The dagger in the heart of government growth policy

By johnredwood on January 29, 2026

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 likeky 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.