![\"Labour](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/rachel-reeves-chancellor-of-the-exchequer-and-sir-keir-starmer-british-prime-minister-sit-at-6483831.jpeg\" "\\"Labour")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer have been slammed for trying to forge closer ties with the EU (Image: Getty)<\/p>\n
He had already navigated an impressive career immersed in Britain\u2019s supermarket revolution, before taking the reins of Speaking from the heart resulted in John Longworth\u2019s suspension as director-general of the powerful business group. But this freed him to campaign at full pelt for Brexit<\/a> \u2013 and then to stand and win a seat in the European Parliament as a member of Nigel Farage<\/a>\u2019s Brexit<\/a> Party. Nearly a decade on from the vote to leave the EU, he once again fears for the future of Britain.<\/p>\n He is dismayed by Sir Keir Starmer<\/a>\u2019s pursuit of a closer relationship with Brussels and by Chancellor Rachel Reeves<\/a>\u2019s economic decisions. \u201cThe idea that we are a wealthy country is complete nonsense,\u201d he warns. \u201cIn terms of people\u2019s prosperity we are in dire straits.\u201d<\/p>\n He has a simple diagnosis of why Brexit<\/a> has yet to deliver longed-for growth: \u201cWe won a revolution but left the establishment in charge who had done everything possible to frustrate it.\u201d In his supermarket days he travelled the world \u2013 even venturing into the Amazon region in search of soya beans \u2013 and witnessing the surging growth of emerging economies convinced him Britain was missing out on true prosperity.<\/p>\n He remembers saying in the 1990s: \u201cWe need to start loading planes up to take people out to Asia to see what real growth looks like because they have no idea.\u201d Britain\u2019s \u201crelative decline\u201d, he decided, was a \u201cserious problem\u201d. The nation needed a different order of growth in order to maintain the NHS.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong> ‘Labour are refusing to do the one thing that would end managed decline’ <\/a><\/p>\n Years of visiting businesses across the country convinced him British enterprises could rise to the challenge of life outside the EU. \u201cThey were quite capable of doing anything if they were set free,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat I knew was the legislative burden of the European Union<\/a> was just going to grow and grow.\u201d<\/p>\n In the run-up to the referendum he visited embassies. In France, he remembers, he \u201cjust got vitriol\u201d \u2013 and at a dinner at the German Embassy he found a group of establishment figures \u201cvery clearly plotting\u201d to undermine Brexit<\/a>. He also remembers a senior BBC<\/a> player being \u201coutrageously prejudiced against Brexit<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI was just appalled,\u201d he says. \u201cI gave a speech at the end and walked out.\u201d When he decided to share his conviction that Britain could have a brighter future outside the EU, from a personal career point of view, he had a \u201cdeep suspicion that it might not end well\u201d. His stance drew the fury of Downing Street, he says, and Boris Johnson<\/a> described his treatment as \u201cscandalous\u201d.<\/p>\n Post-resignation, he took a role in the Vote Leave campaign but did not consider it mission accomplished when the country backed Brexit<\/a>. Mr Longworth and Richard Tice<\/a> \u2013 now the deputy leader of Reform UK \u2013 launched a new pressure group, Leave Means Leave, to ensure Brexit<\/a> became a reality.<\/p>\n Years of gridlock followed as Theresa May \u2013 a \u201cterrible Prime Minister\u201d \u2013 tried to negotiate a deal with Brussels which could command the support of Parliament. Meanwhile, the campaign for a second referendum to reverse Brexit<\/a> was gathering support. Coincidentally, Mr Tice and Mr Longworth had a little more in common than a desire to cut the cord with Brussels, for they had both previously studied at the University of Salford.<\/p>\n Mr Longworth remembers: \u201cI did go back to Salford to do a speech for the alumni and pointed out that had Salford not given us Mr Longworth accepted an invitation from Mr Farage to stand for election and the newly formed Brexit<\/a> Party topped the poll. When he arrived in Brussels he never doubted that Britain was better off outside the EU project. The country had only become a member in an \u201cact of despair\u201d, he argues.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole objective was to create a federal state and Britain misunderstood this again and again. We should have either got in there right at the beginning, and we could have shaped it to our own liking, or we should have kept well out of it and never joined.\u201d<\/p>\n However, his relationship with Mr Farage ruptured and he lost the whip for \u201crepeatedly undermining\u201d the Brexit<\/a> Party\u2019s general election strategy. Mr Longworth had argued that the party should concentrate on winning 20-30 seats. \u201cMy number one priority was getting Brexit<\/a> done,\u201d he says. He feared Tory leader Mr Johnson\u2019s chance of winning a strong majority in the 2019 Westminster election was under threat, and Brexit<\/a> itself could be at risk.<\/p>\n Mr Longworth joined the Conservatives<\/a> and the Tories<\/a> won a landslide \u2013 but he was dismayed at the Johnson premiership. \u201cHe got Brexit<\/a> done but in every other way he was a disaster for both the country and the Conservatives<\/a>,\u201d he says. \u201cHe caused the Boris-wave of migration \u2013 utter disaster. He pushed forward the net zero madness \u2013 utter disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr Longworth has not yet decided which party he will back in the next election \u2013 but again he is concerned that the centre-Right vote will split and Labour may once more win power, potentially with the help of the Liberal Democrats. \u201cIt\u2019s absolutely essential all parties on the Right put the national interest first, because Britain is going to be ruined,\u201d he warns.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd if they don\u2019t, it demonstrates what they are really made of, which is personal ambition and power-seeking.\u201d In Sir Keir\u2019s \u201cutterly pathetic\u201d efforts to \u201creset\u201d relations with the EU he sees an echo of Edward Heath\u2019s original push for membership. \u201cIt\u2019s an act of despair that he\u2019s cosying up to the EU, giving away things while getting nothing in return,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n One of his great concerns is that Britain has been led by people with minimal business experience. He argues that politicians could actually learn much from supermarkets. While super-markets face intense competition and survive through extreme efficiency and championing the interests of the customer, Whitehall has no \u201cinternal competition whatsoever\u201d.<\/p>\n Adamant that supermarkets are a force for good, he says: \u201cBefore supermarkets grew into what they are now, manufacturers dictated to consumers what they should have \u2013 now supermarkets act as the advocates for the consumers, effectively telling the manufacturer what to make. It changed the whole dynamic of the market.\u201d<\/p>\n He grew up in Bolton \u201cin a terraced house next door but one to a mill\u201d. His father served in the RAF and managed a dairy, and Mr Longworth became the first in his family to go to university, studying environmental sciences and then His great fear today is the UK gets locked in an economic \u201cdoom loop\u201d \u2013 but his experience of seeing Britain escape the quagmire of the 1970s fuels his hope that better days are ahead.<\/p>\n He argues \u201cjust one thing alone\u201d would transform the economy, and \u201cthat\u2019s scrapping net zero madness\u201d. He wants a new era of drilling for North Sea oil and gas, with fracking tapping into Britain\u2019s underground energy reserves. If the Government went down this path while shrinking the state and cutting taxes, he says, \u201cpeople would be amazed how quickly things change\u201d.<\/p>\n
the British Chambers of Commerce. But as the 2016 Brexit<\/a> referendum neared he could keep silent no longer \u2013 declaring the EU to be \u201cincapable of meaningful reform\u201d.<\/p>\n
such a brilliant start in life Brexit<\/a> may never had happened.\u201d The UK had still not left the EU by the time of the 2019 European Parliament elections.<\/p>\n
atmospheric physics. When Keith Joseph \u2013 widely seen as Margaret Thatcher\u2019s intellectual guru \u2013 spoke at his university in front of a \u201cvery rowdy\u201d audience, the future Brexiteer was politically electrified. \u201cHe was a genius,\u201d he remembers. \u201cHe was amazingly inspiring.\u201d<\/p>\n