Right View UK retweeted
Here is the Home Secretary back in February contradicting Andy Burnham's claims today.
She confirmed that the small boats have NOTHING to do with Brexit - and that the Dublin returns scheme did not work.
She also noted that we never knew how many were arriving in lorries...
She confirmed that the small boats have NOTHING to do with Brexit - and that the Dublin returns scheme did not work.
She also noted that we never knew how many were arriving in lorries...
Interesting difference between the PM and his Home Secretary over Brexit and small boats.
Andy Burnham today blamed the crisis on Britain losing its EU returns agreement after Brexit but Shabana Mahmood has previously rejected that argument.
She told the Home Affairs Committee in February: "I am sure there are lots of other debates to be had about the rights and wrongs of Brexit, but is Brexit responsible for the boats? I do not think that is true...
“The idea that this has happened because we have lost the access to Dublin and the returns agreement with the EU - I think that is too much of a stretch.”
In September, she went further, arguing that under Britain's one-in, one-out deal with France “more returns have happened than ever was the case under the Dublin arrangements, when we were still members of the EU".
She also warned that it was “a mistake to see the EU’s new pact as some sort of new silver bullet” that would eliminate Britain's migration problems.
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Right View UK retweeted
Chart of the Day 🤓
By popular demand, here's one of UK exports both of goods and of services, and to both the EU and the rest of the world... 🤔
Three quick takeaways:
1⃣ exports of services are more important than exports of goods - and have continued to grow rapidly
2⃣ EU have fallen slightly in volume terms since 2019, but they had barely grown for many years - even when the UK was in the EU
3⃣ exports of goods to the rest of the world have also been relatively weak since 2019 - so any problems on the goods side cannot just be due to Brexit
By popular demand, here's one of UK exports both of goods and of services, and to both the EU and the rest of the world... 🤔
Three quick takeaways:
1⃣ exports of services are more important than exports of goods - and have continued to grow rapidly
2⃣ EU have fallen slightly in volume terms since 2019, but they had barely grown for many years - even when the UK was in the EU
3⃣ exports of goods to the rest of the world have also been relatively weak since 2019 - so any problems on the goods side cannot just be due to Brexit
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Who in their right mind would want to rejoin the EU #TikTok vm.tiktok.com/ZN8DCgjQJ/
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Right View UK retweeted
And here an earlier thread explaining why UK economic growth has probably been slightly higher than it would have been had we not left the EU
(albeit assessing the counter-factual is highly uncertain).
x.com/cricketwyvern/…
(albeit assessing the counter-factual is highly uncertain).
x.com/cricketwyvern/…
Does @AngelaRayner realise how misleading this is?
Even if not, good journalists should have figures at hand to correct her & other Govt. ministers trying to imply UK exports to the EU have gone down since Brexit.
In fact total exports to the EU have increased since Brexit.
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Trouble in paradise
Many French, including some politicians, firmly believe the ECB will bail them out. It is not that easy though, the ECB cannot monetize French debt. Article 123 TFEU bans overdrafts, credit facilities, and direct purchases of government debt by the ECB or national central banks. Secondary-market purchases are allowed only if they do not equate to primary financing, leaving governments exposed to market pricing. The Court of Justice of the EU upheld OMT and PSPP solely under those safeguards and never authorized open-ended financing of a specific budget.
A large-scale, targeted suppression of French yields would test these limits. France faces an excessive-deficit procedure, with a deficit at 5% in good times. Tools like the Transmission Protection Instrument require “unwarranted” and “disorderly” moves plus fiscal compliance, conditions unmet when spreads reflect political gridlock and fiscal trajectory rather than transmission failure. Recent ECB statements stress that the remedy lies in French budgets, not central-bank backstops.
German constraints tighten the treaty rules. The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe reviewed ECB purchases and required the government and Bundestag to police proportionality. Past complaints challenged PSPP and PEPP on monetary-financing grounds. Selective underwriting of French debt would almost certainly trigger an AfD-supported case in Karlsruhe, risking a ruling that forces the Bundesbank to step back.
Such a step would damage the euro. It would resemble a fiscal transfer without democratic consent, eroding the no-bail-out principle and the single monetary policy. Markets would reprice fragmentation risk, other high-debt members would demand equivalent treatment. A Karlsruhe ruling blocking German participation would freeze part of the Eurosystem balance sheet and create a political crisis over the monetary union’s viability.
The legal architecture, treaty text, CJEU case law, and German constitutional oversight, exists precisely to stop the ECB from becoming the residual financier of national fiscal choices. Crossing it for France would not stabilize the euro, it would most likely lead to the break-up of the eurozone.
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Right View UK retweeted
This is the reality.
This is the actual data on UK trade post-Brexit.
David is not some random guy on X (like me). David is the Professor of Industrial Economics at Nottingham University.
This is the data. The actual data. Not some garbage forecast about a fictional earth.
This is the actual data on UK trade post-Brexit.
David is not some random guy on X (like me). David is the Professor of Industrial Economics at Nottingham University.
This is the data. The actual data. Not some garbage forecast about a fictional earth.
…
The reality is UK total (goods & services) exports to EU in 2025 were:
· ⬆️ 18.9% on 2015 (pre-referendum)
· ⬆️ 3.8% on 2019 (before leaving EU)
· ⬆️3.2% on last year.
All in real terms (source: ONS trade statistics)
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Oh dear
Nope, that’s not how taxes and price works. The price is determined by demand and supply.
Companies charge the highest price they can given demand. A tax levied on *profits* does not affect a company’s cost ie supply.
Taxes on *windfall* profits (like oil and gas) are the most efficient kind of tax there is.Community noteCorporate profit taxes do not directly shift marginal costs but empirical studies show partial pass-through into higher consumer prices. Windfall taxes on oil and gas have deterred investment and production in practice despite theoretical efficiency on rents.
dadun.unav.edu/server/api/cor…
ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpwps…
taxfoundation.org/blog/big-oil-p…
scottishfinancialreview.com/2025/09/03/win…
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Soros, funny how he is never discussed when foreign influence is discussed - remoaner hypocrisy- surely not
This week a self-described "influential think tank", the IPPR, advised that the "UK must seek EU membership”. Charlotte Gill was not surprised to find it was funded by George Soros and the European Climate Foundation. dailysceptic.org/2026/10/24/rej…
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More trouble in paradise
Good Morning from Germany, where one of Europe’s biggest landlords calls the country “uninvestable.” Heimstaden is withholding fresh capital over Berlin’s expropriation plans. It owns 20,000 apartments in the city worth ~€5bn and estimates a potential €1bn loss. Its hybrid bond nts in August to 82.5. The irony: a policy meant to tackle the housing shortage risks driving away investment without building a single new home. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
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Right View UK retweeted
France is bankrupt and won't recover. So are Spain, Greece, and Italy, each with greater debts than their GDP. Germany is about to drop off.
After that, the EU is financially finished and can only survive as a war economy in hopes of defeating Russia to seize its cheap the USA will do deals with Russia and the EU is finished altogether.
Europe can't afford not to continue the war with Russia. So when Zelenskiy calls on 9.5 million Ukrainians to return home to rebuild the country, he means to buy time to send them to the front lines next.
You'd be very stupid to go back to Ukraine if you care about your life.
After that, the EU is financially finished and can only survive as a war economy in hopes of defeating Russia to seize its cheap the USA will do deals with Russia and the EU is finished altogether.
Europe can't afford not to continue the war with Russia. So when Zelenskiy calls on 9.5 million Ukrainians to return home to rebuild the country, he means to buy time to send them to the front lines next.
You'd be very stupid to go back to Ukraine if you care about your life.
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Labour growth
The UK government has, since April, spent no less than £61 billion - that’s £61,000,000,000 - on debt interest payments.
That’s equivalent to our entire annual defence budget - on just half a year’s worth of debt service costs, not paying back a penny of our national debt.
For 0 state-of-the-art hospitals.
Or employ 100,000 nurses for a decade
Or fund free-at-the-point-of-use social care, across the entire UK, for three years.
Watch this short “When The Facts Change” video for more on the UK’s soaring debt interest bill - the biggest national scandal our mainstream media continues to ignore.
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Right View UK retweeted
The EU's role in the collapse of the UK car industry
"Output peaked at 1.92 m vehicles during 1972, our last year before entering the EEC. During our first decade in the EEC and its Customs Union output slumped to 868,000 by 1982"
@johnredwood explains: bit.ly/4zTWbkt
"Output peaked at 1.92 m vehicles during 1972, our last year before entering the EEC. During our first decade in the EEC and its Customs Union output slumped to 868,000 by 1982"
@johnredwood explains: bit.ly/4zTWbkt
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Right View UK retweeted
Bond markets are turning up the pressure on Paris as France’s risk premium keeps climbing. The 10y yield spread over Germany has widened further to 175bps, the highest since 2011. Just 15bps shy of its eurozone debt-crisis peak.
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Right View UK retweeted
It is becoming clearer each week that an ECB intervention to support French bonds would likely be needed sooner and on a larger scale than markets assumed even a few months ago. France’s public debt stood at roughly €3.6 trillion, or 119% of GDP, at end-Q2 2026, the highest since the immediate postwar period, and is projected to rise toward 122% by 2027. The deficit is expected to remain around 5.4% of GDP in 2026 (after 5.1% in 2025), well above the EU’s 3% reference value, while the interest bill is set to climb toward €90 billion.
Ten-year bond yields have recently pushed above 5%, and the spread over German Bunds has widened to 175 basis points, levels last seen during the 2011–12 euro-area sovereign crisis.
Any such bailout would carry two broad consequences.
First, preferential treatment for France would be difficult to contain. Italy, Spain and others already carry elevated debt stocks, once exceptional ECB support is established for one large member, extending it becomes hard to refuse on non-discriminatory grounds. The resulting expansion of the central bank’s balance sheet would be inflationary by construction, whether via the Transmission Protection Instrument, flexible PEPP reinvestments, or another channel.
Second, the political and legal reaction in Germany would be severe. The AfD currently polls in the mid-to-high 20s, regularly leading the CDU/CSU. Explicit or thinly disguised monetary financing of French deficits would give the party a concrete grievance. More consequentially, constitutional complaints would almost certainly be lodged in Karlsruhe. The German Federal Constitutional Court has previously scrutinised ECB asset-purchase programmes, referring questions to the European Court of Justice and insisting on proportionality and respect for the prohibition of monetary financing. A targeted French operation would present a clearer factual pattern than those earlier programmes and would almost immediately place Germany’s continued participation in the monetary union under open political and legal contestation, an outcome neither EU institutions nor most national governments wish to confront.
In theory, the ECB could insist on rigorous fiscal conditionality before deploying any instrument. In practice, the French government is already struggling to enact even modest consolidation amid street protests and union threats of broader industrial action. Measures on the scale imposed on Greece or Portugal a decade ago would face formidable domestic resistance, the risk of further political destabilisation is significant.
The authorities therefore face a narrow and unattractive set of options. They may attempt incremental, technically framed purchases, presented as “preventing disorderly market conditions,” “addressing liquidity issues,” or “safeguarding the transmission of monetary policy”, in the hope that limited scale and careful communication can avoid a full political confrontation. Markets and the German public would, however, recognise the purpose. The fact that the ECB’s president is French has not so far translated into overt support, Christine Lagarde has repeatedly stated that the primary solution to France’s difficulties lies in domestic fiscal policy. Still, institutional incentives and the scale of the French problem leave open the possibility of quiet support once spreads or political pressure intensify further.
The institutional and political costs of either intervening or standing aside remain high. There is no good solution to the looming French debt crisis. Either France moves into chaos, or the ECB steps in, devaluing the euro and risking Germany and others leaving the eurozone, ending the failed experiment called the euro.
Ten-year bond yields have recently pushed above 5%, and the spread over German Bunds has widened to 175 basis points, levels last seen during the 2011–12 euro-area sovereign crisis.
Any such bailout would carry two broad consequences.
First, preferential treatment for France would be difficult to contain. Italy, Spain and others already carry elevated debt stocks, once exceptional ECB support is established for one large member, extending it becomes hard to refuse on non-discriminatory grounds. The resulting expansion of the central bank’s balance sheet would be inflationary by construction, whether via the Transmission Protection Instrument, flexible PEPP reinvestments, or another channel.
Second, the political and legal reaction in Germany would be severe. The AfD currently polls in the mid-to-high 20s, regularly leading the CDU/CSU. Explicit or thinly disguised monetary financing of French deficits would give the party a concrete grievance. More consequentially, constitutional complaints would almost certainly be lodged in Karlsruhe. The German Federal Constitutional Court has previously scrutinised ECB asset-purchase programmes, referring questions to the European Court of Justice and insisting on proportionality and respect for the prohibition of monetary financing. A targeted French operation would present a clearer factual pattern than those earlier programmes and would almost immediately place Germany’s continued participation in the monetary union under open political and legal contestation, an outcome neither EU institutions nor most national governments wish to confront.
In theory, the ECB could insist on rigorous fiscal conditionality before deploying any instrument. In practice, the French government is already struggling to enact even modest consolidation amid street protests and union threats of broader industrial action. Measures on the scale imposed on Greece or Portugal a decade ago would face formidable domestic resistance, the risk of further political destabilisation is significant.
The authorities therefore face a narrow and unattractive set of options. They may attempt incremental, technically framed purchases, presented as “preventing disorderly market conditions,” “addressing liquidity issues,” or “safeguarding the transmission of monetary policy”, in the hope that limited scale and careful communication can avoid a full political confrontation. Markets and the German public would, however, recognise the purpose. The fact that the ECB’s president is French has not so far translated into overt support, Christine Lagarde has repeatedly stated that the primary solution to France’s difficulties lies in domestic fiscal policy. Still, institutional incentives and the scale of the French problem leave open the possibility of quiet support once spreads or political pressure intensify further.
The institutional and political costs of either intervening or standing aside remain high. There is no good solution to the looming French debt crisis. Either France moves into chaos, or the ECB steps in, devaluing the euro and risking Germany and others leaving the eurozone, ending the failed experiment called the euro.
France’s public spending sits at roughly 57% of GDP, among the highest in Europe and well above the OECD average of about 41%. That is the opposite of austerity. Isn’t it funny that the French left continues to frame the country’s cost-of-living pressures and the recent wave of “austerity”? The claim does not survive contact with the numbers.
Banque de France and Eurostat data place France just behind Finland and ahead of everyone else in the government-spending ranking. Most of the excess relative to euro-area peers comes from social protection, pensions and health in particular, and clearly not from underfunding core services.
The practical effect of this large state is not lower prices for households. France maintains one of the OECD’s highest tax wedges on labor (around 47% for an average single worker). Employer social contributions are especially heavy, when an employer spends €100 on a worker, the employee often receives less than half that amount after mandatory charges. High VAT, production taxes, and a thicket of regulations further raise the cost of goods, housing, energy, and services. These burdens show up directly in the prices people face and in the gap between gross labor costs and take-home pay. Here is the real root-cause of the cost-of-living crisis.
High spending has also not delivered efficiency. Studies from the IMF and others have repeatedly found that France sits well back from the efficiency frontier in education, health administration, and other public functions relative to peers that spend less. The result is a large public sector that consumes a great deal of resources while still generating complaints about service quality, exactly the pattern visible in the current unrest over schools and living costs.
The cost-of-living crisis and the riots that followed it have real causes: energy price shocks, housing constraints, and stagnant real purchasing power for many households. Blaming austerity in one of Europe’s highest-spending countries deeply misdiagnoses the problem. An overgrown, highly taxed, and often inefficient state tends to make everyday goods and services more expensive, not less. Addressing that requires better targeting and productivity in public spending, not further expansion of a failed model.
Aren’t French lefts simply entertaining in their naive ideological worldview? Believe it or not, but the unions seriously call for a general strike against “austerity“ on November 5. France is simply unreformable and will take down the entire Eurozone with it.
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Meanwhile in the EU nirvana
Everyone is talking about Le Spread, the French-German ten-year bond yield differential, now at first euro crisis levels.
In reality, it’s much worse. During the first euro crisis, Germany still had a functioning economy and was seen as rock-solid. Today, many understand the s broken, and Germany is just buying time by issuing more debt to mask its industry’s implosion through inflated, inefficient government spending and headcount. Germany is on the path to become another failed big-government state like France, with only a few years left to pretend with more debt that its economy is stable.
Le Spread doesn’t tell the whole story. With France already in crisis and Germany slowly becoming another France, Europe and the euro are cooked. If you own euro assets, hedge them before it’s too late.
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Right View UK retweeted
France’s mounting debt is a European problem, not just a French one. If its finances deteriorate further, the repercussions could spread to Germany and other EU economies. Why would rejoining be a priority right now when the economic risks are still unfolding before us?
Brexit was the greatest act of economic self-harm in our country’s history.
I’ve calling on the government for closer ties with Europe to help businesses grow, lower costs and improve living standards.
Rejoining the EU must remain our destination.
standard.co.uk/news/politics/…
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Right View UK retweeted
Someone noted an interesting aspect of this chart: Brexit’s impact on the industrial production and UK economy. And I know, Brexit didn’t happen in December 2015, but that’s a rounding error. The leading narrative is that leaving the EU despite all its regulations and bureaucratic overreach decimated Britain’s industry. Yet look at industrial production in the UK, France, Italy, and Germany since Brexit. Isn’t that intriguing?
Maybe Britain’s stagnant GDP per capita isn’t due to Brexit, but to mass immigration diluting prosperity per capita?
Maybe Britain’s stagnant GDP per capita isn’t due to Brexit, but to mass immigration diluting prosperity per capita?
This chart illustrates Germany’s structural economic decline compared with its peers really well.
Industrial production is down roughly 11% since 2015 (about 15% from the 2018 peak), with sharp losses in manufacturing, energy-intensive sectors, autos, and machinery. Public 0%, and public/near-public employment has surged by hundreds of thousands of jobs since 2023, while the private sector has shed jobs. The private sector has subtracted from growth, only state consumption and investment prevented outright contraction.
By contrast, Poland’s industrial production rose 54% and Switzerland’s 36% over the same period, reflecting competitive cost structures, investment, and (in Switzerland’s case) high-value sectors rather than deindustrialization.
Public spending can temporarily paper over weakness but cannot replace a shrinking productive base. Without deep structural reforms addressing regulations, bureaucracy, and overtaxation, Germany won’t remain prosperous forever. Unfortunately nothing is happening, and the current government has just increased taxes for entrepreneurs throttling growth potential and innovation even further.
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Difficult to argue with too much of this! #TikTok vm.tiktok.com/ZN8AsDqbb/
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