I welcome the Government’s emphasis on growth and I look forward to future debates when we can exchange positive ideas on how to get more people into work, have better-paid jobs and extend investment in these islands. However, I must say to the Government that the measures currently being discussed, often in secret without proper text, are very worrying. They will either add nothing at all to our growth rate or, worse still, they will subtract from it and do damage. Look at what will happen to our fishing industry now that, for many more years, so much of the catch will be offered to continental super-trawlers and other vessels. This has delayed the rebuilding of the British fishing industry and means that we do not get all the inward investment and domestic investment in fish processing and food processing that would follow from having more catch landed in the United Kingdom.
Or look at the idea that we should join the carbon taxes and emissions scheme and the electricity scheme of the European Union. It would be another ratcheting up of the costs of electricity and energy in this country. Their carbon taxes are higher even than our high ones. Are not our carbon taxes doing enough damage already? Does the Front Bench opposite not see the factories closing and the plants being destroyed by ultra-high energy prices? Yet they want to volunteer for more of the same and take it out of our control.
If the Government decide to offer large new sums of money to the European Union, as they usually seem to when they visit Brussels, it will all be borrowed money. We are in a time of stress in our public finances; we are not looking for new ways to spend money. The more they spend giving it to Brussels, the more it will be resented by many people here in the United Kingdom and the more it will mean that those high levels of borrowing keep our interest rates above those of our competitors and stifle private investment and private growth, which is what we so clearly need.
We do not need to look forward, or even to forecast, to know what will happen with ever closer alignment to the European Union, because we have lived through it. In the 20 years that elapsed before we joined the European Economic Community, our economy grew at 3.4% per year: a very good rate of growth. In the 20 years of our early membership when we were a member of the European customs union, until the full single market was declared in 1992, our growth rate slumped to 1.76%. Of course it did, because we took all the tariffs off the things that the European continent was good at and just watched as it laid waste to so much of our industry, with all those closures, and we did not get the market opening on the services that drive the success of our economy. So of course that is what happened.
If you then roll the camera forward to our years in the single market, from 1992 to 2020, our growth rate fell again, even compared with the poor performance when we were just in the customs union. Again, of course it did, because of the anti-innovation, high-cost spirit of so many of those regulations. The last thing we need for a growth strategy now is more laws made in Europe. We know that they do not work; we know that they slow us down. Why do we want to link to the part of the world that is growing so slowly, when our great friends and allies in the United States of America are growing at twice the pace of the European Union? We seem to be negative about them and positive about joining the slow lane. We should not want to join the slow lane. This set of negotiations is bad for Britain and bad for growth.
February 27, 2026
Indeed but alas no chance of sense from this doom loop government.
“This set of negotiations is bad for Britain and bad for growth.” As is almost everything else this government has done. Is Starmer deliberately trying to wreck the UK or is he just extremely thick.
Meanwhile the Tories and LibDims lose their deposits and we get an MP from a party even more dersnged than the one we have.
February 27, 2026
Ll. Good result though. Uniparty trounced by a wobble headed chest whisperer. Good solid support for Reform amongst the locals.
2TK is busy handing over everything to Brussels, Spain, Mauritius and probably Argentina next.
He knows exactly what he’s doing.
February 27, 2026
Reform got 10,000 votes out of an eligible electorate of 90,000.
February 27, 2026
40% didn’t vote.
How many did Restore get?
Oh, that’s right, none. And Advance (Habib’s ego trip) got 150.
February 27, 2026
Well only about 48% voted so what? They are the top supported party in the UK
February 27, 2026
Personally we figure that Starmer is bowing the knee to Muslims in this country. We dont see him do much for BRITS AT ALL.
WE see there still getting freebies. Angela Rayner not paid
her tax, and license for new posh house.!! Same for REEVES she still not paid. How can they be in power? Rest of us not get away with it!!!
February 27, 2026
Off topic I see the monster raving looney party ie the Greens won the by-election in Gorton and Denton with a back drop of accusations of vote family rigging how can this sort of thing still be going on, anyway they asked the winning Green candidate what she won it on and a presto , Asked about two of her key campaign issues, the cost of living and Gaza, she replies: “I am really clear and really proud about my record of standing up for people in Palestine. What the bloody hell as Palestine got to do with the United Kingdom answers on the back of a postage stamp please
February 27, 2026
It’s because the UK has a large voting contingent consisting mainly of brainwashed young people and Corbyn supporters plus a large section of the growing Muslim population which supported the mass murder of Israelis even before the retaliation against Hamas and they vote with extreme left Greens to win elections. With the Libdems they could prevent any of Reform or Conservative policies to save the economy.
February 27, 2026
Two-Tier and the pro-EU Civil Service (particularly the Treasury) are deliberately destroying the economy.
Their absolute priority is to get us back into the EU and they believe this is the way they will achieve it.
February 27, 2026
I am very glad you are back in Parliament. There are very few who make these essential points so clearly and succinctly.
February 27, 2026
It could be that the quick demonstration of being in, being out and being in is required to bust this Remain argument into fragments once and for all.
It seems that the British never really bestir themselves until the situation is dire.
So cheer up, things are getting worse as that great man Norris McWhirter used to say.
February 27, 2026
John Redwood, totally AGREE 400 PER CENT WITH THIS. Boris was kicked out, for far less than PM!! Starmer. MR REDWOOD WE as a family dont trust LABOUR FULL STOP.
I am part of Conservative party. To be honest, we as a party, need extra help to kick LABOUR AND ALL THE OTHER PaRTIES. We stop giving into EU AGAIN. THEY NIGHT MARE, and still our. We see our money, been spent abroad for so much.WE NEED TO GET THIS STOPPED COMPLTELY.!! BEFORE we are broke. We see posh hotels, and other expensive stuff paid for by BRITS.!! WHY OH WHY?!! Could you and some others? Help as a party, before all parties sink?!!
Reply You are right. This government spends too much, gives too much away to foreigners and does not look after us.
February 27, 2026
Well said and very much to the point.
Surely it would be the greatest treachery of this government to take us back under the control of the EU.
February 27, 2026
Thank you Lord Redwood – don’t stop reminding everyone of the flaws and how some want the country to be managed by outsiders for the benefit of outsiders
February 27, 2026
Nothing wrong with the slow lane so long as it’s easy and steady – much better than the chance of being in an inflated bubble with so-called great friends and allies especially the type of great friends and allies who threaten war invasion and economic ruin against all around them – SJ might be living in some delusional sphere like the Americans but most of us are not.
February 27, 2026
Two articles I read today are about home grown policies which are aimed at UN Agenda and disadvantage the UK.
We have more HR legislation and 50% more staff- 3/4 women than any country except Holland. This is costing firms billions and they are not employing on merit. Perhaps this is why the NHS is not performing well.
Subsidies are being directed at environmental projects insofar food production by DEFRA resulting in beef and lamb farmers going out of business and reducing stock The result is very high prices and the government seeking less methane burps, as required by Climate loons. This is also not helped by the inheritance tax grab on farms .
The UK restrictions on ICE cars are stricter than in the EU and, together with lower tariffs on Chinese cars, our car industry is threatened.
The UK has chosen the European Pressurised Reactors for Hinkley and other approved nuclear stations. These cost much more and take much longer to build. EU countries and the US have chosen the Korean designs which are already approved and built in countries such as the UAE. As a result we will have high costs and possibly blackouts.
The UK has signed the UN Migration Pact and is following its rules, which require the recognition of economic migrants as though they are refugees and to assist them. Other EU countries do not and they are left in tents and not given hotel accommodation, medical care and gifts. As a result we have enormously immigration numbers. We have also made agreements to welcome large numbers of Indian workers with zero NI contributions, which other EU countries have not.
The list is not complete.
February 27, 2026
The difficulty of debating with the left is that they don’t want the same outcomes. The policies they pursue show, not that they are incompetent, but that the subordination of the nation state to globalist power trumps the welfare of the British people. Mass migration also helps to weaken the voice of those who relate to the country, rather than the state, which rewards through transfer of wealth from the current citizens to the new ones, few of whom have any means on arrival.
February 27, 2026
A very good speech, but sadly, no notice will be taken of it. Starmer seems determined to destroy the UK, no matter what the cost. He is now giving Gibraltar to the Spanish. I’ll bet they can’t believe their luck
What is the matter with the man? Is he incredibly thick? Does he absolutely hate the UK? Is he just so weak that he can’t say no to anybody? He comes across as a bag of wind, no roots, no principles and blown all over the place.
Every time you think it can’t get any worse, under Starmer, it does!
February 27, 2026
Excellent
February 27, 2026
Great speech Sir John and straight to the heart of the EU debate in the most direct and simple terms plus uncommon sense that we have never ever heard from BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky etc from a humble yet wise, eloquent, profound man with integrity and proven track record of honesty in the most serious debates concerning the future of Britain.
Thank you so much Sir John and please keep up the excellent work you do every day for us all, even if many people don’t realise it.
March 1, 2026
This ‘barbell world’ piece sounds very plausible but how Govs( including in the Uk) can deal IF this is the new reality?
https://economy.com.pk/when-financial-and-geopolitical-waves-collide-we-are-living-in-a-barbell-world-where-international-threat-meets-technological-opportunity/