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Brexit in Peril, Part 2 – The secret Government and Rejoiners’ conference last week

We profile some of the people involved, who now seem to be shaping Brexit policy

Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2023

With Remainers in charge for years, is it any wonder where Brexit ended up?

As we reported yesterday, a secret, two-day, residential conference took place on Thursday and Friday at a very large country house located in Oxfordshire. Present were key Rejoiners, a Government Secretary of State from Rishi Sunak’s Cabinet, and only three low-key representatives from the Brexit campaign. No senior Brexit politicans were invited.

We drew attention to the fact that the senior Cabinet Minister Michael Gove was one of the attendees and could not have spent two days at the event without Prime Ministerial approval. Later yesterday (Mon 13 Feb 2023), Rishi Sunak was asked twice by GB News whether he had approved Mr Gove’s two-day attendance. On each occasion he avoided answering.

In Part One we looked at the event in general and at some of the most well-known protagonists who were there.

In today’s Part Two report we turn our attention to the other politicians who were present, as well as the very senior former senior civil servants who were also participating.

Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire. Attrib’n: Ralph Loch

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

Three key Remainer politicians

1. The Remainer politicians – current and past MPs

1.1 Remainer – the Rt Hon David Lammy MP

Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary

A barrister, David Lammy is the highest earner (on top of his MP’s salary) amongst all Labour Party MPs. Mr Lammy was a Corbynista, nominating extreme-left Jeremy Corbyn for his ill-fated spell leading the Labour Party.

In a Damascene shift he then supported Keir Starmer and was rewarded with a place in the Labour Shadow Cabinet.

For a barrister, it is perhaps surprising the number of times Mr Lammy makes mistakes with his words and at times barely seems to be master of his subject. To give just one example, in an interview with LBC on 24 January 2023 Mr Lammy raised eyebrows when he gave NATO’s full name as being: “the North Atlantic Trade Alliance”. It is of course the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation he was trying to refer to.

Finally, as with many others attending the secret two-day Rejoiner conference, he is an attender of the equally secretive Bilderberg meetings in Washington DC.

1.2 Remainer – The Rt Hon John Healey MP

Labour Shadow Secretary of State for Defence

In government John Healey held several roles including Financial Secretary to the Treasury, before being transferred to Communities and Local Government, and before finally ending up down in Housing and Planning.

He now shadows Ben Wallace as head of Labour’s defence brief, having been appointed by Keir Starmer. He will almost certainly become Defence Secretary if Labour wins the next general election.

From his website: “I campaigned hard, alongside a great team of dedicated Labour volunteers to argue that I believed the UK would be safer and more secure with a stronger economic future as part of Europe. So I was dismayed when the national result came through on Friday morning.”

Only a week ago on 07 February 2023 he told the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in a major speech: “Labour will seek a defence and security pact with the EU”.

1.3 Remainer – The Rt Hon Sir David Lidington KCB CBE

Chair of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)

David Lidington was Minister of State for Europe under Cameron, then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Minister for the Cabinet Office, and Theresa May’s de facto Deputy Prime Minister. He was a key figure in the group of MPs plotting to overthrow the result of the EU Referendum.

Two weeks ago he wrote in the anti-Brexit New European newspaper about “London accepting the legal status of the protocol and its requirement for a framework of checks and controls between Great Britain and Northern Ireland” and “increased practical security cooperation ought to lead to a more formal, structured security partnership between the UK and EU.”

The naked civil servants

This secret conference included several former high-ranking civil servants. Their roles in the Establishment are so important that the public deserves to know who they are.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

Three key Remainer former civil servants

2.1 Sir Oliver ‘Olly’ Robbins KCMG CB

Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

Olly Robbins is possibly the ‘bête noire’ of a great many Brexiteers. Putting aside his many roles in the Civil Service over the years, (Robbins: “Led immigration service policy and operations with a team of 10,000 dedicated immigration policy staff and operational officers”), the one which will stand out to most people is his time from June 2016 after the Referendum, at the Department for Exiting the European Union.

He then moved to the Cabinet Office as the PM’s closest Brexit confidant. Two years later Theresa May gave total control for EU negotiations to Remainer Robbins, provoking the resignations of the (pro-Brexit) Ministers who had thought they were responsible. Mrs May sneaked out the written announcement late on the last day before MPs went on holiday.

EU Negotiator Michel Barnier called Robbins the UK’s “key man” in the Withdrawal negotiations. He clearly liked Robbins. Revealingly, Barnier reported the annoyance on Robbins’ face on the morning of Monday, 04 December 2017, annoyed when the DUP raised their objections to the “agreed” Joint EU-UK Report after they heard leaks about the text – the DUP had not been properly consulted. Also revealingly and most inappropriately, on 06 December 2017 Olly Robbins installed himself in the office of the EU’s No.2 negotiator, Sabine Weyand, who was in charge of the Northern Ireland part of the negotiations on the EU side, and spent the day ensconced in her office with cake and coffee, drafting a work-around text.

Sir Richard Dearlove (former head of MI6) said that Olly Robbins had “serious questions of improper conduct to answer” by negotiating a deal with Europe that would compromise Britain’s future intelligence gathering capacity. He claimed that Mr Robbins was “covertly working” to lock the UK into participating in joint defence and security projects after Brexit that would be “under EU control”.

Mr Robbins resigned from the Civil Service in July 2019 and went to Goldman Sachs (a Remain supporter) as a Managing Director.

2.2 Angus Lapsley

NATO Assistant Secretary General for Defence Policy and Planning

Angus Lapsley is not a name most readers will be familiar with but they should be, given that he has clear views about tying the UK into the EU’s defence structures and has worked hard to achieve this.

He spent over 30 years working in the FCO prior to moving to NATO in September last year. He served as Director General Strategy & International in the Ministry of Defence, as UK Ambassador to the European Union’s Political and Security Committee, and worked in the private offices of two Prime Ministers.

Immediately after the vote to Leave on 23 June 2016, as UKREP PSC, Lapsley was advocating and advising ministers on British entry into new EU defence union plans to be launched that November.

Returning to the FCO, Lapsley became Director for Defence and International Security which formed UK policy in respect of the EU Defence Union which he had just been instrumental in helping to form. This team, in liaison with the MoD and DExEU (the old ‘Dept for Exiting the EU’) advised that post-Brexit agreements – which had been advised on and negotiated by Lapsley – found their way into the May Government’s exit plans.

Lapsley was next loaned to the MoD in 2019 where, as the ‘strategy and international’ lead, he could talk up the EU agreements his FCO team had placed into the exit plans. That is something which he did regularly and on the record, including next door at the Royal United Services Institute (where the Remainer former MP David Lidington – see ‘Remainer politicians’ above – is now Chairman).

“I would sack the individual, I wouldn’t want anybody that stupid working for me.” – Chris Parry, former naval commander

Whilst at the MoD, in June 2021 Lapsley left 50 pages of Top Secret documents at a bus stop in Kent, which were then found by a member of the public and passed to the BBC. The documents contained the locations of British special forces and secret details of a Royal Navy warship’s passage in the Black Sea. These documents should never have even left their secure location, and yet he took them on public transport.

In 2008 another civil servant had left Top Secret papers on public transport; he was arrested and charged under the Official Secrets Act, fined, and demoted by three pay grades. Mr Lapsley kept his job, wasn’t prosecuted, and was ultimately promoted to the Foreign Office.

2.3 Remainer – Sir Tom Scholar GCB

Former Treasury permanent secretary

Sir Tom Scholar is perhaps best known for having been fired by Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng in September last year (2022) from his role as Permanent Secretary at HM Treasury. This is one of the most senior posts in the Civil Service.

Previously Scholar had served as the British representative to the anti-Brexit IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank, as well as many other positions, as he climbed the ranks of the Civil Service.

He may also be remembered as the Downing Street Chief of Staff and Principal Private Secretary to Gordon Brown, taking over from Olly Robbins. (See below.) When the guard changed after the 2010 elections, he led the ill-fated negotiations with the EU for David Cameron in 2015, but came back empty-handed. As Daniel Hannan – then an MEP – put it on Twitter : “Britain banged the table and aggressively demanded the status quo. The EU, after some mandatory faux-agonising, agreed.”

Observations

In this second and final part of our report on yet another initiative by Remainer-Rejoiners to ‘take back control’ of Brexit, we have highlighted the careers of three senior politicians and three highly significant former senior civil servants who were all present at the secret two-day conference with Michael Gove last week.

It matters not what protestations of innocence they make, leopards do not change their spots, as we pointed out yesterday.

The Prime Minister had the chance on GB News yesterday to distance himself from this secret meeting involving one of his most senior Ministers and a group consisting of mostly hard-core Remainer-Rejoiners. When asked twice if he had approved it, he dodged the question each time. We suggest this speaks volumes.

It is now more essential than ever that we show the PM that those who voted for Brexit will accept nothing less. There is still a substantial group of MPs who are staying robust. Facts4EU.Org and CIBUK.Org (of which we are a key Affiliated Organisation) will give them all the support they ask for.

We hope we have our readers’ approval in this.

We must get reports like this out there

Reports like the one above take far longer to research, write and produce than many people realise. If they were easy, readers would see other organisations also producing these daily.

However, there’s little point in the Facts4EU.Org team working long hours, seven days-a-week, if we lack the resources to promote them effectively – to the public, to MPs, and to the media. This is where you come in, dear reader.

Facts4EU.Org needs you today

We are a ‘not for profit’ team (we make a loss) and any payment goes towards the actual work, not plush London offices, lunch or taxi expenses, or other luxuries of some organisations.

We badly need more of our thousands of readers to become members, to support this work. Could this be you, today? It’s quick and easy, we give you a choice of two highly secure payment providers, and we do NOT ask you for further support if you pay once. We just hope you keep supporting us. Your membership stays anonymous unless you tell us otherwise.

Please don’t assume that other people will keep us going – we don’t receive enough to survive and we need your help today. Could you help us? We rely 100% on public contributions from readers like you.

If you believe in a fully-free, independent, and sovereign United Kingdom, please join now by clicking on one of the links below or you can use our Support page here. You will receive a personal, friendly ‘thank you’ from a member of our team within 24 hours. Thank you.

[ Sources: Gov.uk | MoD | FCDO | NATO | Financial Times | LinkedIn | Spectator | Express | Daily Mail (Andrew Pierce article on Scholar, 2017) | Twitter | Michel Barnier’s “Secret Diary” | LBC ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Tues 14 Feb 2023

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February 14, 2023
Brexit in Peril – The secret two-day meeting between Government and Rejoiners
The Government’s conspiracy never to deliver Brexit was revealed on Friday

Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2023

The ‘fifth column’ that goes to the very top of Government – deeply troubling information

Over Thursday and Friday (9th and 10th Feb 2023) a secret, residential conference took place at one of England’s finest stately homes in Oxfordshire. The subject was how to move the UK closer to the EU and it was run by senior Rejoiners. The senior Government Minister Michael Gove stayed over and attended on both days.

First revealed on Saturday (11 Feb 2023) in an article on Bloomberg (paywalled), details were revealed by the Observer yesterday and we are free to report on the story. As ever, Brexit Facts4EU.Org has done even more research about those involved in this plot and we can bring readers some alarming information. More will follow tomorrow.

“A clear and present danger” to Brexit

Castle Brexit is about to come under major attack. For years we have had to contend with the EU, Remainer-Rejoiner MPs and Peers, the BBC and other anti-Brexit media, foreign-funded Rejoiner campaigns, and virtually the entire British Establishment.

Now it has become really serious. There is clear evidence of a ‘fifth column’ which leads right to the heart of the Sunak Government.

The essential information about the secret event

The innocuous-sounding title of this conference was “How can we make Brexit work better with our neighbours in Europe?”

Presumably this bland title was dreamt up in an attempt to attract some Brexiteers in order to give the event some semblance of legitimacy. The names of the attendees we know about (thanks to Bloomberg and the Observer who have seen the notes) include senior Labour and Tory politicians, former diplomats, defence ‘experts’, and the heads of some of the UK’s biggest businesses and banks.

The venue: Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire. Credit: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Attribution: Jeff Jarvis

One source for The Observer article told them the conference was about “moving on from Leave and Remain” and building cross-party consensus on improving ties with Brussels, saying: “The main thrust of it was that Britain is losing out, that Brexit is not delivering, our economy is in a weak position.”

The vast majority who attended are not only Remainer-Rejoiners, they fall into the ‘extreme’ category. These are leopards who will never change their spots

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

Two key conspirators

1. The Rt Hon Michael Gove MP, Secretary of State in Rishi Sunak’s Government

Attribution: UKinUSA from Washington DC, USA,
CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Rt Hon Michael Gove MP is a serving member of Rishi Sunak’s cabinet. He is currently Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities as well as being Minister for Intergovernmental Relations and a Member of the Privy Council. He has held many other positions, including that of Lord Chancellor, and even of Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) in the disastrous May government following the election in 2017.

Gove reports to the Cabinet and to the PM personally. He would certainly have had to inform the Cabinet Office Secretary and seek approval.

Any idea that his attendance at this secret two-day meeting hidden away in the heart of the countryside was not sanctioned at the highest (PM) level is for the Oxfordshire birds.

It’s not often we quote David Cameron, but in his memoir he described Gove as being “mendacious”. And that’s from David Cameron….

2. Lord Peter Mandelson, the Chairman of this secret meeting

Attribution: Policy Network,
CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

According to papers seen by the Observer, Lord Peter Mandelson chaired the two-day meeting. Mandelson is a left-wing politician who has campaigned vigorously for membership of the EU.

He was twice forced to resign from the Cabinet before leaving Parliament. On one of these occasions in 2004 he resigned his seat in Parliament to go to Brussels to become EU Commissioner for Trade.

This was during the prolonged period when the Commission was doing nothing useful in terms of securing trade deals with the most important economies in the world. On his return he was then made a peer by PM Gordon Brown so that he could become ‘First Secretary of State’ and Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Following the Referendum he was a key campaigner for re-running the vote and supported all attempts to overthrow the democratic decision of the British people.

Like Mr Gove he has attended meetings of the secretive Bilderberg Group. To date Lord Mandelson has attended seven of them.

The term “spin doctor” is said to have originally been coined for him and his nickname became “the Prince of Darkness”. He has survived many allegations of financial and other misconduct and when he did resign he always found a way back.

The full list of attendees of the Ditchley Hall meeting we know of

[Key : (R) = Remain supporter, (L) = Leave supporter (?) = Unproven]
- (?) Michael Gove MP
- (R) John Healey MP (Labour’s Shadow Secretary for Defence)
- (L) Lord Michael Howard (Former leader of the Conservative Party)
- (L) Baroness Gisela Stuart (Former Labour MP)
- (R) Sir David Lidington (Former Conservative Minister of State for Europe)
- (R) David Lammy MP (Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs)
- (L) Lord Norman Lamont (Former Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer)
- (R) Angus Lapsley (Nato assistant secretary general)
- (R) Lord Peter Mandelson
- (R) Oliver Robbins (Theresa May’s former Brexit Negotiator)
- (R) Sir Tom Scholar (former Treasury permanent secretary)
- (?) Sir Jonathan Symonds (chair of GlaxoSmithKline), and other ‘business leaders’
That’s eight known Remainer-Rejoiners and only three definite Brexiteers, none of the latter being the most significant figures on the pro-Brexit side of the argument. We have put a question mark against Michael Gove’s name as we have misgivings over his true allegiances. Not one of the core ERG group was invited. The Chairman Mark Francois was not invited, nor David Jones, John Redwood, IDS, or Jacob Rees-Mogg, nor figures such as Lord David Frost – who negotiated the final deal with the EU.

IN PART TWO of this report we will provide some worrying information about the other attendees at this secret event, including those senior civil servants who were involved behind the scenes of the Brexit negotiations and about whom the public has heard little. Do not miss this! Part Two is currently scheduled for tomorrow.

The reaction from leading eurosceptics

This morning the Daily Telegraph reported on reactions :-

The Rt Hon Sir John Redwood MP:

“Instead of talking of sell out at private conferences, the UK establishment needs to complete Brexit and use its freedoms.

“Every time the UK makes concessions to the EU, they see it as weakness and treat us like a wayward dependent state. Time for the UK to show some independent spirit. Pass the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill so Northern Ireland is fully part of the UK, and take back full control of our fish for starters.”

Conservative Peer Lord Cruddas described the meeting as “truly extraordinary”

“It is in effect a platform for not dealing with the fundamental principles of the opportunities which Brexit throws up. His removal was all about reversing Brexit, never mind what the electorate voted for.”

The Rt Hon David Jones MP, former Brexit Minister, Vice-Chair of the ERG, questioned why senior eurosceptics were not invited

“If it were a genuine attempt to explore the benefits and problems associated with Brexit in the national interest, they wouldn’t have held it in secret.”

The key question for readers must surely be: “What was senior Government Minister Michael Gove doing at a secret, residential, two-day meeting run by Remainer-Rejoiners, discussing ways to get closer to the EU?”
Observations

Michael Gove’s presence at this secret event organised by Remainer-Rejoiners will have had to have been sanctioned at the highest level. A senior Cabinet Minister in Rishi Sunak’s Government cannot simply disappear for two days without the full approval of No.10.

This makes it as certain as can be that the Government is happy to engage fully with Remainer-Rejoiners regarding the UK’s rapprochement with the EU, just at the time when it should be standing firm and resolute on issues including :-

Returning full sovereignty of Northern Ireland to the United Kingdom, including the removal of ECJ control of laws in the Province

Urgently repealing thousands of EU laws via the ‘Retained EU Law Bill’ currently being held up in the Lords

Taking back full control of our waters

And many other serious matters which have prevented the full Brexit benefits being felt by the public

There may be some readers who might feel that Brexit Facts4EU.Org is being unnecessarily alarmist. Unfortunately we have never been wrong about our warnings in the past. Unless we stand up and call this event out in the strongest possible terms, Rishi Sunak will think he can get away with a highly-diluted Brexit which is in fact BRINO (‘Brexit in Name Only’).

In Part Two we will reveal even more worrying details about this secretive, residential two-day event deep in the Oxfordshire countryside. We hope to publish this tomorrow.

If you voted for Brexit, we urge you to take notice

Brexit Facts4EU.Org is working with others to assemble a coordinated and powerful force to stop the ‘drip-drip’ moves to dilute Brexit so much that isn’t Brexit at all, and to such an extent that it becomes easier to take us back into the EU. The Rejoiners’ moves will be conducted one at a time but they will be inexorable.

They failed to overturn the Referendum result in one fell swoop despite years of trying to do so in Parliament. Now they will attempt to achieve their aims quietly and by the back door.

Would you work very long hours, seven days-a-week, for seven years, for less than half the Minimum Wage?

We really hate to ask when some people are struggling with higher bills, but we have to. We desperately now need a war chest to fund the fightback. Reports like the one above take far longer to research, write and produce than many people realise. If they were easy, readers would see other organisations also producing these daily.

We are a ‘not for profit’ team (we make a loss) and any payment goes towards the actual work, not plush London offices, lunch or taxi expenses, or other luxuries of some organisations.

We badly need more of our thousands of readers to become members, to support this work. Could this be you, today? It’s quick and easy, with a choice of two reliable payment processors. And we do NOT ask you for further support if you pay once. We just hope you keep supporting us. Your membership stays anonymous unless you tell us otherwise.

Please don’t assume that other people will keep us going – we don’t receive enough to survive and we desperately need your help today. Could you help us? We rely 100% on public contributions from readers like you, unlike the Rejoiner campaigns with their funding from a foreign billionaire.

If you believe in a fully-free, independent, and sovereign United Kingdom, please join now by clicking on one of the links below or you can use our Support page here. You will receive a personal, friendly ‘thank you’ from a member of our team within 24 hours. Thank you.
[ Sources: Bloomberg | The Observer | Parliament | Other media and official sources too numerous to cite. (We will name more in Part Two of this report.) ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Mon 13 Feb 2023

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February 14, 2023
Kemi’s Mexican fiesta, celebrating Brexit Britain’s growing exports
The UK is the second-largest exporter of services in the world, after the US

Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2023

And for goods, exports to Mexico are up by 30% since exiting the EU

On Friday International Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch was in Mexico and was clearly in a positive mood. During her visit she welcomed new trade figures from the ONS that day, showing UK services exports worldwide had reached record highs last year, adding that they “cement the UK’s position as a global services superpower”.

Ms Badenoch was in Mexico to progress the trade talks on a new and improved free trade deal with that country. This will cover both services and goods. At the same time she was also there to promote the UK’s accession to the CPTPP – a massive trading bloc covering a significantly larger number of people than live in the EU. Mexico is a leading member of the CPTPP.

Today’s Brexit Facts4EU.Org report looks at the UK’s growing goods trade with Mexico, as well as at the state of the UK’s goods and services trade more generally.

The EU’s hostile behaviour towards the British

Firstly, a reminder of how the EU set out to ruin Brexit and damage the UK’s economy

After the UK voted to leave the EU in June 2016, the EU deliberately and cynically banned the UK from starting any trade talks with other countries in order to have deals in place ready to enter into force on the date of the UK’s departure. Sadly, the weak Remainer government of Theresa May acquiesced to this demand.

Because the Brexit negotiations with the EU dragged on for years and – because the UK didn’t finally leave the EU’s Customs Union until four-and-a half-years after the Referendum – UK international trade is a long way behind where it could have been by now.

This was caused by the EU itself and by the anti-democratic actions of all the Remainer MPs and Lords in Parliament. It was NOT the fault of Brexit, which of course sought to extricate the country from this malevolent rule from a foreign power.

It must also be remembered that the Covid pandemic prevented the face-to-face meetings so important in trade talks, and that international trade by all countries worldwide dropped dramatically.

1. Mexico – Brexit Britain’s fast-growing goods exports

Next we turn to the UK’s goods trade with Mexico. We don’t yet have the latest figures for services exports to Mexico, but the figures for goods exports were released on Friday. The UK’s goods exports to that country last year (2022) grew to to £1.4bn. This is a 29.9% increase on 2020.

Photo right: Kemi Badenoch meeting Mexican Trade Secretary Raquel Buenrostro, 10 Feb 2023. Credit: Mexican government.

Most of this increase followed Great Britain’s exit from the EU’s Customs Union on 01 January 2021. Between 2021 and 2022, goods exports to Mexico rose by 24.2%.
Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

UK’s goods exports to Mexico

The UK signed a trade agreement with Mexico which did not come into force until 01 June 2021. This happened because the UK had been forced by the EU to try to negotiate its own ‘continuity’ trade deals in a matter of months.

This agreement is now being re-negotiated and improved and is expected to drive British exports to Mexico still higher, as well as reducing the price of Mexican goods arriving in the UK.

2021 Q1 : £262

2021 Q2 : £307m

2021 Q3 : £252m

2021 Q4 : £306m

2022 Q1 : £324m

2022 Q2 : £333m

2022 Q3 : £368m

2022 Q4 : £375m

[Source: Latest Office for National Statistics international trade report, Feb 2023, at current prices.]

© Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2023 – click to enlarge
2. Why Mexico? And why the CPTPP?

Kemi Badenoch took her two-day trip to Mexico because the proposed ‘Mexico 2.0’ deal could transform the UK’s relationship with the world’s 16th biggest economy and open up one of the world’s largest consumer markets – with a population projected to reach nearly 150 million by 2035. That’s double the size of the UK.

The International Trade Secretary was also in Mexico to advance the UK’s proposed membership of the CPTPP. The ‘Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership’ (CPTPP) is looking very promising. The CPTPP is an 11-country Indo-Pacific trading bloc worth a combined £9 trillion in GDP, with Mexico a founding member.

The UK is nearing the final stages of talks to join this trade bloc, made up of some of the world’s biggest current and future economies. Joining could give UK businesses tariff-free access on over 99% of goods to a market of around 500 million customers. The EU is nowhere near joining the CPTPP.

3. Brexit Britain is a global force when it comes to services exports

Finally, services. The UK is the second largest services exporter in the world – behind only the US – and the services sector contributes around 80% of the UK’s GDP. Friday’s results show the UK is contributing to a growing global sector, with service sectors across the world expected to account for 28% of global trade by 2030 – up from 25% in 2019.

The trade data released by the Office for National Statistics on Friday (10 Feb 2023) shows that UK services exports reached record highs in 2022, totalling £397 billion at current prices. It means an increase of 20% compared to 2021, and up 23% on exports in 2018.

Observations

It will be obvious to readers that international trade behaves in a way something akin to an oil tanker. It takes a long time to change course and to build up speed. Progress for Brexit Britain has to be seen in this context.

In addition there is the background of the EU’s iniquitous and hostile behaviour to the UK over many years, which breaks all of its own Treaty obligations in terms of the way it is supposed to deal with its neighbours.

Given all of this it is almost unbelievable that Brexit Facts4EU.Org is able to bring the succession of positive reports which we research and publish daily. Nevertheless this is the case. The UK is a resilient and inventive nation.

Given half a chance we are also an entrepreneurial and wealth-generating nation. If the current government would reverse its huge tax rises this would encourage further growth. For Chancellor Jeremy Hunt to be raising Corporation Tax by 32% can only be described as an act of grotesque folly, just at the time we require the economy to grow.

The Government’s over-reaction to the Covid crisis has caused an almost unimaginable debt to be incurred and has driven half a million people to leave the labour force for good, with millions more continuing to “work from home”.

The way to deal with the debt is to slash the size of the state to reduce costs dramatically, encourage people back to work, incentivise business to invest, and most definitely not to kill the geese laying the golden eggs.

We must get reports like this out there

Reports like the one above take far longer to research, write and produce than many people realise. If they were easy, readers would see other organisations also producing these daily.

However, there’s little point in the Facts4EU.Org team working long hours, seven days-a-week, if we lack the resources to promote them effectively – to the public, to MPs, and to the media. This is where you come in, dear reader.

Facts4EU.Org needs you today

We are a ‘not for profit’ team (we make a loss) and any payment goes towards the actual work, not plush London offices, lunch or taxi expenses, or other luxuries of some organisations.

We badly need more of our thousands of readers to become members, to support this work. Could this be you, today? It’s quick and easy, we give you a choice of two highly secure payment providers, and we do NOT ask you for further support if you pay once. We just hope you keep supporting us. Your membership stays anonymous unless you tell us otherwise.

Please don’t assume that other people will keep us going – we don’t receive enough to survive and we need your help today. Could you help us? We rely 100% on public contributions from readers like you.

If you believe in a fully-free, independent, and sovereign United Kingdom, please join now by clicking on one of the links below or you can use our Support page here. You will receive a personal, friendly ‘thank you’ from a member of our team within 24 hours. Thank you.

[ Sources: Dept for International Trade | Office for National Statistics ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Sun 12 Feb 2023

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February 12, 2023
LATEST : Brexit Britain is fastest-growing G7 country for second year running
BoE, OBR and BBC wrong again, as UK did NOT enter recession in final quarter of 2022

Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2023

Since Brexit, the UK has outperformed other major economies and busted Rejoiner myths

Yet again Brexit Britain’s economy grew in 2022 – by 4.0%, according to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released yesterday. And yet again Brexit Britain beat all the other G7 countries – for the second year running.

Once again the growth forecasts by most economists, the Bank of England, and the Office for Budget Responsibility were confounded yesterday by the actual results in the final quarter of 2022. On Friday (10 Feb 2023) the Office for National Statistics released the latest figures on economic growth and below we provide a Brexit Facts4EU.Org summary.

Brexit Britain defies gloom-mongers and beats the rest of the G7 countries again

Since the UK formally left the European Union, the UK’s economy has done the precise opposite of what was threatened by the Remain campaigns and by the ‘doom ‘n’ gloom forecasters in government bodies.

Not only that, but Brexit Britain has come out ahead of the other G7 countries.
Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

Brexit Britain’s economic growth compared with the rest of the G7

United Kingdom : 4.0%

Italy : 3.9%

Canada : 3.6%

France : 2.6%

United States : 2.1%

Germany : 1.9%

Japan : Yet to report, but will be lower than UK

[Source : Office for National Statistics, Q4 2022 report, released 10 Feb 2023.]

© Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2023 – click to enlarge
And what was the BBC’s reaction?

Inevitably the BBC chose not to look on the bright side of life. Their headline was :

“UK economy avoids recession but not out of woods – Hunt”

First paragraph:

“The UK narrowly avoided falling into recession in 2022, new figures show, after the economy saw zero growth between October and December.”

If the BBC had bothered to interrogate the actual data as Facts4EU.Org did, instead of parroting the ONS’s press release, they would have found that in Q4 the economy grew by 0.41% compared with Q4 2021. Only marginal growth, admittedly, but not “zero”.

When it comes to international comparisons, the BBC starts in typical fashion

“A glance at the economic league table shows the UK is an economic laggard compared with the rest of the G7 club of rich economies.”

We politely suggest the BBC might wish to look at our chart above, drawn directly from the figures provided by the ONS yesterday.

Readers will have to scroll down to the 23rd paragraph of the BBC’s report before coming across one solitary sentence :

”That [growth figure for 2022] was the biggest increase of all G7 nations for last year.”

UK’s economy even grew in December – despite all the strikes

It seems clear that the UK’s GDP would have risen more, had it not been for the waves of strikes hitting the country over recent months. These affected output in those sectors as well as impacting the economy as a whole. As the ONS says :-

“Within the transport and storage sub-sector there were falls from postal and courier activities as well as rail transport, as both industries saw strikes taking place across the fourth quarter. While the direct impact of the strikes in these industries can be seen in the scale of the falls, we are not able to isolate the impact of these strikes from other factors across the wider economy. However, there was anecdotal evidence to suggest this industrial action had an impact across a wide range of industries.”

Despite this, Brexit Britain’s economy still managed to grow in the final quarter, albeit by only a small amount. And it grew faster than the rest of the G7 last year.

Observations

There is no doubt that the UK’s economic position is fragile, as it is with most developed countries.

Nevertheless, a glance at the international comparison table we have produced above shows that the dire predictions from the Remainer-Rejoiners of an economic Armageddon, forecast to start immediately after any Leave vote in 2016, has not remotely come to pass.

We would suggest that the Remainer-Rejoiners cannot simply deflect onto other subjects, nor try to quote yet more ‘forecasts’. The reason they prefer forecasts, of course, is because these are usually negative when it comes to Brexit Britain. They prefer not to talk about actual results, as we do, because these continually ridicule their position.

We must get reports like this out there

Reports like the one above take far longer to research, write and produce than many people realise. If they were easy, readers would see other organisations also producing these daily.

However, there’s little point in the Facts4EU.Org team working long hours, seven days-a-week, if we lack the resources to promote them effectively – to the public, to MPs, and to the media. This is where you come in, dear reader.

Facts4EU.Org needs you today

We are a ‘not for profit’ team (we make a loss) and any payment goes towards the actual work, not plush London offices, lunch or taxi expenses, or other luxuries of some organisations.

We badly need more of our thousands of readers to become members, to support this work. Could this be you, today? It’s quick and easy, we give you a choice of two highly secure payment providers, and we do NOT ask you for further support if you pay once. We just hope you keep supporting us. Your membership stays anonymous unless you tell us otherwise.

Please don’t assume that other people will keep us going – we don’t receive enough to survive and we need your help today. Could you help us? We rely 100% on public contributions from readers like you.

If you believe in a fully-free, independent, and sovereign United Kingdom, please join now by clicking on one of the links below or you can use our Support page here. You will receive a personal, friendly ‘thank you’ from a member of our team within 24 hours. Thank you.

[ Sources: Office for National Statistics | BBC ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Sat 11 Feb 2023

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February 11, 2023
“But, but, but…” say Rejoiners, “this wasn’t supposed to happen”
Brexit Britain’s stock market hits another record high – up by almost 30% since Referendum

Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2023

The London stock market failed to fall off a cliff – instead it has scaled it with ease

Almost unmentioned by the BBC, the London stock market just keeps on hitting new heights. Yesterday the FTSE100 closed at 7,911.15. This represents an increase of 29% since the country voted to leave the European Union. On 24 June 2016 the FTSE100 stood at only 6,138.69.

Readers will recall the dire predictions of economic doom by the Remain campaign, the Government, the Treasury, the Bank of England, the IMF, etc, etc, etc, if the public dared to vote Leave. Below Facts4EU.Org presents the official facts which clearly show the precise opposite to the Armageddon the Remain campaigners threatened the public with.
Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

1. FTSE100 reaches new heights

24 Jun 2016 : 6138.69

09 Feb 2023 : 7911.15 (+28.9%)

[Source : London Stock Exchange, closing prices, 09 February 2023.]

© London Stock Exchange 2023 – click to enlarge
“Aha!” cry the Rejoiners. “The FTSE100 are all big multinationals. What about smaller British companies?”

Here we must disappoint the Rejoiners once again. Facts4EU.Org has also analysed the FTSE All-Share Index which represents all listed companies.
Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

2. FTSE All-Share Index is also at its highest level in history

24 Jun 2016 : 3,348.58

09 Feb 2023 : 4,334.09 (+29.4%)

[Source : London Stock Exchange, closing prices, 09 February 2023.]

© London Stock Exchange 2023 – click to enlarge
“Ah, what about the Pound?” exclaim Rejoiners, gleefully. “It has crashed against the Euro.”

Er no, it hasn’t. Exchange rates fluctuate all the time and can easily rise or fall by 3% in a week for reasons entirely unconnected with Brexit.

Facts4EU.Org compared today’s Pound-Euro exchange rate with that of 10 years ago. This is well before the Referendum became more than a gleam in Brexiteers’ eyes and is a long enough period to make a good comparison.
Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

3. Pound-Euro exchange rate – 10 years ago compared to today

10 Feb 2013 : €1.165

10 Feb 2023 : €1.128

[Source : Xe Historical Currency Exchange Rates Chart, 10 Feb 2023.]

© Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2023 – click to enlarge
“Okay, but what about the City?” ask Rejoiners. “Everyone knows City jobs have been pouring out of the country.”

Alas, no. Everyone in the City reads City AM, which is hardly a pro-Brexit media outlet. Below was their headline at the start of this week.

© City AM 2023

Observations

Remoaner-Rejoiners’ woes

Those who only scrabble around for anything that will do our country down have once again been disappointed by our report today.

Not only is the main FTSE100 index at record high levels, but the FTSE All-Share Index is also the highest it has ever been.

Readers might like to imagine if the story had been the other way around and the stock markets were now down 30% on their pre-Referendum levels. We can just hear the BBC News:-

“The UK’s stock markets plumbed new depths today, after consistently falling since Britain left the EU. In a statement the Shadow Chancellor said: ‘We warned about this. It’s clear that once Labour wins the next election we will have to take urgent steps to open negotiations with the EU to rejoin the Single Market and Customs Union.’”

Instead we get virtual silence. This was not supposed to happen. All the ‘experts’ who campaigned for Remain have a serious amount of egg on their faces. Has any one of these people ever apologised for being so catastrophically wrong and for misleading the public so egregiously?

Well, we all know the answer to that one.

So is it hard to be a Remoaner-Rejoiner these days?

Given all of the facts in our report above, readers might imagine it’s hard to be a Remoaner-Rejoiner these days. Not a bit of it. Facts4EU.Org is attacked on social media on a daily basis. These people’s answer is simple. They ignore the facts and continue to pump out blatant lies.

Generally they do so without even bothering to read our reports. We know this because of the number of times they simply spout obscenities and ask “Where’s the source?” or “Who pays you?” If they read our reports they would know the vast bulk of our reports use official data from the EU Commission – containing the high priests of their euro-fantasy land. They would also find out that unlike the Rejoin campaigns we receive no funding from foreign billionaires. We rely on the generosity of the public. And on that point….

We must get reports like this out there

Reports like the one above take far longer to research, write and produce than many people realise. If they were easy, readers would see other organisations also producing these daily.

However, there’s little point in the Facts4EU.Org team working long hours, seven days-a-week, if we lack the resources to promote them effectively – to the public, to MPs, and to the media. This is where you come in, dear reader.

Facts4EU.Org needs you today

We are a ‘not for profit’ team (we make a loss) and any payment goes towards the actual work, not plush London offices, lunch or taxi expenses, or other luxuries of some organisations.

We badly need more of our thousands of readers to become members, to support this work. Could this be you, today? It’s quick and easy, we give you a choice of two highly secure payment providers, and we do NOT ask you for further support if you pay once. We just hope you keep supporting us. Your membership stays anonymous unless you tell us otherwise.

Please don’t assume that other people will keep us going – we don’t receive enough to survive and we need your help today. Could you help us? We rely 100% on public contributions from readers like you.

If you believe in a fully-free, independent, and sovereign United Kingdom, please join now by clicking on one of the links below or you can use our Support page here. You will receive a personal, friendly ‘thank you’ from a member of our team within 24 hours. Thank you.

[ Sources: London Stock Exchange | Xe.com ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Fri 10 Feb 2023

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February 10, 2023
Did the Truss-Kwarteng mini-Budget really cost the UK £74 bn? Truss not guilty says report

An alternative view of what tossed Truss from power last October

Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2023

In this guest article for Facts4EU.Org and CIBUK.Org, an economist cries “foul”

In a strongly-worded rebuttal to the Remainer-Rejoiner chorus, written by economist Julian Jessop, he pours scorn on the guesswork of Establishment bodies, which we publish below.

“Speculation that Liz Truss is about to make a return to frontline politics has prompted a flurry of dodgy claims and daft statistics about the economic cost of last September’s mini-Budget”

– Economist Julian Jessop, 08 Feb 2023

Three headline figures used by her critics to ‘prove’ Ms Truss trashed the economy do nothing of the sort, argues Jessop. He then proceeds to tackle these allegations head-on in the demolition piece below.

Dodgy claims and daft statistics

A guest article by renowned independent economist Julian Jessop

Did the Truss/Kwarteng mini-Budget really cost the UK £ [insert huge number here] billion?

Let’s start with the biggest number: £74 billion

This figure (sometimes cited as £73 billion) appears to have been lifted from a headline in the Daily Express (26th October) which claimed that ‘Kwasi Kwarteng’s budget blunder cost UK an eye-watering £74 billion, finance chief reveals’.

Digging deeper, this was the Debt Management Office (DMO’s) estimate of the increase in the Net Financing Requirement for the fiscal year 2022-23 between April and September (actually £72.4 billion, but near enough).

© DMO 2023
Brexit Facts4EU.Org found the document in question – click image to read it

This figure was included in the Growth Plan published on 23rd September, so was not news. In short, this was the extra money that the DMO expected to have to raise from the bond markets in 2022-23, relative to the projections in April.

Crucially, most of this figure was accounted for by the additional government support to help people and businesses with their energy bills. It also included the reversal of the 1.25% hikes in National Insurance contributions for both employees and employers.

It is therefore misleading to describe the ‘£74 billion’ (or whatever) as a cost to the UK. The implication is that the UK is somehow ‘£74 billion’ worse off as a result of policies adopted to prevent an energy crisis from becoming a catastrophe. This is clearly nonsense. I wonder also if those gleefully still retweeting this are happy to rely on one iffy headline in the Express.

There is another, only slightly smaller, number doing the rounds: £65 billion

This is the notional amount that the Bank of England said it was willing to commit to buy UK government bonds (aka ‘gilts’) to stabilise the market in the wake of the mini-Budget.

To recap, the rise in gilt yields was exacerbated by the increased use of liability-driven investment (LDI) strategies by some pension funds. This triggered a vicious spiral of margin calls and forced gilt sales, driving up yields further. The Bank of England (and other regulators) should have been on top of this much earlier.

Andrew Bailey

In the event, though, the Bank ‘only’ spent about £19 billion, on which it actually made a profit of about £4 billion. Claims that the mini-Budget “wiped £65 billion off the British economy in a month” are therefore nonsense too.

The third ‘zombie statistic’ is the smallest: £30 billion

This one appears to be based on a report in the Observer (12th November) which claimed that ‘Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget cost the country a staggering £30 billion’.

© The Observer

The £30 billion figure came from an (old) analysis by the Resolution Foundation (RF).

Around £20 billion of the £30 billion was simply a (high) estimate of the cost to the Treasury of those tax cuts in the mini-budget that have survived. This is mainly accounted for by the reversal of the increases in National Insurance (NI) contributions, and partly by the reductions in Stamp Duty.

Ironically, these measures were widely welcomed at the time, in part because they made a deep recession less likely. It is certainly odd to characterise £20 billion of tax cuts as a cost to taxpayers!
The remaining £10 billion was an (old) RF estimate of the annual increase in the government’s cost of borrowing that might be attributed to the fallout from the Truss premiership. This is just speculation. Indeed, most market commentators would agree with me that any significant risk premia in UK assets have long since evaporated.

Of course, some will argue that even if the £74/65/30 billion figures are wrong, the mini-Budget ‘wrecked the economy’ (it didn’t) and that we are still paying the price now (we aren’t).

One example of this dubious narrative is the many tweets which blame the mini-Budget for the sustained increase in mortgage interest rates. But mortgage rates (and mortgage spreads) have also surged in many other countries, notably the US.

Another is the attempt to pin the IMF’s recent downgrade of the UK’s growth forecast for 2023 on ‘the country’s disastrous autumn of Trussonomics, which came too late for the IMF’s October forecasts’. This interpretation makes little sense.

In its October World Economic Outlook, the IMF itself noted that the fiscal expansion in the mini-Budget was ‘expected to lift growth somewhat above the forecast in the near term’, albeit at the cost of complicating the fight against inflation.

In fact, is it Jeremy Hunt who is to blame?

The new factor is therefore that Jeremy Hunt has tightened fiscal policy and signalled that the government will scale back its help with energy bills. This is a rather better explanation of why the IMF has downgraded its UK forecast for 2023.

In contrast, the forecasts for the euro area have been nudged up slightly, reflecting the announcements of additional fiscal support in the form of energy price caps and cash transfers.

Here, critics may respond that the reversal of policy in the UK was necessary to restore credibility in the financial markets after the botched implementation of Trussonomics, and that interest rates are still higher than they would otherwise have been.

However there is actually very little evidence to support this. In any event, it should have been sufficient for a new Chancellor to cancel the surprise measures that most unsettled investors – notably the additional cuts in personal taxes. Instead, the pendulum appears to have swung too far the other way.

History is often written by the victors. However, it is utterly bizarre to blame a forecast revision which is mainly due to tighter fiscal policy and expectations of still-high energy prices on a plan to cut taxes and provide more support with energy bills.

– By Julian Jessop, 09 Feb 2023

For Rejoiners who ask “Who is Julian Jessop?” try this

Julian is a professional economist with 35 years of experience gained in the public sector, the City and consultancy, including stints at HM Treasury, HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank and Capital Economics. He was previously Chief Economist at the Institute of Economic Affairs. Having left in 2018 he is still an IEA Economics Fellow, a member of the IEA’s Academic Advisory Council, and sits on the IEA’s Shadow Monetary Policy Committee (SMPC).

He was a Director, Chief Global Economist, and Head of Commodities Research at the leading independent consultancy, Capital Economics, and was also a leading member of the Capital Economics team, headed by Roger Bootle, which won the £250,000 Wolfson Economics Prize in 2012 (for the best plan to break up the euro).

Julian has provided expert testimony to many parliamentary select committees, on topics including the economic outlook, fiscal policy, the cost of living, international trade and Brexit, and has advised the OBR.

He graduated with a first class honours degree in Economics from Cambridge and has further qualifications both in economics (an MPhil, also from Cambridge) and in law (the post-graduate diploma from the College of Law, gained when he was Head of Economics at what was then the Lord Chancellor’s Department).

We would say this is a pretty impressive CV. Julian is financially independent and free to speak his mind, which he has done in his article above.

Observations

Brexit Facts4EU.Org tries to bring readers stimulating information that is rarely seen in the mainstream media. In this way we aim to broaden the public debate on key issues which affect them. Please, please support us with a donation today so that we can keep going.

To read more great articles like this (no paywall),
see our news summary page!
And please help us to carry on!

Whether the presentation of the mini-budget was ill-prepared or not (it was), the fundamentals behind the economic policies of the short-lived Truss administration are now beginning to be seen as sound.

In his article, economist Julian Jessop points out just three examples of the ludicrous ‘forecasts’ from the Establishment which had clearly set out to get her. He also shows how events were in train well before the Truss-Kwarteng mini-budget and that the IMF’s latest downgrade in the UK’s growth forecast has nothing to do with Ms Truss but rather more to do with the new PM Rishi Sunak and the new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt.

We remain non-partisan and make no case for any particular politician over another. What we can say, however, is that there was a clear attempt to sabotage Ms Truss’s premiership with fake news.

We are grateful to Julian Jessop for permission to use his research.

We must get reports like this out there

Reports like the one above take far longer to research, write and produce than many people realise. If they were easy, readers would see other organisations also producing these daily.

However, there’s little point in the Facts4EU.Org team working long hours, seven days-a-week, if we lack the resources to promote them effectively – to the public, to MPs, and to the media. This is where you come in, dear reader.

Facts4EU.Org needs you today

We are a ‘not for profit’ team (we make a loss) and any payment goes towards the actual work, not plush London offices, lunch or taxi expenses, or other luxuries of some organisations.

We badly need more of our thousands of readers to become members, to support this work. Could this be you, today? It’s quick and easy, we give you a choice of two highly secure payment providers, and we do NOT ask you for further support if you pay once. We just hope you keep supporting us. Your membership stays anonymous unless you tell us otherwise.

Please don’t assume that other people will keep us going – we don’t receive enough to survive and we need your help today. Could you help us? We rely 100% on public contributions from readers like you.

If you believe in a fully-free, independent, and sovereign United Kingdom, please join now by clicking on one of the links below or you can use our Support page here. You will receive a personal, friendly ‘thank you’ from a member of our team within 24 hours. Thank you.

[ Sources: Julian Jessop | The Debt Management Office | The Guardian | The IMF ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Thurs 09 Feb 2023

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February 9, 2023
John Redwood questions whether we can bank on the Bank of England
A serious and timely critique of the Bank of England, by the Rt Hon Sir John Redwood MP

Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2023

Are you happy to bail out the Bank to the tune of £100bn of your money?

Whatever your views of the Rt Hon Sir John Redwood MP, there can be no question but that he is the possessor of one of the keenest minds in Westminster.

An M.Phil, a Fellow of All Souls, a former Single Market Minister and a former Secretary of State, and the MP (for Wokingham) for more than 25 years, his views cannot be ignored.

In his guest article below, Sir John delivers a damning verdict on the performance of the Bank of England – and offers solutions.
Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

Some highlights from Sir John’s article, although we recommend reading it in full below.

“It is simply wrong to say the Bank followed an independent money policy after 2009. The Treasury/Bank agreed policy added £895bn of assets to the Bank’s balance sheet and set taxpayers up for possible large losses as soon as interest rates rise.”

“The Bank of England is sitting on unrealised losses that far exceed its stated capital but it is happy to do so knowing taxpayers will repay it as the losses come in.”

“All this makes it more perplexing why there is such a deafening silence between the political parties over the estimated £100 bn plus of losses for the next five years, and over how the Bank came to allow double figure inflation.”

“The largest financial commitment the new government has put through Parliament is to pay £11bn to the Bank for losses by March. They should agree to stop this drain on taxpayers.”

“Meanwhile the government does need a budget for growth. The UK lacks capacity of many kinds from water to energy, from food to steel. Controlling long term inflation will be greatly assisted if we have a budget for growth which helps put in all the extra capacity we need.”
To read more great articles like this (no paywall),
see our news summary page!
And please help us to carry on!

A guest article by the Rt Hon Sir John Redwood MP

Speaking out on the BoE, inflation, and growth, 08 Feb 2023

I have two major frustrations listening to so many MPs and establishment figures about inflation. They tell me the Bank of England is independent when the Bank says it is not in many crucial respects. They refuse to engage in any conversation that might criticise the Bank for inflation soaring to more than five times its target for price rises though they think the Bank is responsible for delivering the 2% target.

The Bank of England is 100% owned by the state. Its Governor is chosen by the government, and he answers to both the Chancellor in private and to Parliament in public for his conduct and policy. George Osborne as Chancellor chose a Governor who backed his economic and political strategy. The Bank became strongly Remain when the country was deciding whether to be Remain or Leave, backing the partisan position of the Chancellor and some other Ministers. The Governor took the Bank into advocacy of green policies without a change of the Bank’s statutes, again reflecting the wishes of the government.

Gordon Brown as Chancellor gave the Bank the sole power to set the Bank rate and called this making the Bank independent. At the same time he took away crucial powers to regulate commercial banks and to influence government debt issuance. Arguably the Bank was less independent overall after his changes.

The £895bn increase in taxpayer’s exposure from the Bank of England

In 2009 the great banking crash led the Bank to want to conduct money policy by creating more money and buying government debt to drive down longer term interest rates, as well as just cutting the Bank rate. The Bank decided it did not want to be independent when doing this, and agreed that all such activities needed the express written consent of the Chancellor. The Bank also insisted on a government guarantee against any losses on owning and selling the bonds and said that it acted as the agent of the Treasury when dealing with the bond portfolio. As money creation and bond buying became the main tool of money policy it is simply wrong to say the Bank followed an independent money policy after 2009. The Treasury/Bank agreed policy added £895bn of assets to the Bank’s balance sheet and set taxpayers up for possible large losses as soon as interest rates rise. When rates rise bond prices fall.

Of course government and Parliament needed to be the ultimate arbiters of £895bn of bond buying, as these sums dwarfed the extra amounts Chancellors spent at annual budgets. The Bank of England is sitting on unrealised losses that far exceed its stated capital but it is happy to do so knowing taxpayers will repay it as the losses come in. All this makes it more perplexing why there is such a deafening silence between the political parties over the estimated £100 bn plus of losses for the next five years, and over how the Bank came to allow double figure inflation.

The Bank’s lurch from one policy to another

The Bank, the government and most politicians say the Bank is solely responsible for inflation because it alone has the power to settle Bank rate. It can use that to create a boom or a recession, higher inflation or lower inflation. It is lurching from an asset boom and high inflation to recession in a desperate bid to get the inflation down. Those of us who warned that the last £150bn of money creation in 2021 was likely to prove inflationary have never been given a proper answer as to why the Bank thought we were wrong. The Bank largely blames the Ukraine invasion and energy market disruption for the inflation, ignoring the fact that inflation in China, Japan and Switzerland stayed much lower despite their need to import plenty of dear energy. It also needs to explain why UK inflation hit 5.5%, 175% above target, before the invasion.

The UK should have an honest debate of how inflation took off. More need to be open to the idea that money policy allowed too much money to chase far too few assets, first creating a bubble in bonds and properties, only to be followed by a more general inflation as more money washed out of asset markets. I am not proposing taking away powers from the Bank of England, but do want some wider understanding of just how the Bank fits into Treasury policies so we can try to avoid the boom/bust mistakes in the future.

Sir John’s recommendations

For now my advice to both is they have done enough to bring inflation down and do not need further rate rises. The Bank should reduce its bond holdings as they are repaid, but should not accelerate the process by selling into the market. The Treasury does not need a swelling bill to pay losses from market sales that do not need to be undertaken. The largest financial commitment the new government has put through Parliament is to pay £11bn to the Bank for losses by March. They should agree to stop this drain on taxpayers.

Meanwhile the government does need a budget for growth. The UK lacks capacity of many kinds from water to energy, from food to steel. Controlling long term inflation will be greatly assisted if we have a budget for growth which helps put in all the extra capacity we need. As the world scrambles towards protectionism and home production, the UK needs to offer the tax incentives and the sensible regulation to attract and retain major investment in making and growing things we need.

– The Rt Hon Sir John Redwood MP, 08 Feb 2023
Sir John writes daily here.

Finally, here is Sir John in Parliament on Monday

“The European Central Bank is not selling debt at a loss into the market because it does not want the losses. The Americans are selling debt into the market at big losses, but they do not send the bill to the taxpayer. Only the Bank of England insists on both making huge losses and sending the bill to the taxpayer for immediate payment. Who is right?”

– The Rt Hon Sir John Redwood MP, House of Commons, 06 Feb 2023

Observations

In his article above Sir John has been consistent with everything he has written and said for some years. His criticism of the Bank of England has been constant and rapier-like.

Gone are the days when the Bank of England got on with its business quietly. As with so many public institutions it has expanded its remit, apparently without a murmur from the Chancellor. Whilst Sir John doesn’t say so, the rot really set in when the Walking Canadian Haircut was employed as Governor. Almost overnight what were once simple statements became rock star events at which even non-economic journalists started showing up. The Governor had become ‘show-biz’.

This of course coincided with the EU Referendum, when the Governor made it abundantly clear that he and the Bank were all for Remain.

Now we have a Bank which allows itself to take what are fundamentally political decisions, such as the race to Net Zero. Quite what this has to do with keeping inflation to 2% – its primary mission – is anybody’s guess.

We now have a situation where the Bank, with the collusion of HM Treasury, has effectively made the British people “the lender of last resort”. It seems incredible that the Bank has racked up £895bn in bond purchases, with the British people on the line for this.

Sir John is a firm believer in the UK making, growing, and extracting what it needs from within the country, whilst at the same time reaching out far beyond the limited confines of the increasingly-stagnant EU to the faster-expanding world beyond. He is also a firm proponent of securing Brexit benefits much faster than at present. Overall he’s a traditional ‘low tax, small state, high growth’ Conservative.

Finally it seems the rest of the economic world is waking up and criticising the Bank. Sir John has been doing this for years. In his article above he is calling the Bank of England to account in typically robust fashion.

We are grateful to Sir John and we hope readers enjoyed reading what he had to say.

We must get reports like this out there

Reports like the one above take far longer to research, write and produce than many people realise. If they were easy, readers would see other organisations also producing these daily.

However, there’s little point in the Facts4EU.Org team working long hours, seven days-a-week, if we lack the resources to promote them effectively – to the public, to MPs, and to the media. This is where you come in, dear reader.

Facts4EU.Org needs you today

We are a ‘not for profit’ team (we make a loss) and any payment goes towards the actual work, not plush London offices, lunch or taxi expenses, or other luxuries of some organisations.

We badly need more of our thousands of readers to become members, to support this work. Could this be you, today? It’s quick and easy, we give you a choice of two highly secure payment providers, and we do NOT ask you for further support if you pay once. We just hope you keep supporting us. Your membership stays anonymous unless you tell us otherwise.

Please don’t assume that other people will keep us going – we don’t receive enough to survive and we need your help today. Could you help us? We rely 100% on public contributions from readers like you.

If you believe in a fully-free, independent, and sovereign United Kingdom, please join now by clicking on one of the links below or you can use our Support page here. You will receive a personal, friendly ‘thank you’ from a member of our team within 24 hours. Thank you.

[ Sources: The Rt Hon Sir John Redwood MP ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Wed 08 Feb 2023

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February 8, 2023
Like Northern Ireland, the UK left its fishermen behind when it exited the EU
Thanks to the EU, Brexit Britannia does not even rule its own waves

Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2023

How the UK’s control of its territorial waters got lost on the high seas of EU obstinacy

No, in 2020 the UK did not “take back control” of its waters, to the fishermen’s anger. In this report Brexit Facts4EU.Org gives readers some insight into what has happened to the UK’s fishing fleet since Brexit.

Given the iconic status of our fishing industry, its importance to coastal communities, and its significant place in the Brexit debate, we review the control over UK waters and the latest data on the amount of fish landed over the past four years.

Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), international and national waters are clearly defined. Out to 12 nautical miles (22km) from the baseline, Brexit Britain should be free to set laws, regulate use, and profit from any resource. There is then another zone of 12 nautical miles which allows more limited legal controls by the coastal state.

Finally there is what is known as the ‘Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) which extends to 200 nautical miles from the coast. In theory the UK has sole exploitation rights over all natural resources including fish. In practice – because of the EU – this is not currently the case.
Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

The UK fishing industry, 2019-2022

The data below comes from the Government’s official body for managing our waters and fishing within them: the ‘Marine Management Organisation’ (MMO). These are the latest figures and they run up to end-2022.

1. Total catch (in tonnes) by UK vessels, landed in UK and abroad

2019 : 618,812

2020 : 619,963

2021 : 651,678

2022 : 616,303

Increase in tonnage landed, 2022 compared with 2019 : only +0.4%

[Source : Official Marine Management Organisation data, accessed 07 Feb 2023.]

2. Total catch (in tonnes) by UK vessels, broken down into UK landings and landings abroad

2019 : 391,171 (UK) 227,640 (Abroad)

2020 : 379,327 (UK) 240,636 (Abroad)

2021 : 394,200 (UK) 257,478 (Abroad)

2022 : 393,594 (UK +0.6%) 222,708 (Abroad -1%)

[Source : Official Marine Management Organisation data, accessed 07 Feb 2023.]

© Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2023 – click to enlarge

3. Total catch (in tonnes) by foreign vessels, landed in the UK

IMPORTANT : The figures below do not account for fish caught by EU vessels in UK waters which are now being taken straight back to the EU, rather than being landed in the UK.

2019 : 50,509

2020 : 37,894

2021 : 19,793

2022 : 16,968 (-66%)

[Source : Official Marine Management Organisation data, accessed 07 Feb 2023.]

© Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2023 – click to enlarge
A Scottish fishing group speaks out to Facts4EU.Org

One of the many anti-EU fishing groups campaigning for justice is ‘Fishing Forward UK’. Yesterday their spokesman told us :-

“These landing figures produced by the MMO are incomplete it would appear. We keep a log of vessels landing in the northern ports daily and there were 9 Spanish landings in Lochinver in December 2022 according to our records. These figures from the MMO don’t add up really. We need a better way of checking this.”

What did the Government promise?

On 25 July 2019, the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, made a statement in the House of Commons and gave the following reply in answer to a specific question on fisheries.

“We have a fantastic opportunity now to take back control of our fisheries, and that is exactly what we will do. We will become an independent coastal state again, and we will, under no circumstances, make the mistake of the Government in the 1970s, who traded our fisheries away at the last moment in the talks.

“That was a reprehensible thing to do. We will take back our fisheries, and we will boost that extraordinary industry.”

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Hansard, 25 Jul 2019

This is not about fish, this is about people and our coastal communities

The fishing agreement between the UK and the EU is very complex. In broad terms the agreement between the UK and the EU involves a reduction in the EU’s catch of only 25% – spread over six years. This means that after 2026 the EU will still have the right to take 75% of the UK’s fish.

We started this report by comparing Northern Ireland being left behind following Brexit, with the UK’s fishing fleet. Below we put the two together.

A fishy tale only Brussels could conceive of

The southernmost town in Northern Ireland is Kilkeel, County Down. Facing out to the Irish Sea, its harbour shelters the largest fishing fleet in Northern Ireland.

If the letter of the law in the Northern Ireland Protocol were to be applied, any trawler registered and based in Kilkeel setting off and catch its legitimate quota in British fishing grounds would not be allowed back into its own port to land its catch. Not without complying with additional and substantial EU bureaucracy.

The reason is simple. This Northern Irish (British) boat would, on leaving its own port in a part of the United Kingdom, instantly become a boat from an EU “third country” and not have authority to do so.

Photo right: Kilkeel, Northern Ireland

This will happen all over Northern Ireland’s coast

Any Northern Ireland fishing boat from any Northern Ireland port would – if the EU’s Protocol were applied as written – face the same problem. In such circumstances boats would have the option to land their catches at a British mainland port in Scotland such as Campbeltown, Troon or Fleetwood.

For any catch landed at a British mainland port to go to Northern Ireland would require the completion of customs forms countersigned by a vet as an independent witness.

The only reason this chaos has not yet arisen is because the UK Government insisted upon introducing a six-month ‘grace period’ whereby the EU’s Protocol rules would not be applied by the UK authorities. This was against the will of the EU, however, who objected.

At the end of the first six-month grace period the UK Government extended it indefinitely. Nevertheless it remains under the sufferance of the EU’s objections and could yet end up before the EU’s Courts of Justice in Luxembourg.

Alan McCulla, CEO of the Anglo North Irish Fish Producers Organisation commented exclusively to Facts4EU.Org

“The majority of fishermen here voted Leave in 2016 and despite the challenges would do so again if asked. Historic EU quota-sharing arrangements that penalised Northern Ireland’s fishermen in favour of their southern colleagues has ended and in fact we have an increased share of catches in the Irish Sea.

“However, the hypocrisy of politicians who trumpet the narrative the Protocol has avoided a hard land border, while burying the fact that it has failed to avoid a hard sea border for our fishing industry, is stark. The fact that for our industry the situation could get worse is not something London, Dublin or Brussels want to discuss.

Alan McCulla of the Anglo North Irish Fish Producers Organisation, with then DUP Leader Arlene Foster MLA & Diane Dodds MEP

“We really do want to see the Brexit arrangements work for all parts of the UK and indeed Ireland. However, the various grace periods, dovetailing with an overall strategy designed to ‘kick the can down the road’ is hiding what could well happen in the longer term.

“The UK Government has adopted a unilateral approach that conveniently cushions Northern Ireland’s fishing fleet from the worst aspects of the Protocol. The Protocol sets out arrangements that if implemented in their entirety will mean that Northern Ireland fishermen will be treated as foreigners in their own land.

“We continually highlight this to officials and politicians alike who do not dispute what is a fact. What puzzles us can be their answer; ‘now isn’t the time to raise these issues in the negotiations.’

“What we don’t hear is when they judge will be the time? Hence our conclusion that the strategy is simply to kick the can down the road. Actions do speak louder than words and here is one example where there has been a lot of words.”

– Alan McCulla, CEO, Anglo North Irish Fish Producers Organisation (ANIFPO), speaking to Facts4EU.Org, 10 May 2022

There is a hard border – it’s a hard sea border

Over centuries, fishing grounds around the islands of Ireland and Great Britain became established and were commonly shared and accessed even though the majority of the island of Ireland left the United Kingdom in 1922. Boats from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland still accessed each other’s waters, irrespective of the EU.

Now, following the Protocol which was introduced to prevent a “hard border” on land, there is a hard sea border between Ireland’s (the EU’s) 6 and 12 mile territorial waters. Northern Ireland boats cannot fish in the Republic of Ireland’s waters and likewise the Irish cannot fish in British waters.

The Northern Ireland fishermen advised the EU and British officials that this would become a problem in what were the traditional fishing grounds. In the typical fashion of technocrats, however, the reality of fishing at sea and all the customs and practices going with it were ignored. Now there is a hard sea border.

Observations

In 2019 the Government told us all that : “We will become an independent coastal state again, and we will, under no circumstances, make the mistake of the Government in the 1970s, who traded our fisheries away at the last moment in the talks.” This has turned out to be a broken promise.

As with so many things, this is not the fault of Brexit. It is the fault of the Civil Service and the Ministers implementing (or not implementing) Brexit.

The BBC ‘Facts Check Dept’

We are aware that the BBC also published a report on fisheries yesterday. Their figures differ from ours but they don’t say where their figures come from. Call us old-fashioned, but Facts4EU.Org went to the official source of data on these matters: the Marine Management Organisation, which is the Government agency responsible. All we can say is the BBC has used charts from 2019 and 2021. Our information is up-to-date as at the end of 2022.

Our analysis shows that landings by UK vessels into UK ports increased only 0.6% in the last four years. For UK vessels landing in EU ports these increased by ony 1%. These are hardly increases to write home about. If the Government doesn’t very quickly start to get serious about delivering Brexit benefits they can hardly complain if they are deserted by Brexiteers at the next election.

We must get reports like this out there

Reports like the one above take far longer to research, write and produce than many people realise. If they were easy, readers would see other organisations also producing these daily.

However, there’s little point in the Facts4EU.Org team working long hours, seven days-a-week, if we lack the resources to promote them effectively – to the public, to MPs, and to the media. This is where you come in, dear reader.

Facts4EU.Org needs you today

We are a ‘not for profit’ team (we make a loss) and any payment goes towards the actual work, not plush London offices, lunch or taxi expenses, or other luxuries of some organisations.

We badly need more of our thousands of readers to become members, to support this work. Could this be you, today? It’s quick and easy, we give you a choice of two highly secure payment providers, and we do NOT ask you for further support if you pay once. We just hope you keep supporting us. Your membership stays anonymous unless you tell us otherwise.

Please don’t assume that other people will keep us going – we don’t receive enough to survive and we need your help today. Could you help us? We rely 100% on public contributions from readers like you.

If you believe in a fully-free, independent, and sovereign United Kingdom, please join now by clicking on one of the links below or you can use our Support page here. You will receive a personal, friendly ‘thank you’ from a member of our team within 24 hours. Thank you.

[ Sources: UK Government’s Marine Management Organisation | Fishing Forward UK | Anglo North Irish Fish Producers Organisation ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Tues 07 Feb 2023

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February 7, 2023
How can anyone seriously campaign to rejoin the EU after reading this? – PART THREE

At least the EU is offering “town twinning” and giving Ukrainians LED light bulbs….

Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2023

EU Commission President offers totally insensitive comments in a war zone

Following a Brexit Facts4EU.Org investigation of official EU data over several days, we present a deeply shocking report about the EU and Putin’s Russia. Facts4EU.Org can reveal that the EU’s supposed ‘sanctions’ on trade with Russia since his illegal invasion of Ukraine are little more than words.

The failing EU – Part Three
A Brexit Facts4EU.Org exclusive, in conjunction with CIBUK

The EU Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, made a visit to Ukraine on Thursday (02 Feb 2023) and gave a long speech to President Zelenskyy, to the Ukrainian people, and for the press.

Ms von der Leyen’s first message was about economic aid. She then had other topics she wanted to talk about and she spoke at length about them. Below we summarise some of these.

Let there be (EU) light….

After talking about aid and reconstruction as if the war had already been won, the EU Commission President waxed lyrical on the subject of the EU providing LED light bulbs to Ukraine, available from post offices. (Assuming these haven’t all been bombed to the ground by Putin’s forces.)

‘Forget the war, Volod, let’s talk about the EU’s Green Deal’

“From this week on, indeed, the LED light bulbs are available to Ukrainian citizens at the post office. These are the first batches of the 30 million LED light bulbs we promised. But in fact, I am happy to announce that we can overshoot our goal. We are now able to provide 35 million LED light bulbs.”

– EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Kyiv, 02 Feb 2023

Green energy support

In the middle of a bitter and bloody fight for the very survival of Ukraine, the EU Commission President stood in the heavily bombed capital city of Kyiv and made further remarks. She felt it appropriate to talk about green energy.

She continued her long speech to President Zelenskyy by describing how the EU planned to help Ukraine achieve green energy. In the middle of Ukraine’s desperate and bloody battle for its very survival, this is what she said:-

‘Oh Volod, Volod. Please stop talking about tanks, I want to talk about renewable gases’

“Renewables will not only bring clean energy; they will also increase Ukraine’s energy security. Because they are home-grown, and because a decentralised energy system is plain and simply safer. So, we are now working on making available significant funding for solar panels that will be deployed across Ukraine.”

“And the final element in the energy security: Today, we are signing a Memorandum of Understanding on renewable gases, such as biomethane or hydrogen.”

– EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Kyiv, 02 Feb 2023

Greta Thunberg was not present

The EU Commission President then went on to talk about the EU’s sanctions

Our analysis of the EU’s official data yesterday shows clearly that the EU is making more and more money from its sales to Russia. Any thought that sanctions have prevented Russia from receiving badly needed supplies is completely false. In the fact the opposite is the case. From the EU these supplies have risen by 40% per month since the start of the war.

Not only that, but when it comes to imports from Russia – providing much needed foreign currency to keep Putin’s economy afloat – the EU has been more than generous. Our report yesterday showed that the EU has spent over €150bn euros buying goods from Russia in the first nine months of the war.

Despite this, Ms von der Leyen told President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people the following :

“My second message today is that we are making Putin pay for his atrocious war. Before Russia started this war, we were very vocal about the severe economic costs we will impose on Russia if it invades Ukraine.

“Today, Russia is paying a heavy price, as our sanctions are eroding its economy, throwing it back by a generation.”

– EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Kyiv, 02 Feb 202

As we showed yesterday, when it comes to buying from Russia the EU’s very gradual reduction has been far less than that of the UK and took a long time starting. Indeed in November the EU’s imports from Russia actually started increasing again, by +30% based on the previous month.

Undaunted, the EU Commission President ploughed on about town twinning

There then followed a passage about Ukraine joining the European Union before the EU Commission President reached her finale. For this, Ms von der Leyen thought it appropriate to talk about twinning. We assure readers we are not making this up.

‘Volod, I’m sure you’ll get German tanks, once they’ve been repaired. Meanwhile, there’s always town twinning’

“My final point – and it is last but certainly not least: We are connecting more and more our people, our companies and our cities. Last year, Volodymyr, you called for our cities to twin – the twin partnerships. They heard you, and they are doing it.

Credit: Twitter, click to enlarge

“So let me report you that we have now 100 large cities in the European Union that are twinned with 36 Ukrainian cities by now. Munich with Kyiv for example; Turku with Kharkiv. Almost 1,000 smaller towns in the European Union have partnerships with municipalities in Ukraine – with Hromadas.

“And, just like as you called for, they are ready to help rebuild the sister cities in Ukraine. Our network, Eurocities, has already launched a project on the sustainable rebuilding of cities in Ukraine. And I think it is amazing because there are urban planners, engineers, architects fully on board.

“And the New European Bauhaus concept will inspire them. They partner in Ukraine to launch the capacity-building programme. For example, they share knowledge for rebuilding smartly, for example by recycling concrete so that Ukraine could use half of the debris from destroyed buildings to rebuild better.

“Our LIFE programme will provide the first steps on that, this is EUR 7 million for the programme to start. So, our vision is to turn the destruction of war into opportunities to build a beautiful and healthy future for Ukraine.”

– EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Kyiv, 02 Feb 2023

Er… We believe it’s just possible that President Zelenskyy is currently focused on fighting a war. It’s just possible he now has other things on his mind than twinning and Bauhaus – a pre-war German building design style.

Former Secretary of State, the Rt Hon Sir John Redwood MP, speaks exclusively to Brexit Facts4EU.Org and CIBUK.Org, commenting on all three reports in this series and Brexit generally.

“Facts4EU has done a great job making the case for Brexit.

“It was always about being free to make our own laws and spend our own taxes which we can now do. The EU robbed us of cash and damaged many of our industries.

“Common fishing and farming policies made us dependent on imports from the continent. Complex regulations favoured German and French industry over our own.

“The EU is undermining the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. Going back into the EU would be a dreadful idea, putting us under their power to harm yet again.”

Former Secretary of State, the Rt Hon Sir John Redwood MP, Sun 05 Feb 2023

Observations

The title of this three-part series is “How can anyone seriously campaign to rejoin the EU after reading this?”

We are compelled to ask Rejoiners how they can possibly want to surrender British sovereignty to a foreign empire run by people so out of touch with reality. This is not about one person. They’ve been like this for many years and are only getting worse with each passing year.

Ursula von der Leyen was German Defence Minister. It might have been thought she would understand something about war, but it seems not.

We realise that Ms von der Leyen had little to point to in terms of the EU sanctions having made much difference to its trade with Putin’s despotic regime. Nevertheless, for her to stand in a war-ravaged city in a country fighting on a daily basis for its survival, with civilians and military personnel being killed and maimed every day, and to witter on about “town twinning” and “the New European Bauhaus concept” almost defies belief.

Is the EU Commission on a different planet?

One can only speculate what President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people made of all of this. Perhaps they just had to bite their tongues and ask for more EU cash. That’s what we would have done.

For UK Rejoiners, however, they must confront this reality. Here we have the EU in all its glory, prancing around on the world stage playing gesture politics.

The sheer insensitivity of these ideologues playing their violins and talking about wholly irrelevant EU policies while Kjiv and the rest of Ukraine is burning – this surely displays these EU fanatics in their true, washed-out colors.

Brexit Britain stood up to be counted while the EU had meetings and put out disinformation

Whatever your views about this war, most countries’ governments have a broadly similar position. We can therefore judge the EU against Brexit Britain on this basis. The UK has outperformed the EU27 on military training and supply of weapons, massively outperformed the EU in cutting its Russian imports, and hasn’t bothered President Zelenskyy with irrelevant and self-promoting ideological projects.

We must get reports like this out there

Reports like the one above take far longer to research, write and produce than many people realise. If they were easy, readers would see other organisations also producing these daily.

However, there’s little point in the Facts4EU.Org team working long hours, seven days-a-week, if we lack the resources to promote them effectively – to the public, to MPs, and to the media. This is where you come in, dear reader.

Facts4EU.Org needs you today

We are a ‘not for profit’ team (we make a loss) and any payment goes towards the actual work, not plush London offices, lunch or taxi expenses, or other luxuries of some organisations.

We badly need more of our thousands of readers to become members, to support this work. Could this be you, today? It’s quick and easy, we give you a choice of two highly secure payment providers, and we do NOT ask you for further support if you pay once. We just hope you keep supporting us. Your membership stays anonymous unless you tell us otherwise.

Please don’t assume that other people will keep us going – we don’t receive enough to survive and we need your help today. Could you help us? We rely 100% on public contributions from readers like you.

If you believe in a fully-free, independent, and sovereign United Kingdom, please join now by clicking on one of the links below or you can use our Support page here. You will receive a personal, friendly ‘thank you’ from a member of our team within 24 hours. Thank you.

[ Sources: EU Commission ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Sun 05 Feb 2023

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February 6, 2023
How can anyone seriously campaign to rejoin the EU after reading this? – PART TWO
EXPLOSIVE : EU’s saintly claims blown out of the sky in damning new report

Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2023, includes European Commission picture, attribution via Wikimedia Commons

Proud Brexit Britain has been shining like a beacon of light compared to the EU

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

Deceit, hypocrisy and betrayal revealed : EU sanctions? What EU sanctions?
How the EU has been funding Putin’s Russia to the tune of €150 bn since the war started
And the EU27’s sales to Russia have rocketed by +40% per month in the last nine months

Brexit Britain has once again shown the EU how it should be done

(And we couldn’t have done this if we had still been a member of the EU.)

Following a Brexit Facts4EU.Org investigation of official EU data lasting several days, we present the second part of our three-part series entitled “How can anyone seriously campaign to rejoin the EU?”

Today’s second part in this series is a deeply shocking report which explodes the EU’s claims of virtue and saintliness. It concerns the EU and Putin’s Russia. Facts4EU.Org can reveal that the EU’s supposed ‘sanctions’ on trade with Russia since his illegal invasion of Ukraine are little more than words. Meanwhile Brexit Britain has once again led the way.

Please note : What follows is not about the rights and wrongs of the war. Nor is it about who caused it. This report is about countering the disinformation coming from Brussels, which shows up the EU for what it is.

The failing EU – Part Two
A Brexit Facts4EU.Org exclusive, in conjunction with CIBUK

In Part One of this three-part report, Facts4EU.Org revealed the steadily-declining, poor economic performance of the EU last year. In Part Two today (Saturday) we look at the simply appalling behaviour of the EU Commission and the EU27 when it comes to Putin’s Russia.

We conclude tomorrow (Sunday) with a report which might sound like it is a parody – but it is very deadly serious and everything you read in this series comes from official sources. It will shock many readers.

Part Two : EU sanctions? What EU sanctions? An explosive analysis of the EU’s support for Putin

We have analysed the EU’s latest trade figures updated on 25 January 2023 and they will certainly not please President Zelenskyy. (We will be sending these reports to his office in Kjiv.) They show that the EU Commission’s so-called ‘sanctions’ against the Putin regime have not stopped trade between the EU bloc and the Russian Federation.

“And by 24 February, exactly one year since the invasion started, we aim to have the tenth package of sanctions in place.”

– EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Kyiv, Thurs 02 Feb 2023

Putin’s illegal invasion started at the end of February (24 Feb 2022). The EU has produced nine ‘sanctions packages’ in that time, to great fanfare each time. Below we summarise the limited effect of these EU ‘sanctions’ on EU-Russian trade. We then contrast this with the significantly superior performance by Brexit Britain.
Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

EU’s Russian exports and imports

EU’s exports to, and imports from, Putin’s Russia since war began up to end-November 2022 (latest month)

EU’s monthly exports to Russia in November were 40% higher than when the war began

EU’s imports from Russia have totalled €153.6bn since the illegal invasion

[Source: EU Commission’s latest trade figures, 25 Jan 2023.]

© Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2023 – click to enlarge
Providing more supplies to Putin’s Russia each month

There are two aspects to the EU27’s increase in sales to Putin’s Russia. The first is that sanctions have not stopped EU27 companies from providing vital supplies needed by Russia while it wages war on Ukraine.

The second is that not only have the EU27 continued supplying Russia, their monthly sales have rocketed by 40%. In the first nine months since the war started, EU27 companies have raked in €39.1 bn from this trade.

And how did the EU present all of this to the world?

The headline of the EU Commission statistics agency’s report is: “EU trade with Russia declined strongly”.

© EU Commission 2023

Instead of presenting the EU’s import and export figures for Russia, as we have done, they chose instead to present the share of the EU’s total business with Russia. This is highly unusual. The obvious thing to have done would be to present the simple charts of imports and exports. Their problem, of course, was that these charts do not make the EU look good at all. They obviously then tried to find something which presented a better picture. Brexit Facts4EU.Org strongly suggests they rewrite their report as it is thoroughly misleading.

Brexit Britain once again completely outshines the EU

Below we present a comparison between the EU and Brexit Britain when it comes to trade with Russia. As the EU bloc’s numbers are much higher than those of the UK, we have converted these into indices, where March 2023 = 100. This shows the relative performances very clearly.
Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

EU’s Russian exports and imports

1. EU’s and UK’s sales to Russia, Mar-Nov 2022

Brexit Britain has REDUCED its sales to Russia by -47.2%

The EU27 have INCREASED their sales in the latest month to Russia by +40.0%, compared to March

[Sources : EU Commission’s statistics agency and the UK’s Office for National Statistics.]

© Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2023 – click to enlarge

2. EU’s and UK’s purchases from Russia, Mar-Nov 2022

Brexit Britain has reduced its purchases by 97.1% in the latest month compared with March

The EU27 have reduced their purchases by only 42.4%

[Sources : EU Commission’s statistics agency and the UK’s Office for National Statistics.]

© Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2023 – click to enlarge
Former Brexit Minister, the Rt Hon David Jones MP, speaks exclusively to Brexit Facts4EU.Org and CIBUK.org

“This Facts4EU and CIBUK report should come as a wake-up call to any Rejoiners who still naively believe that the European Union is unequivocally a force for good in the world.

“The plain fact is that while Putin has waged his illegal war of aggression on Ukraine, the EU has enthusiastically continued to trade with Russia.

“If the EU had followed the UK’s example and slashed trade with Russia virtually to zero, Putin would have been far less likely to continue to bomb the cities and towns of Ukraine.

“The EU must respond to this report, explain why it continues to breach its own sanctions, and take all necessary steps to cease trading with Russia without further delay.”

Former Brexit Minister, the Rt Hon David Jones MP, Sat 04 Feb 2023

If the EU had acted instead of pretending to act, Russia would have been in deep trouble

Russia abruptly stopped publishing its international trade data at the end of February 2022, just as its illegal invasion of Ukraine started. However we do know that the EU is Russia’s largest international trade partner by far. In 2020, the EU was Russia’s biggest customer, accounting for 37.9% of its goods exports worldwide. 36.5% of Russia’s imports came from the EU. [Source: EU Commission.] It should be noted that this trade was happening SIX YEARS after Putin’s first illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2014, when he seized Crimea.

In 2019, the EU was the largest investor in Russia. The EU foreign direct investment (FDI) outward stock in Russia amounted to €311.4 billion, while Russia’s FDI stock in the EU was estimated at €136 billion.

If the EU had actually acted and cut its trade ties, the Russian economy would have been cut off at the knees. According to a US Congress report 40% of the Russian economy is based on international trade. There is every prospect that in these circumstances Putin would have been deposed.

Finally, Brexit Britain can hold its head high – because of Brexit

Without Brexit, the UK could not have pursued its own sanctions. As a result of Brexit, however, the UK Government was able to act swiftly and decisively – unlike the EU – as can be seen from the charts above.

After reading the above, do Rejoiners really want to rejoin such a dysfunctional foreign empire like the European Union?

Observations

It is not often that the Brexit Facts4EU.Org team are lost for words after investigating aspects of the EU’s behaviour. We have become accustomed to unearthing some extraordinary information.

When it comes to these reports, however, we were completely shocked. When readers see tomorrow’s Part Three report, they will be equally amazed, we’re sure.

There’s no easy way to put his…

Since the start of Putin’s (second) illegal invasion of Ukraine the Commission has put out a stream of statements which are worthy of the Kremlin. The problem for the Commission is that the facts don’t lie – especially when the data comes from the EU itself. Our analysis proves beyond any doubt that the EU continues to prop up Putin’s Russia, with over a quarter of a TRILLION euros paid to Russia for imports (and these are not all for gas) in the first nine months of the war.

Not only that but EU27 countries have been raking in billions in cash by increasing their monthly sales to that country by an astonishing 40%. The Commission might not wish all of this to be known, but Facts4EU.Org’s report today is definitive and leaves them with nowhere to hide.

We very much hope that a major British newspaper will pick this up and run with it. We and CIBUK are both available for comment.

The question must be asked:-

How can anyone possibly want to rejoin this dysfunctional and failing empire? We really would like to hear anyone from the Rejoin campaigns try to defend the EU’s appalling record on Ukraine. Specifically we would like to hear them attempt to justify the figures above.

No doubt Rejoiners will ignore the fact that the EU27 have been increasing their supplies of goods to Russia since the start of the war. They will then try to say that the EU’s imports from Russia have fallen. This is true, but not by much and at a snail’s pace. When compared to the UK’s fall of 97.1% – more than half of which happened in the first month of the war – the EU’s very slow fall of only 42.4% looks derisory.

The EU’s abject failure to introduce immediate and effective sanctions on Putin’s Russia is little short of a disgrace. For the Commission then to try to pretend it is doing something when it clearly isn’t, only adds oil to the fires burning in Ukraine.

Coming tomorrow (Sunday)

We will add to these observations more fully at the end of Part Three of this report tomorrow. And that is a report you will NOT want to miss. PLUS a strong set of comments from former Secretary of State the Rt Hon Sir John Redwood MP.

We must get reports like this out there

Reports like the one above take far longer to research, write and produce than many people realise. If they were easy, readers would see other organisations also producing these daily.

However, there’s little point in the Facts4EU.Org team working long hours, seven days-a-week, if we lack the resources to promote them effectively – to the public, to MPs, and to the media. This is where you come in, dear reader.

Facts4EU.Org needs you today

We are a ‘not for profit’ team (we make a loss) and any payment goes towards the actual work, not plush London offices, lunch or taxi expenses, or other luxuries of some organisations.

We badly need more of our thousands of readers to become members, to support this work. Could this be you, today? It’s quick and easy, we give you a choice of two highly secure payment providers, and we do NOT ask you for further support if you pay once. We just hope you keep supporting us. Your membership stays anonymous unless you tell us otherwise.

Please don’t assume that other people will keep us going – we don’t receive enough to survive and we need your help today. Could you help us? We rely 100% on public contributions from readers like you.

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[ Sources: EU Commission | UK Office for National Statistics ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Sat 04 Feb 2023

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February 6, 2023