BEST
FOR BRITAIN'S
WEEKEND WIRE
Dear John,
It’s been a year since our very first Weekend Wire–we’ve seen three
Prime Ministers, four Chancellors, and too many market freefalls to
count. Let’s see if things have changed at all (other than which Tory
is in charge) since then.
It’s your money and I’m spending
it how I want
Jeremy Hunt’s announcement of the Spring Budget on Wednesday was, to
be fair to him, probably the least catastrophic Government fiscal
announcement in a bit. As we’re all too aware, it can be hard for
Tories to set out financial policy without crashing the economy,
making the pound worth less than a cardboard cereal box badge and
slashing their party’s polling numbers along the way.
The biggest-ticket announcement
from the Budget was a seemingly welcome £4bn
investment in expanding free childcare for 1- and 2-year olds
across England. However, as always with the Conservatives, they get
you in the small print. It will not fully take effect until 2026,
conveniently after the next election, and it’s less
than half of what the CBI says is necessary to provide quality
childcare for all under-4s.
Other eye-catchers were an
abolition of the lifetime allowances for pensions, which many
attacked as a “gilded giveaway” to the highest earners, and £6bn in extra defence spending
following the new AUKUS
agreement.
Best for Britain CEO Naomi Smith
featured on BBC Politics Live on Thursday to discuss the Budget, the
childcare and pension allowance announcements announced in it, the
positive effect of migration to the UK, and the economic
elephant in the room, Brexit.
Fight to halt Anti-Asylum Bill
continues
This Monday, the Government’s
Illegal Migration Bill passed its second reading in the House of Commons.
As the vote took place, hundreds of
demonstrators gathered in Parliament Square demanding MPs to reject the Bill.
Refugees, campaigners, and MPs addressing the crowd called for new
safe routes to asylum, debunked the Government’s rhetoric around
‘illegal asylum seekers’ and expressed solidarity with
refugees.
Despite the Bill’s passage at
second reading, campaigners have pledged to keep fighting against its
inhumane proposals. Best for Britain’s petition for the Bill to be dropped has garnered nearly 30,000
signatures.
Best for Britain CEO Naomi Smith
called out the cruel and cynical politicking behind the Illegal
Migration Bill in a HuffPost op-ed this Tuesday.
Red card for
Sunak
As Conservatives shouted themselves
into a tizzy about Gary Lineker last weekend, the BBC bowed to
pressure and announced he would be suspended from Match of the
Day.
His fellow football pundits from
Match of the Day and across the BBC immediately
declared they would not appear in solidarity, which led to a
bizarre presenter-free show on Saturday night alongside a desperately
cringeworthy, 'patriotic' Match of the Day on GB
News, which we spared ourselves the misfortune of
watching.
As the Lineker row bubbled over,
Best for Britain parked a red card for the international law-breaking anti asylum Bill
in front of the Houses of Parliament, the Home Office, and the Fulham
vs Arsenal match at Craven Cottage in West London.
Tories calling BBC
shots
In a news cycle dominated by
debates over BBC impartiality, an exclusive report this week from The
Guardian revealed that the BBC regularly caved to pressure about editorial
decisions from Downing Street during Boris Johnson’s time as Prime
Minister.
Leaked emails and text messages
uncovered editors requesting their staff avoid the word “lockdown” in
their reporting around the beginning of the pandemic. Other messages
to BBC staff cited complaints from Number 10 that their coverage was
not critical enough of Labour, and even hailing reporters avoiding
publishing too many stories about Jennifer Arcuri, who allegedly had
an affair with Boris Johnson and had received favours from him during
his tenure as Mayor of London.
Much like the policeman in
Casablanca, we’re shocked, shocked, we tell you, to find that
appointing a man who helped Boris Johnson secure an £800,000 loan to head the public
broadcaster has a chilling effect on its editorial
independence.
Democratic backsliding!
Everyone say ‘wheeee!’
Putting the Prime Minister’s mates
in charge of the public broadcaster does fit neatly with the UK’s new
national profile, according to the Civicus Monitor, which tracks the
state of civic freedoms in countries. The UK has been downgraded to “obstructed” on civil liberties, giving
it the lowest rating in Western Europe and putting it in the
same category as Poland, Hungary, and South Africa.
Civicus cited concerns about detention of climate protestors, hostile
rhetoric from the Government toward human rights protections and civil
society organisations, and new legislation like the Public Order Bill
(of which Best for Britain defeated some aspects) and the Strikes Bill as the reason for the
downgrade.
Given the UK’s recent trend of
government-by-trolling, there’s no indication this embarrassing downgrade will dampen
the Home Secretary’s authoritarian posturing.
Georgians take to the
streets
After a brief detente, massive
industrial action took place across the UK this week, with over half a
million of workers walking out on Wednesday in one of the largest
single-day strikes seen in the UK in decades.
The week opened with 72 hours of junior doctor
strikes brought about by
years of pay stagnation and dangerous staffing shortages in the NHS.
On Wednesday, the London Underground was shuttered by 24 hours of
strikes, and 300,000 teachers took to the picket line, along with over
100,000 civil servants, 70,000 university staff, journalists and
Amazon warehouse workers.
On Thursday, belatedly realising
that negotiating is often a better strategy than threatening to revoke the right of public sector workers to
strike or publicly declaring they don’t work hard enough, the Government
announced that a deal on wage increases for NHS workers had been
struck. The agreement includes both a one-off payment this year and a subsequent 5% wage
increase. Unions will now ballot their members on whether to accept
the deal.
ICC names Putin in
warrant
On Friday, the International
Criminal Court issued
a warrant for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin for war
crimes.
Since Putin's regime launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine a
year ago, thousands of civilian deaths and the largest refugee crisis
seen in Europe since the Second World War have resulted. Ahead of the
ICC's warrant for Putin's arrest, new reports of deportations of
Ukrainian children to reeducation camps in the far interior of Russia
have led the UN to accuse
Putin of war crimes and caused international shock, even in the
context of the war. Some Ukrainian parents have
managed to get their children back, but many more remain held in
Russia.
Though Russia's foreign ministry dismissed the warrant,
its issue marked yet another sign of Putin's increasing isolation on
the international stage following the invasion.
Catastrophe
Suisse
It’s starting to look a bit too
much like 2008 for comfort again, and we’re not talking about the
revival of skinny scarves.
Hot on the heels of the collapse of
Silicon Valley Bank and the HSBC acquisition of its UK arm, Credit Suisse this week saw their shares tumble to
dangerously low levels before the investment banker secured $54bn from
the Swiss central bank. Shares subsequently bounced back somewhat
after a shiver had run through markets around the world.
With the Chancellor’s Edinburgh
reforms from December having loosened many of the restrictions introduced
post-crash to prevent a similar financial meltdown, the UK financial
system could be set for a rodeo, and Jeremy Hunt has just thrown out
the saddle.
After a year of reading these
round-ups, do you feel smarter? Better-informed? More stressed? Or all
of the above? From our end, it’s been a pleasure keeping you all up to
date–here’s to another year! Of B4B keeping you up to date, not of
this Government.
Best
wishes,
Tommy Gillespie
Press Officer, Best for Britain
