More than half our imports come from the EU. To get economic growth we would achieve more if we concentrated on import reduction from Europe including the EU by making and growing more at home. Let’s start with oil, gas and electricity, and move onto backing our farms and market gardens to grow more of what we need to cut the food miles.
Such tax or spend changes would be economically apocalyptic; there is no realistic avenue in which to fund a return to the EU.
This new account gives us Brexit from the losing side.
Purpose is something that neither referendum results nor successive election victories can guarantee. Purpose and vision can only be drawn from years of clear and intentional persuasion both of the electorate and of the governing class.
Starmer’s attacks on Brexit and its impact on the economy are as predictable as they are risible. If we want an honest conversation about growth, productivity, and our place in the world we must not let recycled myths be part of it
It would be absurd to attribute all the flaws and mistakes of our time in Government to bad people who somehow didn’t care about controlling public spending or immigration.
This isn’t about putting forward easy simplistic answers to complex problems because we know that rarely works and there’s plenty of others filling that space. It’s a serious centre right organisation making the case for growth and developing credible proposals.
Badenoch understands the importance of not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as Reform would risk. Those trotting along on their ideological ponies, tilting at windmills, need to have a word with themselves.
Jenrick thinks things are so bad that we need a “revolution” but Reform have given little indication of what an economic revolution might look like. Reform cannot be trusted with the public finances. The Conservatives should carry on with the hard work of showing they can be
He is at once more cosmopolitan and more parochial, more devout and more flippant than any recent writer who springs to mind.
A customs union offers then two simple things – a solution to Britain’s disentangling Union (and it really is disentangling) and a quick and noticeable boost to growth, and it does so whilst leaving Britain’s practicable sovereignty no worse off
In Parliament, there are now two political parties arguing against the Labour government and left-wing ideology. The number of right-wing political activists has more than doubled with Reform UK having more members than the Conservative Party. At local elections, there are double the number of right-wing candidates.
Offer a credible economic plan; demonstrate a determination to solve problems, not just exploit them; recognise that lessons have been learnt from the Tory time in office.
We must seek a change of Government and take the EU back to Mutual Enforcement, the border solution they developed. The subject of my Private Members Bill, Mutual Enforcement provides a means of delivering Brexit on a constitutionally sustainable basis
Calling for a ‘proper Brexit’ after all those that have been tried and failed over the past decade, is reminiscent of those Marxists arguing that their ideology was never properly tried in practice and next time will be different.