Dear John,

Christmas is near and the mulled wine is brewing, but instead of calm for the holidays, tensions are stewing. Westminster has been abuzz with infighting and drama - there have even been some jokes from Sir Keir Starmer. 

It’s been a busy week in Westminster so instead of trying to think of more rhymes, let’s get into it.

A COP out?

COP28 was hosted in Dubai this year, a place not so famous for their green initiatives. Almost 200 nations attended to progress international agreements to protect our environment and slow climate change.

The talks came close to collapse but in a dramatic turn-around, a landmark agreement was made, hailed as the “Beginning of the End” of the Fossil Fuel Era.  It was not without further drama however, as smaller island nations said the deal was rushed through without them - but who needs their opinion? It’s not like their countries will be washed away without climate action.

Near the end of the talks the Net-Zero Minister was flown back to London to vote on the tight Rwanda Bill (more on that later), leaving the summit without senior UK representation. 

Also at COP28 the (unelected) Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, threatened to withdraw cooperation with the Scottish Government after First Minister, Humza Yousaf, met with Turkish President Recep Erdogan. According to Cameron he was not provided with  "sufficient advance notice" of the meeting, yet according to a spokesperson for Yousaf a UK official was invited to the meeting.

The Rwanda Rumble

It’s safe to say Rishi hasn’t had a good week (even if he does try and claim a victory) as a self-inflicted Tory civil war is underway. I’d be laughing if they weren’t the ones running the country.

So what happened? The Safety of Rwanda Bill passed its second reading in the Commons on Tuesday, but even an hour before the vote nobody was certain it would. This is a big deal - a second reading on a  Government Bill hasn’t failed since 1986. The fact it may have, with the Government holding such a strong majority shows just how weak Sunak has become in his own party.

Not content with just acting like the mafia, the many rightwing factions of the Tory Party named themselves the Five Families as they met to coordinate their strategy. They are committed to strong arming Sunak into amending the Bill to break international law and despite their humiliating climbdown, he may yet be scared into listening.

The more centrist One Nation group wants to make sure our laws abide by the European Commission of Human Rights, even if it means working with Labour despite what Sunak says. 

This all puts Rishi in a precarious position, a self-dug hole he can’t climb out of and while this melodrama plays out the government aren’t focussed on the myriad of real crises facing the country underlining that Britain can’t wait any longer for a General Election. We need policies that will help Brits, rather than a Government at war with itself.

The Sunak Defence

On Monday, Rishi Sunak was questioned at the Covid Inquiry, where he defended his Eat Out To Help Out initiative. According to Sunak, the scheme was a “micro-policy” and he “didn’t believe it was a risk”. I’m not sure about you, but the policy didn’t seem so “micro” at the time,  costing almost a billion pounds. As for not being a risk, well there’s a reason the Treasury, under Sunak, was rumoured to be called the "pro-death squad"...

Sunak also took the opportunity to launch a lukewarm defence of his former boss Boris Johnson, sayingJohnson’s style of leadership was “not necessarily a bad thing” (tell that to the 57 Ministers who resigned under him). Maybe the ghosts of PMs past still haunt Sunak enough to shy away from giving a true account.

The proud tech-bro further claimed that he was not a "prolific user" of WhatsApp and that he no longer had access to messages during the pandemic, having changed his phone "multiple times" over the past few years. He’ll be fuming when he realises taxpayers spent a fortune on lawyers to stop the Inquiry seeing messages that apparently no longer exist..

Sunak’s questioning also revealed he has a shockingly bad memory - the PM responded that he “couldn’t recall” at least 24 times.

Quick Fire News

A lot has gone on this week and I’m not mean enough to make you read paragraphs on each story. Instead, here is more news summed up in a sentence or two.

And that’s all we have time for this week. Make sure you catch next week’s instalment of Weekend Wire where you’ll be joined by our Director of Communications, Niall.

All the best.

Cameron Stocker
Press Manager (Broadcast)
Best for Britain