BEST FOR BRITAIN'S

WEEKEND WIRE

Dear John,

After a long vacation, earned or otherwise, MPs from Land’s End to John O’Groats have dutifully filed back to London to get governing in 2023. Gird your loins.

Don’t worry, we’ve still got strikes

Ambulance workers across the country took to the picket line for the second time in as many months on Wednesday, with ministers helpfully asking the public to use the services ‘wisely’ to avoid complete gridlock. Amidst widespread reports of chronic understaffing and pay stagnation, statistics this week revealed that ambulance to A&E response times exceeded 12 hours for nearly half of all patients. Junior doctors are being balloted for strike action this week as well.

After widespread industrial action at universities last year, UCU this week announced they would proceed with 18 days of strikes across the next 2 months, citing years of declining pay and job and pension insecurity for academics.

In slightly less grim news, talks between transport ministers and rail unions have progressed, with ministers dropping demands to phase out train guards and unions signalling a desire to work toward a pay agreement. However, a definitive agreement has yet to be reached.

This weekend, shockingly, will see three full days free of major industrial action, so savour it, have fun LARPing a country where all workers are treated and compensated fairly, and get ready for the next round of strikes on Monday.

Pope Catholic, report Tory voters

New polling from Best for Britain has reported that, for the first time, a plurality of Tory voters have gained the ability to read and look out the window. More now believe that Brexit has caused more problems for the UK than it has solved than vice versa, with a third reporting Brexit regret.

The details of the poll, undertaken by Opinium, revealed some additional surprising insights from voters across the political spectrum. Overall, respondents answered that Brexit is a net negative for the UK by a margin of 57%-10%, with the rest reporting ‘neither’ or ‘don’t know’.

Among Tory voters who pooh-poohed Brexit, the issues caused for the Northern Ireland border was the single biggest problem with its implementation. Overall, new costs and red tape in import/export were the largest concern for BrexSceptics. To be fair to Brexiters, the poll was biased: it didn’t include a single question about the benefits of blue passports.

A Bridgen too far

North West Leicestershire no longer has a shameful Tory MP, just a shameful MP.

Andrew Bridgen has had the whip removed after an incredibly offensive tweet comparing false reports of cardiac problems caused by Covid vaccination to the Holocaust was sent from his account on Wednesday.

Just how Bridgen, who praised the Tories’ vaccine rollout in 2021 and publicly got the jab himself, arrived here is anyone’s guess. Over the last year, he began making a series of unscientific statements about the Covid vaccination programme, citing flimsy and unverifiable evidence. Undeterred by consensus among doctors and scientists, he publicly called for a suspension of all Covid vaccinations last month.

But it was Wednesday’s jaw-droppingly ignorant and callous tweet that finally got Tory leadership to withdraw the whip, alongside widespread calls to bar him from standing at the next election. The fact that Bridgen is currently suspended from Parliament over unrelated lobbying offences was apparently hunky-dory.

Ever gracious, Bridgen took to Youtube Thursday to vehemently deny accusations of racism and lamented (as he sees it) the infringement on his right to free speech.

Big to-do in Belfast

Leaders and luminaries from Stormont, Dublin, London, and Brussels convened in Belfast this week with a noble aim: sort out issues surrounding Brexit and the Northern Ireland Protocol, which has paralysed politics and left Northern Ireland without a functioning executive or legislative assembly.

After last week’s progress on data-sharing between EU and UK authorities on goods crossing the Irish Sea, this week saw renewed talks among the Foreign Secretary, the Northern Ireland Secretary, the Taoiseach and Irish Foreign Minister, and Stormont parties on a solution to the impasse. Labour leaders did their own rounds of meetings.

However, DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson Thursday threw cold water on hopes of a major breakthrough, saying a deal was nowhere close to being reached. Back home, David Jones, deputy lead of the flock of over-caffeinated seagulls that is the European Research Group, called for the Protocol to be scrapped, saying without a dream of irony that it has a “colonising effect” on Northern Ireland. Keir Starmer Friday called on the Tories to reject the squawking of the hard right in their party and pursue a sensible solution, even offering Labour’s support in facing them down.

Grenfell heroes receive tragic diagnoses

Upsetting news that 12 firefighters who battled the blaze and rescued survivors in the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 have been diagnosed with rare forms of cancer emerged early Friday morning. Sources have reported that the diseases are associated with inhalation of toxic fumes found in building materials.

Many firefighters who responded at Grenfell were inside the building for over six hours, and many were unable to take off their protective equipment for many hours after exiting, which increased long-term health risks.

Both attending firefighters and survivors have been called in for medical screenings, but the Fire Brigades Union has criticised the level of support offered so far. The union has commissioned its own research into long-term health effects for firefighters in light of what they have described as “inaction” from the Government and fire brigades.

Partygate and the former PM

With a summons for a televised inquiry set to appear in Boris Johnson’s cubbyhole within weeks, new revelations about his conduct during the national lockdowns will put the old adage about ‘all publicity’ to the test.

ITV’s new podcast on the boozing and schmoozing that went down in Downing Street as visitors were barred from hospitals and care homes has revealed that he joked that he was hosting “the most unsocially distanced party in the UK”. Crass remark aside, the podcast also included potentially criminal allegations of destroying evidence relevant to the Sue Gray report.

Amidst reports of similarly classy behaviour, such as a sexcapading bacchanal on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral, Johnson’s flippancy during his lockdown breaches has many Tories quashing murmurings of BoJo 2.0.

Read the Partygate statement made by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus chair Layla Moran MP here.

Nineteen Eighty For God’s sake can’t you do anything right?!

With the Tories’ late-autumnal recovery in the polls seeming only an illusion, Tories of all stripes have begun voicing a comeback that must not be named.

Politico counted the number of MPs who would defect to Johnson in a leadership challenge to the PM in the dozens, while The Times reported Friday morning that there could be a deal struck in which Johnson agrees not to challenge Sunak in exchange for a safe constituency to stand in at the next election. BoJo, man of contradictions, man of paradox: simultaneously an electoral goldmine, iconoclastic juggernaut, yet running scared of the voters of Uxbridge and South Ruislip (if he can even remember where to run away from after all his vacations).

These rather obvious liabilities, not least the aforementioned Partygate inquiry, have many Conservatives eager to erase Johnson from their political world, some more literally than others. In a move right out of the works of George Orwell’s less successful cousin Florge, on Tuesday Grant Shapps tweeted the doctored photo below with Boris Johnson edited out. See if you can spot the former Prime Minister's elbow.

Sadiq talking sense

London mayor Sadiq Khan took to the lectern on Thursday to demand an end to the code of silence about the “immense damage” Brexit is causing for businesses and citizens in London and beyond.

There have been less obvious takes on the wetness of water, but the intrigue of Khan’s Mansion House speech is that it sets up a potential showdown between himself and his party leader, Keir Starmer. With Khan’s demand that the omerta around Brexit ends, Labourland has become slightly uneasy, with many in the party echoing Khan’s belief that the Opposition should be hammering the Government harder on its disastrous Brexit.

Starmer was nonplussed in response, reiterating his ruling out of the UK rejoining the single market or a customs union under a Labour government and saying his focus was on improving the terms of Brexit (despite our aforementioned polling, which also shows a plurality of voters favouring a customs union, including Conservatives).

Our CEO Naomi Smith went on LBC Friday morning discussing Khan’s comments and the calamities of Brexit. If you missed it, you can catch up here (from 1:11:45).

January is slogging along as it does, but we hope the permanent Westminster SNAFU hasn’t dimmed your mood too much and that your Friday the 13th wasn’t too unlucky. Have a great weekend–talk soon!

Best wishes,

Tommy Gillespie
Press Officer, Best for Britain