BEST
FOR BRITAIN'S
WEEKEND WIRE
Dear John,
This week, Brexiters faced a
humiliating defeat in the Commons, the days are officially longer than
the nights, and, hopefully, this Government has seen its last cycle of
seasons. Let’s not get our hopes up too far–it can be
deadly.
Boris blows
up
Marie Antoinette said let them eat
cake, Boris Johnson was ambushed with a cake.
Appearing before the Privileges
Committee this week over charges that he misled Parliament over
Partygate, the former Prime Minister launched an ill-fated defence variously predicated on the notion that
Johnson was informed no rule breaches were taking place by advisers,
that it was a work event all along, that he was too thick to
understand the rules he put in in place, and that we should all cut
him some slack because it had been a tough day at work.
According to Mark Jenkinson,
however, the Committee's findings should be null and void because its
questions were too
“middle class”, while Nadine
Dorries is confident that “reasonable” people will see through the pearl
clutching and back Boris. Polls, on the other hand, show
over 7 in 10 people think Johnson is lying.
Layla Moran MP, chair of the
All-Party Parliamentary Group on
Coronavirus, called Johnson’s defence an “insult” to bereaved families.
Windsor Framework passes
Commons
As Westminster watched Boris
implode with bated breath and schadenfreude, proceedings were
interrupted by a vote on the Windsor Framework in the House of
Commons.
Despite the defection
of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, and Iain Duncan Smith alongside the DUP,
who brandished their best Brexity negotiating-table-flipping
credentials, the Windsor Framework passed the House of Commons by a margin of 515 to 29. Not even two
dozen Tories agreed that blowing up the economy was worth vaguely
‘taking back control’.
Ahead of the vote, Best for Britain
coordinated a joint statement of 77 business leaders calling on MPs to
back the Windsor Framework, which was carried in the Financial Times. Signatories included Paul Drechsler, the
head of the International Chamber of Commerce, and Jürgen Maier, the
former CEO of Siemens UK.
ERG friendly
fire
It’s tough being part of
Westminster’s most annoying social club–one legitimately funny
soundbite and you’re kicked out of the group.
That’s exactly what Steve Baker
found out on Wednesday after he came out in support
of the Windsor Framework and said Boris Johnson risked becoming a
“pound shop Nigel Farage” for his intransigence on the Brexit deal.
This got him silently removed from one of the ERG’s all-important
WhatsApp groups and led to an intervention from the Fortnum and Mason Nigel
Farage–Nigel Farage–who revoked Baker’s Brexiteer card.
We would invite Steve to our
WhatsApp chat, but we’re a bit full at the moment, sadly. As a coping
mechanism, Baker was reported to be removing MPs from other WhatsApp
groups for which he is an admin. Never say he went down without a
fight!
IPCC issues
warning
This week, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a grave warning on the status of global efforts to reduce
warming to under 1.5ºC before the 2030s, with scientists stating that
achieving that goal would be unlikely.
However, the report stressed that
governments should urgently phase out fossil fuels to avoid the very
worst effects of climate change and instead commit to building more
renewable energy infrastructure as its price continues to
drop.
Reacting to the report, shadow
climate minister Ed Miliband criticised
the UK Government’s net zero strategy and pointed to Labour’s planned
massive upscaling of clean energy.
UKTBC goes
green
Following the latest IPCC report,
the UK Trade and Business Commission, for which Best for Britain act
as secretariat, held a live
evidence session on the environment and standards and their place
in future trade deals.
In the session, environmental,
regulatory, and trade experts said that the UK urgently needs a
top-down strategy for maintaining the UK’s high standards in climate
and regulatory protections, or it risks a “race to the bottom”
situation.
Environmental experts in the
session, in particular, warned that the UK’s clean energy industries
could be locked out of investment as the US and EU commit to bold
action on subsidising the transition to a green economy. One academic
in the field said the threat to the UK sector is
“existential”.
Check out the post-session Twitter
Spaces with UKTBC Trade Adviser David Henig and Senior Policy
Adviser at E3G Jonny Peters.
Rishi’s returns: A stealth
operation
The man? A multimillionaire Prime
Minister, under fire from his predecessors, his opposition, and a
local power grid too antiquated to heat his pool. The mission? Publish his tax returns in
such a manner that he escapes scrutiny and ridicule, despite having
held a US green card while serving as Chancellor of the
Exchequer.
The plan? Release said tax returns during the middle of the aforementioned
predecessor’s appearance before a Parliamentary committee about
whether he misled the House in relation to lockdown-breaching parties
for which the aforementioned multimillionaire Prime Minister was also
fined by the police.
The verdict? Sunak has made nearly £5m over the past three years and paid about £1m in tax,
and if he’d had his way, he’d have paid a lot less.
To the
barricades
As the UK debates over pension
measures announced in the Budget, the ongoing protests over Emmanuel
Macron’s plans to raise the state pension age have gripped France in chaos that has been likened to the early days of the Yellow Vest movement.
Millions have participated in
strikes and demonstrations against plans to up the retirement age from
62 to 64, with sanitation workers’ strikes leading to scenes of
rubbish piling up on the streets of Paris. While the vast majority of
protests have been peaceful, several skirmishes have broken out
between marchers and authorities.
The reforms have also pit Macron against his own parliament as the President was forced
to use executive powers to push the reform though over their
objection, in a move that further inflamed tensions and led to a
no-confidence vote that Macron managed to fend off. The unrest has
grown to the point that the King’s planned state visit to France this
week was postponed.
The long winter has officially, astrologically given way to spring,
and a promise of bank holidays sooner than later. Don’t forget to
budget extra cash for newly expensive Easter candy and extra time for
long passport queues if you’re travelling!
Best
wishes,
Tommy Gillespie
Press Officer, Best for Britain
