Good news
Since Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer no less, is warning us that we are in danger of talking the UK into economic decline, I will cheerful today.
After all one doesn’t want to add to the problems of the man responsible for running the economy.
So let me say that it looks like JLR will build its gigafactory in Somerset not Spain. Since its car production lines are in the Midlands not Majorca, this should not have been a hard decision. But the Westminster government had to throw £500 million at JLR to keep the factory in the country.
There is nothing wrong with that, every government is throwing money are car makers, but the bill was so large and will continue for so long because the UK government has to compensate the company for the UK’s very high energy costs.
It will also be throwing money at dozen of other high energy users to subsidise their energy, which is only necessary because of those high prices.
A simpler solution which would help all industry and domestic users of energy and would boost the economy that Mr. Hunt is so worried about would be to find out why energy prices are so high and re-organise the sector to bring them down.
Then industry might be keener to stay without such large tax payer funded subsidies.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.