Trade is not “up.”
A Commons briefing paper published just last month shows that inflation has made it appear that trade has increased but when this is adjusted for, our monthly trade in real terms is lower now than it was in 2018.
And this applies to both EU and non-EU exports and to EU imports as these charts reveal:
The paper even spells it out: "exports to the EU remain below 2019 levels in real terms" and "UK exports of goods to non-EU countries have remained below pre-pandemic levels. Exports were £179 billion in 2019. They fell in 2020 and were still 10% lower in real terms than their 2019 level in 2022."
Non-EU imports, the paper says, have increased by 7% in real terms between 2019 and 2022, although looking at the chart above it doesn't look like it to me. In any case, it's hardly something to shout about and isn't going to help our balance of payments.
She told him, “Having regained our regulatory sovereignty now that we have left the EU, we are now able to ensure that our regulation is tailored to the UK economy, supports our businesses, and protects our consumers and having left a single market we can focus on UK trade with the world, where trade is up 24 per cent.”
It's not clear if the 24% increase in trade (imports and exports) she quotes is in real terms or not. I know world trade has seen a big post-pandemic uptick and I also know that the UK has been left behind.
What is absolutely clear is the impression Ms. Ghani seeks to give is wrong.
She repeats the Tory mantra about "tailoring" regulation to support UK businesses when we know the overwhelming majority of UK industries want to keep aligned with the EU because it doesn't make sense to have diverging regulations which simply add cost, delays, and complexity, often for no good reason.
Her comments come as the House of Commons Procedure Committee publish recommendations on reforms to how "inaccuracies in contributions to the House" are corrected. The current system they say is "disjointed, with very different end points depending on who made the correction and in what form they decided to do so."
Before 2005 there was no consistent method and no authoritative guidance on which procedure would be appropriate for different categories of error and "no simple way of discovering whether a correction had been made."
A system was devised and put into practice in 2007 but now apparently needs reforming. Both the old and the proposed systems look complex and unwieldy to me. It strikes me the problem is that ministers and MPs are very reluctant to correct the record, even when the mistake is quite obvious as is the case with Ghani.
Politicians have it in their DNA to mislead. They deceive their own constituents, colleagues, and the wider public and no amount of fiddling with the rules is going to change that. We just need a bit more honesty in politics.
Rwanda
The appeal court’s ruling that the government’s policy of deporting “illegal” immigrants to Rwanda is unlawful came as no surprise yesterday. Many eminent legal experts had suggested this would happen. The decision comes days after the Home Office revealed that it was going to cost £169,000 per person to ship them off to East Africa to have their asylum claim assessed by Rwanda and not by Britain. It is unbelievably cruel in my opinion.
Incidentally, this is the reaction to the decision of Peter North, son of Dr Richard North:
I'm done arguing the toss with people who say dinghy freeloaders are refugees. Believe that if you want but don't come crying to us when your daughters are raped and dumped in a ditch to die. It's coming to your leafy suburb eventually. You've been warned plenty of times.
— Pete North (@PeteNorth303) June 29, 2023
Of course, there are going to be some bad eggs in those coming here whether fleeing persecution or not, but I’ve seen no evidence that anyone is more likely to be attacked by an illegal immigrant than they are by a legal one or someone born and raised in this country. It is simply whipping up the mob.
The North’s support for Brexit seems to be driven by pure racism and not much else.
Sunak has said they now intend to press on and take it to the UK Supreme Court. It’s really quite mad.
When asked if the policy had any support among the audience at last night’s Question Time, not a single hand among the mainly Conservative voters was raised. I honestly don’t know who the policy is supposed to appeal to.
Simon Clarke, Tory MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland since 2017, told Newsnight that unless the small boats issue is resolved, “we will not be in government after the next election”
I've got news for him, they won't be in government after the next election under any circumstances.
The Tory party has a death wish, pursuing a Brexit that most people now think was a mistake and sending migrants to Rwanda which almost no one supports while trade and the economy flatline and living standards fall is just suicidal. Polling shows the gap between Labour and the Tories continues to inch upward and is well over 20% pointing to a disastrous result whenever the next general election comes.
