I am fed up with the idiot soundbite that says the UK lost 4% of GDP thanks to Brexit. This is based on a long term Remain forecast that said the UK might lose trade with the EU after Brexit which in turn over the longer term could mean 4% less productivity gain than otherwise.
This was always wrong. We now know our trade with the EU has risen since 2016,not fallen.We know our GDP has followed a similar path to the EU, hit by covid lockdowns. It has not fallen 4% more. We have not been allowed many of the gains we can now make if we use our freedom to run a more pro growth policy than the EU does.
The idea that productivity would underperform was based on the idea that as trade fell so there would be less international competition to drive cheaper and better. This was based on a wrong view we would not be able to trade more with non EU, which of course we are doing. Trade Agreements with the TPP and now India will help, but trade anyway is growing faster with non EU and is the majority of our trade as it was prior to the referendum.
So wrong on all counts. Brexit did not reduce GDP. Trade with EU has not fallen, Trade with non EU has continued to grow faster. There is plenty of competition.
Meanwhile UK public sector productivity has slumped through bad management. Government has been busy banning or forcing out of business highly productive sectors like oil, gas, oil refining and ICE cars which have been big exports to the EU.
May 11, 2025
The war criminal Putin has, predictably, rejected Starmer’s ultimatum for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire. After keeping Western journalists waiting for 7 hours in the Kremlin last hight, Putin, who was sweating, appeared and rejected the proposed ceasefire, but said he was ready for direct negotiations with Ukraine. Putin then abruptly left the room without taking questions
Putin’s deranged lickspittle Medvedev – who has made repeated threats to launch a nuclear attack on London – outlined the Russian position on X (Twitter) afterwards:-
“Macron, Merz, Starmer, and Tusk were supposed to discuss peace in Kyiv. Instead, they are blurting out threats against Russia … You think that’s smart, eh? Shove these peace plans up your pangender arses.”
Clearly, Putin, the war criminal, is rattled by Starmer’s ceasefile ultimatum – particularly as the front lines are holding, despite repeated Russian “meat grinder” assaults
Meanwhile, thousands of N Korean troops continue to be transported to the Kursk front, where they are positioned behind the front line as blocking troops – doubtless to prevent a sudden retreat without orders by the Russian conscript army.
May 11, 2025
Yes, he certainly didn’t look nor sound his usual arrogant self. Let’s hope something is causing him discomfort, and not because he ate something dodgy. The problem with Putin is he considers agreements/ceasefires are simply tactical elements of an ongoing conflict. There will only be peace when Putin is ‘retired’.
May 11, 2025
Will Putin’s “retirement” be sufficient, I do have my doubts?
May 11, 2025
I hope the ‘cure’ is now useless.
May 11, 2025
@SG. I hadn’t heard Starmer had given an “ultimatum” to Putin. The mere idea is hilarious, but at the same time very troubling. Does Starmer really believe he can issue orders to someone of Putin’s stature? If he does, goodness knows what he believes he can force upon the rest of us. Hopefully he was just grandstanding.
May 11, 2025
The man as usual was pathetically grandstanding. Pension freezer Starmer is dire, how many small boat gangs has he smashed so far?
His latest plan is for immigrants to pass A level standard English? Not that many english people have that despite getting top grades in all my sciences etc, I only got a C grade at GCSE which was required for Cambridge Maths (having rather scruffy, smudged, left handed writing and a bit dyslexic too – not that they did the dyslexic industry so much in those days) . Not sure “release the sausages” Starmer would pass either but he can count down from 5 to 1 just about!
Then we have the £1000 fines for load music on trains – stand by any tube station for a while and loads of people jump over the barriers – no one does anything similar with the shoplifting which is totally out of control with zero deterrents! Starmer, like a dim lawyer thinks more laws are always needed especially ones against free speed. But the police never enforce the existing one.
May 11, 2025
To a man with a hammer… Starmer like the Blairs are lawyers, rather fond of every more law and ever more over paid lawyers. I am reminded of Jeremy Bentham “the concept of natural rights was nonsense and that to claim rights not prescribed in the laws of the state was ‘nonsense on stilts’.”
Reminded that is by David Starkey in his recent excellent video – All the worst ideas are French.
May 11, 2025
Never heard of anyone handing out free speed, oversupply in the market I suppose?
May 11, 2025
I failed to see what this fantasyland jingoistic propaganda has to do with Brexit. In any case, you obviously haven’t a clue about Ukraine, SG, so it’s probably just as well you don’t write about Brexit either.
Russia is winning, a winning side doesn’t accept an unconditional ceasefire, that’s all you need to remember. Oh, and there isn’t a ‘Kursk front’ anymore, the Ukrainian invaders have been booted out.
As regards Brexit, it’s just as well we are no longer in the EU and able to make our own arrangements now. The Brexit deal is paying off, because it was looking ahead to the longer term, not just to the next couple of years. These were disrupted by the lockdowns anyway.
May 11, 2025
You missed the main point, Sakara Gold. Russia has now announced it is proposing direct peace talks with Ukraine in Istanbul, with no preconditions, starting on 15th May. Now the ball is in Zelensky’s court. What will he be told to do?
May 11, 2025
That was a very elegant refusal of the Kellog plan – which was an ultimatum which expires on 12 May.
Putin countered in a statement a 2.00am. This is a busy man and he is batting NATO right out of the ground.
May 11, 2025
It has repeatedly offered the resumption of 2022 Peace negotiations – he suggests resuming in Istanbul where they agreed a peace treaty before Johnson scuppered it.
May 11, 2025
Oh yes, Putin wants discussions before a ceasefire, Zelenskyy wants a ceasefire before discussions. If you call that ‘no preconditions’ I hope you never were nor never will be involved in negotiations.
May 11, 2025
Exactly – but remember when talking about public sector “productivity” what are they producing? Much of this is negative for the economy like road blocking, net zero, encouraging mass, low skilled benefit claiming immigration, enforsing rigged markets in healthcare, eductation, energy, heating systems, transport, EVs, housing, employing Indians without paying NI, schools and universities, net zero, over regulation of almost everything, slow and inefficint planning, recycling, enforsing thought crimes, the was on free speech…
May 11, 2025
In there areas low productivity (of negative things) is an advantage but not as much of one as firing all these people and letting them get real and productive jobs.
May 11, 2025
In “these” areas rather.
I see that the BBC had the language graduate & Chair of Question Time attacking (quite wrongly) Richard Tice on his manmade CO2 percentages and also had an absurdly hostile audience. And then we had Any Question which (shortly after Reform’s triumph in the local and bye-elections) decided not to even bother having a reform panellist or even a slightly reform leaning one.
Good old BBC wrong on climate, wrong on immigration levels, wrong on economics, wrong on Covid lockdowns and vaccines and masks, wrong on tax levels, wrong on the EU & yet we are forced to pay for them to push this endless damaging propaganda at us.
May 11, 2025
+1 LL. The BBC has played, and continues to play, a huge role in the progressive globalist project that is undermining most of the good left in our society.
There’s no chance of scrapping the licence fee during this parliamentary term. Plenty of opportunity in the past, but it wasn’t taken.
May 11, 2025
14 years of the Consocialist but they did not even decriminalise the BBC propaganda tax.
May 11, 2025
If another news provider such as GB News were to foul up like this, it would get a very stiff warning, if not worse, from Ofcom. But somehow the BBC gets away with it. Who’s decided that? The BBC itself, perhaps?
May 11, 2025
More lists, no solutions, achievable or otherwise
May 11, 2025
You prefer to not have the list of objectives? You want to be truly lost?
May 11, 2025
Well the list has loads of solutions that would certainly work if done. The problem is how can we get politicians to try do this and force the blob to deliver?
May 11, 2025
Good morning.
The simple solution is to counter the argument by asking – “How much GDP was lost thanks to the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) ?”
The ERM, and later the Euro, proved a flaw in the EU Federalist Project. That you cannot have such differing nations using the same currency with different economic models run by different governments. But the Germans did not want to give up control and let the EU run things because they knew they would transfer massive wealth from them to the likes of the PIGS.
Reply Great point. ERM and shadowing DM cost us more than 4% of GDP
May 11, 2025
PIGS = Portugal Italy Greece Spain?
Not seen that before
May 11, 2025
Makes one wonder why the Thatcher/Major govt ever considered the ERM, the Callaghan govt wanted nothing to do with the EMS, the forerunner to the ERM, by late 1978. Why didn’t Mrs Thatcher kill the notion of monitory union stone dead in 1979, her govt. must have seen some advantage in keeping the idea alive.
Reply I gave consistent advice against the ERM. The Treasury and Foreign Office ganged up to force to this disastrous course of action.
May 12, 2025
Sir John, the true Cassandra of British politics.
May 12, 2025
Gosh what a wonderful comment hefner.
So analytical yet sarcastic all at the same time
Be proud.
May 13, 2025
I am, I am. But if you know your classics, it‘s a compliment as Cassandra was right, the Achaeans (Athenians) took over Troy.
May 11, 2025
The ongoing destruction of what the UK is good at continues at pace. The Net Zero fixation adopted by this and the past government is to blame. The process is driven by international policy interference driving UK domestic energy decisions.
The ongoing misdiagnosis (CO2 attribution) of weather variation is used to maintain a false agenda and is simply resulting in deindustrialisation of the UK.
Thankfully new political parties are beginning to bring sanity and reality back into the decision making process. I only hope there is sufficient core industry left to build back from, come the next election, if we are allowed to have one by 2029…..
May 11, 2025
Rod, Agenda 30 is on track
We are being deindustrialised, Net Stupid is costing every household a fortune and the main beneficiaries are China and the BRIC countries.
Uncontrolled immigration is diluting our culture and the government continues to prioritise alien cultures. Within a decade every town, village and hamlet will have a Mosque
May 11, 2025
and women and girls (post-puberty) will have to be accompanied by a male family member.
May 11, 2025
It does beg the question, why do they imagine race replacement will give them, (who ever they are) a better world than the one we developed and cultivated to such a success for all concerned?
May 11, 2025
Brexit is over, done and dusted. The world is rapidly moving away from fossil fuels and ICE vehicles to EV’s, renewables and nuclear. The fossil fuel lobby is fighting a desperate rear guard as their business model collapses. Can’t we move on?
Reply Fossil fuel use continues to increase worldwide this decade.Drill baby drill in US, more coal and Russian gas in China, India and Brazil increasing etc.
May 11, 2025
I think you’ll find if we get a Reform Government, that Brexit will not be over – done and dusted – as you claim, and the Net Zero nonsense will be binned in favour of reliable energy sources.
This week, an EV car left charging overnight in Hampshire exploded in flames. It was completely destroyed, as were several other vehicles and the owner’s house was badly damaged by fire. No wonder people aren’t buying them.
May 11, 2025
@Donna +1. The banning can’t come soon enough. The sun-dimming (“cloud seeding”) experiments paid for with £56m of taxpayer funding (via the £800m pa taxpayer-funded Advanced Research and Invention Agency, ARIA) are terrifying and at the very least will clearly reduce the efficiency of solar panels. It’s very sinister that ARIA is exempt from Freedom of Information requests.
Dr John Campbell did a video on this recently, with links to sources.
May 11, 2025
The last thing the UK needs is less sunshine. Perhaps in the Sahara? Though the extra CO2 and precipitation is even helpfully greening some areas of desert! A lot to be said for a bit more CO2 plant food!
May 11, 2025
EV vehicles need to be banned from petrol station forecourts, there is almost no reason for such vehicles to be there anyway (beyond lazy owners wanting to use the often attached mini-mart shops), should a EV catch fire whilst standing in close proximity to petrol pumps or other hydrocarbon related infrastructure it will become a major incident for the Emergency services, and will likely shut down major traffic routes.
May 11, 2025
try pushing an EV turned off while driver visits the premises!
May 11, 2025
+1
May 11, 2025
Problem is that an increasing number of service stations also have electric vehicle charging facilities.
May 12, 2025
@MiB; Once again you have failed to understand my comment! 🙁
If EVs were to be banned from Petrol Station forecourts why would there be any EV charging points installed, and those that had been installed would get relocated.
May 12, 2025
Have I Jerry?
It was you that demanded no fuel stations should allow EV vehicles on their forecourt.
Currently many forecourts I see have petrol and diesel and EV charging points.
Do you get out much Jerry?
May 13, 2025
@MiB; You might as well be telling me the price of smoked Haddock, you still miss the point. Even if forecourts do have EV charging points they should not in MY OPINION. But regardless of any personal opinion, I very much doubt such chargers are installed alongside the petrol filling pumps or in the road tanker unloading bay.
As for “getting out much”, I suspect I have a far greater understanding than you do Martin, how ever many times you use a petrol station to charge your EV, some of us have had to learn the Petroleum Spirits Act, not so much the law but the whys and wherefores of Petroleum storage, the risks, so we didn’t kill ourselves or burn workshops down!
May 11, 2025
The cancellation of the Orsted offshore wind project proves definitively that renewable power is more expensive – even guaranteed prices based on gas generation were not enough to make this scheme profitable.
May 11, 2025
Subsidising the ‘unreliables’ as Matt Ridley calls them cost £28 billion pa. £900 per household pa.
May 11, 2025
Even that is an underestimate I suspect as it, expensive energy and the extra taxes exports jobs and reduces our ability to compete so fewer jobs lower wages and fewer jobs too.
May 11, 2025
SG where on earth do you get your information from
I bet you haven’t heard that the ice caps are expanding rapidly which has made the ecoloons go very quiet.
Melting ice caps was the lynchpin in the “settled” science of global warming, now for 2 years and counting it’s gone into reverse
May 11, 2025
IW, where on earth do you get your information from?
The ice caps are decreasing slowly, that’s why in the Northern hemisphere the USA, Canada, and Russia have started and have further plans for increased trans-polar traffic between Asia and US East coast or Europe.
For the Southern hemisphere see nature.com ‘Record low Antarctic sea-ice coverage indicates a new sea ice state’ A.Purich, E.Doddridge, 2023, Comm.Earth & Environm., 4, 314.
I wonder, are you too far gone to be able to read anything outside your preferred ‘scriptures’?
BTW, a climatology is made of an average over 30 years, so now people compare the present year with the 1991-2020 climatology, which quite obviously makes your comment simply irrelevant.
May 11, 2025
Who chose the arbitrary 30 years and why 30 I wonder?
Surely any sensibly scientist would consider it over many millions of years where data is available or can be derived?
May 11, 2025
Mankind only affects climate at a frequency of 30 years, even I know that.
(no Physics ‘A’ level).
May 11, 2025
No. Western governments – ours in particular- are fighting to destroy our economy.
If you think this is hyperbole, consider just one thing. The planning process for the proposed second Thames crossing East of London has cost £250 million and amounts to 85,000 pages. We now live in a lunatic asylum.
May 11, 2025
The deficit aspects of leaving the EU has been down to weak Remain politicians or the majority of those who have been in Parliament since 2016, ably abetted by a civil service resenting the loss of executive power. Thanks to them, Brexit is still unfinished business.
May 11, 2025
Brexit happened Five years ago. You were warned you’d hate it once reality kicked in
May 11, 2025
what a delay, still waiting.
May 11, 2025
80% of UK GDP is Services, and 50% of our exports are Services, Being in the EU for all those years, cost us UK taxpayers a fortune. Thank Heavens for Brexit.
May 11, 2025
+1
May 11, 2025
We like our current position – with partial implementation of Brexit better than remaining, we look forward to the full scale implementation of Brexit.
So you are wrong. We warned you that you were wrong before and after the Brexit vote.
May 11, 2025
Obsessed with GDP as are all politicians. What about all the musicians etc who lost work, universities collaborative research teams, stopped from accessing European money and partners, small exporters both here and in the EU who do not have large established export teams so prohibitive cost lost them business or now with those costs are less competitive, farmers and others no doubt suffering until the U.K.s bureaucracy got its support funds organised etc
So benefits yes, but one eyed ignorance of the negative effect on lots of ‘little’ people is typical of everything the political class do and is one of the reasons why there is such a disconnect.
May 11, 2025
Very very few ‘little’ people trade internationally. In fact a massive proportion of all GDP is home based. International trade is a relatively tiny proportion and of that, exports to the EU constituted 1.5% – so we imposed massively expensive regulation on the WHOLE ECONOMY to satisfy 1.5% which exported to ten eU and could quite easily have sold their exports elsewhere.
(I know the percentage fluctuates, but that was the percentage when Norris McWhirter was making this point up and down the land).
May 11, 2025
You really write anything that comes to your head, doesn’t it?
commonslibrary.parliament.uk 22/04/2025 ‘Statistics on UK-EU trade’ appears to say that £358 bn (41% of all UK exports) go to the EU, and is somewhat compensated by £454 bn (51% of UK total imports). Obviously this trade in and out might not be done by your ‘little’ people, but those might be employed by bigger importing/exporting companies.
1.5%, well, wrong by a factor 27, not bad for a Sunday.
May 11, 2025
What is the GDP of the U.K. Hefner? What % are exports to the EU?
In addition you need to factor in that much of our exports to the rest of the world were directed via the EU to take a higher percentage of exports to the EU. Imports from the EU were also enforced by quotas and the tariff wall against the rest of the world.
May 11, 2025
‘To FAKE a higher % of exports to the EU …’
May 11, 2025
You have the figures on the referred document. And these figures are for 2023/24 so no Rotterdam effect.
May 11, 2025
+1
May 11, 2025
Economics is not your strong point. Brexit means increasing barriers to trade, as simple as that. It therefore reduces trade. If our trade with the EU has risen since 2016, it would have risen by about 4% more without Brexit
Reply There is no evidence our EU trade would be 4% up. You cite total trade. As the bulk of our trade with EU is imports, how would importing more help as imports are negative GDP.
May 11, 2025
There is plenty of evidence that introducing barriers to trade reduces trade. Or do you now want to deny even something as basic as that?
May 11, 2025
all depends on whether you WANT to trade.! If with EU – then NO!
May 11, 2025
So standing behind the trade barrier EU Tariff wall is a bad idea – locking the world out.
You get it at last!
May 11, 2025
Scallion is a comedian! ‘Economics is not JRs strong point’! 😂
If you don’t know enough to recognize absolute top level political economy – unsurpassed – then really you should go back to the kitchen and make salad, scallion.
May 11, 2025
Very timely remark Lynn. What about applying these wise words to … someone like … Lynn herself?
May 11, 2025
What a pathetic remark hefner.
Your passive aggressive sarcastic comments are real bore.
May 11, 2025
Hefner I am not a scallion (spring onion). I have a passing relationship with the kitchen but would never go by the name of any vegetable. Scallion reveals himself in the name he chooses for himself.
Too nuanced for you Hefner.
May 11, 2025
Scallion, the EU should stop creating those unnecessary barriers to trade, as simple as that.
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2025/02/03/concentrate-on-the-us-which-is-growing-not-the-eu-which-is-stalled/#comment-1497035
“It’s nearly eight years since the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement came into force and it would help the 94.5% of the world’s population who live outside of the EU, including us of course, if it started to fulfill its obligations under that treaty … “
May 11, 2025
There is a very simple way to avoid being faced by unnecessary barriers to trade, Denis, and it is the way we used for a long time – by being a member of the EU. Outside the EU, you face costly barriers – thanks to Brexit, our exporters face costly barriers.
Reply The EU imposed huge tariff and non tariff barriers on the majority of our trade which is with non EU. We can now take all those barriers down.
May 11, 2025
94.5% of the world’s population live outside the EU, are you suggesting they should all join it?
The EU has voluntarily taken on this treaty obligation to all those countries around the world.
May 11, 2025
Denis, how can this Facilitation Agreement be enforced?
May 11, 2025
This is a treaty which the EU collectively and each of its member states individually has ratified:
https://tfadatabase.org/en/ratifications
and which therefore has the force of both superior EU and inferior national law for all of them.
May 11, 2025
So which court enforces it?
May 12, 2025
The EU’s own Court of Justice should insist that the EU keeps its international agreements.
For a start, from Article 3 of the Treaty on European Union:
“5. In its relations with the wider world, the Union shall uphold and promote its values and interests and contribute to the protection of its citizens. It shall contribute to peace, security, the sustainable development of the Earth, solidarity and mutual respect among peoples, free and fair trade, eradication of poverty and the protection of human rights, in particular the rights of the child, as well as to the strict observance and the development of international law, including respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter.”
May 11, 2025
The WTO enforces it. In fact it’s interesting how many cases there have been against the EU. The impose massive fines. I believe also against companies like Siemens.
May 11, 2025
You do realise that, IF that were true, 4% extra trade with the EU does not mean 4% extra GDP. I doubt if it would mean 0.001% difference to GDP.
Answer me one thing. Our trade with the EU was always at a deficit – we imported far more from them than we exported. Why would you want to do more trade with the EU at a deficit?
May 11, 2025
@Scallion; “Brexit means increasing barriers to trade”
As did joining the EEC; the company my father worked for had to ditch plans for a new and rather large processing factory due to the new barriers to trade that came in after Jan 1973, even with transition arrangements the investment was going to become uneconomic once they expired, as on-going core product supplies from outside the EEC could not be guaranteed. But as one set of doors closed, others (re)opened, ’twas true after we joined, it is true post Brexit.
May 11, 2025
Fortunately there are still a few UK businesses, both large and small, that possess or are building global reach. Brexit has enabled the recent trade agreements with India and the USA, however flawed or limited they may be, and should help to continue that growth. By contrast the EU looks awkwardly placed as the USA pressures German businesses to relocate operations there and China dominates more and more manufacturing sectors. The UK’s problem is old political parties that are slow to adapt to the new trade realities and are determined to screw the UK’s wealth creating sectors with high taxes and burdensome regulations.
May 11, 2025
We trade with the nonEU on the basis of rolled-over EU trade agreements, so if our trade with the nonEU is growing, it cannot possibly be because of Brexit
May 11, 2025
We don’t need trade agreements to trade worldwide unless our idiot politicians have imposed a tariff blockade against those countries.
Tariffs work – they kill trade. That’s why so many have been imposed against the USA – but where a country had a free trading status with the majority of the world, like Russia for instance, no amount of tarriffs imposed against it by the consequently dying states can dampen its economy.
That’s why Putin laughs in your face when you propose the 18th package of tariffs on Russia. No impact on Russia but the EU economy is in tatters!
May 11, 2025
Exactly.
May 11, 2025
For your information, Russia’s economy looks ‘good’ (GDP growth 4.1%) because it spends 6+% of its GDP on its war with Ukraine and its present inflation rate (March 2025) is 10.3% (tradingeconomics.com ‘Russia inflation rate’).
Russia recently slashed its 2025 oil price forecast to $56/barrel to be able to sustain war. And Russian people are footing the bill with during 2025Q1 a sharp rise in people defaulting on their mortgages and on their consumer loans (themoscowtimes.com 29/04/2025 ‘Russia’s largest banks face sharp rise in loan defaults’).
May 11, 2025
Hefner, for your information war costs a lot and there is unnatural borrowing, unnatural state spending. We know – we had an existential few wars against Germany and borrowed a lot. The efforts of the armed forces are lost to the productive sector – and that costs a lot too.
Russia is the 4th biggest economy in the world by ppp. It is by far the richest country in earth in natural commodities. It can sell oil at whatever price its customers are prepared to pay. They are selling a lot of oil and gas – to India for instance which adds a bonsella and sells ‘Indian oil’ to the EU.
You are irked because the EU chose to nominate the price at which Russia could sell oil, and they snub you as the losers you are.
Consider that Russia is funding millions of refugees from Ukraine. It is fighting NATO yet the leaders of 29 countries were in Moscow yesterday. All substantial, sovereign nations, what is the number of reduced, bankrupted desperate states the constitute the EU? Oh I remember, less than 29.
Now tell us the same stats for the EU? GDP growth? What % spent on supporting the War in Ukraine? What is the inflation rate? How much does it pay for a barrel of oil? What state are the banks in? Does Deutchebank still exist?
May 12, 2025
Unfortunately what is important to the Russian citizen is GDP per capita ppp and here Russia is 43rd. The country might be rich in GDP ppp but if money is wasted on entreprises of no benefit to the population here it comes, the present Putin-led Russia.
As for the Ukrainian refugees (statista.com 2025 ‘Estimated number of refugees from Ukraine recorded in Europe and Asia since February 2022 as of February 2025, by selected country’, Germany 1.24 m, Russia 1.22 m, Poland 993k, Czechia 389k, UK 253k, …
and obviously Russia would not have had these 1.22 m refugees if Putin had not attacked Ukraine to start with.
As for the 29 leaders in Moscow, that was for the 9th May 80th anniversary WW2 parade …
What about your fixation on Germany and Deutsche Bank? They both still exist 😉
(spglobal.com 30/04/2024 ‘The world’s largest banks by assets, 2024’)
May 11, 2025
….and yet I recall at the time it came to vote to stay or leave the EU there were so many grossly misleading statements,innacuracies and lies that were dished out to the voting public by our politicians who were hell bent on making sure we stayed in the EU and who were prepared to mislead the public in order to fulfil their own personal agenda.
I for one was one of the majority who fortunately voted to get out and my only concern has been to see some politicians still wanting to get back with the EU despite Brexit the risk being we again lose our fishing rights as part of future deals with the EU and we are still unable to control immigration and the resultant disastrous impact on our economy because we are still tied in to the ECHR and it seems we just can’t say NO.
May 11, 2025
We said No Paul, it’s the weak minded in Westminster petrified of having the responsibility of governance. They will abdicate to anybody!
May 11, 2025
Our exports to the EU are at a record high and we have a zero tariff zero quota FTA with them. So “closer alignment” could only bring very marginal benefits for UK, but probably larger benefits for the EU.
May 11, 2025
I remember Channel 4’s headline report the day after the EU referendum result. It was the most distorted report I have ever seen and it was actually unsettling to watch: UK’s exports will reduce; main parts of UK’s financial sector will relocate to Frankfurt or New York; many UK non-financial firms will relocate to the continent; much of the UK’s FDI will now relocate to the continent too; unemployment will surge; imported inflation will surge and there will be huge delays importing products we need given bureaucratic checks and friction. All this was to a backdrop of thunderclaps and lightining with each new assertion.
Needless to say it was all garbage. I was appalled by it and I have never watched their gonzo journalism since.
May 11, 2025
Misinformation – but the MSM is exempt from the legal censure of spreading misinformation!
May 11, 2025
I notice Donald Trump has an effective way of dealing with the MSM. When they ask him a loaded question to undermine him he responds by saying ‘you should concentrate on your ratings. They are in dire straits. You should be ashamed of yourselves for having driven xxxx organistation into the ground.’ Then he just moves onto a fair question. If another hostile question gets asked they get the same treatment.
His style might be a bit full-on for the British electorate but I am amused when he puts the left back in their box.
May 11, 2025
No loss of trade, no loss of GDP is a very firm line to take but not as far as I would go. I stick with my position from before the referendum, that the impact of EU membership on the UK economy has always been marginal, and quite likely marginally negative, and so I would expect leaving the EU to have a marginal economic impact. What has changed is that then I would compare any potential on-off sacrifice of GDP with a recurring trend growth rate of 2,5% a year, but now it is clear that since 2008 our trend growth rate is much lower. So now the comparison could also be between some marginal effect of Brexit and the 22% loss of GDP attributable to the net zero policy.
May 11, 2025
The 4% of GDP claim can be as wrong as you like, but it matters not to the dogmatic Remain camp. The EU is their religion and if lies suit their agenda they will feel justified in using them.
May 11, 2025
@Dave Andrews – yes pure religion
May 11, 2025
Don’t know why we are still talking about Brexit and have no idea if we won or lost by four per cent – only thing is I see are the food banks dotted about with the rundown of the shop fronts on the high street makes the whole thing questionable – we have nothing to crow about.
May 11, 2025
Government taxes are killing the High St. nothing much to do with Brexit.
May 11, 2025
Funnily enough the High Street has bottomed out and there is a considerable turnaround. We have a big unit in a northern town where the occupant triggered their break clause. Next week our agent is showing 3 (three) national and international companies the premises. We have offers before they view (!) and have been offered a 15 year lease – unheard of for a decade.
The U.K. economy is unbelievably resilient. Even the incompetents in power since 1990 have been unable to kill it.
May 11, 2025
It always amazes me that the Remainers think that trade was the main factor in deciding whether or not people wanted to stay in the EU. It is of course one thing to take into account, but the most important reason l voted to leave, and l know there was a huge number like me, was to regain democratic control of our Government.
The Remainers have no real answer to this, and it is far easier to make false news about trade balances.
May 11, 2025
There is no real answer to this because it is fake news. Our government was always democratically controlled by voters when we were in the EU (as is true of Spain, Italy, France etc). Brexit has not changed this one jot
May 11, 2025
If while the UK was a member state of the EU the UK government had always had a veto on EU measures, with no Qualified Majority Voting on EU laws, and with no supreme EU court interpreting those EU laws, and with the UK Parliament having the unchallenged right to disapply any EU law that had been agreed by the UK government without prior parliamentary approval, or later when circumstances changed, then you might have been right.
May 11, 2025
Not quite true. Whilst in the EU all important Acts passed by Parliament were headed with the ministerial statement that “This Act complies with EU Directive or Regulation *****”.
Clearly, Parliament was no longer supreme when faced with having no option other than to comply with EU Directives and Regulations.
May 11, 2025
Of couse we could refuse to comply. What do you even think Parliamentary sovereingty means?
May 11, 2025
The point being that they surrendered OUR Sovereignty. We did not comply with the UN definition of a nation qualified to have a seat at the UN.
Even under a direct explicit Order from the Sovereigns – the Brexit vote – they REFUSE to recover our sovereignty.
May 11, 2025
But our Government was NOT our law maker! We could not sack our law makers – the German bureaucratic dictatorship of the EU.
May 11, 2025
This reminds me of a note I circulated on June 22 2016 which started:
“I’ve been reflecting on what single change could possibly have induced me to vote to stay in the EU, and I think the answer would have been a treaty change which restored our national veto in the 180 areas of EU decision making where it has been abolished since the last referendum in 1975, when we were promised, officially and in writing, that our Parliament would not lose power through the Common Market because it would always be able to veto anything that was proposed.
At a stroke that would have effectively neutralised legitimate concerns about the erosion of our national sovereignty, but when that change was formally proposed in a report by the European Scrutiny Committee in November 2013:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmeuleg/109/10903.htm
the idea was immediately rejected by the government and Cameron did not bother to raise it during his renegotiation.”
Nearly nine years on it is disappointing and worrying that some people like you still have not grasped this and once again I plead with Sir John to help organise a proper campaign to crush these efforts to reverse Brexit.
May 11, 2025
Given the “Rotterdam fudge” and how EU internal market rules work(ed), there are so many ways of calculating pre and post Brexit trade I take all such figures with a pinch of salt! Technically, on one matrix, UK trade with the EU grew by 100% post Brexit…
Pre Brexit forecasts were often worst case scenarios and used by both sides of the argument, obviously none were based on the then unknown terms of any withdrawal agreement (or Europhile policies were the UK to remain), all thus meaningless and no one should be citing them in 2025, but by the same score there are plenty of Leave supporters who claim the UK has never actually left the (clutches of the) EU – which I have some sympathy for, as we have just witnessed with the USA-UK trade deal, GBNI is still kowtowing to baked-in EU regulation, and EU threats.
May 11, 2025
It is truly petrifying listening to the Governor of the Bank of England floundering in a sea of garbage. He does not know which way is up.
Time the BOE was made responsible for it’s own losses. If that bankrupts it – so what? The Treasury needs to have full responsibility for money supply. We can sack them!
May 11, 2025
Yep – he’s clueless.
May 12, 2025
@MT; “he’s clueless”
Who, the puppet or the puppeteer?
May 11, 2025
+1
May 12, 2025
@LA; “If that bankrupts it – so what?”
So what you ask?! The BoE is owned by the State, thus the taxpayer will take any hit. If the BoE is bankrupt so is our Central Bank… 😮
But yes, it is time our government removed Gordon Brown’s smoke and mirrors, a decision supported and retained by the Tory party and retained when they became the govt, the idea of (notional) independence; if the BoE spouts nonsense it has likely come from the Government via No.11, but the politicos can disown it.
May 11, 2025
Not that that matters to true remainers – they can make up any soundbites they like and the media will repeat them as facts.
The Brexit war is still being fought on different fronts. The establishment and die-hard remainers refuse to give in… They will prove they were right all along by creating stories to show how right they were!
It’s the continual creep of deceit and lies about Brexit that wear you down – Time to turn a deaf ear in their direction!
May 11, 2025
But one side in that war is well-organised, the other side is not.
May 11, 2025
The ‘Word’ used was might before anything was even voted on. The only danger is Parliament believed in this un-verifiable so have refused us real leaving, and are still fighting to get us back in. Is it because MPs have become ‘free-loading’ and don’t like the idea that they should work, live up to the promises to get elected. All the while it is the EU dictating they could shrug their shoulders and say ‘not me’
It could be on of the same reasons 2TK wants back in as then the problems his bunch have created are not theirs
May 11, 2025
In today’s Telegraph – “Badenoch: I’ll reverse Starmer’s EU reset if it betrays Brexit”
So that begs the question why did she keep EU Laws when she had the power to repeal them?
One sound-bite to be elected then another when you are – a trait running through out the HoC
May 11, 2025
I think I may have touched a nerve with the author of this intemperate letter in the Maidenhead Advertiser:
“EU will stand up to vile transformation of USA”
” D R Cooper bemoans the EU setting rules for trade of its member states with third parties like the UK (Viewpoint, May 2) yet has been one of the diminishing band of Brexit aficionados who rants about UK sovereignty (which the UK countries had as members of the EU, with their abilities to set their own laws).
The EU maintains the highest consumer standards in the world, which is why Agent Orange and his American fellow travellers loathe it. Put simply, the EU protects its citizens; the USA doesn’t.
Keir Starmer, busy searching for a backbone, simply won’t stand up to this vile transformation of the USA, the EU will.”
May 11, 2025
Denis – at least you know you are being read!
May 11, 2025
Highest standards! 🤯 they don’t even have clean water in the taps and have brought us down to their 3rd world level.
May 12, 2025
You are being simply ridiculous: there are 27 countries in the EU. How do you know the quality of water in every region of these 27 countries.
Water might be of various quality in different parts of the UK but I would think this is more related to the individual UK water companies than to the EU. See …
dwi.gov.uk ‘Taste and odour in drinking water’
stwater.co.uk ‘My water tastes and smells unusual’
wessexwater.co.uk ‘Tastes and smells of your water’
watertreatmentservices.co.uk ‘Taste and odour problems in drinking water’
anglianwater.co.uk ‘Taste and smells’
unitedutilities.com ‘Unusual taste or smell’
anglianwater.co.uk ‘Taste and smells’
southeastwater.co.uk ‘My water smells strange’
…
May 11, 2025
58 criminals arrived in the UK yesterday; from the safe country of France…in the british army, that’s the size of two fighting platoons
May 11, 2025
Germany has ‘closed it borders and refuses to give access to any more asylum seekers’ – and it’s in Shenghan!
What is wrong with our politicians?
May 11, 2025
Briefings for Britain site; Catherine McBride’s 30/4/25 piece well worth a read. “The 16 dumbest things your MP has said about trade” Release the sausages I say, the EU seems to like them more than some seem to know.
May 11, 2025
Having read a few of C. McBride’s articles (thecritic.co.uk) (thanks Diane for the tip) I found them much more hopeful and much less ‘it’s all the fault of the Remainers’ than what I usually read on this blog. And also she is not afraid to have graphics and tables in her articles.
Reply So why do you bother with this site as you seem to despise it?
May 11, 2025
I don’t despise this site, some people put interesting comments quite worth reading, some not.
I don’t believe for one second the present problems in the UK are so related to Remainers, the Civil Service, the WEF, the WHO, the WMO, the UN and the other phantasmagoria that some people appear so keen on.
There have been some studies (theconversation.com 31/01/2024 ‘Fear of aging is really a fear of the unknown – modern society is making things worse’) showing it is a common feature of old people who feel first unproductive then undervalued then have difficulties to understand the world around them and therefore have to find bogeymen to try to make sense of it.
As the owner of this site, you really are at the origin of this deluge of mis-, mal-, dis-information.
Reply The site allows debate. Some of the worst misinformation comes from pro EU and pro government contributors. I delete the most inaccurate on both sides.
May 12, 2025
By deluge of misinformation, malinformation, disinformation and inaccurate information hefner simply means stuff he disagrees with or dislikes.
In general it is exactly what drives the Left’s determined campaign to close down free speech.
May 11, 2025
Wise words as ever.
You really should go into politics.
May 11, 2025
“Immigration” ” Open Borders ”
Is a worldwide thing not just a uk thing.
Is world wide open borders good ?
This ” stop the boats” is boring.
The question is
IS WORLDWIDE OPEN BORDERS A GOOD THING ?
That’s the question
The answer I dont know.
May 11, 2025
Try getting into Russia, the Middle-East, Asia, Indonesia, Australia, Africa, North & South America without a valid visa & passport …..it only happens in Europe (less Poland)
May 11, 2025
How can you not know?
Is invasion good, do nations benefit?
Globalists who dream of global government want no borders and no nations, just a bastard mix of people – drones.
May 11, 2025
Listening and watching todays’ news one thing is obvious : Under 2TK and Mrs Balls we are never going to stop the small boats or reduce legal inward migration by nearly enough ( to less than 100,000pa.)
Brussels is ruthless at linking two or more entirely unrelated issues to get want they want from a “negotiation”, which is usually nothing of the sort, so it’s about time we tried the same.
If Mrs Balls and 2KK had a pair between them, they would tell Macron, no renewal of fishing licences unless you take back the boats.
May 11, 2025
Sir John, about the 4% lower GDP forecast.
The actual forecast was that UK GDP would be 4% lower than it would have been after 15 years outside of the EU.
Not absolutely 4% lower, but lower than it would have been compared to a theoretical UK still in the EU.
Of course it is impossible to test this forecast because there is no such doppelganger country in the EU. But when you look at our peer nations in the EU like France and Germany, it is now clear that being in the EU is not particularly advantageous to GDP growth.
But misunderstandings like this are pounced on by the other side as if it destroys our whole argument.
May 12, 2025
Excellent post KB
You have exposed the ridiculousness of this much repeated claim by Remain and other pro EU groups.