BEST FOR BRITAIN'S
WEEKEND WIRE
Dear John,
It’s our 60th Weekend Wire, summer is approaching, and we’re excited to see the sights, feel the breeze, and bask in the sun. In the past, we’d have also been looking forward to a refreshing dip in the sea, but it’s a bit too sewage-infested for that now. At least they finally said sorry about it.
One month to Trade Unlocked <[link removed]>
Today marks one month until Trade Unlocked arrives at the Birmingham NEC, and the largest and widest-reaching conference of its kind creates an international trade policy blueprint fit for the 21st century.
As we continue rolling out our agenda of speakers and panels, we’re also excited to share the first look inside the conference and at our plenary stage. The conference will centre around our plenary stage, with three breakout stages and ten industry zones. The hundreds of businesses in attendance will be able to learn more about speakers and panels and vote on policy recommendations with the Trade Unlocked app.
Be sure you’re following Trade Unlocked on Twitter <[link removed]> and LinkedIn <[link removed]>, and keep your eye on the #TU23 hashtag so you don’t miss any updates from our speakers and partners!
Running out of road
If Brexit keeps going the way it’s going, we’ll all be driving Fred Flintstone cars.
This week, a group of major automakers warned that the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement’s ‘rules of origin’ requirement for electric vehicles to have 45% of their value sourced from the UK or EU could spell disaster for the British auto industry, as the UK does not currently possess the battery manufacturing capacity to meet the requirements.
Stellantis, which owns Peugeot, Fiat, Vauxhall, and Citroen, was the first <[link removed]> to sound the alarm bell this week, and Ford and Jaguar Land Rover soon joined <[link removed]> their call to both delay the implementation of the rules of origin and to urgently attract new electric car manufacturers to the UK. An auto industry trade body cautioned that 800,000 UK jobs could be at risk without an improved deal.
Kemi Badenoch, pretending not to see the Brexit-shaped crack in her Government’s windscreen, denied that leaving the EU was a factor in the UK car industry’s turmoil, but the Treasury later in the week offered up <[link removed]-[LIST_EMAIL_ID]> a suspiciously-timed £500m subsidy to Jaguar Land Rover for a battery giga-factory. Keir Starmer, for his part, responded to the brouhaha by pledging <[link removed]> to improve the UK’s Brexit deal and forge better trade links with the EU.
UK bands stuck at home
Not only has Brexit wrecked our economy, but it’s also making us worse at carrying a tune (to Europe, at least).
New research from Best for Britain released over the weekend revealed <[link removed]> that the number of UK artists booked at EU music festivals this summer has fallen by a third compared to pre-Brexit numbers. Likewise, one of the UK’s flagship summer festivals, Glastonbury,reported a 50% fall in European artists performing this summer compared to pre-Brexit levels.
Industry sources have cited new difficulties securing temporary visas and bringing equipment through customs as the reason for the drop. Best for Britain CEO Naomi Smith said <[link removed]> “talent is now shamefully being starved” of opportunities to tour Europe, while Independent Society of Musicians Chief Executive and UK Trade and Business Commission member Deborah Annetts said the red tape “continues to cost opportunities for emerging artists”.
Nevertheless, sovereignty-respecting music lovers can still see the UK’s best and brightest musical acts performing at next year’s Festival of Brex <[link removed]>…oh, wait, nevermind.
If you want to learn more about post-Brexit challenges facing our creative sector, you can check out the UK Trade and Business Commission’s arts and culture session <[link removed]> from January.
Earth’s mercury to hit 1.5℃
The Earth is set to reach <[link removed]> the 1.5℃ warming threshold for the first time between now and 2027, according to the latest projections by climate scientists, setting the world on course to reach one of the highest-profile metrics of the global warming crisis.
The warming will hit <[link removed]> the limit set at the 2015 Paris agreement due to the combined effects of human activity and an unusually strong El Niño, and scientists said that the effect would likely be temporary and would not constitute a failure to meet the Paris target. Still, they cautioned that flirting with this level of warming so soon signalled that the world is warming far too fast.
However, environmental scientists and campaigners stressed that the worst effects of warming could be avoided if countries sharply cut their emissions.
National WHAT conference?
This week, right-wing politicians and commentators from around the world gathered in London for the National Conservatism Conference, and if the name wasn’t enough to prick up Sigmund Freud’s ears, we can only imagine what he’d make of what Suella Braverman, Miriam Cates, and Danny Kruger had to say.
References to the debunked, antisemitic Cultural Marxism <[link removed]> conspiracy theory were a dime a dozen, Jacob Rees-Mogg savaged his party’s recent childcare incentives for encouraging women not to be homemakers, and a GB News presenter had a quite sad realisation that his friends had disinvited him from a birthday party. Another speaker must have mixed up her notes from a fear-mongering speech about trans people with her treatises on AI, because all she managed onstage was a confused rant <[link removed]> about “biomedical self-mastery”, which presumably means she lives in constant terror of being attacked by fembots.
And that’s barely a drop in the ocean. Unfortunately, with right-wing loons constantly jockeying to brandish their credentials to set themselves up for a leadership race after the Tories are likely routed at the next election, this self-immolating, paranoid brand of conservatism on display this week could become a more regular feature of British politics.
Mea caca, say sewage dumpers
Though Tory MP Damian Green may protest <[link removed]> their attempts to stop a new generation of children from making idyllic memories of frolicking in seas filled with sewage, a group of English water companies have judged that they’d better apologise and commit to a £10bn investment <[link removed]>in the next decade to clean up England’s waterways.
The head of Water UK said the public was “right to be upset” about the over 300,000 instances of raw sewage spills last year and pledged that the new funds would cut the spills by half this decade, upping the ante on Defra Secretary Therese Coffey’s plan to maybe do it before the end of the century <[link removed]>. The cost for this will eventually filter down to household bills, presumably after an assessment finds that the billions in shareholder dividends can’t take the hit.
Tough on dissent, tough on people who look like they may dissent at some unspecified point in the future
Following widespread condemnation of the Met’s actions arresting peaceful protestors (along with a hefty contingent of people who happened to be standing nearby) at this month’s coronation, new polling has revealed that the draconian terms of the Government’s anti-protest laws have already begun working as they always intended.
An exclusive poll for Adam Bienkov’s Byline Supplement newsletter found that over 40% of Brits would not feel safe joining a peaceful protest, fearing arrest by a newly-emboldened police force. Even more respondents–48%–reported that they did not trust the Metropolitan Police.
Significantly, women were significantly less likely to trust police or feel safe at peaceful protests, after this year’s report of a culture institutional misogyny, abusive officers allowed to remain on the force, and sexual assault cases going uninvestigated at the Met.
It bears repeating that the terms of the Public Order Bill have been harshly condemned by the UN <[link removed]> and Amnesty International, who said the UK was becoming a “negative force for human rights on the world stage” this year.
This week felt like far more than 1/60th of the usual Tory nonsense, but that’s just the way the lettuce wilts sometimes. Talk soon!
Best wishes,
Tommy Gillespie
Press Officer, Best for Britain
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Best For Britain - United Kingdom
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