BEST FOR BRITAIN'S 



WEEKEND WIRE



Dear John,



The Easter holidays and their many days off work have finally arrived, which means the brightest minds at the top of Government have chosen this week to offload all their scandalous material. It makes for great reading if you’re stuck in a 10-mile traffic jam at the port of Dover.



GFA turns 25







This Friday marked the 25th Good Friday since the Good Friday Agreement. As the official anniversary on Monday approaches, Best for Britain is celebrating the role of international cooperation in ending the Troubles and bringing lasting peace to Northern Ireland.



With leaders in the UK, Ireland, and beyond, including President Joe Biden visiting to commemorate the anniversary, we’re measuring all the ways that the end to conflict has brought positive change on both sides of the Irish border and beyond, as well as a trip down memory lane to the 90s. Make sure you’re following B4B on Twitter and TikTok so you don’t miss it.



Trapped! At the Dover border <[link removed]>



Brexit has gone from crashing the economy to imprisoning children on school trips in coaches as delays checking passports on coaches and for other holidaymakers led to 14-hour backups <[link removed]> on the way into ferry and tunnel ports in Dover last weekend.



Suella Braverman initially urged the nation not to put two and two together <[link removed]> and tried to blame the French. She categorically denied <[link removed]> that Brexit was a factor before Dover officials and Downing Street sheepishly admitted <[link removed]> passport checks were causing significant delays. The chaos forced Dover officials to stagger coaches, but as of Thursday afternoon <[link removed]>, queues were already hours long for a second consecutive weekend.



Conversely, some Brexiters are saying the 14-hour border delays were actually a part of the plan all along, with one explaining that the Dover traffic jams were meant to provide British motorists ample time to discuss the glories and sacrifices of the Royal Air Force during the Battle of Britain.



We actually quite like not being in economic limbo, report voters



This week, a new poll from Queen’s University Belfast <[link removed]> indicated that close to 7 in 10 voters in Northern Ireland believe the Windsor Framework will benefit the economy, while 65% also think it should lead to the restoration of the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly.



Hilary Benn MP, co-convenor of the UK Trade and Business Commission <[link removed]>, said the poll highlighted the advantage of a “constructive” approach to working alongside the EU to sort out the issues surrounding post-Brexit trade. 



Tories and poo: A tale as old as 2010







Don’t let anyone tell you the Tories aren’t levelling up the UK’s coastal communities. Just this week, reports revealed that they’ve made everyone in seaside towns the grossest kind of millionaire imaginable.



An analysis by The Times <[link removed]> showed that raw sewage was released for a total of one million hours in 2022, which The Mirror <[link removed]> equated to every three minutes. However, outraged local governments, residents, and campaigners can rest easy, because Environment Secretary Therese Coffey has got the culprit red-handed: the Industrial Revolution <[link removed]>.



As she rubbished the prospect of fixing the problem in the near future and called those who do not want human waste in their local waterways “detached from reality <[link removed]>”, Coffey claimed getting pollution back under control would require reversing the Industrial Revolution.



To be fair, she knows better than anyone that simple solutions won’t work–she already tried her plan A, dumping a bottle of black-market antibiotics <[link removed]> into every river in the UK.



Project Infodump



The Government has been trying to throw off scrutiny of, well everything lately. Last week, in a 48-hour period right before the Easter recess, over 150 transparency and disclosure documents were made public <[link removed]>. 



Included in this data-dump were reports of hundreds of thousands spent on flights, lavish gifts, and dinners attended by Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, and Rupert Murdoch. Deputy LOTO Angela Rayner criticised the attempt to evade the public eye.



The strategy of overloading the narrative with a deluge of admissions of shady behaviour may have worked in the past, but the Tories, always eager to return to halcyon days gone by, forgot about Google.







Tory sleaze: Part ∞



Put a fiver on every Tory MP accepting a position at a fake company before the next election, because, following up on the Led By Donkeys sting, Scott Benton, Conservative MP for Blackpool South, has just lost the whip in nearly identical circumstances.



On Wednesday, an investigative report by the Times revealed <[link removed]> that Benton, a member of the APPG on Gambling, was offered a role lobbying for a fake gambling company. While he never formally accepted the fake role, he did appear to offer privileged access to a parliamentary white paper on gambling and provided examples of PQs he’d submitted in the past on behalf of business interests. He also boasted that he had the ear of relevant ministers.



The Prime Minister initially waffled before finally revoking the whip <[link removed]> from Benton late Wednesday night. However, it’s not all negative for Benton, as being an independent member will allow him plenty more time to mock his constituents’ weight <[link removed]> on Twitter.



Trump in court (not the divorce kind)



This week, former US President Donald Trump pled not guilty to over 30 charges in a New York court related to hush money payments made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. He has now officially become the first US President to be formally charged with a crime.







After the arraignment went off without any major hitches (barring a lookalike of the Capitol-storming ‘QAnon Shaman’ taking a tumble <[link removed]> off his bike on the streets of New York), Trump and Co. reacted <[link removed]> with predictable fury on his personal internet screaming void, Truth Social, where he claimed the process was rigged. The quasi-sentient mound of biomass that is Donald Trump, Jr. elected to share a photo <[link removed]> of the presiding judge’s daughter alongside threatening statements about her career.



However, the most appropriately curt reply came from Yusuf Salaam, who was the target of Trump’s full-page ad in the New York Times calling for his execution over a crime he didn’t commit in 1989. He released <[link removed]>a one-word response: “Karma.”



International aid stuck at home



The Tories, normally against redefining anything, have decided that ‘international aid’ can also mean ‘paying billions to hold people seeking asylum in squalid detention while you create a years-long processing backlog so they can be used as a political scapegoat to shore up your faltering electoral prospects.’



A report this week revealed <[link removed]> the Government spends 3 times more aid money right here in the UK housing people seeking asylum than it does funding development overseas. The amount of this budget spent on housing people here in the UK has ballooned from under £600m in 2020 to £3.7bn last year.



In the same period, aid to countries in Africa has been cut in half and is projected to fall by over £500m more in the coming years. 



From all of us at Best for Britain, have a safe, restful holiday. Just don’t go swimming in the sea, because what you’ll see floating by you is not Easter chocolate.



Best wishes,



Tommy Gillespie

Press Officer, Best for Britain







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Best For Britain - United Kingdom

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