There were three wrong propositions behind the Remain campaign :
1. The EU was primarily a free trade club which we had to belong to to trade with them.
2. Trading on most favoured nation terms with countries under World Trade rules did not allow much trade.
3. Their gravity model forecasts assumed you could only trade extensively and successfully with near neighbours. They still use false forecasts from this system instead of now using the outturn data which was so much better.
The EU was and is a European union gaining ever greater powers and controls over all aspects of member states governments. It is a currency union, has a common foreign and security policy, shared frontiers, integrated transport systems, mandatory environment policy and much else. It is not a free trade area. It is a highly regulated customs Union.
Trading onWTO terms has produced big increases in trade between WTO members as barriers and tariffs were brought down. Our trade with the US has grown well with no Free Trade Agreement to supplement WTO membership.
Trade has expanded greatly with faster growing economies on the other side of the world, as with China.
Over the last week the UK has been able post Brexit to negotiate a Freer Trade Agreement with India and a trade deal with the US. Since leaving we have rolled over all the EU trade deals with third countries and gained improvements in some. We have joined the big and important TPP .
Since 2016 our trade has expanded well. The fastest growth has been in services and in the larger share of our trade which is with non EU countries.
The impact on growth and GDP is assessed at just an extra 0.1% from the Indian Agreement next decade. The US deal abates the damage done by higher US tariffs on our exports but still leaves us with a negative on growth this year.
May 9, 2025
Let’s see the full details of these deals first,
I suspect they may just be another instance of Starmer giving stuff away to foreigners.
India gets huge tax breaks for its people who work in the UK. Not exactly great for UK residents looking for work in competition with them.
We don’t have much steel or aluminium to export to the US. Meanwhile, our farmers are getting hammered to maybe create opportunities in other sectors of our economy,
May 9, 2025
@Peter; Yes, let’s judge these trade deals on the detail, not the headlines; many (migrant) workers staying here in the UK on temporary visas have access to tax breaks UK workers do not, I doubt India is getting breaks other countries citizens can not.
In the 1980s I knew a young lass from Sweden who was making a fortune by working in most of the EEC member countries, and those aligned with it, she was being paid no more than anyone else of her employment grade but she never remained in any country longer than the tax rules allowed her to claim back the employee taxes she had paid – needless to say the friendship did not last! 🙁
May 9, 2025
Indeed Peter, easy to do a deal when you give away enough.
Sir J notes the limited impact of trade deals to GDP. What’s the betting Starmer will do a deal with the EU that:
– is contrary to his manifesto commitment to remain out of the EU and ‘make brexit work’
– costs us much more than we gain
– locks us to a failing economic and political model (GDP per capita has fallen against most other countries)
– will claim miraculous benefits even when our EU trade has barely been affected by brexit
May 9, 2025
Indeed 20% plus advantage if no NI. Also in competition with them for work, schools, housing, road space… free and fair competition please. No more blatantly rigged markets like no NI for some workers. We already have absurdly rigged markets in energy, transport, housing, banking, schools, healthcare, universities, heating systems, EVs …
So it is too dangerous to charge EV in the house of commons car park! To dangerous to do so at home too I assume. So where is it safe to do so. They cost more, cause more CO2 and are unsafe to charge or even to leave standing it seems!
May 9, 2025
Electric scooters banned on tubes due to fire risk they they are allowed in high rise flats charging overnight. We also still have EV cars and vans on the channel tunnel, under and very near houses and RoRo ferries is this sensible? Especially as EV do not even save CO2 on balance when fully and correctly accounted for.
May 9, 2025
Not that a bit more CO2 plant, crop and tree food is a bad thing!
May 9, 2025
On a minor note, the workers at Jaguar Land Rover, who were positioned behind Starmer as he made his speech, all looked pretty glum.
Perhaps people nowadays are fed up with having to provide a background wallpaper for various politicians.
May 9, 2025
Indeed PMs who also have to appear next to someone in a head scarf here, someone visably disabled there and someone black behind them. As if pathetically flower arranging but using real people!
Reply I am not publishing your comments on Badenoch as you clearly have not read her speeches on net zero and migration which admit the last government got these wrong and change policy.
May 9, 2025
The devil will be in the detail. Trump who lokes to do a good deal, I.e.he likes to win so the way he was gushing over 2TK possibly means he has screwed us.
The Indian deal is another surrender by Starmergeddon on the scale of the Chagos fiasco
The destruction of Britain carries on at pace
May 9, 2025
This is said to be a reciprocal arrangement for temporary workers and similar to other schemes worldwide.
May 9, 2025
Farmers are not being treated well but the trade deal with the US is a relatively small problem. If the NFU was in charge we would still have the Corn Laws at the very least and probably they would always be able to find some specious reason for excluding any food produced anywhere else in the world. We need an agricultural policy that ensures farmers can make a decent living from food production without having to slag off food from other countries, which we need now and in the future because domestic production will not feed 80 million people.
There is a very interesting article by Robert Tombs here:
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/04/20/a-history-of-tariff-wars/
“Peel was a prescient and intellectually brave politician. He knew that the United Kingdom, a group of relatively small islands whose already sizeable population was growing faster than ever, had not been self-sufficient in food for many years.”
Recently Sir John commented that we could be self-sufficient in temperate foods but I doubt that is the case.
May 9, 2025
DC,
When you are the first nation in the industrial revolution it’s easy to think food production can be outsourced to other nations.
May 9, 2025
@Peter – Yet Indian national in the UK still get to pay taxes in their home Country. 2TK made a big thing with these announcements by doing them from an Indian owned and run car manufacturing facility – is that in recognition that the company gets to pay its taxes in India and gets a free pass in the UK?
May 9, 2025
@Peter – headline in the Telegraph “Donald Trump will slash US tariffs on Range Rovers” To be clear that is the Indian(Tata) Range Rovers – soon to be in its next iteration Chinese/Indian Range Rovers thanks to the bung that PM Sunak threw their way.
UK Governments find it hard to support UK workers and businesses but love the headline of giving UK taxpayer money to foreign tax domains,
We need a UK Government…. a UK democratic Government with a Government and Parliament working for the nation and its people
May 9, 2025
Today wind is providing 1.9gw and we are Importing 24% of our electricity.
Absolute madness.
May 9, 2025
I was told they have to pay over £1000 for NHS cover and the reason they don’t pay NI is because they won’t accrue a State pension.
May 9, 2025
Agreed. Too soon to rejoice.
May 9, 2025
Good morning.
I do not know the details of the trade deal between the USA and the UK and so, I will hold comment.
I do know one detail between the trade deal between India and the UK, and that is that an unlimited number of Indian workers will be able to come here, with their families, and apply for jobs knowing that they have an unfair advantage over UK workers. And that advantage is, that both they and UK business do not have to pay for National Insurance despite the fact that, from day one, both the worker and their dependence have full access to UK services such as schools and the NHS. All for a paltry 0.1% extra GDP. And this is being hailed as a success.
God only knows what the USA deal must be like, but I am not looking forward to seeing that.
May 9, 2025
Is there anything to stop the likes of JLR, and any other Indian owned UK company, removing all UK employees and replacing them with Indian nationals? Clearly a major cost reduction benefit.
Remember P&O Ferries did something similar.
May 9, 2025
Given that energy in the UK is 3-5 times what it is in the USA it will be rather hard to find many areas where the UK can compete with the USA.
May 9, 2025
They also in addition to far cheaper energy have far lower taxes, cheaper borrowing, less restrictive employment laws, many economies of scale, more land, cheaper housing, cheaper raw materials…
May 9, 2025
@ Mark B
As is customary with your posts, you have failed to establish the facts before commenting. Last year saw the number of work visas issued to Indian nationals fall by 50%, due to changes to immigration rules banning overseas care workers etc. from bringing in family dependents. And by increasing the salary threshold for skilled workers. Indian chefs, yoga teachers and musicians will be capped at 1800 – with no dependents. We need the skills that highly educated Indians wishing to work here in the digital and financial sectors will bring
Do try and do some research before you jump to the wrong conclusions, there’s a good chap
May 9, 2025
@Mark B –
I understand the unfairness of double taxation. If you work in one country it is a bit off that you pay taxes both there and your home country. But I have never read it to mean that you don’t get to pay in the country that is supplying you with an income and providing facilities such as infrastructure health and education so you can thrive. I read it as that because you no longer consumed the facilities in your home country you won’t be contributing there.
The Indian deal appears to be the opposite to what is natural, they pay in their home country while not being there and get a free pass where they are being supplied free facilities all at the cost of the local tax payers, while also stealing their jobs as their labour is cheap.
May 10, 2025
They will pay UK income tax.
The national insurance deal means they pay into the Indian social security system instead of the UK system.
This means they will not qualify for a UK state pension, which is where the vast majority of national insurance is spent.
They have to pay a healthcare premium to access NHS care.
The Indian social security deductions are 10-12% both employer and employee, making a total deduction rate very similar to our own 15+8 = 23%.
May 9, 2025
Mark B
What other results would you expect from a government that does not have a single commercially experienced person in the cabinet !
They appear to be good at getting great rewards for themselves, but for those of us who have pay for it all, it just gets more and more expensive.
May 9, 2025
The US deal allows beef imports providing it’s not hormone produced. How that will be enforced will be interesting. But it fits in with the destruction of British farms by inheritance tax and they will be forced to accept solar farms and wind turbines, all as required by Mad Eds 6500 civil servants.
May 9, 2025
With regard to the trade deal with India where a large number of Indians and dependents can work here for far higher wages but not pay NI but few British working in India do the opposite, we now hear that this is fine e because many other countries have the same arrangement. It almost seems as though our government is either incompetent or is working for the other side.
May 9, 2025
The last Labour prime minister spoke of “British jobs for British workers”. Perhaps the present one thinks that was horribly racist and is somehow making amends?
May 9, 2025
Wasn’t that 0.1% in 15 years!!!!
May 9, 2025
There are some good parts but what strikes me about both the India and US deals is what an absolutely terrible negotiator Starmer is when faced with competent negotiators. Goodness knows what he’ll agree to give the EU. Of course we saw this with the junior doctor and train driver deals as soon as he was elected. The only competent negotiators we have are in private sector companies and public sector unions.
May 9, 2025
The devil is in the detail with both India and the USA. Meat farmers worry about their market in the face of hormonal beef and chlorinated chicken. The answer is clear country of origin flag labelling and the market making its choice. UK producers should sell on quality, real and perceived. Chlorination is something of a red herring, as most of our prepacked salad leaves are chlorinated. I will continue to buy meat from my local market butcher and free range chicken and eggs from a man who delivers every month.
The real concern is the cost of UK production of almost anything due to the Nett Zero insanity and the ever increasing tax take in support of it. The imposition of IHT on farmers and SMEs is iniquitous. It is double taxation and should end.
India is a better choice of trading partner than China, but I want to see the detail of imported labour and tax advantage on offer. Both could disadvantage home grown business in an already over taxed individual and business environment. I suspect the downside for the UK will emerge in the rush to have got it done.
On the plus side, it has all been achieved by virtue of not being part of the EU. We need now to remove all the residual regulatory umbelicals with the EU and specifically return NI to full UK membership.
May 9, 2025
The USA trade deals appears to be work in progress with some aspects still to be concluded. That said, based on what has been revealed, both the India and US agreements are important steps forward for important UK export sectors. Added to the Pacific deal they offer significant opportunities for those businesses with the gumption to go out to win markets in this new polarised world. It would not and could not have happened if the UK was still a member of the EU.
May 9, 2025
Our hosts first paragraph under his three bullet points; Indeed, and it has always been thus, in aims and deeds, as set out in the blocks founding Treaty. So one has to wonder why so many Conservative politicos not only voted to join, voted to stay in 1975, but then did so much to shore up the old EEC in the early to mid 1980s when the block as in danger of fragmenting.
As for the US-UK trade deal, with so much detail still unknown it is hard to make any judgements, with both leaders claiming they have erased the others red-lines! My ‘gut’ feeling is of a fudge, at least on Starmer’s part, he has likely given to much ground in some areas and not enough in others, but at least there’s now a full trade deal in the making, something Johnson (apparently) found impossible to sign the UK up to in 2020.
May 9, 2025
Agree the NI concession will encourage Indian firms to transfer staff to their UK subsidiaries rather than recruit British workers. What’s the betting these staff come into the UK on visas that allow their families to join them and allows right to remain? Another boost to UK immigration numbers?
May 9, 2025
Labour have done well to negotiate the trade deal with India, which escaped Badenoch and numerous other Conservative politicians – including Sunak himself – during the last Administration. However, apparently it will only boost the economy by £4.8bn. Which is a tiny proportion of the UK economy, worth about £2,850bn last year.
Labour’s deal with America has reduced, but not eliminated, Trump’s tariffs on us, but says nothing about our large pharmaceuticals sector, nor the film industry. US tariffs on automotives are immediately slashed from 27.5% to 10%, with steel and aluminium reduced to zero. Trump has given unprecedented market access for British farmers and UK protections on food standards will be maintained. We will not be importing their chlorine treated chicken, nor hormone treated beef.
The EU remains our largest trading partner and still takes the bulk of our exports. We will not be able to increase exports to the EU until the appalling Macron is replaced
Reply More lies. The majority of our exports go the rest of the world. Goods exports to the EU are likely to decline as we stop producing oil, gas, oil products and petrol and diesel cars which have been big sellers.
May 9, 2025
Sir John, trade is clearly one of your interests and focus.
Can you give us your understanding of the fishing rights we will have in our own UK waters post 2026, as agreed with the EU during our trade negotiations?
Many thanks.
Reply Too be decided
May 9, 2025
It’s not a free trade deal, the USA is applying a 10% tariff on imports from the UK that wasn’t there six months ago. The President seems to think that we should happy about this poor outcome because he relented on his opening tariff threats which were more severe. This is the logic of the mob.
May 9, 2025
Will
It’s the Art of the Deal.
Deliberately ask for a much inflated and higher figure than you want, and end up with something better than you had, or ever even expected.
Yes you upset the system for a while but they will all come around eventually.
The above tactics used by the EU over Brexit and instead of just walking away we gave in on that as well.
More to come from those in power, so do not hold your breath.
May 9, 2025
It is quite sad that our major negotiating tool for third World countries is access to our employment market (and preferential access at that).
Who benefits from that? Not the taxpayer and not our own job seekers.
If we made and sold more of our own stuff to ourselves, there is plenty of trade within the UK for us without needing to seek additional exports.
May 9, 2025
We need to start being honest there was never ever a free trade arrangement with the EU. It was costly in both jobs and resources, the prime mover was things that were under UK Government control were moved not only to an unelected unaccountable EU Commission control but were forcible dissipated to others where we had no say and no choice.
May 9, 2025
Like our other trade deals these two trade deals will have little immediate economic benefit for the UK but they will have important political effects in making it more difficult for us to be dragged back into the EU orbit and forging closer links with countries outside the EU where about 95% of humans live. There will be economic pros and cons but they will not add up to much in terms of overall GDP. In contrast the net zero policy has already cost us a lot.
May 10, 2025
Precisely.
May 9, 2025
Remain wasn’t about economic arguments, that was just a pretext. For Remainers the EU is their religion and Brussels their Shangri-La.
So devoted are they that they choose not to move to their beloved EU, but would stay in this country bemoaning their bereavement, whilst plotting to take us all into bondage again.
They are bewitched, wedded to a dogma that defies reason. It’s no good pointing out the faults of the EU, because in their mind the EU can do no wrong.
May 9, 2025
I saw Mandelson shaking hands with Trump in the Oval Office. I felt sick
May 10, 2025
I agree, I do feel for poor Donald.
May 9, 2025
The two much mentioned trade deals were negotiated by Labour/Starmer. Rest assured they will be cr*p.
May 9, 2025
Just a reminder that in the EU today is “Europe Day”, to commemorate the Schuman Declaration on May 9 1950:
https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-history/history-eu/1945-59/schuman-declaration-may-1950_en
referring to “a first step in the federation of Europe” and “the first concrete foundation of a European federation”.
May 9, 2025
I am not a fan of what some call ‘free trade’ deals, but I understand the need for reciprocal arrangements. Once we get past today’s headlines to what is said with USA announcement – a 12-month “temporary arrangement”.
With as speculated the UK coming once more under the EU Umbrella next week everything is 2TK double speak say one thing do the opposite and maintain the two tier structure of them and us at all costs.
May 9, 2025
Sir John
Trade, in WWII spirit ‘wot’ trade
If we had not suffered under duplicity of the Government and Parliaments this century with their focus on appeasement of everyone but the Country and its People, the very thing they are there to protect and secure. With out their double standards and double talk we would have had thriving Industries, energy production and farming so able to be self-reliant and resilient. Let’s never forget it is the UK Governments and Parliament that has forced the Nation and its People into this perilous situation – they cancelled our future!
External trade should be a bonus, the icing on the cake and not survival in hope of being thrown a bone for a tomorrow.
May 9, 2025
WE really do have a dichotomy of a situation with this government. On one hand they are starving the UK of energy to close factories and reduce our industrial output, while at the same time they are negotiating trade deals to improve our balance of payments.
Something doesn’t add up.
Are we going back to the dark ages or are we going to be a super-exporter of goods and services?
We can’t be both!
May 9, 2025
Given we are doing well enough outside of the “highly regulated customs Union” one wonders why the Establishment so keen for us to rejoin it, de facto if not de jure.
May 9, 2025
Starmer seems to rely on proclamation of ‘a deal’ getting him some sort of respect!
If the ‘deal’ is in fact merely giving away the cheapest ‘crown jewels’ but encouraging others to make offers to rob us blind, what sort of future is there for what was a trading country?
May 9, 2025
sadly both the india and us trade deals are a disaster for the uk, as a casual look under the covers at the substance reveals. the uk ruling class really are crap and are showing their poor levels of understanding and negotiation skills again. so as much as I am a brexiteer, and want deals, these are nowhere near deals I could ever support. I would rather shoot my children than allow the Indian outsourcers to rape this country some more.
I predict a very sad end for starmer, and hopefully the rest of the political class too.
come on john, you should know better than this.
Reply I recommended a much more ambitious free trade agreement and set out how to do it
May 9, 2025
But this Government cannot see that they get advantage from being free of the EU: we now read that they are working towards tying us up in the EU defence force. I should have thought there was everything to be said for keeping well clear of that.
Reply Yes we must avoid it
May 9, 2025
I see the First Sea Lord has resigned, as he doesnt like the Strategic Defence Review, and he doesnt like females being forced into the marines, and he doesnt like the marines being moved into the army…
The whole defence world is furious at the politically correct nonsense being rammed down their throats by the ruling classes.
The gap between what Trump and the US military are doing, and the rainbow flagged UK military is getting too big, and something is going to snap.
Where are the politicians speaking up about this?
May 9, 2025
‘Since 2016 our trade has expanded well. The fastest growth has been in services and in the larger share of our trade which is with non EU countries.’ Something that your party needs to keep reminding the electorate.
May 9, 2025
I’m confused I thought we had a trade deal with the EU, one that cost us a divide between GB and Northern Ireland in the sea. Yet the BOE governor says the UK needs to ‘rebuild’ its trade relationship with the EU and do ‘everything we can’ to improve long term trade with the EU. The current UK government is in talks to reset its trade and security relationship. BBC
The BBC says the UK should pursue a veterinary agreement with the EU, aligning to reduce red tape on food, farms, and fish. What is this about, John? Most of our problems in the last decade with food came from the EU, including salmonella some harmful to human health (138 consignments) from Poland and 1 case from Austria, Prior to that, horse meat was sold as beef and used in processed meals. We even had to ban holidaymakers bringing back cheese and meat from the EU recently in a bid to prevent the spread of foot and mouth disease. No cases in the UK, but rising cases across Europe. The Gov also had to ban personal imports of cattle, sheep and pig meat and dairy from Germany, Hungary, Slovakia and Austria. Why would the UK want to align with this problem?
May 9, 2025
Why are we putting so much emphasis on trade with a poor backward country like India that is more interested in coming here and staying than trading. We are already awash with foreigners who are here for no particular reason other than to better themselves and worsen us in the process. China is growing much more rapidly than India and produces stuff we want at prices we like.
May 10, 2025
Poor quality ‘stuff we want at prices we like’ – yes you get what you pay for!
May 9, 2025
Yesterday the Bank of England Governor said something along the lines of “since Brexit our trade with our nearest neighbour (EU) has decreased.”
Please could you show the figures you think he is using and compare to the figures that you or “Facts For EU” would use to show the reality.
Reply Yes, our trade has gone up
May 9, 2025
What’s the best source for actual trade data? Continuity Remain continually argue that trade has been damaged severely by Brexit.
Reply ONS I have published all this as has Facts4eu
May 9, 2025
Thanks
May 9, 2025
I think it’s time to have that Review on where we stand now versus what we were promised –
the leading lights in all of this should be summoned to give their account at nine years post the vote.