BEST FOR BRITAIN'S 

WEEKEND WIRE

Dear John,

Recess is upon us, meaning we should anticipate slightly quieter summer months in Westminster. Luckily to round off the parliamentary calendar, the Tories were handed two humiliating by-election defeats for the road.

Bye, election

On Thursday, voters headed to the polls in much-awaited by-elections in Selby and Ainsty, Somerton and Frome, and Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where they served the Government its first double by-election loss since…2022.

Labour’s Keir Mather swung a majority of over 20,000 to seize Selby and Ainsty, while the Lib Dems’ Sarah Dyke beat out a strong Tory challenge to take Somerton and Frome. The Tories managed to cling onto the Uxbridge and South Ruislip seat vacated by Boris Johsnon by just 495 votes.

On the morning broadcast round, Tory Chairman Greg Hands promptly tried to spin that narrow hold in outer London into the top story of the day to distract from the losses of a combined majority of nearly 40,000 in two seats, only to be virtually laughed out of the studio.

For a close reading of this week’s by-elections and the impact of tactical voting on Thursday and in next year’s general election, have a read of the blog penned by B4B’s Director of Development, Cal Roscow.

In between lame duck and opposition

Thursday’s by-election results also mean that Parliament has a new Baby of the House in Keir Mather, the 25 year-old newly-minted Labour MP for Selby and Ainsty. Spare a thought for Nadia Whittome.

Digesting the result, Johnny Mercer took to the airwaves to claim that Mather was an “indentikit” briefcase-type who’d been “dropped” into the Yorkshire constituency. The Minister for Veterans Affairs went on to say that “we don’t want Parliament to become like the Inbetweeners” and that such candidates lack life experience and empathy with voters struggling to provide for their families.

Contrarily, Mercer’s Plymouth constituents can rest assured that the voice representing them in the halls of power knows the exact rush and crush cycle that comes with regularly getting into public, protracted spats on Twitter.

Anti-asylum bill receives royal assent

This week, the Government’s shameful targeting of vulnerable people seeking safer lives in the UK became law. The anti-asylum Illegal Migration Bill received royal assent and became an Act of Parliament on Thursday.

The Bill’s cruelty has already attracted condemnation across the political spectrum at home and abroad. This week, the UN said it had “very serious legal concerns” about the Bill and worried that it could amount to “a worrying precedent for dismantling asylum-related obligations” internationally. This comes after Amnesty International cautioned earlier this year that the UK is becoming “a negative force for human rights on the world stage”.

Best for Britain CEO Naomi Smith said the Bill is “morally repugnant” and “totally unworkable”.

Scary Susan

Sadiq Khan is running scared, and it’s…only partially thanks to Susan Hall.

On Wednesday morning, the London Assembly member beat out Mozammel Hossain to win selection to be the Tory candidate for Mayor of London in next year’s election, and the Trump-supporting, TOWIE-hating, dog-whistling mayoral hopeful immediately got a front-page splash in the Evening Standard.

Unfortunately for her, and fortunately for lovers of drama, the choice of photo, showing an exuberant-looking Hall with her arms raised, sent Tories across the capital on the warpath, with Nickie Aiken claiming the editorial choice was nothing short of “mockery” with “a whiff of misogyny”. 

However, supporters of Hall’s campaign might want to cool talk of Aiken’s angry letter to the editor of the Evening Standard, which claimed that the photographer insisted upon the arms-up pose over Hall’s objections with malicious intent. How dare they mock their poor candidate to run a city of over 8 million people just for not being able to take charge of a photoshoot?

Vattenfall down

The UK’s 2030 net zero ambitions were dealt a major setback this week when Swedish giant Vattenfall announced they were halting work on one of the North Sea’s largest offshore wind farms off the Norfolk coast.

The Norfolk Boreas wind farm, which would have powered over 1 million homes, will not be going ahead thanks to major cost increases caused by geopolitical factors like the Russian invasion of Ukraine which have hit clean energy supply chains especially hard. Vattenfall’s CEO said that the UK Government urgently needed to rethink their price controls, which were set prior to the Russian invasion.

The head of one clean energy trade body said the Vattenfall stoppage was yet another consequence of the Government’s lack of a long-term industrial strategy.

Mediterranean heat wave intensifies

While the UK sees below-average temperatures, southern Europe and northern Africa have been baking under a series of heat waves that have lasted into a second week, sparking extreme weather events and bringing thermometers close to record levels.

Temperatures in southern Italy are expected to approach the European record of 48℃, and the country’s north has been punished by violent hailstorms as temperatures there cool. Authorities in Greece and Tunisia are working to contain wildfires that have broken out in the hot and dry conditions, with meteorologists warning that it could be up to a week before the region sees sustained relief.

With the Earth seeing some of its hottest average daily temperatures in recorded history over the past weeks, conditions like this are only expected to become more common as climate change continues unabated.

With our lawmakers heading off for recess, we hope you find time to relax, recharge, and take a break while there's no threat of the Government trying to pass legislation that flagrantly breaches international law - then it's back to business as usual in the Autumn.

Best wishes,

Tommy Gillespie 
Press Officer, Best for Britain