Update: the mainstream media is finally waking up to the impact of Brexit on dental care provision. We were writing about this more than a year ago. Exeter MP Ben Bradshaw (Labour) posted a tweet drawing attention to the astonishing statistic that 78,000 people in Devon and Cornwall are waiting to get onto an NHS […]
Last week the government ratified the first new trade deal since Brexit – and your MP didn’t get to vote on it. Is this what the Brexiteers meant by taking back control? I’m talking about the UK-Australia trade deal. It is fairly insignificant in economic terms, the government’s official impact assessment suggests the increased trade […]
“Quit the EU to save our #NHS” said the Daily Express It was the wrong diagnosis, but voters believed it. The latest news is that the NHS is facing “the greatest workforce crisis in its history”, which is bringing our health service to its knees. NHS England is facing a chronic and dangerous shortage of […]
Where do we go from here? The British electorate faces a challenge like never before, writes Jeremy Hall, from Devon: The nightmare of the Johnson era has gone forever (?), but a Johnson crony (Sunak or Truss) will be imposed on the rest of us by 160,000 Tory Party members who are richer than, whiter […]
If you’ve watched either of the two ghastly Conservative leadership debates, you’ll know that this country is headed not for any change for the better (as if!), but for a slightly different flavour of awfulness, incompetence and ideology than that which was served up by the liar, Johnson. I cannot say I am surprised that […]
“Mordaunt” is a Norman surname. It belonged to one of the Conqueror’s henchmen who came over with him in 1066 and is thought to derive from the French expression, “mort d’entaille” (or something similar), which quite literally means “death by cuts”. Liz Truss, now Foreign Secretary and Penny Mordaunt’s former boss at the Department for […]
Mr Rushforth acknowledges that Brexit is not ‘done’ and had, in the great tradition of the adaptable Mr Johnson, two versions of his cartoon – one with Brexit crossed off and one with it not. Johnson certainly f**ked it up, along with everything else he touched. Will the new leader and PM consider it done […]
Here we go again. Like the shoe-stretchers my mum got me for Christmas, the Tories are the stinky gift that keeps on giving. Let’s dive in… 1. Previously on The Week In Tory: thermonuclear tribunal magnet Boris Johnson battled to survive, as Steve Baker told the BBC “I believe the Conservative Party is the only […]
There is no question that the fates of Boris Johnson and Brexit are inextricably linked. It is impossible to imagine that the UK would have abandoned its 40-year relationship with the EU had it not been for this young journalist making his name through inventing nonsense stories about the Eurocracy and for the same man, […]
Steve Baker is standing for election to the Conservatives’ all-powerful 1922 committee. He may want Boris gone (good), but as a Brexiteer cultist who will he want to replace him? A tweet and a couple of articles to remind us of what Mr Baker is all about…
Many of you will have seen Steve Bray on television, holding his placards and flags aloft, calling out the lies and hypocrisy of the politicians being interviewed on Brexit. Some of you may have joined him on his near daily protests outside parliament or 10 Downing Street. For many, he has become the embodiment of […]
Even as some hard-core Brexiters concede that the project isn’t working for the country, they reach for tired claims that there have been benefits in certain high-profile areas. The reality is very different, as Andrew Levi explains, in the case of the Covid vaccine public health response. Radical Remainers ‘The Great British, world-beating, Covid vaccine […]
A round-up of a typically marvellous #TheWeekInTory 1. Loving crowds of flag-waving patriots loudly booed Boris Johnson, the one-man game of shag, marry, avoid who is still – amazingly – our PM. 2. Priti Patel, the Shetland Pony of the Apocalypse, told Tory MPs not to attempt to sack Johnson because of the Jubilee. 3. […]
Boris Johnson press conference. He just said the UK will have the worst performance in the G7 next year cos “we came out of the pandemic first, so had a faster recovery”. So [deep breath] we’re doing badly because we’re doing so well. Then he said we need to build 300,000 more homes. Then he […]
Let’s start with Brexit. These are the latest figures from the OBR. UK trade levels collapsed during the pandemic and have failed to rebound, unlike those of other G7 countries. 2/ Pre-Brexit, the UK was a world leader in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) – and had been since the 1970s. Between 2017 and 2020, […]
The phrase ‘the sick man of Europe’ originally applied to the Ottoman Empire and has been used to describe various countries since, including the UK in the 1960s and 1970s as well as Italy, Greece and even Germany following unification. The UK lost the label after joining the EEC and concentrating on trade within Europe […]
As a former diplomat and civil servant, I tend to distrust the media when complex things like the Northern Ireland protocol are concerned. So, since returning from France – where I heard a lot of views on Brexit and its consequences from people as diverse as market traders, hoteliers, long term British residents and random […]
On 25 February 2014, the European Parliament voted on an EU fund to provide food aid to those suffering extreme poverty in the EU. The EU offered up to £22 million to help subsidise Britain’s food banks, but the money was blocked by the UK government. Thirteen million people live below the poverty line in the UK. […]
It seems almost certain that the government will announce legislation to abandon the Brexit Northern Ireland protocol in the next few days. No coherent lawyer I have yet noted has suggested that this is anything but a breach of international law. The Attorney General has suggested parliament is supreme in the UK and can as […]
This shouldn’t need saying again, but in view of the media coverage of the NI Protocol, perhaps it does. The problems are not caused by the NI Protocol, but by this particular form of hard Brexit. While the UK and Ireland were both part of the EU and the EU single market, it was possible […]
More than a year ago we published this article about two small businesses being ruined by Brexit. We now have an update from the second of those profiled – Steve Shovlar. Over to you, Steve. (Oh, and just to explain, ‘Sir’ Steve references the ludicrous award of a knighthood to Gavin Williamson, a serial failure […]
Well, if you can fathom out what’s really going on here, you’re doing better than us or Sharon who wrote to her MP George Eustice in the first place. See what you make of this. The question: Dear Mr Eustice, I feel compelled to ask you why your party in government has broken its promise […]
It’s been a challenge to find anything to write in the latest edition of the Week in Tory. They’ve all been such well-behaved boys and girls. Only kidding: it’s absolute carnage. Don your biohazard suits, top up your breakfast absinthe, and let’s dive in. 1. Under Boris Johnson, 10 Downing Street now holds the record […]
It’s high time we got real and faced up to the disastrous performance of the Johnson government and its damaging impact on our lives argues David Knopfler. We live in fictitious times, where magical thinking has replaced facts: where we pretend that pandemics are over despite the bodies piling up at our mortuaries in ever […]
Let’s start #TheWeekInTory with PartyGate, where randy Honey Monster and (no, really) Prime Minister Boris Johnson denied 20 fines meant there had been wrongdoing. 2. This doesn’t quite explain why he had personally phoned the Queen to apologise for all the wrongdoing. 3. Regardless, The Metropilitan Police issued MASSIVE fines of £50 for breaching lockdown […]
Regular readers of my Facebook posts will know that it is my position that this current government is dangerous because of its incompetence. I recognise that many of you find them to be cruel, or their policies deliberately designed towards the vicious and unnecessary, but my own experience is that they haven’t got a clue […]
As the queues on the M20 get longer and longer with the average waiting time of anywhere between 18-30 hrs you have to wonder how much this will cost consumers. Moreover, many don’t even know why it’s happening. Here is a quick piece to explain this lunacy. Back in January the new IT system GVMS […]
I spy with my little eye – yellow stars on a blue background… If you look carefully, all across the UK there are blue plaques with yellow stars, announcing funding by the EU for that area. Funding that has helped our country. Funding that came from the EU, not the UK. Funding that the UK […]
Note: No EU country has ever fired a shot at another EU country. Sixty years ago, in 1962, the then British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, set out a strong and compelling case for Britain to join the European Economic Community (later to be renamed the European Union). What’s remarkable is that Macmillan’s pro-Europe arguments of […]
Online here European Movement CEO, Anna Bird, addresses UK with Ukraine rally in London. – YouTubeand reproduced below, more or less as delivered, is the text of Anna Bird’s speech at the London Mayor’s ‘vigil for Ukraine’ in Trafalgar Square on Saturday. It is excellent that European Movement UK (EM-UK) was involved in organising this […]