BEST FOR BRITAIN'S
WEEKEND WIRE

Dear John 

An unexpectedly short working week still managed to produce a flurry of activity from all corners of Westminster. 

Mini budget, mega bluster

Today, Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng presented the Government’s fabled ‘growth plan’ to the House of Commons in an event christened the ‘mini budget’ which conveniently means no requirement to involve the Office for Budget Responsibility for scrutiny.

Amid interest rates rising to 2.25% and the pound sinking ever-closer to parity with the US dollar at $1.10, the measures epitomise just how strongly the Chancellor and Prime Minister have thrown their lot in with trickle-down economics and with making the rich richer: The 45p levy on earnings over £150,000 will be scrapped alongside an end to the cap on bankers’ bonuses. They will also scrap the intended corporation tax increase (yes, the one that would apply to companies like Amazon).

Not content to dole out treats to the highest income brackets, the Chancellor also made sure to name whom he has identified as the culprits behind Britain’s economic malaise: part-time workers on benefits. Choosing to ignore the fact that such part-time workers are predominantly single parents, disabled people and unpaid carers, he announced sweeping cuts to their benefits should they choose not to shirk the responsibilities that allow them to work only part-time and take on more hours. At last, the downtrodden financiers have a lifeline, while the fat cats of the working poor will pay up.

These financial measures, according to the Government, are meant to attract top talent to the UK and stimulate investment and wealth creation. The markets, however, seem to have missed the memo: Within minutes of Kwarteng’s mini-budget going public, sterling crashed even further to its lowest level since 1985.  

Hitting the ground running

Soon after the Queen’s funeral, Liz Truss headed straight to New York for the UN General Assembly, an annual forum enabling UN states to convene for multilateral discussions on a range of key global issues. 

Truss’s visit also marked a significant opportunity for her first crucial bilaterals with key allies, including French President Emmanuel Macron, who Liz Truss bizarrely decided to cast as a potential enemy last month. 

It turns out Macron was pretty gracious despite Truss’s offending remarks, and he made clear earlier this week that he was happy to ‘move on’ from what Truss had said. Truss also followed suit and decided she wanted a ‘constructive’ relationship with France - something we still think it’s weird a British Prime Minister actually has to say.

Managing expectations

A key bilateral of Truss’s trip to New York was her meeting with US President Joe Biden. Ahead of the meeting, Truss and her team had already issued warnings that a trade deal with the US was unlikely to happen anytime soon. 

The realism, likely induced by Biden’s clear disapproval of the UK Government’s threats to renege on the Northern Ireland Protocol, has nevertheless offered room for optimism, with Truss deciding that the UK’s priority isn’t really a trade deal with the US anyway, and is instead accession to the CPTPP, a trans-pacific trading partnership made up on 11 countries including Canada, Australia and Singapore. UK Government officials have also tried to highlight trade deals with individual US states as examples of progress - although Best for Britain was told at a recent UK Trade and Business Commission session that trade deals with individual US states weren’t really trade deals at all. 

Trickle-down tension

Another key difference that emerged between the two leaders was their attitude towards the economy.

Around the same time that Liz Truss was signalling that they would lift the cap on Banker bonuses and implement tax cuts for the wealthy, Joe Biden tweeted that he was ‘sick and tired’ of trickle-down economics - the theory that concentrating wealth for those at the top will ‘trickle-down’ to those at the bottom, benefiting everyone. 

This clearly makes UK economic policy something of an outlier OR look a little retro  - but it looks like Truss has no plans for plain sailing when it comes to our friends across the Atlantic.

The lady doth protest too much? 

Chilling news emerged that a peaceful anti-Bolsonaro protestor was handcuffed outside the Brazilian embassy by members of the Met Police in London at the start of the week. 

The images of the handcuffed woman (who was released without charge) were then used by Bolsonaro supporters to smear the Brazilian left and to suggest that the UK is similarly right-leaning

Being lauded by Bolsonaro’s supporters is not a good look for the Met, particularly after concerns were raised over their treatment of peaceful anti-monarchy protestors over the past weeks. 

Peaceful protest - and the right to freedom of assembly and expression - are part of the European Convention on Human Rights, which the UK adheres to (for now). Of course, after the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act became law earlier this year, anyone being ‘noisy’ or causing ‘unease’ can now be criminalised.

Reform on the horizon?

Next week, a Best for Britain contingent will be heading to Labour Conference, where a motion on electoral reform looks likely to be debated. 

While at last year’s conference, 80% of constituency party delegates voted in favour of proportional representation, the motion was defeated by affiliates, including some of Britain’s biggest unions. 

This year, the landscape is looking rather different. Three of the biggest five Labour-linked unions  - Unite, Unison and the Communication Workers Union - have openly embraced proportional representation, meaning that the chance of a motion being debated and passed is quite high. 

Conference motions aren’t binding, but should there be majority support for an embrace of proportional representation at conference next week, the pressure will be on for Starmer and team to include electoral reform in their next election manifesto. Should they win, this xxxxxx of minority rule in Britain could soon be relegated to the dustbin of history. 

With the UK being one of only two countries in Europe still using First Past the Post for national elections (the other is Belarus), and with the Tories using their disproportionate power to misrule for more than a decade, Best for Britain have been undertaking a major campaign over the summer to convince people to back reform. Check it out here.

Watch this space for more detail next week!

Social Attitudes survey insights

This week saw the release of the newest British Social Attitudes survey.

The most eye-catching revelation was a 52% majority of citizens in favour of tax hikes to fund increases in health, education, and benefits spending, including 46% of Conservative voters and 61% of Labour supporters.

The survey showed a welcome decline in nativist thinking about British identity, with just 17% of those surveyed believing being born in Britain is important for being ‘truly’ British and a meagre 13% believing British ancestry is important. It also indicated that more than double the number of respondents believe migrants have enriched Britain’s economy and cultural life than believe they have damaged them.

Inclusive attitudes toward LGBT+ people also continue to grow. 73% of respondents either welcomed the past decades’ social progress for gay people or believed it needs to go further, with 64% expressing the same beliefs about gains made by transgender Britons.

What the frack?

This week, in a U-turn from the 2019 Conservative manifesto, the Government officially lifted the ban on fracking.

Facing widespread backlash as well as uncertainty over whether fracking in the UK would even be economically viable, the Prime Minister pledged to only implement the practices where there was local consent. 

That is, until Thursday, when reports emerged that she was considering labelling potential fracking sites as ‘nationally important infrastructure’ to bypass local opposition. Then, after repeatedly downplaying the practice’s earthquake risks, Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg made the case for fracking in the House chamber. The result is better seen than described.

After bizarrely claiming that fracking opponents were funded by Vladimir Putin and calling their concern over fracking’s well-documented risks “Ludditery”, Rees-Mogg faced a raft of anger from his own party.

Tory MP for Fylde Mark Menzies took umbrage at his latter comment, charging that “There’s nothing Luddite about the people of Lancashire or Fylde.” East Yorkshire’s Greg Knight was also excoriating in his response asserting that “the safety of the public is not a currency in which some of us choose to speculate.”

That will be all from us this week. Enjoy the calm before the Conference, and catch us in Liverpool in the coming days!

Best wishes,

Tommy Gillespie

Press Officer, Best for Britain

P.S. 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.