This is a bad deal. The government should drop it now. Parliament is unlikely to pass the necessary legislation for it. I will vote against were they to try. If we cant get a good future partnership before we pay them any extra money, why would we get one once we have signed away the cash?

News that there might not be a deal was said to have lowered the pound yesterday. Quite why signing a Withdrawal Agreement to force the UK to send another £39bn across the exchanges to the rest of the EU should be good news is anyone’s guess. Of course it was not quite like that. The pound, along with other currencies, slipped against the dollar, but it stayed strong against the Euro at 1.14 compared to the August low of Euro 1.10 when a deal seemed more likely.

The habit of ascribing all these movements to Brexit is bizarre. Ask how you would have explained the moves without a Brexit vote and you will probably produce a more convincing explanation of what is happening.

The government decided to cut the maximum stakes allowed on gaming machines from £100 to £2. It is very worried about addiction to these machines by people who cannot afford the scale of losses some run up.
The Treasury has decided to delay the implementation of this measure to give the gambling companies more time to adjust to this change. The many campaigners to stop this particular problem are unhappy about the delay. Some MPs will move amendments to the Finance Bill to put pressure on the government to change its mind and get on with earlier implementation of the measure.

I would be interested in your views as I consider adding my name to these proposed amendments. As the government accepts the argument that this type of gambling can become addictive and does harm, there is a case for getting on with implementation as soon as possible. Others defend the right of the gambling industry to offer a range of bets and challenges to people, and think all the time some forms of gambling are legal there will be a risk that some people do it to excess. So far I have had more writing in in favour of the ban.

The Remain media seem to think EU membership was just about trading arrangements, and that you cannot trade successfully outside the EU. Both these assumptions are completely wrong.

Leave voters voted to take back control of our money, our borders and our laws. We want the government to set out the enhanced spending plans, the tax cuts we can afford, the better migration policy and the improved laws that being independent will bring. We are the optimists. We think the UK can be better making her own decisions. We want to abolish VAT on domestic fuel and green products, we want to rebuild our fishing industry, and we want a fair migration system which controls numbers without giving preferences to some countries over others.

Remain seem to think sacrificing any of these freedoms is just fine if they can help us recreate the current trading and customs arrangements we have with the EU. Why are they so keen on the high tariff barriers the EU makes us impose on non EU imports? Why so keen on having to give away much of our fishery to foreign vessels? Why so keen to value EU trade more than non EU trade?

I have been sent an extract from official figures to remind me that our trade with the rest of the world, largely conducted under WTO rules with no special Agreements or FTAs, has been growing far faster than trade to the EU. Since 1998 our exports of goods to the EU have grown at just 0.2% a year, whereas our goods export to non EU has grown sixteen times faster at 3.3%. Our services exports have also grown faster to non EU than to EU. Last year we ran an overall deficit of £72 billion with the EU, but a surplus of £42 bn with the rest of the world.

If this single market and customs union is such a great boon to us, how come our goods trade has scarcely grown with it for almost twenty years? And if trading under WTO rules is difficult, how come our non EU trade is bigger than our EU trade and growing much faster?

It isn’t worth paying £39bn to stay in this customs union.

Every family in the UK must have slept so much easier this night one hundred years ago. The terrors of warfare in an industrial age had been great. Life in the trenches was dreadful. It drove some men mad and left many more maimed for life. All too many never returned from their brief lives in battle. Most of those who died were too young to leave children. They left behind grieving parents, brothers and sisters. Today most of us are grandchildren and great grandchildren of the survivors. We are doubly grateful that their generation sacrificed their young lives to resist tyranny, and that our own relatives lived through the trials of war.

Most of the soldiers just accepted their duty, and did not think much in public about the justice or wisdom of it all. Now they have all died we can both remember their bravery and ask ourselves what have nations and statesmen learned from that bitter experience?

The war was about the imperial expansion of Germany. The superior forces of the allies once the USA entered the conflict finally forced an unconditional surrender on the Germans after nearly four years of stalemate on the western front. The power of artillery, the machine gun and barbed wire to defend positions was so much stronger than the ability of forces to attack and overwhelm. As a result much of the war in the West was fought over a few miles each way in Belgium. It led to work on even more fearsome weapons that allowed more mobile warfare with greater chances of success for attackers in the subsequent world conflict. By 1939 planes used for reconnaissance and modest bombing in 1014-18 became terror weapons, with new generations of tanks and faster moving military vehicles. The Second World War ended with the massive explosions of Atom bombs.

The failure of the peace after 1918 to settle the German question should give us pause for thought. A comprehensive victory won at such cost did not give rise to a lasting peace. Far from resolving German aggression and militarism it led to a more fanatical and more heavily armed Germany. We need to remember in future that winning the peace matters as much as winning the war. It entails settling the defeated country in a way which allows it to be stable and successful in future without reverting to invasion and threats to neighbours.

Why did 1945 work when 1918 did not? The allies succeeded in helping Germany and Japan establish working democracies. Clauses against militarism and against re-armament were placed in their constitutions. American power was there as a guarantor of their peace and as a guarantor of the general peace. The Treaty of 1919 left Germany with anger over reparations and a sense they had been exploited in defeat. This led to a dictatorship born of violence and adopted through a sense of grievance pushing Germans to assert new claims over European lands and peoples. After the Second World the allies learned more about how diplomacy and the post war settlement needed to be wiser and more effective than the 1918 one. As a  result  they helped create a peace loving democratic Germany (and Japan) that have not threatened others with force since 1945. The formation of NATO and an allied troop presence for many years in Germany established a new pattern of mutual security.

When I first read of the tragedy on the Somme I was angry that men were  led in such a way. The more I have read the more saddened I have been by the excessive slaughter, the failure to find tactics that could shorten the war and lessen the death rates, and the ultimate failure to resolve the underlying problems at the heart of the war.

There is much to remember, and much to learn from as we  reflect on a much needed peace in 1918. All too often men were sent over the top to repeat the mistakes of past battles, in the false hope that this time enough damage had been done to the enemy to warrant the risk of walking towards a hail of machine gun and rifle fire. All too often they repeated the same slaughter as the previous time frontal assault by foot soldiers was tried. Why didn’t they learn? Why weren’t they told to shelter or turn back when they realised that their bombardment had not paved the way for success? Could their commanders not see that the defending forces were still too strong for infantry advancing on machine guns? Why were the politicians and Generals well away from the danger so unable to think of new tactics and so careless of such a huge slaughter? Why could they not trust the junior officers to vary the orders as not only led the futile attacks, but were often the first to die?

In 2017 UK ports handled 482 million tonnes of cargo. 62% was imports.
Dover accounted for just 5.4% of this. EU trade accounted for 43% of the tonnage handled.
Dover Calais should work fine, but there are plenty of other options if the French change their mind and don’t want to keep the business.

Twice in the twentieth century government and Parliament sent the professional but small British army onto the continent to fight against German militarism and expansion. In 1914 around 100,000 men were sent as the British Expeditionary Force. They fought bravely at Mons, on the Marne and later at Ypres. They retreated a long way but helped the French slow and turn the rapid German advance, stopping them capturing Paris. Most of that force was killed and by year end the UK was embarked on recruiting a far mightier citizens army capable of measuring up to the scale of Germany’s forces.

In 1939 a larger expeditionary force was sent, expanding to around 400,000. This army with our French allies was heavily outnumbered and outgunned by German forces. It had to be rescued from the beaches at Dunkirk, whilst the German forces went on to conquer France. Around 60,000 of the force did not return in the rescue.

On both occasions the UK had been aware of the threat for some time. On both occasions the UK sent an army that was far too small, and inappropriately equipped to stand up to the forces ranged against it. The original British army of 1914 did not have the equipment needed to fight a trench based war, with insufficient machine guns, grenades and artillery. The army of 1939 was better equipped,but lost most of it in the retreat that resulted from the far stronger forces ranged against it.

In 1914 the army command had not thought through tactics in the machine age. As the war got bogged down towards the end of 1914, more thinking was needed over how you defended men in trenches, and how you could mount an attack at such well defended positions. The answer was not clear until the invention of the tank sought to inject some mobility and pace into the static battlefield. Several years were spent whilst at war experimenting with mining, with more intense artillery bombardments on trench lines and in seeking an alternative front in the Dardenelles. Gas also found its cruel way into the repertoire of torture at the front. Most of this failed to produce a breakthrough, and was pursued in battle in ways which allowed far too many casualties for no good purpose.

It is difficult not to be angry to read of the many times armies of men were asked to undertake a frontal assault of a kind which had failed many times before, only to fail again. Wellington sought to conserve his troops and keep them out of danger as much as possible, knowing replacements were hard to come by. In 1914-18 there was a wanton approach to the loss of life, brought on by the huge numbers of volunteers followed by conscription and by a stubborn refusal to see that killing so many was not advancing the cause of victory.

So what can we learn from this for today? Our current army is not large enough to fight a major war against a substantial hostile power. We need the NATO alliance and the engagement of the USA to help keep our peace. The army has been used to fighting asymmetric wars against terrorist groups in splintered countries and neighbourhoods. In some of these Middle Eastern conflicts our force committed has been small, and has not always had the equipment it needed. Were we to be drawn into a wider war we would need time to expand our military numbers and to produce many more vehicles and weapons.

There is a need for more thought over what kind of weapons we might need and what we might face at a time of rapid technological change. Our professional army would become the core of an expanded army were need to arise, which we trust it does not. We need above all to ensure that home defence is strong, which as always depends on our ability at sea and in the air to control approaches to our coast. We also need to ensure that we can sustain our weapons and maintain military production on these islands if our supplies from abroad are disrupted as they were in both major wars of the twentieth century. Our island position makes it so much easier militarily to defend ourselves. It also requires plenty of sea power to ensure supply from abroad, and plenty of flexibility to produce more of what we need at home.

The Remain spinners have long since run out of new or vaguely credible lines. Yesterday the BBC Radio 4 Today programme did its best to keep their flag flying. The Business editor led the questioning on food shortages, when there isn’t a scrap of evidence that any important continental exporter is about to cancel supplies or that the UK is about to place new barriers at our ports to keep the food out on March 30th. Instead of asking enough of his chosen expert and then of Sainsbury about the Argos acquisition, the possible tie up with Asda, the highly competitive state of the UK food market or about how they might source more UK produce to cut the food miles, we had to have the same old nonsense scares. There is a simple answer to all this. We don’t believe them!

The UK government is trying to get worked up about a possible EU agreement.
Just remember this is not a possible future trading or partnership agreement. It is not anything the UK actually wants. They are talking about the EU’s Withdrawal Agreement, which contains many things including £39bn that Leave voters do not agree with.
I just hope the Cabinet realises in time that trying to sign such a deal will go down badly with many voters, and would place the UK in a very weak position. There are plenty of Conservative MPs who have said they would not vote for it, and it will need primary legislation. The government cannot commit the UK to this. Only Parliament can.