News
Good morning and welcome to your Sunday morning daily briefing from the team at Britain Unbound. Today the news will see focus on the following topics:
- The Unite The Kingdom (UTK) Event in London
- The Makerfield By-Election and Andy Burnham Candidacy
- Wes Streeting Speech and Wish to Rejoin the EU
The Unite The Kingdom (UTK) Event in London
Despite the best attempts from the UK Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, to foretell a day of violence in London on Saturday, the UTK march took place with very little issue and need for police intervention. The organizers will no doubt be very pleased with this, as there had been numerous reports of agitators within the crowd trying to create a scene.
The Britain Unbound team did however enjoy the fact that, when the Prime Minister refused entry to the UK for 13 intended speakers at the event, those from the EU were prevented using powers regained through Brexit. He was only able to prevent their access to the UK, by being outside of the EU.
The Makerfield By-Election, and Andy Burnham Candidacy
As a cross-party entity, Britain Unbound takes no position on the internal party politics of the Labour Party. However the choice of Makerfield as the potential site for Andy Burnham to re-enter the political ring for Labour leadership, and the results of the recent local elections, set the scene for an effective Leave vs Remain battle. Andy Burnham has made no secret of his wish to see the UK rejoin the EU, and with Reform UK performing very well in the Makerfield constituency, both sides of the divide will likely throw everything at this by-election.
- See the local election results in Makerfield at the following link here
Wes Streeting Speech and Wish to Rejoin the EU
Andy Burnham is not the only person in the running for the Labour leadership, brandishing their pro-EU credentials to try to win over the disaffected rejoin voters to their cause. Wes has previously commented that he would support the UK rejoining the EU Customs Union (despite this not actually being possible under current EU treaty terms), but his speech went further and labelled Brexit a "catastrophe".
- Julian Jessop wrote back in December on why a UK-EU Customs Union would be a bad idea, which you can read here
