Dear John,

After a few quieter weeks on the news front, politics is back with a punch.

A lot of Con, not much pop

The first half of this week was polluted by the launch of (another) right-wing conservative faction: the Popular Conservatives. Or, as they have dubbed themselves, the PopCons. 

The shiny new movement, led by lettuce Liz Truss - the same woman who likely upped your mortgage and rent bills by around a third - aims to galvanise Britain's “secret Conservatives” and fight back against the “left wing extremists” she claims have taken over Britain's institutions. This despite the Conservatives being in charge for 14 years and who have put their mates in charge of quite a few of Britain’s institutions. 

The irony of one of the least popular Tory politicians in party history representing a group that has chosen to name itself ‘popular’ was not lost on anyone, with new polling showing that she enjoys a favorability rating of -54%. To put that into perspective, Rishi Sunak only scores at -27% and he’s about as popular as stepping on lego.

Aside from Liz, other spokespeople included ex-Tory party Chairman Lee Anderson who claimed that only “odd weirdos” care about achieving net zero, and the wafer-like Rees-Mogg who in 10 minutes managed to criticise just about every major international organisation and protection aimed at promoting equality or preventing exploitation.

All in all the whole event made for rather depressing viewing. With all the problems facing this country, many caused by these very characters, this was an olympic standard exercise in navel gazing. As journalist Zoe Grünewald exclaimed, “We don’t need another faction, we need governance”.

Broken promises, broken Britain

Top of the list of issues going unaddressed, whilst the party of Government distracts itself with in-fighting, are our public services. This was brought to the fore this week, as appalling scenes emerged of three-day-long queues of would-be patients trying to register at a new NHS dental surgery in Bristol. 

The British Dentistry Association has called for the system to be completely reformed. This was in part a response to the Government’s new proposals to tackle NHS shortages with cash incentives; a move that has been labelled as simply “rearranging the deckchairs”. 

And it’s not just dentistry in the spotlight this week. On Monday Rishi Sunak admitted in a TV interview that he was failing to keep his promise of bringing down waiting lists right across the NHS.  

This was confirmed on Wednesday by updated statistics which revealed a sharp rise in long A&E waits. In January 2024 alone, 54,308 people had to wait longer than 12 hours on a trolley for an emergency hospital bed. It’s worth noting that this number was just 17 in January 2011.  

But just so everyone’s clear, the Prime Minister is definitely not to blame for this: If those stubborn doctors would just come off strike then everything would be fine. Please ignore that waiting lists for planned treatments were growing long before doctors took industrial action.

Climate climbdown

On the topic of broken promises, this week Labour confirmed that they would be watering down their Green Prosperity Plan, cutting their financial pledge in half. 

As it was confirmed that same day that average global temperatures breached the critical 1.5C increase threshold, we must hope that this announcement represents flexibility rather than a lack of ambition to reach net zero.

The risk for Labour is voters take it as the latter.

Rishi rolls the dice on Rwanda

On Monday the Prime Minister bet (now former) TalkTV posterboy Piers Morgan £1,000 that deportation flights to Rwanda would get off the ground before the General Election. 

Making flippant and expensive bets at the expense of some of the most vulnerable people in our society and during a cost of living crisis, really is a new low for multi-millionaire Sunak, something he was to test just days later. 

Clearly recognising his mistake, Sunak took to the airwaves the next morning to decry that, despite televised footage of him placing a bet, he was not in fact a betting man and that he had been caught off guard. Unfortunately for Rishi, you can’t get away with anything these days thanks to the power of the internet and videos quickly resurfaced from around a year ago showing him boasting about a long summer spent spread-betting on cricket. So which is it Rishi?

One long comms calamity

It really was the week from hell for Sunak’s poor comms team, and on Wednesday evening his latest party political broadcast went viral for all the wrong reasons. 

In a short “Rishi Explains” video, uploaded to YouTube, the Prime Minister stood in front of a whiteboard to explain his plan for the economy. 

Clearly he didn’t get the memo that politicians should NEVER stand in front of a whiteboard. Oh well, at least we got some laughs out of it.

Best wishes from B4B

Ending on a more sincere note, this week Buckingham Palace announced that King Charles has been diagnosed with cancer and is already undergoing treatment. We at Best for Britain wish him a full and speedy recovery. Our thoughts are with him and his family. 

And that’s all from me for today. Make sure you rest-up over the weekend as next week could be rather explosive. I’m talking potentially about a rise in inflation on Wednesday, a recession confirmed on Thursday and two by-elections lost by Friday. 

But enough on that for now, our External Affairs Office Ben Stead-Lewis will give you the full run down next Saturday. 

Until then!

Martha Harrison 
Press Manager 
Best for Britain