Reform as they all are supporters of EU membership, Net Zero, mass legal and illegal immigration and high taxes. And you know that none of these 4 parties believes we have a climate crisis caused by anthropogenic emissions of CO2 as they have no issues with emissions from China, India et al and disprove of nuclear power, the only low CO2 emitting energy which is affordable and reliable.
May 2, 2025
They’re so keen on Red Ed’s Eco Lunacy that Reform has won overwhelming control of Doncaster Council.
Net Zero won’t be going ahead in Red Ed’s Donny Constituency 🙂
May 4, 2025
I think a number of voters object to the £28 billion pa subsidy to ‘sustainable energy’. Works out to be £900 Pa per household, but of course not all households pay, so the ones that do pay more than that.
May 2, 2025
She is not up to the job, like most of this Labour government’s ministers. She and they are obviously clueless about business and what makes it tick. Her policies and actions are a disaster for the economy. It will take a decade or more to repair the damage. Some may be irreparable.
May 2, 2025
+ 1. A succinct and cogent summary. Wrecker Reeves out now!
May 2, 2025
Replaced by …. Bell ???
May 2, 2025
Exactly, unfortunately as you say, it is not just her, it would appear no one in the Cabinet have a clue about managing anything.
May 2, 2025
Reeves is just a ‘tick box’ hire. When she was appointed, the most important thing, apparently, was that she was the first female finance minister.
May 2, 2025
Thinking big to Labour means a big surge in regulation and taxation to bring about societal equality, all of which is antithetical to economic growth. That’s why no government minister has worked in the commercial world. If only the government would be honest about this, as many on the Left are when they advocate degrowth to achieve equality.
May 2, 2025
Sir John
While it is excepted Rachael Reeves has absolutely no background in finance or the economy, it also has to be accepted like her partners in crime they are nothing more than ideological terrorist that hate with malicious vengeance the UK and its People. How else can you account for their actions?
Getting past those points we must and have to recognise she and her team are advised by the Treasury – a Treasury that itself believes it has a wealth of knowledge and experience.
May 2, 2025
Their mentor being OBR. Enough said?
May 2, 2025
Sir John
As an aside, CCHQ is blaming Conservative loses, not on their management, not on their choice of candidates or the party leadership in Parliament, but the fact a couple of strays took to the bookmakers at the last GE to place bets. Apparently, it was the thing uppermost in the electors’ minds.
Does any one actually remember that situation?
It does however highlight were the rot is in that once great party
May 2, 2025
Perhaps Rachel is expecting a big one off Capital Gains tax bonanza as the private rental sector sells up. Unfortunately it will mean will less income tax receipts in following years. Personally, I need the income as my pension is minimal and I was in the last stages of repairing my property and letting it. Then I read that Lord Bird of Big Issue Ltd told the lordships that landlords are not selling up and, along with a tenant supporting group, he urged the house not to water down the legislation. Our landlords society has polled members and around half are selling. Student lets are still profitable and it should be possible to get possession. My prospective tenants must be disappointed that I cancelled until the legislation is clear. If it’s like Bird wants, I might move in myself and sell my present house to avoid CGT. Sorry Rachel.
May 2, 2025
Rachael Reeves with guidance from her boss and the treasury is able to talk of cutting costs, bureaucracy, red tape, removing over regulation, risk-averse government interference, prudence and so on. They are able to believe that tax is income not money taken from the economy.
What is clear none of them understand the words they are saying
May 2, 2025
But half the electorate don’t seem to understand either!
May 2, 2025
I see that the ‘greens’ didn’t make any gains yesterday ….so why are we buying billions and subsidising billions on solar & wind-turbines from china ….the only supplier in town !
May 2, 2025
The Greens even win the Bristol Mayoralty.
Aaron Banks (Banksey) came a close second to Labour and would have won if the CONs hadn’t split the “right-of-centre” vote (yes, I know the CONs aren’t RoC).
May 2, 2025
I don’t intend this as a criticism, but when our host criticizes, while accurate and honestly done, he has the tendency to use parliamentary language as though he were still constrained by the Speaker – which softens the blow somewhat.
We all know the labour plan – part of which is to keep on raising taxes until we have nothing more to give. I would attack the chancellor on her lack of humanity and integrity, because as noted, she doesn’t understand numbers.
There is no point in quoting statistics to someone that doesn’t know what a spreadsheet is. It just goes over their head, and she’s heard similar arguments a dozen times. They mean nothing to her!
Instead we should point out in graphic terms what her uncaring treachery is doing to our country for no good reason, because we have never believed her competent to talk about fiscal black holes.
To be effective we have to go for the throat – she deserves nothing less.
May 2, 2025
The Maidenhead Advertiser has printed the letter I mentioned:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2025/04/28/what-re-set-with-the-eu-should-the-uk-ask-for/#comment-1511019
under the headline: “EU to blame for trade hold-ups and delays”.
At the moment we are taking 18% of the electricity we are using from EU countries on the continent who might be inclined to hold us to ransom over any disagreement, including over the excessive paperwork they impose on our goods exports without any scientific basis, but passing 3% on to the Irish Republic which has already contrived to reposition the customs border to split Northern Ireland from Great Britain, plus we are getting 5% from the Norwegians who are not in the EU and who I would regard as more trustworthy.
The government prefers to blame Brexit rather than the EU for UK firms being “buried under red tape”:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2025/05/01/the-costs-and-damage-of-eu-food-policies/#comment-1511659
and maybe our vulnerability to energy blackmail by the EU is one reason for their grovelling attitude.
May 2, 2025
We get our food, consumer products, tech items, cars, trains, oil, wood and electricity ( beyond what the sun/wind help us with). Doesn’t anyone have concern about the risk in where we are and where it is leading?
May 2, 2025
I should be interested to know if the disastrous policies we are seeing, are Reeves’s own, or whether, like so many of her recent predecessors, she has insufficient grasp of her subject, and the necessary character, to give any kick back at all, to the recommendations fed to her by the ‘Professionals’ in the Treasury. This, as you suggest, would certainly seem to be the case as far as the OBR is concerned.
May 2, 2025
“When the Chancellor went to China to promote the UK and UK exports she associated herself with just £600 m of deals.”
The reason for the Miliband and Reeves China trips was to negotiate the size of the Chagos Islands dowry and the price of the hundreds of £billions of kit for Net Zero. The £600m was probably the cost of the Chinese paid UK warehouse to store and from which to distribute all this kit. The Civil Service and the CCC are using the entirely false price of offshore wind of £44/MWhr (2021 price) in the DESNZ ‘Electricity Generation Costs Report 2023’ when the CfD price for the last Allocation Round 6 (AR6) was around £80/MWhr (2023 price) and the much delayed AR7 will likely be well over £100/MWhr. BTW, the Civil Service are clearly unconcerned that the cheap price of Chinese solar panels is because they’re made with slave labour. But of course we must unilaterally save the planet from the rising average global temperature of 0.14 degrees C per decade according to the website Whats Up With That?’s analysis of the UAH satellite data. Not that CO2 controls temperature anyway.
May 2, 2025
So you don’t trust Dr Roy Spencer to analyse his own data, you prefer to trust Watts. Really interesting … Could it be that Spencer showing much higher warming rate from his current analysis of data (don’t forget Dr Spencer and Dr Christy were at the origin of the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer used for the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) plots of temperature at different levels in the atmosphere, whereas Willard Anthony Watts is a retired television/radio meteorologist at the origin of … nothing much apart from his climate skeptic website) has suddenly become persona non grata in the OR household?
So now that Dr Spencer appears to show data going higher than the 0.14C/decade trend, does that mean no one should read his original website?
May 3, 2025
hefner
your “much higher warming rate” being perhaps 3 tenths of one degree measured as a global average spread over a decade.
May 2, 2025
The only thing the modern Labour and Conservative parties are big on, and good at, is legal and illegal immigration.
May 2, 2025
‘The United States has barred the state of California from introducing rules to end the sale of petrol and diesel cars from 2035, despite similarities to the UK’s Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate.’
https://www.gbnews.com/lifestyle/cars/electric-car-ban-petrol-diesel-2035-california-zev-mandate
Our Chancellor need to cancel ZEV mandate and help the UK manufacturers …like the USA & China
May 2, 2025
The Federal Trust has just issued a new video entitled “Brexit doesn’t work, federalism does”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-L3HgNP8SQ
I wonder how they would feel if a federal government in Brussels imposed a similar bar on EU member states …
I read here:
https://history.blog.gov.uk/author/dr-andrew-blick/
that the new Director of the Federal Trust is writing a book:
“Beyond Magna Carta: a constitution for the United Kingdom”
which I suppose may say that the new UK constitution should be legally inferior to the EU Constitution.
May 2, 2025
Everything now has to be done to ensure their idiocy is reversible asap after 2029. Preferably earlier. Reform councils cutting council tax in half would be a good start. Nigel to make sure the EU can’t view any deal with 2TK as lasting longer then July 2029.
May 2, 2025
226 criminals arrived in the UK yesterday; from the safe country of France…no wonder no one is voting tory or labour
May 2, 2025
quelle surprise, eh!
May 2, 2025
GC : “…no wonder no one is voting tory or labour.”
I cannot imagine any woman voting for parties who continue to encourage the illegal immigration of unidentifiable young men of fighting age with deeply misogynistic cultures with collection from French waters, free hotel (or now house) accomodation, free heathcare, £40/week pocket money, free entertainment and the freedom to roam the streets (even loitering around school gates) and take up black market jobs. Or, simply abscond.
May 4, 2025
How many days does it take to land a battalion?
May 2, 2025
2TK’s version of the Uniparty gained power with just 1 in 5 of the UK’s electorate support. I wonder how many of those still support his direction today?
Today while hiding inside an Italian government run defence company 2TK tells the media that his projects need to go harder and faster, to meet his election promise to change the UK forever.
So, conclusion with less support than ever he will fight the people, refuse to work with them to affect the change ‘he’ wants, for his WEF Socialist World Government.
Not the Tories should be allowed any comfort from slipping even further down the credibility rating, they are led top to bottom in the Parliamentary group by similar WEF disciples, looking for continuation and continuity of more of the same that brought them down.
We now in reality have a ‘none of the above’ party running rings around the ‘free-loaders’, the egotist and still those that dominate Parliament don’t get it. They were not empowered and paid to fight their electorate, in a democracy they are there to serve and work with the people and the country.
A Parliament out to destroy democracy no wonder they are steadfast order taking remainers
May 2, 2025
The lack of understanding by the Chancellor, the Treasury or their boss 2TK on how to grow a country pale’s when it comes to a majority in parliament that don’t give a ‘monkeys’ for it either. They refuse to hold people to account for fear of stepping out of line, losing their place in the free-loading gravy chain. It is all about toeing the line their gang leader sets before serving their constituents and the nation
May 2, 2025
“their main idea to promote UK dairy products with a revised SPS agreement”
Starmer and Reeves are like children – they understand nothing of EU horse-trading. There as much chance of exporting UK dairy to the EU as of the UK armed forces staging a re-enactment of the Battle of Waterloo in the middle of Paris on Bastille Day.
Actually, not even that much of a chance.
It would be amusing if it were not so irritating to see all the fraudulent EEC arguments of 1971-5 (‘cheap food’, ‘neighbourly interaction’, social and ‘industrial cohesion’, ‘common defence strategies’) set forth as facades all over again.
They can sign what they like, the French and Germans will just sing another verse of ‘Soldier, soldier, won’t you marry me’.
For them t’s about extracting megabillions of cash from UK taxpayers’ pockets. Nothing else.
May 2, 2025
Off Topic.
US President Donald Trump has issued an executive order calling for all federal funding to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) to be blocked.
On Thursday evening, Trump alleged that both organisations have engaged with “biased and partisan news coverage”. The order instructs the board of the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, who distributes funding to PBS and NPR stations, to “cease direct funding” to the “maximum extent allowed by law”.
It adds that the board should “decline to provide future funding” to the news organisations. The ( very worried ?) BBC has contacted NPR and PBS for comment.
May 2, 2025
“Rachel Reeves closing down sale as Beales closing its last remaining store in Poole.”
“Retail industry bosses said the closure of the historic store “illustrates the devastating impact” of the rise in national insurance contributions and the higher minimum wage, which came into force in April.”
Reality – Reeves punishes small businesses in April. Fools Labour punished in May,.
“May Day, May Day, May Day”
Oh dear, never mind, mustn’t grumble.
May 2, 2025
I fear for our country and its offspring under this new Government. This latest batch from Labour is worse than any for 50 years. Far from “growing” our economy, they are undermining it, and I can see the markets turning against us IF they do not change their crazy policies. However, wearing blinkers, they fail to see the damage they are causing and seem to believe they are on the right path. Alas, there appears to be no mechanism to remove them before a General Election, so we’ll have to pray to our God to save us, for they will not.
For sure, it’s deja vu 1970s all over again.