I got this message from the pro-democracy organisation giving their assessment of Labour’s proposed policies as revealed on the Labour list website. They welcome many of them, but criticise Labour for not including proportional representation, repealing the harsh anti-protest laws or defending the political independence of the electoral commission.
‘Dear David,
Yesterday, the LabourList website published a summary of Labour’s draft policy platform – likely to be the foundation of Labour’s 2024 manifesto. There’s a lot in there that we at Open Britain can get excited about, but also some concerning omissions which we simply can’t ignore.
Let’s start with the positive. We’re finally seeing some fleshed-out policy on key issues, and from what we can see, it does look like Labour is taking public concerns around the environment, economy and security seriously. Of particular interest to us, though, is the section at the bottom entitled “Reform Westminster and Devolve Power.” Here are some of the plans featured there:
Reducing the voting age to 16
Greater devolution of power to the nations
Creation of the Integrity and Ethics Commission, which looks into breaches of ministerial code and misconduct
Banning second jobs for MPs
Replacing the House of Lords with an elected chamber
Cracking down on political donations from shell companies
This is all really good, sensible stuff. It shows a distinctive move away from the current government’s anti-democratic legislative agenda and a commitment to restoring public trust in politics, getting younger people involved, and putting the Boris Johnson days long behind us.
But there is an elephant in the room that we need to talk about. Proportional representation is a potentially disastrous omission. PR is supported en masse by Labour stakeholders across the board because it would fundamentally change Westminster’s toxic, win-at-all-costs dynamic. It would also make more people’s votes count, restoring their confidence in the system. Starmer can’t just wish the calls for PR away.
And there are some other elephants in the room too. What about revisiting this government’s sly voter identification policy? What about repealing the Policing and Public Order Acts so that dissenters aren’t arbitrarily thrown into cells? What about reinstating the independence of the Electoral Commission? As much as we applaud this positive constitutional agenda, there’s a lot of damage being done right now that it won’t undo.
Imagine this policy package with those additions. That would be the kind of landmark reform that would boost this country’s mood almost overnight, unleashing the democratic power of so many who have gone without a voice for so long.
We don’t want just to imagine it. We want to make it real. We want to make our voices so loud that the Labour leadership has to listen. This agenda shows that they understand the issues we face – but they’re not yet willing to do everything it takes to address them. Let’s keep the pressure on.
The internet petitioning organisation 38 degrees are running a campaign for the greater regulation of the gambling industry. Yesterday I got a message from them that they’d acquired the government’s White Paper on it, and gave their analysis of its strengths and weaknesses.
‘Hello supporter,
Thanks in no small part to the pressure you all put on the government, yesterday we finally saw the white paper of the Gambling Act review. The full document is here.
Thank you so much for all your efforts, for signing the petition, Tweeting to government and to the many who sent personal messages to the DCMS Secretary of State Lucy Frazer.
There were some positives in it, including proposed affordability checks, reductions in stake sizes for the highly addictive slot machines, and a statutory levy on industry profits to pay for independent education, treatment, and research. They also promised a review of incentives such as free bets and bonuses – something I’ve personally campaigned on – which I hope could be the beginning of the end for them.
But there was much missing, including allowing the relentless gambling advertising to continue, something that almost everyone is fed up of.
And almost all proposals will need further consultation which will mean more delay.
Every day of delay means more lives lost, more families devastated like mine was, so we can’t sit back and let the gambling industry keep delaying reform.
The fight will very much continue – this is just the start.
It’s time to take stock now but I’ll be back in touch soon about any new campaign and petition.
Thank you again, we’ve got this far, we’ve shown together we can force change upon a powerful industry, and we can go much further.
Very best wishes,
Annie Ashton’
I’ve got a particular interest in this, as I believe the deregulation of the gambling industry a few years’ ago has done immense damage and led people into addiction, poverty and despair. I also recall that Blair during his reign wanted to set up gambling supercasinos in place like Blackpool. This was to become a British Las Vegas, along with a number of other places. Fortunately it didn’t happen. But I am concerned by a video I caught sight of the other day about Starmer getting donations from the gambling industry.
Unite the Union have launched a new campaign on Megaphone: Don’t raise the state pension age: 68 is too late! Below is a message from Caren Evans, Unite’s National Officer for Retired Members. Sign the petition today.
The government recently indicated it may raise the state pension age for millions of workers aged 44 to 52. Fearing massive defeat in the next general election, it now looks like the government may abandon these plans – for now.
Meanwhile, governments in other countries are facing huge rebellions over plans to raise the retirement age.
We must make it clear that any UK government that attempts this will also face massive opposition, now and in the future.
That’s why Unite the Union, together with the National Pensioners Convention, is launching the 68 is too late campaign.
We will not allow our State Pension to be raided to pay for politicians’ bad choices.
New research by Unite shows that the profits of the UK’s largest companies are now 89 per cent higher than before the pandemic, but workers are not seeing our fair share. Our life expectancy is no longer rising, our NHS has been cut to the bone, our work doesn’t pay, and our workplace pensions have been raided.
Workers create the wealth in this society, and we demand a share of that wealth. We deserve dignity, respect and financial security in our old age.
In solidarity,
Lois,
Megaphone UK
I’ve signed it, because the government is pushing the pensionable age back to what it was when it was first introduced: 70. Along with all the other workers’ rights they can roll back to leave people in poverty and despair, while further stuffing the pockets of the corporate profiteers who fund them.
Here’s another email I received from the pro-democracy, open government organisation Open Britain. It’s another expose of the extreme right-wing thinktanks on Tufton Street. These want the privatisation of the NHS and other public services, the destruction of the welfare state, tax cuts for the rich and the very worst kind of Brexit, for ordinary people, a no-deal departure from the EU, These people have extensive connections to the Tory party, especially under Liz Truss, and to the aristocracy. The expose also notes that these thinktanks are given airtime and serious discussion while those holding left-wing policies, such as Proportional Representation, are shut out.
‘Dear David,
In our ‘long read’ email last week, we filled you in on our research into the UK’s failure to address illicitly funded political campaigns. Unfortunately, sketchy shell companies and untraceable political donations from Russian oligarchs are only one element of the dark money problem. Think tanks hold increasing sway in Number 10, and many do not reveal their donors.
Nowhere in the UK symbolises these kinds of organisations more than Tufton Street. The headquarters for hard-right libertarian lobbying groups, Tufton Street discreetly houses a network of different groups that generally oppose public services of all kinds, advocate tax cuts for the rich, and promote austerity. While not all these organisations are physically located on Tufton Street, the name has become a symbol for a particular brand of political lobbying – one that has all but taken over politics today.
In recent years, high-level think tank “experts” have found their way into increasingly influential positions, from Conservative Party conference to BBC Question Time to the corridors of Number 10. Nothing made this more evident than Kwasi Kwarteng’s ballistic mini-budget, which looked to implement unpopular trickle-down policies dreamt up in Tufton Street boardrooms. As former Johnson advisor, Tim Montgomerie stated with glee after the mini-budget: “Britain is now their laboratory”.
When was the last time the government listened to the constitutional experts who concluded that PR would improve representation, the electoral experts that said Voter ID would disenfranchise millions or the human rights lawyers that said the UK is violating international law? Clearly, it’s only a certain kind of expert that holds sway.
This week, we want to get into the think tanks on Tufton Street (and beyond) and the influences they’ve had on the last decade of Conservative rule. In another longer-than-usual email, we will demystify the deep-pocketed and enigmatic think tanks that exert so much power in this country.
Libertarian Nonsense:
These groups advocate for outdated and deeply unpopular policies which – instead of dealing with the UK’s growing income inequality – generally look to make it worse. They want to slash or eradicate public services, give tax benefits to the nation’s wealthiest, and crush unions. We don’t know who funds most of them, but it’s fair to say it’s probably people and companies with a vested interest in those policies. What we do know is that much of the money comes from hard-right American billionaires and multinational corporations.
Here’s a brief overview of the most prominent libertarian lobbying groups on Tufton Street:
The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) is a libertarian think-tank masquerading as an educational charity. Closely allied to Liz Truss, the group lobbied at least 75 MPs before her leadership victory and practically hand-wrote her “trickle-down” policies. The group does not disclose details of its funding, but a general breakdown reveals the majority comes from large businesses and wealthy individuals – we still have no way of knowing who they are.
The Adam Smith Institute is another libertarian group that claims it seeks to “use free markets to create a richer, freer, happier world”. In reality, they also championed the mini-budget that imploded the UK economy and directly influenced Conservative MPs to advocate for trickle-down policies. Like the IEA, they believe “the privacy of their donors should be protected” and refuse to say who funds them. However, their breakdown also reveals a majority from businesses and wealthy individuals.
The Taxpayers’ Alliance has been around for years, claiming to be non-partisan and ostensibly advocating for more responsible use of our taxes. Like the two groups above, it gets a transparency rating of E on openDemocracy’s transparency index. In recent years, they’ve joined the culture wars, going after LGBT organisations like Stonewall and notably having their talking points immediately repeated across the right-wing press.
As we’ll see, these right-wing groups not only hold massive sway in government and advocate for radical trickle-down policies but also hugely influence the debates on Brexit and climate. Most of the organisations we mention in this email are members of the Atlas Network, a group of over 500 such think tanks operating globally and headquartered in the United States.
Brexit Zealotry:
How many times in recent years were we told that being a member of the EU called the UK’s sovereignty into question? But did anyone ever ask what effect dark money-funded think tanks controlling government policy was having on our sovereignty? In an incredible twist of irony, these groups worked hard to cement a no-deal Brexit aimed at regaining our sovereignty while actively undermining it by exerting influence over the nation’s future.
The Tufton Street lobbying groups that pushed a hard Brexit:
The Institute for Free Trade (IFT), formerly the Initiative for Free Trade (they were initially unable to meet the formal requirements to be an “institute”), was launched by Liam Fox and Boris Johnson in 2017. It was chaired by Daniel Hannan, one the leaders of Vote Leave and the right-wing Koch-funded Cato Institute. They were exposed for offering US donors direct access to UK politicians, claiming to be in the “Brexit-influencing game”.
In 2018, the IFT published a US-UK trade policy paper written in consultation with dozens of other libertarian groups. It called for a no-deal Brexit, a “bonfire” of EU regulations (which we would later see under Sunak), and an NHS open to US market competition.The whole thing was designed to advance Boris Johnson’s radical Brexit agenda with the veneer of “expert” advice.
Dominic Raab and Liz Truss were under fire in 2019 for meeting with the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) off the books, with the think-tank bragging that it could “side-step” transparency requirements. At the time, the IEA was pushing hard for a no-deal Brexit that would see radical free-market trade reforms put in place between the US and the UK. The IEA’s lobbyist, Shanker Singham, also worked directly with the European Research Group (ERG), the ominous group of Euro-sceptic MPs that won’t reveal its list of members.
The Brexit project was partly made possible by mysteriously-funded think tanks that viewed a hard Brexit as an opportunity for their donors to make a killing in a deregulated UK market. It was a dirty, dirty game that – despite being fully exposed – is not talked about nearly enough.
It took Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s shambolic mini-budget to truly reveal the extent to which think tanks like the IEA, Adam Smith Institute, and others have massively disproportionate influence over British politics. In reality, it had been going on for far longer than that.
If Britain is the laboratory for a gang of dodgy think tanks, where does that leave ordinary people? It renders us powerless, left to be the guinea pigs of organisations that have no real connection to our lives, values, or communities. It’s the antithesis of democracy.
You’ll have noticed through our examples that Tufton Street operates as one giant network – bringing together staff and resources from across their global network. They also all seem to have backdoor access to Tory MPs, a nexus of corruption in the heart of politics aimed at undemocratically advancing the aims of a wealthy elite. In his new book Bullingdon Club Britain, Sam Bright (the journalist that broke the PPE contracts scandal) explains the Tufton Street network’s intrinsic connections to the British aristocracy in more detail than we have time for here.
It’s vital that the British public is aware of what’s going on behind the scenes and understands the impact these networks are having on politics. The next government needs to be under no illusion that the people of this country have had enough of this corruption of our system and want an end to the toxic impact of foreign billionaires and multinational companies. If we’re ever going to build a system that works for all of us, these kinds of actors need to be sidelined for good. They don’t have the country’s interests at heart.
It will always be difficult for ordinary people to take a stand against these insanely wealthy and highly organised forces, but we aren’t put off by the magnitude of the challenge. We know that those forces CAN be beaten through the collective efforts of the hundreds of thousands of us who care about this country’s future and who are prepared to take a stand to get our political system back on track.
Brexit, we were told, was all about regaining Britain’s “sovereignty” and being in control of our own destiny. But big money in British politics is a more significant threat to our future than unelected EU bureaucrats ever were.
Even though the Brussels bureaucrats have been removed from the equation, people still don’t feel they have a proper say in how this country operates. One big reason for that is the amount of money, often from opaque sources, sloshing around our political system.
Have you ever thought that the national picture painted by the likes of Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, and Rishi Sunak differs significantly from the one you see when you look around your own family and friends? You’re not alone.
Britain ranks among the most socially liberal countries in the world on key issues, and a substantial majority now reject many of the established economic assumptions of recent decades. But you won’t see any of that reflected in the current government’s agenda. Westminster is becoming an island of irrelevance, increasingly detached from the concerns of ordinary people.
There’s a reason for that. The government cannot hear the concerns of ordinary people over the hubbub of wealthy donors and other lobbyists with shady financial backers.
As part of our Parliamentary work, we’ve been researching just how broken the system is. In this longer-than-usual email, we’d like to share some of that with you.
Dark Money and Foreign Influence
The UK has particularly lax campaign finance laws. As a result, many donations get through that probably shouldn’t. Yes, there are permissibility requirements in place, but there are plenty of ways to evade them if you want to.
The term “Dark money” refers to donations whose origins are untraceable. Because the ultimate source cannot be confirmed, there is no way of knowing whether that money comes from the kind of person or organisation that shouldn’t have influence over our lawmakers.
One example of dark money is the “Proxy Donation”. These are donations made by one person, who would not be a permitted donor, in the name of another who is. Some examples include:
Ehud Sheleg, art dealer and former Conservative party treasurer, gave over £600k to the Tory party. Documents later showed that the money originated in a Russian account of Sheleg’s father-in-law – a former official in the old pro-Putin regime in Ukraine. Proxy donations are a complete blindspot in the law, so there was no legal mechanism to hold him accountable for it.
Lubov Cherdukhin – back at it again – gave money to the Conservative party while her husband was receiving funds from business deals with sanctioned Russian oligarchs. She gave £50k to the Tories 8 days after Putin invaded Ukraine.
Mohamad Amersi has given over £200k to the Conservatives and worked closely with Boris Johnson on key policy decisions. Prior to the donation, he was given a large deposit from a Kremlin-linked company secretly owned by Putin’s telecoms minister Leonid Reiman.
“Shell Companies” are another way for dubious donors to evade the rules. According to Transparency International, 14% of LLPs established in the UK between 2001-2021 (21,000 companies) show signs of being shell companies. Here are some examples:
Conservative mega-donor Lubov Cherdukhin, who once paid £160k to play tennis with Boris Johnson, was being paid out by a shell company secretly owned by Russian senator and Putin ally Suleiman Kerimov, according to the BBC.
The offshore company Aquind is owned by a former Russian oil magnate and a Russian arms manufacturer. The company has donated heavily to the Conservative party.
Top Labour MPs Wes Streeting, Yvette Cooper, and Dan Jarvis received a combined £345,000 from a company called MPM Connect Ltd, which has no staff or website and is registered at an office where the secretary had never heard of the company.
“Unincorporated Associations” are nebulous groups with little oversight or legal classification. It’s essentially like ticking the “miscellaneous” box on a donation form when asked what kind of organisation you are.
Tory minister Steve Baker’s “Covid Recovery Group” organisation (a parliamentary coalition of anti-lockdown Conservative MPs) received tens of thousands from a UA called the Recovery Alliance. It has no digital footprint, no registered members, and its finances are completely opaque. Opendemocracy has linked it to a number of other covid conspiracy campaigns and anti-lockdown groups.
Richard Cook’s “Constitutional Research Group” – of which he is the only listed member and chair – gave £435,000 to the DUP’s Brexit campaign. No one knows for sure where the money came from, but investigative journalists discovered his involvement in a number of illicit trades, including underground trash-dumping and fire-arms sales.
According to Byline Times, 29 different opaque UAs donated £14 million to the Conservative party between 2010-2022.
Big Money
Between 2001 and 2021, one-fifth of all political donations in the UK came from just ten men with an average age of 70. If that doesn’t indicate that we have a big problem, we’re really not sure what would.
While there’s nothing inherently wrong with political donations, huge amounts of money coming from multinational corporations and the mega-rich does raise questions about who really calls the shots. Especially when they seem to get things in return.
Here are some situations where extremely wealthy individuals and corporations used their financial heft to influence things:
In 2021, the Conservatives received £400k in donations from oil and gas companies while the government was deciding on new oil and gas licences.
More generally, the Tories took over a million from oil companies between 2019 and 2021.
From 2020-2022, the Conservatives took £15 million from the financial services industry, which they were certainly kind to when it came to dealing with banker’s bonuses.
Labour MP Wes Streeting received £15k from John Armitage, former Tory party donor and manager of a hedge fund that owns half a billion dollars in US health insurance and private healthcare. Streeting recently came out in support of private hospitals.
The “Leader’s Group” is a dining club of Tory super-donors that has given over £130 million to the party since 2010. The club’s billionaires and business moguls have been known to dine with Boris Johnson.
In 2022-2023, controversial groups, including gambling giants, climate sceptic organisations, and evangelical Christian groups, made over £1 million in donations for staffing the Labour front bench. Recipients include MPs Wes Streeting, Rachel Reeves, and Yvette Cooper. Reeves alone received nearly £250k.
Recently, Crossbench peer Caroline Cox received large donations from American evangelical Christian activists against gay marriage that used hateful language about Muslims.
While the Conservatives often top the list when it comes to money in politics, remember that this is a cross-party systemic problem. The real issue is that the rules that are supposed to prevent the wealthy from buying influence just aren’t strong enough. We’ve allowed a situation to emerge where money can buy outcomes almost directly, and the mechanisms to detect the sources of that money are ineffective. Our system just isn’t fit for the 21st century.
The first step to fixing any problem is admitting that there is a problem. Our political system is addicted to money, to the extent that we’re now shutting real people’s voices out on a regular basis.
As you know, Open Britain’s mission these days is to deliver a democracy that works for everyone, not just the rich and powerful. That means a political system primarily driven by people, not primarily driven by money. That’s what democracy was always meant to be about.
As you might expect from what you’ve read above, we don’t take donations from shady think tanks or Russian oligarchs. All our work is funded directly by you, our supporters. We believe that having our work funded through small donations from a large number of people is the healthiest model of all, one that allows us to say what needs to be said to whoever needs to hear it. We hope you agree.
Excellent video by the Left-wing group Led By Donkeys which shows the pervasive connections between the former Prime Minister, swivel-eyed Liz Truss, Kwasi Kwarteng and her cabinet and the mad, free enterprise groups located at or near 55 Tufton Street. These include the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Adam Smith Institute, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Taxpayers Alliance. These groups are all in favour of privatisation, including that of the NHS, tax cuts for the rich and the ending of the welfare state. One of them also pumps out propaganda against global warming and climate change. Truss herself set up a Free Enterprise Group with the assistance of the IEA, and the group as how morphed into another organisation with a similar name, linked to them. Truss was among the authors of the noxious Britannia Unchained, which claimed that British workers were the laziest in the world and demanded more cuts and privatisation for the rich and that workers should be stripped of their rights. All of them were connected to the Tufton Street network. Kings College, Oxford, held a debate about whether the NHS should be privatised, put forward by one of the inmates of the IEA. And when one journalist asked them if Truss had handed the government over to the Tufton Street thinktanks, she was told ‘Yes’.
These organisations are very secretive and won’t disclose who funds them. Some of them received donations from BP, others from the tobacco industry. A number of them are American organisations. But for the most part, their donors are unknown. The video points out that nobody elected Truss except 0.1 per cent of the population, and her tax cuts benefited only 2,500 millionaires. It is for their benefit that she trashed the economy, an event Led By Donkeys commemorated by sticking a mock blue plaque about it on the front of 55 Tufton Street.
Their ideas don’t work and the economic collapse they caused showed they are catastrophic. But nevertheless, they benefit the rich and so the Conservative right definitely won’t question them, even when the force everyone else into poverty.
And they aren’t cheap, either. I got this message from the Labour party yesterday
‘Dear David,
Labour South West are proud to be hosting a Business Dinner with Rachel Reeves MP. We have some fantastic guests and businesses attending the dinner and would like to invite you to come along.
Tickets to our Business Dinner are priced at £120 per head or £1000 for a table of 10 if CLPs or businesses wish to purchase them. Tickets include a three course dinner, wine for the table, and a welcome drink on arrival, as well as an opportunity to submit a question to our guest speaker and Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
We would be delighted to have you join our event which we are hosting at The Bristol Hotel, Prince St, Bristol, BS1 4QF on Thursday 2 nd March 2023. The drinks reception will start at 6.30pm.’
I am very definitely not going. Not just because of my health, and the fact that I don’t have that kind of money to waste, nor the fact that I don’t want to see the woman who said that Labour would be even harder on the unemployed than the Tories, but also because I despise this kind of politics. It’s fundamentally Tory, and is very much a form of lobbying and influence peddling. If Reeves wants to meet the Labour rank and file, it should be a meeting organised for them and/or trades unionists. These are the people she should be meeting, in an open forum. It shouldn’t be business people who can afford to pay such costly amounts just to get to sit at some kind of banquet with her.
This seems to me to show how Labour is moving away from its socialist traditions towards an attitude that prizes corporate donors above working people and ordinary members. But as this has been going on for years, this probably won’t surprise you.
Arch-Brexiteer Mahyar Tousi has posted a very interesting little video about the current financial state of the Conservatives. Good news! According to Bloomberg, it’s dire. There’s a £25 million black hole, and the party has had to trigger its overdraft facility simply to pay its staff. They’re also raising the membership fees and asking their members to pay more. Tousi makes the point that membership of the Tory party doesn’t get you much. You don’t get to select the leaders and you have to pay more if you want to attend their conference. They’re also chasing more firms for donations and sponsorship.
Tousi asks if this means that the Tories are no longer Conservative in the sense that they’ve forgotten the values of financial responsibility and strong leadership. And if they aren’t, are they still fit to run the country? He also makes the point that the Tories have been so successful at winning elections because they were able to spend much more money on campaigning. But if they are no longer able to do that, and the Labour party is similarly struggling with financial problems thanks to the unions withdrawing their funding, does this mean that smaller parties have a chance?
Yes, you can see from that comment that he supports Reform or Reclaim and other bonkers parties of that ilk. As for the Tories, I think they’ve been shedding members for several years now because of the way they ignored their wishes for those of the big corporate donors. And now it’s coming back to hit them. Well, I hope they do go down after everything they’ve done to this country, its great working people and the very institutions and practice of politics, democracy and justice. My only reservation is that I can see Starmer hoping to pick up the donors that may have left the Tories, and simply carry on with their policies. Just as New Labour did under Blair.
I’ve also had this email from the pro-NHS, pro-nationalisation organisation, We Own It about a planned demonstration they’re holding against the privatisation of the NHS in February. They’re appealing for people to go to it. I can’t, due to expense and illness, but I’m putting it up here in case there are people interested in it, who may be able to attend.
‘Dear David,
BREAKING: private health companies donated £800,000 to the Conservative Party over the last decade. Now we know why the government is doing nothing about NHS privatisation!
A recent Oxford study linked NHS privatisation to the preventable deaths of 557 people.
It is time to make the government feel the power of organised people over organised money.
Can you sign up to become one of 557 people in Parliament Square from 2 – 4pm on Saturday, 25th February demanding an end to NHS privatisation?
So far, 541 people have signed up. We need 89 people to reach our final goal of 630 (that is, 557 people representing the victims of NHS privatisation, 43 people to help carry signs and banners and 30 stewards to help manage the event).
You are involved in our NHS campaign because you believe that our NHS should work for people, not the greedy private companies that donate to the government.
Unite the Union, Just Treatment, Doctors for the NHS and Socialist Health Association fully agree with you. That is why they are now supporting our action.
It is time we make the government feel the power of organised people over organised money.
We want to bring together 557 people representing the 557 people whose deaths are linked to NHS privatisation to put on a powerful display that can get into the papers.
More press coverage means more pressure on the government. The more of us there are at the action, the more likely the action is to get press coverage.
We need 89 more people to reach our goal. Can you sign up now to join us?
Because of the incredible efforts of our NHS nurses and ambulance workers who are fighting to save our NHS, the government is already feeling pressure.
With the recent study that links NHS privatisation to 557 preventable deaths, there is no better time than now to pile onto that pressure they are feeling.
The government already knows that over 75% of the public, according to our last poll, want to end NHS privatisation. But they don’t feel that people will fight to see that happen.
You can show them from 2 – 4pm on Saturday 25th February in Parliament Square that you will.
The more people join this action, the more powerful it will be. The more powerful it is, the more likely it is to receive coverage from the press.
This coverage will pile on the pressure on the government and start forcing them to take action.
We need 557 people to represent the 557 people whose deaths are linked to NHS privatisation, according to a recent Oxford study.
But we need even more people to make sure the action is big and effective. So after signing up, please send the link to your friends and family, especially those who live in London and ask them to sign up too.
Thank you so much for always standing up against NHS privatisation.
Cat, Johnbosco, Matthew, Kate – the We Own It team
PS: 30 years ago today the British Coal and British Rail (Transfer Proposals) Act 1993 was passed, paving the way for privatisation of our railway. We’ve put together a list of 30 top failures of rail privatisation from the last 30 years. Take a read and share with friends and family.’
Here’s another update on the Tory attack on democracy, this time using the pretext of Brexit to scrap up to 4,000 British laws protecting ordinary Brits and the environment against big business exploitation.
‘Dear David,
The Brexit campaign did not end when the UK left the EU. High priests of the cause, Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, continue to influence government priorities and push damaging legislation such as the Retained EU Law Bill.
They say that the Retained EU Law Billis a simple administrative tool to tidy up UK law following our messy departure from the EU. But the truth is altogether more sinister.
What that Bill actually does is give government ministers powers to scrap up to 4000 perfectly sensible UK laws that enforce environmental standards, protect workers’ rights and help consumers hold big business to account…and all without any further reference to our elected representatives in Parliament.
This Bill is a blatant attempt to further entrench the interests of big business over those of ordinary people and the environment. No wonder they are attempting to rush it through at an indecent pace; it would never pass proper democratic scrutiny.
The fact of the matter is that the Brexit purists in this Sunak government don’t care about democracy. They are only interested in delivering for their wealthy paymasters (spoiler: that’s not you and me), and if that requires them to pass regressive legislation behind a smokescreen of anti-EU sentiment and dangerous xenophobia, then so be it.
They will do anything to perpetuate the illusion that Brexit is something other than a cruel ruse carried out on behalf of the elite beneficiaries of a harsh economic model that puts excessive profits first and people and the environment last.
The Retained EU Law Bill demonstrates the general recklessness of the ongoing Brexit project. Ministers are taking ‘Henry VIII’ powers for themselves and have imposed a deadline of December 2023, beyond which any of the laws on their list that have not been given a reprieve will simply fade into the ether.
Consumer protections…gone. Workers’ rights…gone. Environmental standards…gone. For the Brexit puritans, this would be a proud victory; for the British public, an abject and undemocratic disaster.
By taking this approach, government ministers are effectively cheating Parliament, and therefore the British people, out of our right to scrutinise the laws we must live by. Sunak is effectively placing critical elements of Britain’s future in the hands of a minority of Brexit radicals. No one voted for that, and we should not accept it.
It’s no secret why he’s doing it, either. This Sunak government is so weak that it cannot do anything without the agreement of their most radical faction: those who were never going to be satisfied with Brexit and who want to push this country further into the realm of right-wing extremism. (Just this week, the cranks in that faction forced the government to table an amendmentto the Online Safety Bill that would make it illegal to share videos of small-boat Channel crossings if they were presented in a “positive light”. Wow!)
It’s important to remember where all this started…in the poisonous Brexit referendum campaign. There is a direct line between the lies and fear-mongering of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson in 2016 and the Conservative playbook in 2023. Unfortunately for us, neither of those two charlatans shows any sign of going away. Almost everything Farage says these days suggests he is planning to unleash another wave of Brexit-level political chaos in the coming elections. And just last week, we saw press reports that Johnson received a record-smashing £1,000,000 donation from a wealthy Brexiteer, which some have speculated could fund a campaign to retake Number 10 if/when the Conservatives take a kicking in May’s local elections.
All of this demonstrates why Open Britain’s fight against the “Farage-isation” of UK politics has never been more important or more urgent. We’re determined to ensure that these political wreckers can never exert their will over us again.
Despite their self-congratulation and the symbolic victories they claim, the Brexit campaign has achieved nothing positive for the people of this country, especially the most vulnerable, who endorsed it with the hope that it would improve their lot. As elections approach, we must all resolve to use our democratic power to put this dangerous ideology to bed once and for all.
The Open Britain team
PS – A quick reminder that we and a number of partners in the democracy sector are working to put pressure on Labour to commit to making the changes we need to renew our political system. You can help right now by signing our joint petition here to get Keir Starmer to support proportional representation.‘
This is all deeply alarming, though not entirely unexpected. We warned a few years ago that the Tories wished to replace EU, or EU inspired human rights legislation with a British Bill of Rights, which would be far weaker.
Going through this, I found the legislation banning people from sharing videos of the channel migrants particularly pernicious. I’d seen something about this in the titles of videos from various anti-immigrant groups and people on the web. The impression given was that the government was doing this to stop people knowing about the large numbers of migrants crossing the channel in order to protect the migrants themselves and the supposed official policies protecting and encouraging them. But according to Britain, this is absolutely not the case.
The Tories really are getting desperate. Sunak is flailing around with no new ideas against a wave of strikes which have popular support. Hence the attempts to make the right to strike all about illegal, and repeal EU legislation in order to appease the Brxiteers. People like Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg.
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