Tariffs can be damaging to trade. That is why I want us out of the EU customs union, because it imposes high tariffs on lower income countries wishing to sell us better value food. I want us to be able to negotiate a lower overall tariff package for ourselves than the EU wishes to do with the rest of the world. It is particularly foolish and unfriendly to levy high tariffs on food we cannot grow for ourselves because it comes from a non EU country.

I find it curious that the EU claims to be scandalised by Mr Trump threatening a 10% tariff on German cars which sell in large numbers into the US, when the EU itself imposes just such a 10% tariff on US cars into the EU. Germany runs a colossal trade surplus with both the UK, inside the EU tariff wall, and with the US, outside the tariff wall. Mr Trump identifies the asymmetric tariffs and some other barriers as one of the reasons the trade is so lop sided, and wishes to do something about it.

Meanwhile it is typical of the EU that they are telling the UK that we cannot exempt ourselves from the US steel tariffs, though we would probably be in a good position to do so on our own. It is reminder of why we need to get on with our exit so we do have control over these matters. I also read that the EU is still pursuing tax cases against us and argues that we owe them E2.7bn of underclaimed customs dues which the UK Treasury contests. We have lost a lot of revenue before from EU tax cases and now have to argue against making yet another additional payment to a body we are leaving. Clearly they think we should be levying higher tariffs on non EU imports than we think are owing because they wish to keep these products out, and to harm UK consumers.

This is not the wonderful free trade EU some think we must stay in at all costs.

The mainstream media seems to have got lost in repeats on their news and comment shows. Every day is Groundhog day. They do the Irish border story, the various alleged barriers to trade stories, and various sectors at possible risk stories. Most of it fans baseless fears or perpetuates misunderstandings of what the current position is and how WTO works. It usually assumes both that the EU will be out to damage their trade with us, and that they will have the power to do so even though we are no longer under their jurisdiction!

If they wish to do a Brexit story every day when there is precious little news in these very slow moving negotiations. I have some thoughts on some new topics that many of us would be interested in. They could also provide a bit of balance.

Let’s ask the various parties how they would like to spend the Brexit bonus, the £12bn we will save when we are finally out. And let’s have some discussion on whether we should pay the EU additional money after 29 March 2019, and if so why and for how long.

Let’s look at our options for designing a much better fishing policy for the UK once after March 2019 we have taken back control of our waters and fish stocks. How much more fish could we land in the UK and sell at home or for export, whilst doing a better job than the CFP has done on conserving stocks, owing to discards.

Let’s get on with debating a modern UK farming policy, with an emphasis on how much more food we can grow for ourselves as we used to before entering the CAP.

Let’s discuss which are the best prospects for new trade deals around the world, and will the government ensure we can sign these quickly once out of the EU?

The government is rarely asked about its leaving preparations, and the Opposition rarely asked about what it wants the country to do with its new freedoms once out.

Many people in the UK would like to see a better balance between supply and demand for homes. Houses are dear in many parts of the country, rents are high and people struggle to get on the housing ladder as owners.

Many people would also like congestion on the roads reduced so they could get their children to school and themselves to work and back more easily each day.

Many want our air to be cleaner, and for the UK to make a bigger contribution to reducing pollution.

We all want our power and water supplies to be good enough for all conditions, at a time when our capacity in both is quite constrained.

A new migration policy in line with the governments own aims and targets would make a contribution to all of these aspirations. If we welcomed in fewer economic migrants each year, limiting the numbers eligible to take lower paid jobs and benefits, it would help. We would make the task of tackling housing shortages easier as there would be less additional demand. Fewer people means a bit less congestion, fewer vehicles with emissions, less need to generate extra power. We need to plan properly for all the extra people we do invite in to make sure they can live to decent standards with housing, healthcare, transport and utility provision of a high standard. We need to adjust our various targets to take into account likely population growth and to make sure it is all sustainable.

The government’s aims and targets allow plenty of scope for people with skills, investors, those coming into senior roles in companies, academics and others to come to our country and to contribute as they do now, and they will be most welcome. It does not require any new border arrangements or controls on tourists, visitors, people wishing to support themselves here from their own savings and assets.

A new migration policy requires two things. It needs the government to extend the work permit system from the rest of the world to the whole world as we leave the EU, creating fairness between people from Europe and from anywhere else. It then can set limits to the numbers admitted for lower paid work, and can give sector and regional specific permits out where there is a clear need that cannot be fulfilled from our present population.

It also needs the government to set sensible rules over eligibility to benefits, requiring people coming here to wait before gaining eligibility until they have been taxpayers and settled residents for a reasonable period of time.

I look forward to the government publishing a paper on just how it will run these matters after March 2019.

Following the rejection of the UK’s very generous offer to the EU by the Commission and the Parliament, I am reminding people why we voted Leave by publishing the relevant section from my recent lecture.
The negotiating mandate put out by the EU falls well short of a Good Deal for us and for them, as it seeks to tie us down in far too many ways without offering a good reason to accept their terms.

The main benefits of Brexit come from once again being a self governing country

I find it extraordinary that so many who make their living out of government and politics

Are so defeatist about this greatest of countries

Why do they doubt our abilities to shape good laws

Frame a good economic policy

And trade with the five continents of the world based on what we are good at?

Why do they both say they love the EU

Yet have such a low view of it that they think its main aim will be to do us down

Why do they tell us every clause and line of the Treaties has to be enforced against the UK

Yet all those great clauses in the Treaties that require the EU to be a good neighbour and trading partner of nearby states will in their view go unenforced and unheeded

If the EU is as logical and legal as they say our future friendly relationship is assured

And if it is not and the Treaty is made for breaking, it need not concern us what it says, especially once we are out

Anyone who walks the corridors and great rooms at Westminster

Must see there the heroic story of our islands

There on the walls and in the sculptures are the establishment and the rebels

The winners and the losers, the great moments of our history

There is the signing of Magna Carta, the taming the King in the seventeenth century,

The union of the crowns,

The saving of Europe from Napoleon,

The passage of the Great Reform Bill and the triumph of the suffragettes

So many made common cause to put the people in charge through their vote

And to put Parliament in charge of carrying out their wishes

All the time we remained in the EU there were an increasing number of laws we could not change

More taxes we could not control. More money that someone else spent away from our shores

This system took away the very freedoms our ancestors fought for and established

Once back these powers will be used well and sometimes badly, but always as a result of strong argument and heated votes here at home,

We will doubtless have economic reversals out of the EU as we did in it

But the difference matters

Next time when mistakes are made they will be our mistakes

They will be mistakes the British people can punish and put right

More importantly

Taking back control gives us immediate opportunities

To legislate wisely
And to grow our prosperity

That is why I voted for Brexit

That is why many of the 17.4 million voted for Brexit

That is why many who voted Remain

Will be winners too from this course

Once we are at last out of the EU.

This great people

This once and future sovereign

Will have many contributions to make to the world

As we have in the past

Let us be a voice for freedom

A strong arm for peace

And a force for good around the globe

The BBC and other parts of the media seem to be very quiet about the Italian election. You would have thought this stunning result was worth a bit of comment, analysis and discussion. Just as we saw in Greece, Germany, the Netherlands and elsewhere in the Eurozone the traditional centre right and centre left parties have been dashed aside. 5 Star, a fairly new movement, has swept through the south of Italy, whilst the Lega has dominated in the northern Italian plain, taking much of Lombardy, the Veneto, Trentino and Piedmont. The centre left governing party was left holding on to Tuscany, whilst losing in most of the country. It slumped to just 18.9% of the vote, with the centre right party Forza that had displaced the Christian democrats some years ago only polling 13.9%.

Both 5 Star and Lega are Eurosceptic. Mr Salvini who leads Lega speaks for the centre right coalition as its largest party. The coalition has 37% of the vote. Mr Di Maio, the leader of 5 Star, speaks for 32.3% of the vote. One of them should be Prime Minister, though coalition talks could I suppose find some other combination of parties which gave the job to someone else. The Lega campaigned for Italy to leave the Euro and to remove the Maastricht,Nice, Amsterdam and Lisbon Treaties from Italy’s constitution. 5 Star dropped its wish to leave the Euro, but made clear its opposition to EU budget and Euro austerity policies and proposed spending more with tax cuts.

Lega representatives have made clear their view that the EU should change its approach to the UK and try and rescue an Agreement which they think would be in the EU’s interests. They had already upset the EU authorities massively, so that will not make much difference to the relationship.

The Italian result is another in a long series showing growing anger and frustration with the economic and budgetary policies of the Euro, high levels of unemployment, and the EU’s migration policy. It will probably make Brussels corral the waggons of integration more and will doubtless entice them to try to influence the government formation talks which will now be fascinating. The collapse of Italy’s governing party to 18.9% does at least make Mrs Merkel’s 26% vote share for her CDU look good!

Most economists and most western governments agree that the more you free trade the more prosperous the participating countries will be. It is clearly true in theory. If Country A removes tariffs or other barriers to importing better and cheaper items it will be better off by the amount it saves on the imports, whether the other side similarly liberates or not. If both sides remove barriers then clearly both will be better off, as each will concentrate on what they are best at, lifting the buying power and living standards in both countries.

Today the theory of free trade and international specialisation is under threat, both from Mr Trump who thinks tariffs and a trade war might be good for the USA, and from China, the EU and others who impose tariffs and non tariff barriers against trade whilst claiming to believe in free trade. It is the huge German/EU surplus on its US trade, and the Chinese surplus with the USA that has triggered Mr Trump’s interest in the first place. He argues that there is an excessive imbalance because China and the EU do not play fair. He points to cheap currencies, state subsidy of overcapacity and below cost prices for some Chinese goods, and the EU tariff of 10% on all imported cars as part of his case. He says he wants to rework NAFTA and explore bilateral trade deals that are fair to the USA and to the other party. He thinks a bad trade deal is damaging to US interests, undermining jobs and incomes at home as the US comes to rely on cheap imports and foreign exchange borrowings to pay for them. He points to high levels of protectionism on agricultural produce in the EU and the NAFTA area.

A trade war will make losers of all involved. What country A gains on domestic production by pricing out imports it loses on exports to Country B who retaliates, and loses out from the higher price level in its own country squeezing real incomes. With a steel tariff on imports into the US, for every steel job at home that helps, several steel using jobs at home are weakened.

At this juncture the UK stands close to the point where it is an independent country again capable of pursuing its own free trade policy globally through its membership of the WTO and its worldwide network of diplomatic and business contacts. This is a good time to make the case for freer world trade and to lead negotiations at the WTO to put new life into removing tariffs and other barriers. They are still universally high on agriculture, and a wider issue with many emerging market countries that retain high levels of protection in ways that are unhelpful to themselves.

There is a strain of advice going to Ministers from officials,the CBI and others of the Remain persuasion that we now have complex supply chains in business, and that European integration of industrial activity means we have to stick close to the single market.

In the 1980s before I became a Minister I chaired a large quoted industrial group. Between 2003 and 2010 in the opposition years I chaired an industrial group servicing the global market with some European production, as well as plants in the USA, India and China. I now realise I was in charge of complex supply chains. They did not cause problems at the time, despite the fact that components and finished product crossed many borders both within and outside the EU.

I have two main conclusions from my experience. The first is it is true that just in time and high quality production required careful management of suppliers. Sourcing was global, not regional. There is a high degree of mutual dependence in modern industry on a range of suppliers around the world. Large companies do not rely just on the EU or just on the US these days.

The second is we had no more difficulties with non EU sourced components than with EU products, despite all such products if needed in EU based factories having to come in under WTO rules.

The crucial things we had to manage were the quality and quantity suppliers could deliver, and the ability of the transport system to deliver them over long distances in some cases. Government interference in the process was rarely the main problem. Goods moved with electronic manifests, were always traceable and well known to the authorities in the countries they were travelling through.

There is absolutely no need to bend or drive UK policy on some fear about supply chains. Cheaper good quality components and products will still get there from EU and non EU places as they do today, whatever Agreement or lack of Agreement we end up with.

In the case of the pharmaceutical industry some claim to worry about the degree of UK/EU business integration, whilst ignoring the fact that UK/US business integration is much closer for the majors and takes place across WTO rules based frontiers.

For several years the UK economic debate has been fixated by the state deficit and borrowing requirement, and has largely ignored the balance of payments deficit. I presume this is because of official adherence to all EU rules and guidance, so they have been trying to get our budget deficit back down to Maastricht compliance levels at under 3% of GDP. There is celebration this month because at last we have got there thanks to a further surge in tax revenues that outperform the usual Treasury pessimistic forecasts that delight in getting it wrong.

I have not been worried about the state deficit for sometime, ever since Mr Brown found out that the UK state can literally print money to pay its bills. Mr Osborne, originally a critic of this in opposition, then discovered its charms in office as well. It turned out to have no adverse consequences on shop price inflation, though of course it caused massive price inflation in government bonds, because it was accompanied by severe pressure against bank lending to the private sector to avoid an inflationary blow off. I always adjust the outstanding debt by the £435 bn the state has bought up, as this is in no sense a debt we owe. So our government borrowing level (excluding future state pensions which some here worry about and which have always been pay as you go out of taxation) is modest by world standards at around 65% of GDP, and at current interest rates is affordable.

Most of the state debt we owe to each other anyway. The government owes it to taxpayers who own the debt in their pension funds and insurance policies. The state can always raise enough money to pay the donestic bills backed by the huge powers to tax, and as we have just seen when credit expansion and inflation are low it can also use liquidity created by the monetary authorities.

The deficit I worry about much more is our external deficit. That is the one where we have to buy foreign currencies to pay for it. It is the reason why we keep selling some of our best property and business assets to foreigners, and why we have to borrow abroad. Running at around 5% of GDP it is high by world standards, and means we gradually get into more debt or sell more assets to keep up with it. When you owe money to foreigners they may not accept money created to pay them off but will need real assets.

One quarter of the payments deficit is the government’s payments abroad for EU contributions and overseas aid. Stopping the EU payments halves that, and spending more of our overseas aid on the refugees who come to the UK here in the UK would help as well. Under overseas aid rules you can include the first year costs of refugees and migrants in your own country, and supplies and capital items you need to provide aid abroad. So lets make sure where appropriate we do spend the aid money at home or in the country we are helping, rather than buying imports from other advanced countries with it. One of the big wins from Brexit should be the opportunity to slash the big deficit in fish and food which is an important part of the burden of this overseas drag on our finances. I want the Treasury to take the balance of payments deficit more seriously and to act as a counter to those who want us to give more money away to the EU to perpetuate this large imbalance.

It is commonplace for tv programmes on the BBC and even on some independent channels to interview far more Remain than Brexit sympathisers, and to give them more uninterrupted airtime. Doing some interviews again this week I was reminded how bizarre it sometimes is.

There is first the test they sometimes apply to you. They ask if you would be willing to come on. When you say you will they then interview you for the task to see if they think your views are the ones they wish you to have for the sake of their programme. Sometimes they drop you, presumably because your views are not stupid or extreme.

Then there is the barrage of interruptions when you are on, if you dare to say sensible and moderate things. They are constantly putting words in your mouth that you have never uttered or thought, and you have to spend the interview denying their words are or ever have been your views. They are particularly hostile to new points or points they have not heard before.

If you look as if you are going to answer a question they think should floor you, they interrupt with another one in the hope that you will not have an answer to that.

I cant remember on Brexit when I was last asked an original or different question. The whole debate is repetitious, going over the same old lines we rehearsed on both sides endlessly for the referendum campaign. Every day is Groundhog day. We have debated at length the issue of membership of the Customs Union and single market, and the Commons has twice decisively voted against remaining in either. Now Labour wants to do it all over again as some Labour MPs have apparently changed their mind and wish to ditch their Manifesto on this matter. So the media then goes through it all over again.There is little likelihood of another Commons vote beforre Easter on this.

It is easy for the media to know what I am likely to say, because my views are all set out on every issue they raise on this topic on this website. Most of them interviewing me seem to be briefed by researchers that have never read my actual views, yet nonetheless reckon they know them better than I do.

Some in the media still have not grasped that the Northern Ireland/Republic of Ireland border is already a complex border with a different currency, different Excise taxes, VAT and Income taxes either side which need sorting out as goods move across. This does not need a man or woman in a kiosk on the border doing the sums whilst vans and lorries wait. It is all done electronically. So why can’t the new arrangements be done similarly? Have these interviewers ever heard of TIR, Authorised Economic Operators, and electronic manifests? If not, it is difficult for them to ask sensible questions of those who think all this means watch towers and Customs officers holding everyone up which no-one wants and we do not need.

The whole point about having cake is to eat it. If we do a good deal with the EU both sides can have their cake and eat it. If a deal means too little cake for one side there’s no point in the deal. No Deal will let us eat more cake than a bad deal.