The much travelled PM thinks UK growth has to come from more trade with the EU and China. I am not sure he knows our big trade with these two is heavily weighted to imports, not exports.I worry he doesn’t realise importing more from them lowers GDP growth.
He is right that if we could export more to them without importing more that helps growth. So why does he follow anti industry anti farming policies that mean we will make and grow fewer things they might want to buy? We used to sell lots of oil, gas, refined oil products and petrol cars to the EU. All these are on the ban and tax more heavily list. We watched as EU grants tore out our orchards, as EU quotas limited our dairy and meat production. Since leaving the EU the farms tax, higher National Insurance, grants for not growing food mean less agricultural output not more exports to a loving continent.
The net zero extremism means high energy costs. There has been a rush of closures in steel, ceramics, cement, plastics, other building materials as demented accounting means we have to import energy intensive products rather than make them for ourselves. The decision to keep our own oil and gas in the ground so we import LNG which creates so much more CO 2 instead is particularly damaging.
This is bad economics and worse politics. The UK trade more with non EU so the PM concentrates on the EU trade in long term decline. We trade more in services than goods, so the PM concentrates on goods. We run huge deficits with the EU and China and a good surplus with the rest of the world. By concentrating on the two big deficits and giving in to them the PM makes more imports and less growth the more likely outcome. China has no intention of helping us rebuild our industries and every intention of making us depend on their batteries, cars, turbines and solar panels. The EU has every plan to use the reset to impose many rules to ensure they sell us more and buy less.
January 29, 2026
My Lord,
We do need to make and indeed grow more of our own products and food.
Other nations put their own country first, we don’t. Well, we do, but our government don’t.
We all know what needs to be done to grow our economy and expand our manufacturing base but the government prefers to ignore us and Brown nose the EU and other anti democratic nations.
January 29, 2026
Everything this bunch of chancers do is designed to undermine us. High energy costs are kept deliberately so because all manufacturing and farming is seen as bad for the environment. 2TK is happy to let China supply us with finished products because he’s a Marxist who has spent his whole life undermining this country just like his friend Harmer.
He really is in a hurry to complete the destruction because he knows the game is up. Just watch for a bogey man argument to cancel the next general election.
January 29, 2026
It is flogging a dead horse to continue writing about Starmer and his motivation.
For a start, he would be well briefed on the trade balance with China. Though he does U turn when pushed, he will not do it for everything even if logic suggests he should consider it.
We don’t know how long he will be Prime Minister, or – if he goes – what his successor will be like.
January 29, 2026
According to The Grauniad, Starmer is saying US officials disagree with Trump’s statement on the Chagos islands.
Starmer may be in “will not ‘yield'” mode. He might think it makes him appear strong.
January 29, 2026
Also in The Grauniad today I note :-
“Farage attack on high street Turkish barber shops is dog-whistle racism, minister says”
This by Miatta Fahnbulleh (not heard of her before) who is “”the devolution, faith and communities minister”.
It reminds of the old Peter Simple column (a Peter who does not post on here) in The Telegraph.
In the famous words of Dr. Heinz Kiosk “We are all guilty!”
January 29, 2026
Good morning.
He is only following orders, much like all PM’s past. They only difference is, he does not care what we, (Leavers) think. Unlike Alexander Johnson who, told a pack of lies (ready made BREXIT) and believed that we had to take Remainers views into account.
The vast majority of MP’s, if not all now, believe in some alignment with the EU and we should pay them money for them to sell into our market. But none of them run a business which explains much.
January 29, 2026
@Mark B +1, well said. The more we reflect on how we got to this situation the more we realise that those that have found their way into the UK Parliament this century are either free-loaders or haters of the UK itself. Lying has been the general out pouring from the institution that calls it self the UK Parliament (or is it EU State Council ) they fight the people then tell lies to save their knecks
January 29, 2026
Sir John, your criticisms of the Starmer Gang’s policies are not merely correct but should be a blinding glimpse of the obvious to this Gang. That they are not leaves only one conclusion: the damage they are doing is deliberate. Yet you have never, to my knowledge, said so.
This is nothing like the old politics of envy. It is hard Left socialism driven by visceral hatred. Destruction of all the Gang hates is the Gang’s purpose. I’ll bet you, also, that if it does not succeed in its aim by 2029 it will seize the opportunity presented by there no longer being any MPs, to stay in power until it has completed its objectives or is thrown out by force, bribery or coercion.
January 29, 2026
Peter G
I’m inclined to agree, everything the government touches, does damage; such, that it must be deliberate!
We know that many in government are members of the Fabian Society, whose long term goal was to turn the country into a socialist state…
It’s looking clearer to see.
January 29, 2026
Indeed the anti-growth agenda of doom loop Reeves, Starmer, Miliband, Lammy, Phillipson… is misdirected on every level. So are they A very dim and deluded or B evil and actually wish to damage the UK’s economy and its abilities to compete and even defend itself.
So Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks Kemi should not put a candidate up in Gorton and Denton – I agree. But I suspect Kemi will get this wrong to. It which will be another large mistake by her. After all Farage stood down many candidates to allow the Boris Tories to win in 2019 alas they betrayed this. The Tories have no chance whatsoever of winning currently about 6% in the polls with Reform on 30% Labour 27% and Greens on 17%.
January 29, 2026
Totally agree with Kemi not putting a candidate up in Gorton and Denton. Polling at a low single figure percentage she could surely explain it in a sensible manner.
January 29, 2026
The voting motives of people are curious, especially where they support a ‘no hope’ candidate. Do they simply want to signal support but without caring who wins the election and represents them? I would always vote for the candidate most likely to represent my the majority of my views AND who is most likely to win. For a right winger in this by-election that candidate is clearly Reform UK.
January 29, 2026
It is most likely that the low single digits are one nation Tories. Most Reform supporters will already have jumped.
Not putting up a candidate sends a terrible message and probably only boosters the Lib Dem vote
January 29, 2026
The vast majority of our economy is made up of British products and services being sold/purchased internally within the UK, but everything he has done has damaged it.
If he really wanted to get growth, he would be concentrating on kick-starting the British internal economy, but that would mean tax cuts, deregulating and getting the boot of the state off the backs of small businesses and sole traders.
But of course that wouldn’t require swanning around the world, pretending to be a Statesman, kow-towing to Xi …. and touting around for a new Globalist job when someone in Labour finally wields the knife.
January 29, 2026
Indeed and it would net cheap reliable on demand non green crap energy!
January 29, 2026
would need…
January 29, 2026
The ongoing legislation round Net Zero and EU product alignment controls ensures there are no fresh start up activities in manufacturing or commercial developments because the difficulties and cost of meeting legislation and planning demands is too high.
Until the entrepreneurial space is opened up by scrapping red tape and too many petty fogging rules around business obligations, the decline of British manufacturing will continue.
Just this week we heard of William Evans bespoke sporting gun makers and shop in London closing down due to excessive rate bills levied by the Public Sector authority. How deep into traditional craft and quality production destruction do the none productive sector think they can go, before people simply give up trying?
January 29, 2026
Alistair Heath has written a splendid article in the Telegraph today. He calls Starmer an oikophobe.
He says, “The oikophobe repudiates national loyalties, and reveres international law and global bureaucracies.”
Rather apt!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/01/28/starmer-oikophobia-erasing-britain/
January 29, 2026
Oikophobia, derived from Greek for “fear of home,” commonly refers to the political and cultural, rather than literal, repudiation of one’s own heritage, culture, and institutions, often characterized by self-loathing and a preference for foreign cultures. Coined by Sir Roger Scruton in 2004, this phenomenon is often associated with Western intellectuals, left-leaning ideologies, and a tendency to denigrate national traditions.
Wikipedia
January 29, 2026
S,
I expect Lifelogic’s name to be on a post like this. It was a frequent feature -even down to the spelling of ‘Allister’. He has begun to feature ‘doom loop’ again though.
January 29, 2026
+1
But from the Greek oikos, or “house”, and phobos, “fear” and not Oik – the one defined as a rude and unpleasant man from a low social class or an uncouth or obnoxious person. Though he probably does have a fear of the rather self effacing & modest Trump. This as he keep telling the right things to do – ditch the net zero hoax, control immigration, get rid of Sadiq Khan, cut the size of the state…alas two Tier Kier Starmer still does the complete reverse he like the doom loop it seems!
January 29, 2026
The more we hear about the way this government goes about things the more you have to wonder about the differences between the socialist mind view and that of the capitalist view. Socialists have a habit of wrong targeting, and generally getting things wrong. The history of this current government shows that all too well, but when it was this same PM that started the victimisation of veterans for no good reason it makes you see that socialism is not just another version of life.
Perhaps Starmer should take a leaf out of Trump’s book of ideas and impose high tariffs on Chinese goods imported – He’s certainly not going to change the import/export balance with China with nice cosy meetings, and unless he calls an end to the deadly net-0 we will have nothing to sell to anyone.
January 29, 2026
“our big trade with these two is heavily weighted to imports” – that’s the point he is ensuring the peoples and the nations hard earned income is exported. You make friends abroad by propping up their regimes.
The PM and his Party with the support of Parliament keeps demonstrating their hate of the people in this country
January 29, 2026
Starmer just doesn’t get it.
It being, anything
January 29, 2026
+1
January 29, 2026
Every on that has contributed this morning is in unison, the UK Parliament, its selected Government hate and fight the hardworking people of this once great Nation. They are all focused on self and lining the pockets of their Foreign Masters – their can be no other explanation
January 29, 2026
In the Telegraph this morning
‘A British-based people smuggling gang has allegedly been caught trying to sneak more than 20 Bangladeshis across the Channel in a lorry to France.’ Why? why were they stopped, it is not against the Law(yet) to leave the Country.
Presumably stopping them dumps more cost on the beleaguered taxpayer
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/01/28/police-stop-migrants-from-being-smuggled-out-of-britain/
January 29, 2026
2TK and his entourage, travelled to China for a 1 hour 20min talk with Xi Jinping, that it all finished avoided Parliament and handed more of the UK away for no return, other than greater control for the Chinese of UK assets, safety and security
January 29, 2026
Reminds me of Cameron going to the EU to negotiation the reduction to UK contributions ….but coming away with a bigger bill
January 29, 2026
but the country has been socially engineered over many decades by both the main legacy parties to be a services only economy. making anything has been outlawed by lots of things, planning, power prices, extreme anti pollution and supposedly safety measures, and so much more.
but being a services economy depends on being able to deliver best quality, leading edge, innovation, niche stuff that the rest of the world is prepared to pay a premium for, it depends on the rest of the world tolerating the pollution, and high risk work, that we have exported to them by depending on them to make everything for us.
and it depends on protecting a high quality workforce and the intellectual property this country invents.
the ruling classes have succeeded in destroying our capacity to make anything, but failed in the basics of what an economy which depends on its intellectual property needs.
January 29, 2026
It looks as though during Starmer’s visit it has agreed that AstraZeneca will invest $15bn in China. Did nobody tell him that it is supposed to be the other way round?
January 29, 2026
In Starmers view …..thats ‘trade’, and therefore a UK success
January 29, 2026
Yes, and where’s the money coming from for this investment in China? Knowing Sir Keir I expect it will be UK tax-payers’ money and do not forget that any company in China must be majority Chinese owned. Have we stopped giving aid yet to China?
January 29, 2026
Clueless, absolutely bloody clueless.
Our business people going out there to see if they can buy from China cheaper than they can make back here.
January 29, 2026
The “dagger in the heart of government growth policy” is of course the dreadful Net Zero policy, a device designed to sabotage our energy, economy and national security for socialism depends upon making and keeping people poor. The science (Happer & Wijngaarden) shows that additional CO2 produces a negligible increase in global temperature and Shula & Ott none at all. Even the UN’s IPCC Working Group 1 (“The Science”) calculates a mere 1.2 degrees C for a doubling of CO2 (see P95) and Table 12 in Chapter 12 shows no signals for climate change (precipitation, droughts & storms) other than some mild warming which according to UAH satellite data since 1979 is 0.14 degrees C per decade. The history shows from the Antarctic Vostok ice core samples that when both CO2 and temperature are very low, as they are now, CO2 follows temperature and has done for 5 cycles for the last 450,000 years. Eventually the planet will start to cool but the CO2 will be found to continue rising and by this point, but hopefully before, this false theory will finally be dead.
January 29, 2026
Correct
January 29, 2026
Indeed plus even if CO2 were a problem the politics pushed by Starmer and Milibrain EVs, heat pumps, “renewables”, walking, cycling, public transport… save trivial CO2 anyway if any – they just export it
January 29, 2026
Quite so Sir John. The country is being run by energy Zealots who think that they can pass a motion at a Labour Party Committee meeting and suddenly the Wind will blow evenly and all the time. As I type (10:26 AM GMT) our electricity is being 52% supplied by Gas – so if there were no Gas generation there would be no lights for many.
January 29, 2026
Indeed but they also burn wood (young coal) at Drax pretending that saves CO2 it is actually far worse than coal!
January 29, 2026
Demented is the word!! Lol
January 29, 2026
Is that it? He’s got a visa free travel to China deal?
January 29, 2026
Since 2023, Nationals holding valid ordinary passports of 48 countries, namely Brunei, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Ireland, Hungary, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Australia, Poland, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Slovenia, Slovakia, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Andorra, Monaco, Liechtenstein, the Republic of Korea, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Malta, Estonia, Latvia, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Russia and Sweden are exempted from visa requirement if coming to China for the purpose of business, tourism, family or friends visits, exchange and transit. They can stay in China for no more than 30 days without a visa.
…..and Starmer is calling this a success, 3 years later than other european countries ….what a joke
January 29, 2026
Not for Iain Duncan Smith and other though!
January 29, 2026
It is very difficult to add anything to your comments confirmed in detail by other correspondents to the damage Starmer and his Government are doing to the nation’s economy and culture. The big question, raised by others, is why? Do ministers and MPs not see what is happening to the country and the effect of their policies? Perhaps the answer is ‘yes’ because there are been so many U-turns. Then, why do they keep doubling down, net zero being the best example of real policies causing direct damage and excessive expenditure? It must be something in the self-hating leftwing mindset. I simply can’t believe it is deliberate, as others suggest.
January 29, 2026
I genuinely think that Starmer is more than out of his depth, and has little clue of how anything works outside of woke policy and general dislike of this nation which is his driving force.
I noted it even before he was elected. You could see it in his body language and the nervous smile that’s way beyond the general nervousness of the camera or public speaking. He doesn’t have a clue and I think he knows it.
Believe it or not most of our ills are still being put down to Brexit.
Believe it or not a lot of the public still believe that to be true.
It’s incredible the amount of pro-EU Blairite’s I come across who moan about such things as lack of English apples.
Mention that joining the EU saw the demise of our orchards, along with other farm produce, and let’s not forget our fishing industry, I am treated as if I’ve spat in their face.
The level of belief that re-joining the Eu will deliver us to the sunny uplands is immense.
January 29, 2026
Why are Starmer, Harmer, and this Labour Government so determined to harm the UK? Are they thick, stupid, ignorant or blind to the damage they are doing, or do they just not care? How come none of them have any respect for the UK, its history and the talent of its people?
Perhaps Net Zero is the most damaging action they are taking right now. Do they not see that the rest of the world just pays lip service to it?
The big question is whether the Conservatives or Reform have the bottle to make the tough changes needed if one or both win the next GE.
January 29, 2026
‘British car, van, truck and bus production fell to its lowest level since 1952 last year, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT)’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clymp4ynldlo
Overall, 764,715 vehicles were built in 2025, which was 15.5% fewer than in 2024 ….but don’t worry we can import more chinese cars, and its even been suggested by Starmer today, that in partnership with Jaguar, china could build its car here in the UK
January 29, 2026
Update reported today
‘Liverpool has been chosen as the first-ever European headquarters for a major Chinese vehicle manufacturer. Chery Commercial Vehicle (CCV) will open a major new site in the city’ https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/chinese-vehicle-giant-chooses-liverpool-33320452 Apparently Liverpool Councillors journeyed to China with Starmer …..Subsiding a sector of industry, especially a foreign company, never leads to growth, just sector takeover
January 29, 2026
Chery Commercial Vehicle (CCV) is primarily owned by the Chinese government, specifically the Anhui and Wuhu governments
January 29, 2026
Yes, undoubtedly Starmer and his regime are constructively treacherous and incompetent. Today he announces visa free travel to China for U.K. citizens. Not mentioned is the likely visa free travel of Chinese citizens to the U.K. Given what China is, I view this as a very naive if not stupid concession by Starmer. I cannot think of anything useful that our alien government have achieved to date, in fact their effect has been exclusively negative.
January 29, 2026
Yes, undoubtedly Starmer and his regime are constructively treacherous and incompetent. Today he announces visa free travel to China for U.K. citizens. Not mentioned is the likely visa free travel of Chinese citizens to the U.K. Given what China is, I view this as a very naive if not stupid concession by Starmer. I cannot think of anything useful that our alien government have achieved to date, in fact their effect has been exclusively negative…
January 29, 2026
Perhaps he believes in automatic reciprocracity.The very simple perspective of those who believe in an exact mirror image of events in most aspects of life.Many of the crowds do believe this and quite frankly when I vote I will also be looking at the comments from supporters from different political groups.The ones who cannot be objective,the one’s who make up silly names,the ones who rubbish without reason,the ones who think they are too clever.Its a difficult choice.
January 29, 2026
Oh I don’t think he believes he believes in reciprocity. After all he considers white people in Africa as ‘colonialism’ but Africans in Europe is ‘enrichment’.
January 29, 2026
HI SIR John
SO WHY IS ONE MAN MAKING THE DECISIONS FOR THE UK WHERE ARE ALL THE OTHER MP’S FROM ALL PARTIES
WHATS HAPPEND TO DEMOCRACY?
THERE IS NO FUTCHER FOR THE UK BECAUSE WE DON’T HAVE ANY RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT FROM ANY PARTIES THE SKILLS ARE NOT IN WESTMINSTER OR THE DEADBEATS UNELECTED HOUSE OF LORDS
January 29, 2026
@George sheard – they are lazy freeloaders that take directions from foriegn masters
January 29, 2026
Wanted know the direction of the new ‘UK’ thats part of ‘The Plan’
China is a vital player on the global stage, and it’s vital that we build a more sophisticated relationship,” Starmer told Chinese leader Xi Jinping in a meeting at Beijing’s ornate Great Hall of the People on Thursday.
“Our international partnerships help us deliver the security and prosperity the British people deserve, and that is why I’ve long been clear that the UK and China need a long term, consistent, and comprehensive strategic partnership,” he said.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping also said China was willing to develop a “stable, and comprehensive strategic partnership” in remarks to the visiting leader and called for the two sides to “create new momentum” in their relationship.
Those of similar religion girate towards one and other – as always it means the UK taxpayer pays with their jobs and what money they have
January 29, 2026
I don’t think he understands the first thing about economics.
It is all about a certain dogma.
January 29, 2026
In other news
The European Union has added Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to its terrorist list ……the UK hasn’t