Dear John,

Parliament’s back and so are we with some back to school blues starting across the Channel.

Back in FASHion

It was a somewhat depressing start to the week when it emerged that the party that was too right wing for Marine le Pen gained the most votes in elections in the German state of Thuringia and came a very close second in Saxony.

It marks the first time a far-right party has come out on top in a German election since Adolf Hitler was on the ballot. For more about what that means for Germany, the EU and the UK read my latest blog.

He’s back… in Prime Minister form

Staying on news from the continent, Brexiters were left frothing at the mouth when it was confirmed on Thursday that Michel Barnier - famed for showing up prepared for era defining negotiations - would be the next Prime Minister of France. 

Macron is hoping that replacing his wunderkind with ‘the French Joe Biden’ can forge a functioning legislature from the most fractious political landscape almost anyone in France can remember. But with whispers that Macron may himself be eyeing up early retirement, for Barnier to go even one term like Scranton Joe could be ambitious.

Brexit corner

Decades of failure

Excoriating, scathing, devastating, damning - just some of the adjectives used after the Grenfell inquiry published its final report on Wednesday.

It found that the 72 people who died on that terrible night, the survivors, friends, families and the community around Grenfell were failed by almost every organisation charged with protecting them, including but not limited to; construction companies, the fire service, the council, the building managers and the state. It detailed clear evidence of corruption, negligence and total incompetence.

The 1,700 page report was thorough and led to the Prime Minister issuing an unreserved apology on behalf of the Government. But with the the judicial backlog, some predict it won't be until the next decade before anyone appears in court over the disaster and as many have already said - justice delayed is justice denied. 

More bad news

Similarly tragic was the horror that unfolded in the Channel on Tuesday when 12 people lost their lives trying to make the crossing. It is the largest loss of life in the Channel this year and brings the total number of those who have died to 184 since 2018. It underlines the urgency of the new Government restoring the safe routes to asylum closed by the last administration.

Bill me up Scotty

As there’s only two weeks of Parliament being back before they rise again for the conference season, there has been a mad rush to progress legislation. This week we had:

• The Passenger Railway Services Bill - Bringing rail franchises back into public ownership
• The Great British Energy Bill - Establishing the publicly owned energy company GB Energy
• The House of Lords Hereditary Peers Bill - Getting rid of the final unelected legislators who are there by dint of being born
• And the Budget Responsibility “Liz Truss” Bill - which means any future maniacal ‘uncosted tax cuts for the rich’, free-market fundamentalist will need to check their homework with the OBR before deciding to explode our mortgages and pensions 

There was also the handing out of Private Members' Bills which gives individual MPs the right to table new legislation outside the Government’s agenda. 20 of these are randomly allocated by ballot and hilariously, no Conservative MP was chosen despite the Tories holding almost 20% of parliamentary seats. 

What you hear there is the world's smallest violin playing after they used 14 years in government to do f*** all.

Farwell Patel

Speaking of f*** all, this week Conservative MPs weighed up the qualities of the six people hoping to become the next Tory leader and Wednesday saw the first round of voting. 

After the first count it was, ‘kill-innocent-people-as-a-deterrent’ and former darling of the Tory right Priti Patel who came up short, securing the support of only 14 of her colleagues and who is now eliminated from the race. The fact that she was seen as the somewhat middle option gives you some indication of how far off the rails this lot have gone.

The surprise frontrunner and now favourite to reach the final two to face the membership vote was Robert Jenrick - a man who came to prominence by denying even the slimmest comfort to unaccompanied child asylum seekers. Bodes well.

Looking back in anger

Smug in the knowledge that he secured tickets for one of the Wembley shows, your author has been uncharacteristically sanguine about the furore that has followed the sale of tickets for the Oasis reunion tour which saw hundreds of thousands of fans left empty handed or empty walleted. 

After hours of virtual queuing many were told that the tickets that were originally priced at £150 would now cost £350 because of ‘unprecedented demand’. This week the Prime Minister vowed to make ticketing affordable and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy committed to a review into ‘dynamic pricing’.

🫣 Cringe Column 😬

And that's it. Hopefully in next week’s edition we can leave you in higher spirits! Until then!

Niall McGourty
Director of Communications
Best for Britain