BEST
FOR BRITAIN'S
WEEKEND WIRE
Dear John,
You might have seen a lot of us
this week between our latest MRP poll and the run-up to Trade
Unlocked, Best for Britain press mentions hit triple figures! Have a
read and parse it all out, if your heads aren’t spinning as fast as
ours.
A farewell to
harm
Breaking news yesterday evening was the semi-surprise
departure of two prominent former Tory ministers. First was Johnson
devotee Nadine 'Mad Nad' Dorries who hours after claiming
the last thing she wanted to do was cause a by-election, promptly
caused a by-election by resigning her Mid-Bedfordshire seat. For all
the harm she did, Nad certainly gave us some laughs during her time as
Culture Secretary (nope still not used to saying that). Watch our
highlight reel of her greatest hits here.
Sayonara
Cincinnatus
Following hot on the heels of his acolyte was Boris Johnson
who, after hearing the Privileges Committee was recommending the 10
day suspension which would leave him vulnerable to a by-election,
decided to bravely run away from his Uxbridge and South Ruislip
electorate, resigning his post with immediate effect. As an elected
representative, Boris Johnson caused immeasurable pain and damage in
this country and all in the pursuit of self advancement, so let's not
waste any more time on him.
Runners and
riders
The concurrent resignations are almost certain to deliver
concurrent by-elections in the Mid-Bedfordshire and Uxbridge &
South Ruislip probably some time in late July. If only some
internationalist campaign had done a
huge seat level poll recently to give us an idea of how they
might go...
With Government approval ratings still in the toilet, Sunak's
prospects of retaining either seat seem bleak. The Tories face an
almost certain pasting by Labour in Uxbridge and a stern challenge
from the Lib Dems in Mid-Bedfordshire who need to overturn a 20,000+
vote majority. Good thing they
have form in that department.
The Lib Dems have a strong local party in the constituency
which partially overlaps with the former fiefdom of the previous Lib
Dem Mayor of Bedford Dave Hodgson who narrowly lost out in May. The
rest of the constituency is made up of wards with more Lib Dem
councilors than other opposition parties.
10 days to Trade
Unlocked
In case you live under a rock and
missed B4B’s hundreds of pieces of nationwide media coverage across
print and broadcast this Wednesday, we’ll distil them down to three
for you: The public want the Tories out, but Labour haven’t fully
convinced them, and Rishi Sunak has the advantage…of not being Liz
Truss.
At a press conference on Wednesday
morning, we unveiled the
results of our Westminster voting intention MRP polling. If a
general election were held tomorrow, Labour could landslide to as many
as 470 seats to the Tories’ 123. However, with ‘don’t know’ currently
polling third a number of different scenarios could erode their
majority or even result in a hung parliament, with Labour on just
316.
Accompanying the release of our MRP
polling, elections whiz Prof John Curtice provided analysis of the
continued effects of Brexit on UK elections, while More in Common
director Luke Tryl shared insights from focus groups across the
country. Campaigner Carol Vorderman gave
a talk on the need for tactical voting to oust the
Tories.
The full breakdown of the polling
is available on our website. Best for Britain’s tactical voting guide
can be found here.
Trade Unlocked
countdown
The countdown to Trade Unlocked
2023 is soon to be in the single digits, and our team is abuzz with
the final preparations before we head to the Birmingham NEC on 20th
June.
This week, we announced one of our
breakout stage hosts, Telegraph Europe Editor James Crisp, and we also
rolled out our first breakout forums. For SMEs, we rolled out this
video guide to #TU23 for small businesses:
Be sure you’re following Trade
Unlocked on Twitter and LinkedIn to see our final updates ahead of the conference and stay
posted on updates on the day if you won’t be attending.
No need to ask the
48%
With the seventh anniversary of the
Brexit referendum fast approaching, the BBC are on the hunt for voices
from across the political spectrum to reflect on the effects of the
seismic shift it caused in our society. They’ll be talking to hard
Leavers, shire Tories who voted Leave for financial deregulation,
fishermen who voted Leave because they got cut off by a Volkswagen on
their way to the polls, and even to people who voted Leave but lied on
their exit polls and said they voted Remain.
Yes, this week, BBC Question Time
announced that their 22nd June episode, a day before the seventh
anniversary of the Brexit referendum, will feature an audience entirely composed of people who
voted Leave. The special episode in Clacton-on-Sea, roughly
seven-tenths of which supported Brexit in 2016, will surely be
followed up with a panel drawn from the 69% of the population which
now thinks Brexit was the right decision. Right? Guys?
As of Friday, the BBC has not
returned the writer’s query about whether it was okay to only pay 52%
of the licence fee.
Rishi in
DC
The Prime Minister took a trip to the US capital this week with AI on his
(still human…for now) mind, and a whole lot of words in the new joint
“Atlantic Declaration” he and President Joe Biden unveiled at the
White House on Thursday.
With the prospects of a UK-US trade
deal firmly stomped upon by Sunak and his boots, the Prime Minister
did make some progress on attracting a new global AI summit to the
UK.
The new “Atlantic Declaration”, on the other hand, is big on “propelling
our economies into the future so we can protect our people” and small
on actual details of how it will achieve this lofty goal. It’s like an
IOU 1 Trade Deal, or, if you’re Sunak, IBEGU4 1 Trade Deal.
It wasn’t all business–the PM did
manage to squeeze in a trip to a Washington Nationals baseball game,
where he touted his love for cricket and then chickened
out of throwing a ceremonial first pitch for fear it could go
awry.
Just Stop Oil woke zealots
splash orange paint on the sky
Sunak’s trip to DC went ahead
despite having to take place mostly indoors, because a plume
of smoke from a wildfire raging in Canada has blanketed the US
east coast in an orange haze reminiscent of the Martian landscape
we’ll need to escape to if things keep going the way they’re
going.
The fires in Quebec, which have
been increasing in frequency and intensity due to climate change,
caused New York City to have the worst air quality of any city in the
world earlier this week. Washington was walloped with highly hazardous
ratings as the plume moved south.
As the eerie, dangerous conditions
made spending the day outside equivalent to smoking 6 cigarettes,
Fox News decided that it’s tyranny to caution residents
against breathing in wildfire smoke and spent hours dismissing the
health risks to their viewers. Expect GB News to follow hot on their
big brother’s heels this summer when they claim that the same experts
who say swimming in sewage is unhealthy took the covid
vaccine.
Experts
said conditions would improve over the weekend.
Florida Man indicted
again
This may be the most American-heavy
Weekend Wire we’ve had yet, but it’s for good reason: Donald Trump
has now been indicted on federal charges related to the illegal
retention of classified materials after voters booted him out of
office in 2021.
The sensational charges came after
Trump refused to return classified documents he’d kept in his
Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach following his exit from the
presidency, leading to a federal indictment in Miami. The charges
carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a permanent
disqualification from running for public office.
We’re not exactly qualified to give
legal advice, but we think Trump could kill two birds with one stone
and just declare Mar-a-Lago a sovereign microstate–he could claim
diplomatic immunity and he’d get to be a president again.
Ukrainian dam ruptures amid
counteroffensive
This week, as Ukrainian forces
began a major counteroffensive against Vladimir Putin’s invading
forces, a major dam in the south of the country was blown up in an
alleged sabotage.
The breach of the Kakhova Dam on the critical River Dnipro was blamed on
Russia by the Ukrainian government, while the occupying Russian
government has variously said it was the Ukrainians and that it was a
lack of maintenance and high water levels. The Institute for the Study
of War said the most likely explanation was a Russian sabotage to
hinder the Ukrainian counteroffensive. Thousands of people in the path
of floodwaters were evacuated.
Elsewhere, the Ukrainians recaptured territory in the city of Bakhmut amid reports of serious friction between the regular Russian military and
mercenary paramilitary forces.
Just for fun, we’re imagining what
role Donald Trump would audition for in the prison production of
Grease. It’s a shame there’s no Orange Ladies...
Bye for now!
Best
wishes,
Tommy Gillespie
Press Officer, Best for Britain
