There is a run of commentary urging the Prime Minister to avoid a lurch to the right. I agree with them that saying so called right wing things in the hope that people will come back from Reform is not going to work.

The government needs to carry through its stated policies of cracking down on illegal migration and making big reductions in legal migration as promised. It needs to cut taxes more and set out a path to lower tax rates after the election. It needs to tackle the productivity collapse in the public services and get more people into better paid work.It needs to actively promote growth.

The commentators should grasp that a lurch to the left is also a very bad idea. The pro EU Conservatives have in the past done Labour type  damage to country and party. Edward Heath in office lurched to the left introducing price, wage and dividend controls, presided badly over a strike, put us into the European Community and duly lost the election.  John Major pushed us into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. This  delivered a boom/ bust disaster as a few of us predicted . It  led directly to a colossal electoral defeat when the full damage of this EU policy became obvious. It was only a worse Labour Boom /Bust  in 2009 that got Conservatives back into office. Theresa May tacked away from the Brexit she was meant to deliver and devised a bad social care policy.She managed to lose an election, only clinging on with help from the DUP.She lost support of many Conservative MPs  for wanting a Labour style sell  out to Brussels.

Similar voices to those who lost us those three elections and three  Prime Ministers are now urging Rishi Sunak to backtrack on lower taxes and lower migration, encouraging him to cosy up to the  EU, regulate more things and be governed by the views of international lawyers. History tells us this is a bad course for Conservative leaders to follow.

Remain tried to make out Brexit was mainly about trade. It was of course mainly about taking back control, giving us the right to make our own laws, set our own taxes and spend our own money. They also asserted it would damage our trade to leave. They said we would not even be able to roll over all the EU trade deals we were part of. Treasury, Bank, much of the civil service and Remain parties pushed out these lies continuously. The Treasury famously summed up its conclusions by saying wrongly that leaving would ” push the UK into recession and lead to a sharp rise in unemployment. ” Their severe  shock scenario meant an extra 800, 000 unemployed  and a 6% fall in GDP!

So what happened?

After the vote unemployment fell and the economy grew. Trade went up.

The UK did roll over all the EU trade deals into UK trade deals and in some cases negotiated improvements to them.

The UK went on to agree a trade deal with the Trans Pacific Partnership countries. The UK also at some needless political cost signed a trade agreement with the EU.

The government has recently released figures for what has happened to our trade since the vote and since we left. Our service exports have doubled since 2014 to non EU countries (2016 was a little up on 2014) and risen by more than a half since 2016 to the EU.

The UK is now the second largest exporter of services worldwide after the USA. We are now adding service sector chapters to trade deals which the EU was unwilling to do.

Total exports are up from under £600 bn in 2016 to £862 bn in the year to February 2024. They are up by a third to the EU and by considerably more tothe rest of the world.

Labour did well in the local elections. Being hopelessly divided on big issues did not stop its success.  Its former leader remains banished. Some of the Corbynites remain on the Labour benches arguing for more Corbynite policies. The party is deeply split over the Hamas/ Israel war with some wanting a much tougher anti Israel line and some worrying about anti semitism . It is split over the Reeves wish to follow OBR austerity economics. There are many keen promoters over a speedier path  to net zero shocked by the dumping of planned public spending to try to up the pace. All those who want to nationalise much more and tax much more are kept quiet or played down.

I point this out as a minority in my party argue that if all Conservative MPs supported everything the government does we would jump in the polls. They say divided parties cannot win. So how did Labour manage it? How did Margaret Thatcher pull off 3 great wins, when the Wets as they were then disparagingly called tried to undermine her continuously?

The way to win is to govern well. It is to allow robust debate about issues, policies and out turns. A leader needs to listen, adopt the best ideas, and be prepared to make the case for his choices.

To win Rishi Sunak needs to get legal migration well down, cut taxes for all, curb excessive public sector losses, recapture lost public service productivity and resolve public sector strikes.

Most of us accept the science that says CO 2 is a greenhouse gas, and accept manmade CO 2 is an influence on the climate. Clearly, however, most people do not think there is a manmade CO 2 driven climate emergency, because if they did we would see jet travel plunging, car use falling, meat diets disappearing, heat pumps flying off the shelves and many other behavioural changes.

Instead polls tell us people are against dearer fossil fuel energy. They oppose higher petrol taxes, oppose schemes to make it more difficult to use  cars and vans, oppose wind farms and pylons near their homes and are angry about climate protesters trying to block roads and attacking petrol companies.Only a small minority buy all electric cars.

Many voters would like government to limit UK CO 2 by enforcing a major reduction in migration numbers. We would like more home grown food to cut the food miles  rather than wilding schemes to boost imports. We support promoting fuel efficiency.

Some say in a temperate climate like the UK a possible average rise of temperature of say 2 degrees might help agriculture, as would some increase in CO 2.There have been many changes in climate during earth history. Some think adaptation is a more affordable and practical response as and when change occurs. It is self evidently true that unless China, India and the US reduce their CO 2 output nothing we do can stop more rises in world CO 2. It is also obvious importing instead of making and growing at home usually increases world CO 2 so it is not a win. The Green party who promote climate crisis as their lead issue never get out single figures in the polls.

Sir John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con):
When will the Government do something about the very high energy prices in this country, which have been made high by regulations and taxes? Does my right hon. Friend not accept that any kind of steelmaking will be extremely difficult if we have uncompetitive energy, and is it not wrong to import such materials, because it will mean even more carbon dioxide emissions, as well as destroying jobs here?

David T. C. Davies (Secretary of State for Wales):
We have looked carefully at the losses that Tata is making, which have come about partly because of the age of the infrastructure. In fact, Tata has had to close down the furnaces at the Morfa coke ovens within the last few weeks. The UK Government are fully cognisant of the cost of energy at the moment, which is why Tata has already benefited from many of the schemes that we have introduced over the past few years, will begin to benefit from the British industry supercharger scheme shortly, and will benefit from the carbon border adjustment mechanism at the start of 2027.

The more government we have the worse it is. I have more government than I want, more government than I need and more government than I can afford.

It is great news we have got rid of the needless, prying, interventionist EU government . Too many place still have three layers of local government with County,  district and town or parish. There are then national quangos and regional quangos.

Wokingham has a Borough Unitary rather than County and District. That avoids disputes and confusions over which Council does what and saves a double overhead. I did with others successfully press to get rid of the regional Development Agency but we are now lumbered with a useless, annoying and expensive  LEP, though it is cheaper than the RDA.

Elected Mayors are prone to playing national politics in preference to doing the day job of improving and supervising local public services. Mayor Kahn has damaged London with his anti driver measures, his failure to control knife crime and his inability to run a good value strike free public transport system, The overlap with the London Boroughs causes tensions and extra cost, especially over planning.

The low level of turnout at many of the elections and the low level of support for all the main parties with Labour topping the polls with just 35% on the national calculation displays a big gap between what the public want and will support and what the parties are offering.

Councils spend huge sums of money. They have extensive powers over our roads, schools, social services, planning, trading standards, the public estate, sport and leisure. Many of them claim poverty and blame the government for their excesses and mistakes.

The more Councils claim to be incapable of marshalling their resources to serve us better, the less interest there is by many in voting or engaging with them. Instead of building a strong local democracy their incompetence and denials of responsibility encourage people if they do wish to engage to gravitate their complaints or opinions to government or Parliament.Many people assume their Council will continue to ignore their needs and wishes as it has so often in the past.

The Liberal Democrat Wokingham Council is a good  example of what is wrong. They spend money on consultations, only to ignore the results. They waste millions on road projects that make our roads worse, impede people living their lives and damage local businesses. They have amnesia about their decisions when people complain about what they are doing.

I went to the GWF lecture given this year by Professor Judith Curry. As a non climate scientist I do not campaign against the establishment scientific view on global warming. I have asked various questions in speeches and writings about the data, models and predictions. Professor Curry’s book and lecture argues that the fundamental proposition adopted by the UN and most governments that the world is warming caused by man made CO 2 is not proven and subject to major uncertainties.

She confirmed that most of the climate models ignore changes in solar intensity and in volcanic activity and struggle with winds and clouds. She said there is no good agreed explanation for warming periods in earth history prior to man made CO 2. She did not rate the chances of current models being right that highly. This blog gives those of you who do argue the establishment science is wrong to briefly make your case.

I will stick to making 3 main arguments about current policy.

1, It is absurd for the UK to close down energy using activities and to keep our oil and gas in the ground if we replace them with imports that increase world CO 2

2.The Green transition cannot work without widespread consumer buy in, which will need better and cheaper products than heat pumps and dear electric vehicles

3.Some of the proposed products of electric transition increase CO 2 especially as quite often our system cannot supply renewable power to run  them.

Sir John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con):

I strongly welcome the Secretary of State’s clear statement of policy that foreign states should not be allowed to take over press and media in this country, which is a welcome development. I hope that in the proposals for amending the law it will be clear that the policy relates not only to Governments but to nationalised industries, public authorities or companies in which states have significant influence because of their shareholdings. If that is not set out, such bodies may try to find ways around the law. I am sure my right hon. and learned Friend is up to that, but can we please have an amendment that absolutely nails press freedom in the way we want it to exist—free of influence from foreign states?

Lucy Frazer (Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport):

I understand my right hon. Friend’s points. When we bring forward legislation, it is important that it does not have loopholes. As a Department, we thought very carefully about how we can protect against that. When the Bill comes back to this House this afternoon, he will see that we have defined foreign state ownership very broadly. We have extended the definition to include not only ownership but control and influence.