The UK’s population is facing an “impossible” situation with “punitive” utility costs, high fuel prices and a hugely spiralling cost of living – so a new campaign is being launched to combat them all.
Rescue Britain is a non-political effort to relieve the nation from constantly-increasing costs that are not countered by rising wages, to save our “failing” democratic institutions, and to halt what appears to be the collapse of society.
“The United Kingdom is facing a social and economic crisis of a scale not seen for generations. Citizens and businesses are facing out-of-control cost increases in all staple product areas, centred around energy and fuel costs. The cost increases at the point of purchase have rapidly outpaced wholesale and supply-side pricing, indicating that rather than being a genuine cost-led increase, the price increases are a market-distorting profiteering exercise by companies and their owners.
“Since the beginning of 2022, the steady increase in fuel and energy prices has multiplied the already-high background inflation rates experienced in the UK and beyond. With the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, and the attempted (failed) weaponisation of the energy and fuel markets against Russia by western powers, a cascade failure in the external/internal regulation of the market has taken place.
“This cascade failure has been tolerated and even encouraged by a broad consensus within the UK Government, aided and abetted by their associated energy lobbyist peers. Instead of viewing the situation as a crisis, much of the political class view it as an opportunity to leverage progress towards their associated political agendas, with cover provided by a constant state of socio-economic emergency.
“The result? A cost-crippled UK populace, obscene profits obtained by energy and fuel corporations – including their shareholders/execs, and a subservient UK political class failing in their duty to the British public.
“Britain is under attack by enemies within and without, and our democracy is fading fast.
“Now is the time to Rescue Britain.”
It seems the organisation has a strategy, with specific subjects to tackle and phases to work through – but This Writer hasn’t seen what they are yet. This may be because it seems the infrastructure is not yet ready because it had to launch before intended, for reasons that have not been made clear.
If the issues raised by this organisation are of concern to you, click on the links and consider offering your support. You could help Rescue Britain!
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Sunak and Truss: they may seem to be arguing but in fact their aim is the same: tax cuts. Their only difference is in strategy.
What new hell is this?
After nearly three weeks working on my libel trial and dealing with the fallout from it, I finally turned back to politics to find that the Conservative leadership election has come down to a race between these two deadbeats: Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss.
Sunak is a busted flush because we know his tax history is dodgy, and his performance as Chancellor even dodgier. While he recognised the need to support the economy during the Covid-19 pandemic, his choices did nothing but make matters worse and he shares the blame with Boris Johnson for the severity of the UK’s death toll and the depth of the recession that followed.
Truss, on the other hand, is simply barking mad. I’m not even referring to her now-infamously crazed comments about cheese; she has surpassed them with her increasingly strenuous attempts to get Vladimir Putin to nuke the UK until the glow can be seen from New York.
Sadly, nobody seems to be taking these piddling details into account. How about their economic policies, then – both of which come across as a recitation of recent Tory leaders’ greatest flops.
From Sunak, we get The Big Lie. I’ve been writing about this since sometime around 2013; it’s the idea that, if you tell a lie often enough, people will believe it. The Nazis stole it from us in the 1930s and now the Tories have stolen it back.
In this case, the lie is that reducing the UK’s financial deficit is the only goal of government economic policy, rather than improving the well-being of UK citizens.
To achieve this, like George Osborne before him, he would limit public spending – because he does not understand the vital role the public sector plays in producing a healthy and efficient economy. Any good news on the deficit would be translated into tax cuts.
From Truss, we get Starving The Beast – a George W Bush economic policy from the bad old days of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). I’ve been writing about this since the earliest days of Vox Political, back in 2012. It was a stinker then and the smell has become no better over time!
According to Mainly Macro‘s Simon Wren-Lewis,
her policy is to raise borrowing to sufficiently high levels such that at some point a deficit crisis will be declared, the answer to which is of course spending cuts… So while Sunak aims to keep to deficit targets and cut taxes in good times, Truss plans to cut taxes now so spending is cut in a future manufactured deficit crisis.
Starving the beast involves not just one big lie, but a whole series of untruths. Voters are being told that tax cuts will not raise demand and therefore inflationary pressure, and will also pay for themselves. When both fail to happen after the next election voters will be told that the high interest rates that tax cuts have made inevitable and a larger deficit has nothing to do with tax cuts, but is all the fault of a bloated public sector.
So you can see that the choice of replacement for Boris Johnson, the worst liar the UK government has seen in decades, is between two more liars.
And the Tory faithful will lap it up because both candidates are offering what they want: tax cuts and lower public spending.
These are the people who believed every bit of nonsense pushed on them by the Brexit press.
Whichever candidate they support, they will be voting to destroy the quality of the public services on which you rely, and to cause further harm to the national economy, and therefore your quality of life.
Neither Sunak nor Truss can win a general election and I think they both know it.
So I tend to agree with Professor Wren-Lewis’s conclusion, as well:
Expect no progress on reversing the damage the Conservatives have done to the UK economy over the last twelve years whichever of the two candidates becomes Prime Minister. Instead the only relevant question is how much more damage each can do until the next general election.
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Speak no evil: but Boris Johnson doesn’t seem capable of holding his mouth shut.
Claims from Downing Street that Boris Johnson will remain prime minister until October are not true, it seems.
The timings of a successor’s election are managed by the backbench 1922 Committee and the Conservative Party Board, and Johnson has no power over them.
Also, when he discussed the prime minister’s resignation with him, 1922 Committee chairman Sir Graham Brady did not make any agreement that Johnson could remain in Downing Street until October.
The 1922 Committee controls the first part of the process – whittling the number of candidates down to two – and this could be completed as soon as July 21, when Parliament goes into recess for the summer.
Then the Tory Party Board takes over to put these candidates to a vote of party members – and this could be carried out by the end of August.
Meanwhile, there is a loud – and growing – demand for Johnson to leave immediately, with a “caretaker” PM installed for the duration of the leadership contest.
Considering the apparent falsehoods being put about by Johnson and his team, even about his departure, this should come as no surprise to anybody.
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Darkness over Westminster: we’re starting to find out which Tory MPs think they can replace Boris Johnson as party leader and prime minister – and they’re a desperately disappointing group.
The Conservative Party is in a deep mess if it can’t find somebody to replace Boris Johnson who the public will respect.
And the choices are extremely limited.
So far, it seems, only three people have even indicated a desire to become the next leader – and prime minister.
If you think Tom Tugendhat is the straightest of them, think again. A former Territorial Army Lieutenant Colonel, he’s a sabre-rattler who has verbally attacked Iran and Russia while supporting similarly vicious regimes in Saudi Arabia and Israel. As prime minister, he may put the UK in danger of participating in a series of harmful foreign adventures.
Suella Braverman, on the other hand, is a confirmed swivel-eyed loony. She used to be chair of the hard-right hard-Brexiteer European Research Group of Tory MPs that was funded from members’ expenses claims – meaning you paid for it.
She supports plans to strip us of our human and work-related rights – a project made possible by Brexit – while hiding behind publicity campaigns about bringing back blue passports (which could have been done at any time).
She merrily planned to support breaches of the UK’s international treaty agreements with the Internal Market Bill, knowing that it would harm the fragile peace in Northern Ireland. This willingness to break international law prompted the Bar Council to point out to her that a crime which broke the law in a “specific and limited way” – the phrase used by the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, when he announced the move – was still a crime.
As Attorney General, she didn’t like the acquittal of the so-called “Colston 4” who toppled the statue of slaver Edward Colston in 2020, and considered referring the case to the Court of Appeal, thereby attacking the judgement of an independent jury, even though there was no question of there having been a mistrial. That should have been enough cause for her to be ejected from her job.
When the Metropolitan Police issued questionnaires to Downing Street staff and politicians in the wake of the Partygate scandal, Braverman was asked if fines would lead to resignations. Her response was to have an apparent breakdown in the Commons chamber:
Just have a listen…
It’s such a bizarre response from Suella Braverman to a normal, reasonable parliamentary question.
She responded to a legitimate question with nonsense – and failed to answer the question itself.
Other possible leadership candidates include Brexiteer Steve Baker, Sajid Javid – whose resignation statement earlier this week may have done to Boris Johnson what Geoffrey Howe’s did to Margaret Thatcher, Grant Shapps – whose dodgy commercial dealings are now the stuff of legend, Liz Truss – the Evil Queen of Cheese, Rishi Sunak – whose ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme at the height of the Covid-19 crisis may have led to tens of thousands of deaths, Ben Wallace – who, as Defence Secretary, has been merrily rattling the sabre against Vladimir Putin, and former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt – who allowed private firms into the NHS with much lower standards of service, leading to a massive increase in preventable deaths.
Do you honestly think any of them is fit to lead the United Kingdom?
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Boris Johnson has accepted the inevitable and resigned as Conservative Party leader, although he intends to remain UK Prime Minister until October.
His speech indicated a huge amount of ill-feeling toward the “herd” of Tory MPs, and the “Darwinian” system, that forced his departure:
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Bowing his head: but it would be too much to hope that Boris Johnson is ashamed of the depths to which he has dragged his government, the Conservative Party, or the United Kingdom as a whole.
How humiliating for UK voters to see a disgraced prime minister clinging to his office while all his lieutenants – rightly – desert him.
After then-“Levelling-Up” secretary Michael Gove publicly called for Boris Johnson to give up and go gracefully, a delegation of Cabinet ministers attended 10 Downing Street to beg him to see sense.
And what happened?
He sacked Gove.
Yesterday, a BBC Newsnight editor reported a confidante of one of the dissenting Cabinet members’ reaction when asked what would happen if Johnson refused to resign: “Then he won’t have a Cabinet.”
So, this morning (July 7), we started to see the first resignations of Cabinet ministers since Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak quit on Tuesday.
Key among them was Michelle Donelan, who was only appointed as Education Secretary on Tuesday evening after Nadhim Zahawi was promoted to become Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Her resignation letter to Johnson states: “Yesterday, I pleaded with you to do the right thing and resign for the sake of our country and our party, both are more important than any one person.
“I see no way that you continue in post, but without a formal mechanism to remove you it seems that the only way this is only possible, is for those of us who remain in cabinet to force your hand.”
Also out was Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis. while the total number of resignations from the government climbed towards 50.
Meanwhile, Nadhim Zahawi, who was only made Chancellor on Tuesday and was said to be “solidly behind” Johnson at 2am today, appears to have been moving to slip a knife into his boss’s back – because he was urging Johnson to quit by 8.45.
And now the BBC is reporting that Johnson is set to resign as Conservative leader later today – but will continue as prime minister until the autumn (to outlast his immediate forerunner Theresa May?) while a leadership contest takes place.
So the nation can breathe a sigh of relief.
But, after the national disaster of the last three years, what new nightmare will replace him?
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Laughing at us: Boris Johnson has previously mocked his opponents as they tried to lever him out of office for previous corruptions. Will he be smiling with attacks coming from behind him, as well as in front?
The Conservative government stands divided and paralysed as more members resign and Boris Johnson’s attempts to save himself grow even more desperate.
Late yesterday evening, Attorney General Alex Chalk threw in the towel. His resignation letter stated: “To be in government is to accept the duty to argue for difficult or even unpopular policy positions where that serves the broader national interest. But it cannot extend to defending the indefensible.
“The cumulative effect of the Owen Paterson debacle, Partygate and now the handling of the former Deputy Chief Whip’s resignation, is that public confidence in the ability of Number 10 to uphold the standards of candour expected of a British Government has irretrievably broken down. I regret that I share that judgement.”
Then came a flurry of resignations, intended to fit in before Prime Minister’s Questions.
First to go this morning (July 6) was another Parliamentary Private Secretary, Laura Trott. Her resignation letter, posted on her Facebook account, said trust in politics was of the “upmost [sic] importance”, adding “but sadly in recent months this has been lost”.
Next was Children’s Minister Will Quince, who said he was left with “no choice” after 10 Downing Street sent him out to defend Johnson with “inaccurate” lines. He said: “I accepted and repeated assurances on Monday to the media which have now been found to be inaccurate.”
On Monday in media interviews, Quince said he had been given assurances that Johnson had not been aware of complaints against Chris Pincher. It later emerged this was not true.
Robin Walker, Minister for School Standards, quit saying the government has been “overshadowed by mistakes and questions about integrity”.
Lee Anderson, the Red Wall Tory who was ridiculed for saying it was possible to cook nutritious meals for 30p, quit at around 10.30am. On the Pinchergate lies, he stated: “I cannot look myself in the mirror and accept this… Integrity should always come first and sadly this has not been the case over the past few days.”
Also quitting were Treasury Minister John Glen and another PPS, Felicity Buchan.
Oh – and Justice Minister Victoria Atkins.
And key backbencher Robert Halfon has also announced that he has lost confidence in Johnson. In a letter, he said he was “previously against any leadership change… during Covid, a cost-of-living crisis and the war in Ukraine. However, after the events of the past few days and the resignation of Cabinet members, I feel that the public have been misled about the appointment of the former deputy chief whip [Chris Pincher].
“The parties at Number 10 Downing Street were bad enough but the appointment of this individual and the untruthful statement about what was known is unacceptable to me.”
Also withdrawing support were Chris Skidmore and Tom Hunt.
It’s over, isn’t it?
That’s what everyone’s saying.
New Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi was even challenged with those words when faced with the sudden resignations of two government members during a TV interview.
Johnson says he won’t go, as he prepares to face attacks from all sides during Prime Minister’s Questions.
But it’s not entirely up to him.
Would it be better for him to jump before he is pushed?
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Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak: by backstabbing Boris Johnson, are these Star Wars fans hoping to be star choices to replace him?
Boris Johnson’s Chancellor of the Exchequer and Health Secretary have both quit, along with several junior ministers, in what is being seen as signs that his government is collapsing.
The resignations follow revelations by the former Permanent Under-Secretary to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Lord McDonald, that Boris Johnson’s claim that he was never informed of an investigation into improper behaviour by Chris Pincher was false.
The major Cabinet resignations are Health Secretary Sajid Javid and Chancellor Rishi Sunak, but MPs who are Parliamentary aides to Cabinet ministers have also gone: Jonathan Gullis, Saqib Bhatti, Nicola Richards, and Virginia Crosbie. Tory vice-chair Bim Afolami is also out.
Andrew Murrison resigned as Johnson’s trade emissary to Morocco, as did Theodora Clarke, trade emissary to Kenya.
In his resignation letter, Javid stated: “I am instinctively a team player but the British people also rightly expect integrity from their Government.
“We may not always have been popular, but we have been competent in acting in the national interest. Sadly, in the current circumstances, the public are concluding that we are neither. The vote of confidence last month showed that a large number of our colleagues agree. It was a moment for humility, grip and new direction. I regret to say, however, that it is clear to me that this situation will not change under your leadership – and you have therefore lost my confidence too.”
Sunak’s letter stated: “The public rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously.
“It has become clear to me that our approaches are fundamentally too different. I am sad to be leaving Government but I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that we cannot continue like this.”
Former Brexit Minister Lord David Frost said Javid and Sunak had done the right thing. In a statement on Twitter, he said: “The developments of the last week show there is no chance of the prime minister either putting in place the necessary change of approach to running a government or of establishing a new policy direction.”
According to Nick Watt, political editor of the BBC’s Newsnight, one of Johnson’s closest allies has told him the resignations mean Boris Johnson’s premiership will be over by the evening of Wednesday, July 6: “No PM can survive the resignation of two senior cabinet ministers like that.”
In his letter, Murrison said, “the last straw in the rolling chaos of the past six months has been the unavoidable implications of Lord McDonald’s letter”.
Saqib Bhatti said: “The Conservative party has always been the party of integrity and honour but recent events have undermined trust and standards in public life.”
Jonathan Gullis said for too long “we have been focused on dealing with our reputational damage rather than delivering for the people”.
Nicola Richards described the Conservative Party under Johnson as “currently unrecognisable”.
And Virginia Crosbie said in her resignation letter that if Boris Johnson continues as PM he risks “irrevocably harming this government, and the Conservative party”.
Theodora Clarke went a little further in hers: “To learn that you chose to elevate a colleague to a position of pastoral care for MPs, whilst in full knowledge of his own wrongdoing, shows a severe lack of judgement and care for your Parliamentary party.
“I was shocked to see colleagues defending the Government with assurances that have turned out to be false. This is not the way that any responsible Government should act.”
Johnson has already moved to replace his resigning Cabinet ministers – with nonentities. Nadhim Zahawi, who will forever be remembered as the MP who used public money to heat his stables, becomes Chancellor.
Steve Barclay becomes Health Secretary. When he was appointed Brexit Secretary in 2018, he was given no power to conduct negotiations, prompting journalist Owen Jones to tweet: “They’re just putting random people off the street into ministerial positions now and hoping we don’t notice.” It seems they are still doing that.
But the damage is done and it seems all but the most staunch Johnson toadies are agitating for him to be removed.
Andrew Bridgen told the BBC the PM “should do what he should have done some time ago, and resign”.
“If he doesn’t do that, the party will have to force him out.”
It seems the Tories are on the march. To add snap to their step, YouGov has conducted a lightning poll showing more than two-thirds of UK voters – and a majority of Tories – want Boris Johnson to quit as prime minister:
SNAP POLL: Most Tory voters – and two thirds of Britons – say Boris Johnson should resign as PM
One thing is certain: Johnson is unlikely to go willingly.
If he is to leave 10 Downing Street, he’ll have to be forced out. But how soon can it happen?
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Boris Johnson and Chris Pincher: a poor choice of friends?
Boris Johnson could be ousted from power if new Ministerial Code breaches are alleged over Downing Street’s changing story about the Chris Pincher scandal.
At first, the prime minister’s office claimed that “no official complaints [about Pincher] were ever made”.
But McDonald of Salford, a crossbench peer who was formerly (as Simon McDonald) Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, has blown that – and subsequent li(n)es out of the water.
In a letter to Kathryn Stone, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, he stated [boldings mine]: “This is not true. In the summer of 2019, shortly after he was appointed minister of state at the Foreign Office, a group of officials complained to me about Mr Pincher’s behaviour. I discussed the matter with the relevant official at the Cabinet Office. (In substance, the allegations were similar to those made about his behaviour at the Carlton Club.) An investigation upheld the complaint; Mr Pincher apologised and promised not to repeat the inappropriate behaviour. There was no repetition at the FCO before he left seven months later.”
The letter added that a BBC website report stated: “Downing Street has said Boris Johnson was not aware of any specific allegations when he appointed Mr Pincher deputy chief whip in February,” then added: “By 4 July, the BBC website reflected a change in No 10’s line: ‘The prime minister’s official spokesman said Mr Johnson knew of “allegations that were either resolved or did not progress to a formal complaint”, adding that “it was deemed not appropriate to stop an appointment simply because of unsubstantiated allegations”.’
“The original No 10 line is not true and the modification is still not accurate. Mr Johnson was briefed in person about the initiation and outcome of the investigation. There was a ‘formal complaint’. Allegations were ‘resolved’ only in the sense that the investigation was completed; Mr Pincher was not exonerated. To characterise the allegations as ‘unsubstantiated’ is therefore wrong.
“I am aware that [it] is unusual to write to you and simultaneously publicise the letter. I am conscious of the duty owed to the target of an investigation but I act out of my duty towards the victims. Mr Pincher deceived me and others in 2019. He cannot be allowed to use the confidentiality of the process three years ago to pursue his predatory behaviour in other contexts.”
He didn’t say Boris Johnson had been lying in his letter, but in a subsequent interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he might as well have: “I think they need to come clean. I think that the language is ambiguous, the sort of telling the truth and crossing your fingers at the same time and hoping that people are not too forensic in their subsequent questioning and I think that is not working.”
Stone isn’t – technically – the right person to have received Lord McDonald’s letter; she investigates complaints about breaches of the code of conduct for MPs and, although Pincher’s conduct in 2019 probably would have been in breach of that, McDonald was really objecting to what No 10 is saying about the matter now.
It would have been more appropriate to write to the Downing Street ethics adviser – but of course there isn’t one; Lord Geidt resigned last month and hasn’t been replaced.
The peer’s revelations have triggered a slew of new accusations against Boris Johnson and his administration.
Lib Dem deputy leader Daisy Cooper said: “Boris Johnson needs to own up to his web of lies and finally come clean today. Every day this carries on our politics gets dragged further through the mud.”
Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner said: “The prime minister knew about the seriousness of these complaints but decided to promote this man to a senior position in government anyway. He refused to act and then lied about what he knew.
“Boris Johnson is dragging British democracy through the muck. His appalling judgement has made Westminster a less safe place to work.”
It became apparent that Downing Street had not even provided the government’s spokesperson-of-the-day with the facts, when Dominic Raab tried, on the Today programme, to push the line that Boris Johnson had not been briefed about disciplinary action against Pincher.
Himself a former foreign secretary, Raab said he had spoken with Johnson over the last 24 hours and had been assured that the prime minister had not been briefed.
Then Lord McDonald appeared on the same programme and categorically stated that Johnson had been told everything at the time.
So Raab’s story changed by the time he got to LBC radio: “There was a review, an investigation if you like … to decide whether a formal disciplinary action or an investigation and process was warranted.
“The review, conducted under the auspices of Sir Simon – now Lord – McDonald was that disciplinary action was not warranted. That doesn’t mean that inappropriate behaviour didn’t take place. We were clear that what happened was inappropriate, but we resolved it without going for a formal disciplinary process.”
Raab said he told Pincher “in no uncertain terms” that his conduct had been unacceptable.
So Raab was saying that the complaint against Pincher had been upheld, but that did not mean he was guilty – even though Raab himself had told the MP that his conduct had been unacceptable.
Does that make any sense to you?
It didn’t make sense to Susanna Reid on Good Morning Britain, who grilled Raab over his misuse of language:
It seems this cack-handed handling of a serious matter has been the last straw for many backbench Tory MPs, who are now saying Johnson would lose a vote of no confidence if it took place today.
And they are acting to change the rules of the 1922 Committee to allow another confidence vote to take place.
Tory Johnson critic Sir Roger Gale said: “Mr Johnson has for three days now been sending ministers – in one case a cabinet minister – out to defend the indefensible, effectively to lie on his behalf. That cannot be allowed to continue.
“This prime minister has trashed the reputation of a proud and honourable party for honesty and decency and that is not acceptable.
“It is so blatant a lie it has to be acted upon as swiftly as possible by my party.”
John Penrose, the former “anti-corruption tsar” who quit over Sue Gray’s Partygate report, has expanded on why Lord McDonald’s letter is so explosive:
“This is dynamite. Honesty is one of 7 Nolan Principles of integrity in public life & at the core of the Ministerial Code so a) #10 not telling the truth is another serious breach & b) the PM’s promised reset has no credibility because their behaviour hasn’t changed at all.”
This may explain why Tory backbenchers are after another “no confidence” vote.
Meanwhile, the business of government takes a back seat once more as Boris Johnson again scrabbles to save his own wretched skin.
Some Parliamentary reporters are already suggesting that this is the end of the road for Johnson – but he’s a slippery character. I’ll report more developments as they appear.
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Doubts about Boris Johnson’s fitness to lead the UK must be multiplying after this revelation from the BBC:
Boris Johnson was made aware of a formal complaint about Chris Pincher’s “inappropriate behaviour” while Mr Pincher was a Foreign Office minister from 2019-20, BBC News can reveal.
It triggered a disciplinary process that confirmed the MP’s misconduct. Mr Pincher apologised after the process concluded, BBC News has been told.
BBC News understands the PM and the foreign secretary at the time – Dominic Raab – knew about the issue.
So Johnson knew Pincher was a wrong ‘un… and then appointed him to a hugely responsible position in the Whips’ Office anyway.
Remember that scandal in Theresa May’s time as PM, when the “dodgy dossier” of MPs’ wrongdoing known to the whips was made public?
Johnson put Pincher in that office and gave him access to that kind of information, we may conclude.
Was that a responsible thing to do – really?
It seems there may be much more muck to rake out of this already-filthy territory.
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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