𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Champions of the European Union are pushing for Britain to rejoin but one of Margaret Thatcher’s most influential advisers is adamant the UK has a brighter future outside the grip of Brussels. Lord Redwood is at the heart of Britain Unbound, a cross-party effort to forge a new vision for the nation.

He championed privatisation as the Iron Lady’s chief policy adviser and describes her as the “best boss I ever had”. He has lost none of his appetite for radical ideas. His own life was transformed when his parents moved the family from a council house into a home of their own. He wants the dream of a property-owning democracy restored and looks back on his parents’ success in getting onto the housing ladder as the “best thing that happened to my family, thanks to my father’s hard work”.

Lord Redwood, who stood against John Major for the Conservative leadership in 1995, does not hesitate when asked, if he was starting out today, whether he would join the Tories or Nigel Farage’s Reform UK: “I’d be joining the Conservatives, because it’s the only serious show in town.”

His brought his long career as the MP for Wokingham to an end when he decided not to fight the 2024 election. He says he “couldn’t agree with all the party political positions” the party had adopted – but Kemi Badenoch has reignited his enthusiasm for the Tories.

The 75-year-old explains: “I’d got to the point where I had too many disagreements to be able to say to my electors, ‘I’m still a Conservative.’ Whereas now, I’m proud to wear the label of Conservative [and] very happy to take the Conservative whip in the House of Lords.”

He considers Mrs Badenoch the most exciting Conservative leader since Lady Thatcher.

His defining memory of Britain’s first woman prime minister may come as a surprise to those who see her an ideologically-driven crusader: “I think it was just the huge warmth and humanity of the woman, who was always personally very concerned about people she dealt with, and about people who were in difficulty and wanted the Government to help. That was a side of her that didn’t come out very much.”

He also remembers her “huge work rate” and the question which guided every decision: “What was going to be best for the public and the nation?”

Governing the country was not about “party political issues” for the late PM he says, adding: “That was what I warmed to and why I liked advising her, because I had ideas on how the nation could be freer and more prosperous, and she was very responsive to a lot of them.”

Today, he warns that Britain will “lose its freedom” if it re-enters the European Union, and would have to make a “substantial, increased financial contribution”.

He says: “The net zero damaging deindustrialisation agenda would be intensified… We would lose our right to be nice to animals, because we’ve actually raised our standards of animal welfare and, for example, banned the export of live animals.”

Lord Redwood is not fazed by the possibility of another referendum and is sure that support for returning as a member state can be demolished: “If you ask people, ‘Would you like higher taxes from the EU?’ or ‘Would you like the EU to make more of our laws?’, there’s overwhelming opposition to that.”

He’s sees Labour’s push to align with the EU as a “folly” and attacks the argument that adopting Brussels-born rules would be good for growth. The peer is convinced that the UK’s link-up with the bloc has hurt the nation, arguing it forced Britain to “import a whole lot of cheaper European products, which just closed down so many of our factories”.

He also blasts “net zero extremism”, saying: “The idea that the EU in general and the UK in particular should be a high energy cost area was bound to be deeply damaging to traditional high-energy-using industries.”

Labour, he fears, is continuing some of the worst elements of the EU tradition.

“If you over-legislate and over-regulate, you just destroy jobs,” he says. “And the EU did quite a bit of that, and now the UK Government is wanting to do even more of it.”

The debate about Britain’s future relationship with the EU has reopened as cross-party concern mounts about the nation’s low growth rate and the stagnation of living standards. A gulf in prosperity has opened up across the Atlantic, with GDP per capita in the US standing at $90,027 last year compared with $57,607 in the UK and an average of $47,089 across the EU.

“Shouldn’t Europe be ashamed of that?” he asks.

Britain has an opportunity, he argues, to “copy the good things in America that give you growth, prosperity, higher incomes” and reject the “bad things on on the continent of Europe that destroy jobs and depress wages”.

Cautioning against following the EU model, he says: “[If] you were advising a government abroad how to increase your growth rate, you wouldn’t say, “’I think you should put your taxes up and regulate everybody to death.’”

Despite the EU’s challenges, he does not anticipate a USSR-collapse of the bloc – and nor does he want to see it fail.

“I think it’s going to survive quite a long time,” he says. “I’ve never been one of those who either wishes it ill or forecasts its failure. I don’t think any member state is at the point where it’s about to pull out.”

He remembers being taken to lunch by “friendly Germans” who wanted to “put him right” on Europe.

“They had this naive view that I was intelligent enough to see it their way,” he recalls. “And when I proved to them that I didn’t see it their way, they then got quite cross and they would start shouting at me, saying, ‘You do not understand! You will not have any influence!’ I would reply, ‘I don’t want any influence over Germany. I’m not German. I don’t know what the German public want. I wouldn’t presume to tell you what to do. So why are you presuming to tell me what to do in my country?’”

In the decade since the Brexit vote, British politics has been transformed by the rise of Reform UK, which is routinely ahead of the Conservatives in the polls.

The former Welsh Secretary is not alarmed by intensified competition for the centre-Right vote as Mrs Badenoch and Mr Farage battle for the trust of voters.

“They both wish to be Prime Minister,” he says. “It’s a perfectly healthy ambition, and in case of Kemi, I think it’s a realistic one. Each party has to do what it’s got to do, and the public will decide, and I’m an optimist; I do believe in the common sense of the British people. In my political life so far, they’ve usually been more sensible than a lot of the politicians who are trying to represent them.”