BEST FOR BRITAIN'S
WEEKEND WIRE

Dear John

Welcome to the long weekend! Because you’ve got longer to read it before the week starts all over again, I’ve crammed in a little bit more to keep you busy. 

We’re just over a week away from the announcement of a new Prime Minister, while the current government seems to have just been on holiday all month. Energy bills are skyrocketing, inflation and the cost of living are rising through the roof and the whole of Europe is drought-stricken and feeling the direct effects of climate change. 

So sit down and get ready for the weekend with our handy update. We don’t promise to provide cheer, but we do promise to keep you informed and to give you ways to take action to make all our futures a bit brighter.

Energy price cap

We’ll start with the most depressing news of the week. It’s the energy price cap, which Ofgem has confirmed will rise to £3,549 from October.

This figure represents a near tripling of the cap from last October, when it hit £1,277. It should be pretty obvious to everyone (and hopefully also to our new PM) that this is unsustainable for the vast majority of people. 

How to deal with the cap is the subject of continuing debate. Liz Truss’s anti-‘handout’ position seems to have softened in recent weeks, although she still seems set on tax cuts which are likely to disproportionately benefit the wealthiest members of society and offer nothing to the poorest. 

Labour has called for an emergency budget and is asking for the cap to be frozen. 

Whatever happens though, it needs to happen soon - as things are going to get dramatically worse very quickly unless people get help soon. 

A bit sh*t

We’ve been hearing for some time now about how deliberate sewage spills by water companies have polluted our rivers and our seas - and water company bosses have pocketed a tidy payout despite their failures to keep our waterways clean. 

The Lib Dems found that many of the monitors designed to measure and record sewage overflows are faulty. Across Devon and Cornwall, they found this affected one in eight sewage monitors, and that across all water company-installed monitors, information was only provided for 90% of the time. 

French politicians have pointed out that even though the UK isn’t in the EU anymore, it is still a signatory to several international treaties which oblige us to avoid polluting shared waters. They’re worried our sewage is going to land on French beaches and contaminate fish and seafood stocks and shellfish farms.

Any story about sewage is likely to stink but this really is a bit sh*t. 

Pipe dream

To make matters worse, it turns out English water companies are currently replacing just 0.05% of their pipe network each year - meaning it would take 2,000 years before our entire network of leaky and overstretched pipes was replaced. Perhaps water company bosses are inspired by the 2,000 year old Roman baths at Bath, whose lead pipes are still going strong after all this time. 

This compares to a replacement rate of 0.5% a year for most European countries - a rate that predicts most piping will last 200 years - something that seems far more realistic. 

It seems like our water companies are crossing their fingers and hoping for the best - but the turbulent times are already here. 

Inflation nation

Dire warnings come from Citi Bank this week with projections that inflation is likely to reach 18% by the start of 2023. 

Citi has predicted the energy price cap will rise to £4,567 in January, and then reach £5,816 in June - and thus will be a huge driver of dramatic inflation rates. 

No ethics needed

Liz Truss has announced her extraordinary decision that, if she becomes PM, she will not appoint an ethics adviser because she knows ‘the difference between right and wrong’. Clearly Boris Johnson’s ethics adviser must have resigned from his role because the PM was beyond reproach. 

Truss claims that ‘outsourcing’ ethics is not the right way to go, and that ethical standards must instead run through the heart of Government. This is all well and good, but who gets to decide what those standards are, and judge whether they are being followed, in the absence of an adviser? And if the PM is the arbiter of ethics in government, what happens when we’re (again) faced with a PM whose ethics are a little…dodgy?

Yep, the NHS is on the table

Liz Truss’s disregard for the NHS has been on display recently. News that she had written an opinion piece in 2009 supporting cuts to NHS funding and to doctors’ pay set tongues wagging. But of course, that opinion piece was over 10 years old, so it was easy to claim that these were Truss’s old views. 

This week, however, it became clear that Truss is more than happy to tear into the NHS. She says she will divert money allocated for tackling Covid backlogs away from the NHS and channel it into social care. 

More money for social care is no bad thing - but this shouldn’t mean less money for the NHS. Without a fully functioning NHS, our social care system will collapse - but instead of expanding funding Truss seems set on spreading out the little there is as thinly as possible. 

Enough of the experts, v2.0

Rishi Sunak isn’t exactly hitting all the right notes either. 

On Wednesday night, in an interview with The Spectator, he claimed the Government had been wrong during the Covid-19 pandemic to ‘empower the scientists’ in the way that it did. This is a bit bizarre seeing as it was only the scientists who had the expertise to understand and make predictions about the pandemic. 

According to Sunak, the scientists were given too much of a say in the nature and length of lockdowns. 

The scientific community has reacted with displeasure - many pointing out scientists had little or no decision-making power, and were simply supplying facts which informed decisions made by the politicians. 

If Sunak wants to hear less from those with the facts, maybe he should hit up his colleague Michael Gove, who famously said British people had had ‘enough of experts’ and their opinions when asked about expertise in support of his pro-Brexit position. 

BBC bias

Former Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis delivered explosive accusations about the BBC. 

She criticised the role of Robbie Gibb on the BBC’s board. Gibb helped to found GB News and was formerly Theresa May’s Director of Communications as PM. Maitlis alleged that he is shaping the BBC’s output into a distinctly less neutral form by acting as the ‘arbiter of impartiality’. 

She also claimed the BBC was unusually keen to pacify Downing Street after she criticised Dominic Cummings’s lockdown breaches. She said that the BBC was very quick to accuse itself of failing to be impartial. 

Steel yourselves

In more depressing Brexit news, it emerged UK steel producers will have to pay a 25% tariff to sell certain construction products to Northern Ireland on account of EU tariffs for global steel imports being exhausted for the year. 

EU producers can continue to export tariff-free throughout the UK - while the UK pays a price for trading throughout its own internal market. It’s all the more embarrassing because the UK literally voted for this to happen - the Northern Ireland Protocol is a key part of Boris Johnson’s ‘oven-ready deal’ with the EU. Well done us. 

No negotiation needed

While it’s clear to all that the Northern Ireland Protocol could do with some adjustments, Liz Truss is reportedly planning to continue the current Prime Minister’s approach to the question. 

That is, she intends to keep shouting that the EU is refusing to negotiate at the same time as the UK Government is pressing on with the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill which would give the UK legal cover to break the treaty we signed with the EU. 

And now Truss appears to be saying she would trigger Article 16 of the Protocol if she wins the leadership election. Some of her supporters mistakenly seem to think this would unilaterally cancel the Protocol, rather than in actuality starting a dispute-resolution process that would create massive uncertainty for Northern Ireland and businesses trading across the borders. 

Ending with the important stuff

In June we alerted you to the defining policy decision of the era: the choice of whether to return to imperial measurements from the metric ones we’ve all got used to. 

We’re now letting you know that it’s your last chance to respond to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s consultation on this, as it closes at 11pm tonight. 

The potential transition back to imperial measurements has been hailed as a Brexit benefit and really, when the pickings are so slim, it’s understandable that the Government would want to big it up. 

It’s such a fantastic opportunity to be involved in the democratic decisions that really matter and tell Rees-Mogg what you really think. 

On that note - have a lovely long weekend!

Best wishes,

Maheen Behrana

Senior Campaigns and Policy Officer, Best for Britain

PS. Please do support the campaign with either a one-off donation to the Better Democracy Fund, or by becoming a regular supporter. Your support will mean we can bring progressive parties together, fight undemocratic changes to our elections, and campaign for a change in our voting system to make all votes count.