April 5, 2026 49 Comments I was the only MP over Brexit who had voted to leave the EEC in the first referendum as well as the second, who voted 3 times with the Spartans against the unsatisfactory May deal, refused to vote for the 2020 Boris Trade Treaty over Northern Ireland and fishing, and who voted against the Windsor framework. I think I was the only MP who recommended we left with no Trade deal, to trade with the EU on most favoured nation terms under WTO rules which would have worked fine. I pointed out that simply threatening to do that would have improved the deal we were offered so it was silly the government did not try it. The EU was bound to want to avoid tariffs on their huge exports to us.
When I was 21 I won two elections which changed my life. In the autumn I took the examination at All Souls College and was elected to a fellowship. In the following May I was elected as a Conservative Councillor on the new Oxfordshire County Council and became a Committee Chairman or Executive Councillor. At All Souls I met Sir Keith Joseph and started advising him at his request when he took over as Margaret’s guru after she gained the leadership.
By 1975 I was a young investment analyst learning my trade in a leading investment company owned by a merchant bank. Knowing of my involvement in Conservative politics and of my fellowship they asked me to research the economic and market issues around the UK’s membership of the European Economic Community which were to be decided by the referendum. I saw other City commentators and analysts writing superficial material saying it was important the country voted to stay in, based on the government spin of the day that the EEC was just a common market which gave us economic opportunity by being tariff free. I took my research seriously, read the Treaty of Rome, examined our trading patterns and looked at the industrial and economic trends already apparent with the UK suffering closures in the face of EEC competition in everything from textiles to steel , from food to cars. I saw this was much more than a common market, with a general Treaty setting out ever closer Union across many government areas as its main point.
I wrote a draft report which concluded that our payments in or membership fees would escalate and place an unacceptable strain on our stretched public finances. I forecast that our balance of trade would stay in heavy deficit, and that more of our industrial base would collapse as it was not competitive enough once the tariffs were off. I saw that the CAP and fishing policies would also add to our trade deficit, with much reduced domestic production of food. I said staying in the EEC would be more damaging than leaving from the economic point of view. I felt pleased with my work which was clearly distinctive and provided a forecast of what was likely to happen inside the EEC, unlike others.
I was called in by a senior Director who told me they disagreed and thought the common market was a good thing. He asked me to re write. I said I would write anything he wanted me to as I was doing it in firm’s time for the firm but then the piece would have to go out in the name of the Bank and not in my name. Surprisingly he wanted my name to still be on it, so we compromised. I left in my pessimistic analysis but put in the alternative establishment view such as it was to provide balance. It was the first time I discovered a lot of the UK establishment held a semi religious belief in the need for the UK to be in the EEC/EU whatever it did and however much it cost. Most Remainers have not read the Treaties they adore.
I was asked to speak in the referendum campaign as a County Councillor and Conservative thinker. I went to the first meeting and explained why I was voting to leave and found that shocked my hosts who had just assumed I would support staying in. My case was both economic and was about sovereignty and democracy. I was not invited to give any more speeches in the referendum campaign.
After the defeat in the referendum I spent the next 20 years loyal to the result, but reminding people and governments that the majority had voted to belong to something they called the common market, on assurances that our sovereignty would not be undermined and that we would keep a veto over things we did not agree with. I watched as the EEC grabbed more and more power, as our balance of trade with the EEC remained mired in huge deficits, and as the cost of belonging climbed unacceptably.Our growth rate predictably fell a lot. I will explain tomorrow how I moved to recommending we leave.
The great EU re set is the great EU sell out
By johnredwood on April 15, 2026
Why bother to get elected as the governing party if all you want to do is to give the task of governing away to Brussels?
Why get into office, tax some small farms out of business, spend subsidies on getting farmers to stop growing food and then say your big idea is to export more food we do not grow to an EU that does not want it? Are they aware of our massive trade deficit in food with the EU and how the EU will want rules that boost their exports to us?
Why get into office, double up on net zero policies that lead to a big acceleration in the rate of closure of high energy using businesses, and why ban all new oil and gas developments at home? Why be so keen to sign up to even higher levels of carbon taxation and carbon tariffs on non EU imports, to put up the cost of living and and ensure the UK closes down more industry? Why is imported CO 2 OK but domestically produced less voluminous CO 2 not OK?
Why get into office by promising to smash the gangs that bring in so many illegal migrants, only to want to sign up to a Youth Scheme which will many more EU migrants coming to the UK to study at our expense under Erasmus or to seek homes and work here? Why pretend this is not a partial restoration of freedom of movement under EU approved rules?
Why say aligning us with EU laws - which means making us accept any EU law they care to impose - will increase our growth rate? It did not do so when we joined the EEC, nor when the single market was "completed" in 1992. More laws, more taxes and more Danegeld sent to the EU will not make us richer or generate more well paid jobs here.
Reject the Euro and renegotiate
By johnredwood on April 6, 2026
My experiences as Single Market Minister confirmed my analysis of my earlier years. I had to spend most of my time trying to stave off laws and regulations we did not want, seeking to dilute, delay or derail. It meant constructing qualified minorities of states sufficient to force change to a badly drafted power grab, or to secure delay.
As I reported to the Lords I discovered the promised Emergency brake to stop them imposing very bad laws on us was never going to be used and in due course lapsed through never being applied. As single market Minister I saw just how far the EU had got with its power grab, how powerless the UK was unless we could muster some support from other countries. The proposals were usually carved up by the Commission with German and French backing, and too many of the smaller states just went along with everything for fear of getting a bad reputation as trouble makers.
Press and public were excluded from our debates about all these new laws. The press usually declined to publish my read out of what had happened as they feared the EU Commission would cut them off from their briefings if they dared report what had actually happened in a Ministerial meeting. Apparently other Ministers often said different things in the meetings compared to what they reported back home. I had no problem with the press knowing what I said and what I was doing in the meetings as it was the same as the account I gave to Parliament and press back home.
I was moved on from the job at the time the EU decided on a major push to get every country to sign up to the Euro. This was a massive power grab which would change everything. I began my fight inside the UK government against it, and with others persuaded the PM to negotiate and secure an opt out from joining. When the PM refused to promise to use the opt out to ensure we would never to go in to the Euro I took up his challenge when he resigned the leadership and made the case against the Euro and for other changes of policy.
The leadership election did secure the promise from the PM that he would hold a referendum before entering the Euro. More importantly this extracted from Mr Blair the same promise. I knew then the pound was saved, as polls showed the UK public were so much wiser than many of their MPs with big majorities against the Euro. They also showed a Labour government was inevitable. John Major had badly crippled the UK economy by his EU zealotry putting us into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, which predictably gave us both boom and bust, ending badly for many businesses and homeowners and destroying the Conservatives as an election winning party for more than a decade.I had failed with Nicholas Ridley to stop ERM membership despite writing a report before joining the government forecasting boom or bust from ERM participation.
In the Shadow Cabinet and on the backbenches in the Opposition years I was one of the voices that persuaded the party to oppose each of the centralising power grabbing Treaties Labour signed up to. We wanted the incoming Conservative government in 2010 to renegotiate, pointing out that we did not agree with the big Treaty changes and many of the extra EU laws of the 1997-2010 era. Having Liberal democrats in the coalition 2010-15 prevented anything serious being done about the EU.
I and my friends ran campaigns and organised votes from the backbenches to secure a referendum on continued membership, as we had by then decided the EU was so changed from the EEC on the UK prospectus in 1975 that the people should be allowed to cast their judgement on our membership of this Federal governmental body.
It was when I and a few friends at a meeting with the PM explained we were close to half the Conservative MPs being willing to defy a 3 line whip to vote for a referendum that the PM agreed to include one in our next Manifesto. It was the most important change I had ever helped secure. I always assumed the public would vote to leave as it was such a crippling deal being in the emerging superstate.
The country rich list
By johnredwood on April 10, 2026
Low tax rates, plenty of cheap energy, and a welcome for innovation and technology are three essentials for fast growth, high productivity and high per capita incomes. The present UK government in going for higher taxes, dearer energy and EU levels of restriction on business innovation has turned its back on growth and success.
The top group in the world GDP per head league comprises Luxembourg ($145,000) , Switzerland ($116,000), Ireland ($110,000) , Singapore ($97,000), Iceland ($94,000), US ($92,000) and Norway ($90,000) . Two of these are EU members, Luxembourg and Ireland, who have got away with very low corporate tax rates attracting plenty of international financial and technology business to book profits with them. Switzerland and Singapore have also made themselves attractive business, investment and financial centres. Norway has used oil, gas and hydro energy to build a national wealth fund out of the revenues. The US has combined cheap fossil fuel energy leapfrogging to be the world's largest oil and gas producer, with dominance in the digital revolution creating the nine largest quoted corporations worldwide.
The Europeans along with Japan and South Korea create a middle grouping. The EU's GDP per head is now less than half the US, with Korea about to overtake it, and with Japan around the same level. Germany ($60,000) and the UK ($56,000) lead this group with Greece as low as $26,000 . Spain ($38,000) , Italy ($43,000) , France ($51,000) share the group's slow growth characteristics. The EU members and the UK are held back by dear energy, over regulation, and a failure to create conditions where home grown technology businesses can flourish and grow into world scale companies. This group of countries is falling further and further behind the US, with a few Asian exceptions like Taiwan and South Korea.
China and Russia on $15,000 hover just above the world average of $14,000. Mexico ($14,000), Brazil ($11,000), South Africa ($7,000) and India ($3,000) help keep the world average low. China is now growing at around 5% per annum and India faster. Over this century to date the US has grown twice as fast as the EU.
The UK seeking closer ties with the EU is linking itself eveer more firmly to a proven slow growth or ,no growth model. EU economies are digital colonies of the great US corporations. They are de industrialising rapidly as their penal self harming n et zero policies destroy once great engineering, vehicle, steel, glass, ceramics, textile, petrochemical and other industries.
EU re set
By johnredwood on April 7, 2026
The EU re set is an ill conceived danger to UK growth and prospects. The government pretends the negotiations are not underway when they are well advanced. They pretend they are not making big sacrifices of money and powers, but they are.
It is all based on lies about what has happened since our half hearted Brexit departure. ONS figures say our trade has risen, yet the re set case is based on the damage they say was done to our trade by leaving. They forget we paid a big price to secure a tariff free trade deal anyway.
Our GDP followed a very similar course to the EU countries that stayed in, well ahead of Germany and a little ahead of France and Italy in growth. That was not surprising as the UK governments stayed fixed to so many laws, rules and taxes from our EU membership, and we continued to pay sums to the EU as some kind of guilt penance. We are now largely free of sending them money which means we now are saving the sums promised on the bus. It's a good job we are given this government's propensity to run up huge extra bills and to max out the borrowing.
I have set out here and in the Lords how in the past our joining the EEC slashed our growth rate, and joining the restrictive and costly single market slowed our growth rate further. Why does the government perversely think adopting more EU rules and sending them more tribute money will increase growth? It is bound to be another negative.
MPs who want this re set need to be asked to explain themselves. They also need to be asked
- How much extra money will the UK be expected to send to Brussels when the full re set agreements are revealed? How will this extra cost be raised from taxpayers?
- Joining the EU carbon trading and carbon tariff system will mean dearer energy and dearer imports. How many job losses and closures will this bring?
- Will the UK need to pull out of its trade deals with TPP, India, US, Australia etc as the rules of the single market it will have to adopt makes these Treaties illegal in EU law?
- Why is it acceptable that in important areas the UK will have to adopt whatever laws the EU demands of us with no right to influence, vote on them or reject them?