summary
The only people with enough power to alter this Government’s
policies are the Tories themselves. They could even bring down
Johnson.
Send a deluge of emails to every
Tory you can think of. Make them all want to end the stream of
complaints!
Get writing!
the
challenge
the state of Britain…
Our objective is to restore normal democratic government to the UK.
- Children are starving
- The economy is falling behind most of the rest of the world, because of the double mismanagement of Covid-19 and our leaving of the EU
- There have been many unnecessary deaths during this pandemic.
- The Union is at risk
This is not a party-political campaign. What is wrong with the UK goes far beyond partisan politics.
It would be perfectly acceptable to have any Government which respects our democratic institutions and processes — including a Conservative one, if that’s what voters choose. Sadly, the current regime shows no such respect. It falls far short of our British ideal.
In its irresponsible frenzy to pander to the interests of big business and the super-rich, with complete disregard for the welfare of everyone else:
- Contracts have been given to the Tories’ cronies without regard to normal tendering processes or any due diligence
- Attempts are underway to limit the power of the judiciary to review Government actions. Judicial review is a vital pillar of our democracy; limiting that will dramatically increase the ability of Government to behave however it likes
- There appears to be an increasing willingness to ignore both the UK’s constitution and international law
- There seems to be a drive towards a no-deal exit from the EU at the end of 2020, even though a significant majority of the population are in favour of a close relationship with our friends and neighbours
- Tory politicians have accepted large donations from supporters with undeniable Russian ties, and the Government has been reluctant to investigate Russian interference in British elections.
the plan
fight the corruption!
Wondering what you can do to fight the decay in our democracy? You’re not as powerless as you might think. We have some suggestions. Together, we can make a difference.
Our Government seems to think it can ignore the 57% of the electorate that didn’t vote it in. Thanks to our first-past-the-post electoral system, the Government has an 80-seat majority in the House of Commons: it is unlikely that opposition parties will be able to bring it down. That doesn’t mean we can’t get it to change course.
If enough party activists become convinced that the future of their party is under threat, they will act to repair the damage. Policies will have to change, with a new leader if necessary. This is how Thatcher was brought down in 1990. If the policies don’t change enough, the regime will be so weak that a General Election or a Government of National Unity will become a realistic prospect.
It is our task to persuade the activists that their future hangs in the balance because Johnson’s policies are so unpopular. Now is the ideal time to strike. We can influence the dialogue within the Conservative party. Write to and contact as broad a base as possible: everyone from Tory MPs and Lords to constituency offices and councillors. We need as many as possible at that conference to realise that a large swathe of the country is extremely unhappy with their policies and will eventually be voting accordingly. They need to understand that their careers are on the line.
This is why a deluge of letters, emails and face-to-face meetings is so important.
how you can help
We have collected a number of resources here. You can do anything from sending a standard email to doing a deep study of some of the subjects we have available, in preparation for meeting your MP by phone or in person. There is also a daily suggestion, and a calendar of events you can check out.
We plan to focus on a different subject every few days. Come back regularly!
Here’s how to join the effort…
We need the Government to be worried that the majority of the people are very unhappy! Everything you can do will help. Let's start with a truly massive email campaign.
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You can find out how to contact your MP from the Parliamentary website. That often gives a constituency address as well as the Westminster one. The site also gives phone numbers, if you would like to ring them. Sending a letter may be taken more seriously than an email; here are some drafts you can edit.
WriteToThem is another useful site, with a lot more detail about your MP, as well as your local government politicians.
If you don't have a Conservative MP, why not contact your local Conservative constituency party office instead? Either way, cc the Conservative chief whip: [email protected] - Best for Britain have a website called hey-mp.uk which makes it very easy to send emails, tweets, etc. to your MP.
- Most MPs have ‘surgeries’ to allow face-to-face meetings with constituents (or these days perhaps a virtual meeting). If you have a Conservative MP, why not arrange a meeting to tell them of your concerns? You could approach Conservative local councillors, too.
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If you would like to contact the Prime Minister directly, please write to:
The Rt Hon Boris Johnson MPYou can also email via the Number 10 website.
Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
London
SW1A 2AA - Protest in person. While protests may be curtailed by the current situation, people have been doing pop-up peaceful protests throughout the UK, for short periods, socially distanced and wearing masks.
now get writing, phoning, talking…
Defend our NHS
March 7, 2021THE ROYAL College of Nursing (RCN) is threatening strike action and says nurses may quit in droves since the proposed 1% pay rise for NHS staff has made them feel "that they are not valued by either the government or perhaps some of the public".
This of course follows the appalling comment in a report by the libertarian Institute of Economic Affairs — which is linked to 14 ministers, including Hancock — that the NHS performance during the pandemic was `nothing special’. This is the same organisation that published an extremely detailed report nine years ago called 'How to abolish the NHS' and still has the consummate nerve to sneer at 'NHS Privatisation Paranoiacs'.
Show the neoliberals in our political elite that our NHS is sacrosanct. Write to a Tory today or sign the Change.org petition.
'Help the poor or face rebellion'
Dec. 2, 2020Update 2020-12-2: The Trussell Trust has called for a freeze on all universal credit deductions after it found that they are the reason why half of all food bank users need help. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of struggling families face benefit caps which could leave them hundreds of pounds a month worse off — and make them destitute; and Sunak has not yet committed to keeping the £20-a-week boost.
‘I see a country very fragmented, very polarised and very divided — more divided than I have ever seen it before’
— Gordon Brown
Gordon Brown says that unless the government comes up with an immediate anti-poverty programme it will face a rebellion from a deeply divided Britain. The former prime minister cited research by the Resolution Foundation showing that unemployment and reduced wages had already cut into the incomes of millions of households. He called on the Government to extend the £20-a-week increase in universal credit beyond next spring, and to increase child benefit.
Meanwhile, MPs are saying that new universal credit claimants should be given a ‘starter payment’ so they can afford food and rent during the five-week wait before normal payments begin. 38 Degrees has also launched a petition in support, as well as one calling for the £20 raise to be given to disabled people as well.
Although new claimants can request loans, these have to be paid back from future payments ‘which are already barely enough to get by on,’ said Stephen Timms, chairman of the work and pensions select committee. The committee, which has a majority of Tory MPs, also calls for the £20-a-week boost, introduced in April as a temporary measure to help the low-paid during the pandemic, to be kept.
If you agree that we should make it easier for the low-paid to afford food and rent, write to a Tory today. And sign this petition and this one.
'Patel must go'
Nov. 22, 2020‘If I were prime minister, the home secretary would have been removed from her job’
— Keir Starmer
The row continues over Priti Patel; Ken Clarke has now expressed concern over the prime minister’s refusal to sack her for bullying civil servants.
The former home secretary said he was particularly worried by the resignation of Sir Alex Allan, the prime minister’s ethics adviser, who quit after Johnson overruled his conclusion that Patel had broken ministerial code.
If you think this is an appalling way for ministers and, for that matter, the Prime Minister to behave, take action now.
GLP 'reveals proof of corrupt procurement process'
Nov. 20, 2020Update 20-11-20: The National Audit Office says that almost 500 PPE suppliers with links to senior Tories were given ‘high-priority’ status which meant their bid for government contracts were 10 times more likely to succeed. Meanwhile, one expert said the Moonshot scheme struck her as ‘the most unethical proposal for use of public funds or for screening that I'd ever seen’.
Good Law Project (GLP) says that it has seen leaked documents which reveal that Cabinet Office contacts and others have been helping 'VIPs' sell PPE to the Government outside normal procurement channels.
'The leaked documents also evidence a startling opportunity for price gouging by favoured suppliers,' says the GLP. 'It is only if prices were more than 25% above the average paid to other suppliers that questions were to be asked about value for money.'
This meant that these firms were able to make enormous margins on contracts which were sometimes worth hundreds of millions of pounds.
If you think it is wrong that these firms have been enabled to make huge profits from our hard-earned taxes — in this pandemic, moreover, when so many are facing crushing poverty — tell a Tory now.
Call to action to save our planet
Nov. 15, 2020UPDATE 2020-11-16: Johnson is clashing with the Treasury over plans to fight climate change and create tens of thousands of jobs. The Treasury is concerned about costs; earlier this year, Tory donors apparently reacted with fury to Sunak’s plans to increase taxes on the wealthy...
‘No more kicking the can down the road till 2050’ — Caroline Lucas, MP
The Government’s climate change adviser says reaching net zero carbon emissions in the UK is likely to be much cheaper than previously thought — but the Government is not yet doing enough to meet our legally binding target of net zero emissions by 2050.
Chris Stark, the chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change, the UK’s independent statutory adviser, says it is essential for the Government to have a coherent strategy before the UK hosting of the next UN climate summit, Cop26, in November 2021. He also criticised the current policy of `lumping costs onto the electricity bill’, which hits the poorest the hardest, and said there was `a lovely opportunity’ for the Treasury to ensure a fair and cheap transition.
Meanwhile, 38 Degrees are also calling on the Government to step up action on climate change. They have launched a petition asking Johnson to back Caroline Lucas’s Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill, which has cross-party support from seven political parties.
If you want our country to play its part in stopping the world burning up around us — without the cost falling, as ever, on the backs of the poor — tell the Tories now. And sign the petition.
People rally behind Rashford to help hungry children after Tory vote
Oct. 22, 2020Update: 2020-10-26 Pressure is mounting on Downing Street; more than 2,000 top child-health specialists have signed a letter condemning the Tories, saying they see 'far too many' children who don't have enough to eat, and it is 'heartbreaking'. Meanwhile, Labour plans to hold another Commons vote; and Rashford's petition for measures to stop child food poverty is nearing 900,000 signatures.
“Never forget this. In a time of national crisis, they subsidised their own meals despite £80k salaries, propped up their wealthy mates, and left over a million children to go hungry”
— tweet by anti-poverty campaigner Jack Monroe
Last week footballer and hunger hero Marcus Rashford spoke of his 'despair' as Tory MPs voted down the plan to stop 1.4m children going hungry. The Labour motion to provide food vouchers as a substitute for free school meals was defeated by a majority of 61, with 322 votes to 261.
Pressure is mounting on the Government to change its mind on this issue, as they did in the summer. Write to a Tory today. And sign the petition.
Government's duty is to get a Brexit deal
Oct. 21, 2020Update: 2020-10-21: More than 100,000 have signed the European Movement’s petition against a no-deal Brexit. If you agree that no deal would be a disaster, sign the petition.
The duty of a government is to its country: to the welfare of its people - which, on the whole, requires a healthy economy. Yet our Government seems intent on a no-deal scenario which could hit our economy three times harder than Covid-19 has, as ITV reports: with shortages of food and vital medicines and, in a worst-case scenario, water rationing and power outages.
In this scenario, the major beneficiary will be hedge funds. Ordinary people, however, will suffer. Our people voted, with a small majority, to leave the EU. They did not choose a no-deal scenario, with its inevitable chaos and economic damage. Protect our people. Take action now.
Petition to end child food poverty
Oct. 16, 2020Update 2020-10-18:
As Rashford's petition nears 300,000 signatures, Labour has joined the campaign, saying it will force a vote this week unless the Government agrees to expand the free school meals scheme.
“This is not going away any time soon and neither am I”
— Marcus Rashford MBE
Hunger hero Marcus Rashford has vowed to fight on after Downing Street rejected his call for free school meals to be provided during all school holidays. It is one of several measures he is calling for in a parliamentary petition which has already reached nearly 200,000 signatures just a day after going online.
The footballer is also backing the School Breakfast Bill, which is aimed at guaranteeing children in disadvantaged schools a free breakfast and has the support of a cross-party group of 65 MPs. If you think it is wrong that children are going hungry in the 21st century, write to a Tory today — and sign Rashford’s petition.
MPs and GLP take legal action against the Government
Oct. 14, 2020
“Huge sums of public money have been awarded to companies with no discernible expertise. Sometimes the main qualification seems to be a political connection with key government figures”
— Jolyon Maugham QC, director of Good Law Project
Green MP Caroline Lucas, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran and Labour MP Debbie Abrahams have joined Good Law Project (GLP) in taking legal action against the Government over its failure to account for £3bn spent on private contracts since lockdown.
If you think that the Government should account for taxpayers’ money, and that money to combat Covid should go to the NHS and not private firms, write to a Tory today. And, if you can, consider making a donation to the Good Law Project to help this legal battle.
Another Test and Trace fiasco
2020-09-20“We got to the London test centre… they [ the site staff ] got us to get a QR code by booking a test in Aberdeen”
“The test helpline said it would be quicker to wait out quarantine for two weeks than get a test”
— a shocking Guardian report highlights the fiasco that our test-and-trace system has become.
Health secretary Matt Hancock added insult to injury by reprimanding people for ‘gaming the system’: “It’s incumbent on all of us to … tell our constituents that tests are available in large numbers and the average distance travelled is 5.8 miles … And people should take this seriously and not game the system.” Just one day later, as cases rose to nearly 4,000 a day, we were told that tests will now be rationed.
If you don’t think this is good enough, tell the Tories now.
the Internal Market Bill
2020-09-16Update: The row hasn’t calmed down at all in the last 24 hours. A quick Google search for today’s items on this subject (17th Sept) reveals anger from around the world, from the devolved governments, and from domestic commentators on all sides of the debate.
In yesterday’s Yorkshire Bylines, Amanda Robinson draws attention to the serious implications of the new Internal Market Bill, which seeks to abandon the Northern Ireland Protocol laid out in the Withdrawal Agreement, instead reinstating a land border. This is a flagrant breach of international law, it would also destroy the Good Friday Agreement, and risk a return to violence.
Not only that, but the Bill also seeks to confer further sweeping powers on the Government which amount to an unprecedented and very disconcerting power-grab by this regime.
Please help us to urge all right-thinking Conservatives to reject these dangerous steps towards an elected dictatorship.
Failures in handling the pandemic
2020-09-14
“Government incompetence is going to cost lives…
and for them to be asleep on the job is unforgivable”
— Greenwich Council leader Danny Thorpe
A week ago, Sir Keir Starmer warned that the NHS Test and Trace system was “on the verge of collapse”. Since then he has accused Boris Johnson of “ignoring the problem” and of failing to give “honest answers” about the deep problems the test-and-trace system is facing.
Now, according to the Sunday Times, a leaked ‘sensitive’ report reveals that tens of thousands of Covid-19 tests are being binned; there is a backlog of 185,000 swabs, and tests are being sent to Italy and Germany. Meanwhile, cases in the UK are on the rise.
If you think this is appalling, call for action now.
XR is not an organised crime syndicate
2020-09-11
Home secretary Priti Patel is considering reclassifying Extinction Rebellion as an organised crime group, after activists blockaded printing presses owned by ‘climate change sceptic’ Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
If you think it is appalling to criminalise non-violent protesters who are objecting to newspapers playing down climate change while the world burns around us, call for action now.
NHS, drug shortages and no-deal Brexit
2020-09-10In October last year this country was warned that, in the event of a no-deal Brexit, a lack of vital medicines could mean patients would die.
Dame Sally Davies, who was England’s chief medical officer at the time, said the government could not guarantee there would be no deaths if the UK crashed out of the EU without an agreement, and insisted that patients’ lives were at risk.
Yet, despite that warning, we are apparently still set to crash out without a deal — except that now we also have the threat of Covid-19 to face.
If you think this is insane, call for action now.
The scandal of food insecurity
2020-09-01Footballer and hunger hero Marcus Rashford is continuing his fight against child food poverty (see Archie Bland’s story in the Guardian). If you agree that millions of children in the UK should not be going hungry in this day and age, ask the Tories to accede to his requests.
Another threat to the National Health Service?
2020-09-01
An article by Polly Toynbee in the Guardian highlights the latest ruse in Government attempts to make the NHS unfit for purpose. There are plans to apply financial penalties to trusts which fall below targets. It’s a real “gotcha”: if you haven’t got enough resources to do what we ask, we’re going to take away some of what you already had. Of course, this plays into the Government agenda to prove the NHS not fit for purpose, opening the way to yet more privatisation.
Let the Tories know you think this is unfair.
Russian influence
2020-08-27Many people are uncomfortable about the lack of investigation into Russian funding of UK political parties…
Join the effort…
…but, whatever you do, stay safe!
Want your event added to the calendar? Email [email protected] with the title, location, date, start and finish times, and any other info you want added. If possible, include details of a contact for the event.
(if your device doesn’t load the calendar, you can try this link)
protest in the time of covid
Protesting safely during a pandemic presents a number of challenges, which is why Save Democracy UK includes a lot of online activities and other totally safe options, such as letters and phone calls.
For protests in person, small and frequent protests work best. If you want to protest in person, try to maintain a distance of 2m, wear masks if you can and outdoor is best:
- Clear messages — one theme works best
- Easy-to-read banners and placards
- Record it either with video or photos and post to several different social media accounts
- Create a hashtag to go along with the event, for example #CONSoviets has been used for a protest about government links to Russia. Use any appropriate existing hashtags too
about us
corruption!
We are concerned citizens and want to save the UK from political and economic harm. This site is curated by Kim Spence-Jones, an engineer and entrepreneur; the group includes civil-rights lawyers, legal academics and civil-rights activists.
We believe our democratic institutions are in peril both from outside forces and our own Government. We need to act, fast and collectively. We have created this site as one way to counteract this threat. Please share it with people who feel the same and want to join with us.
You can contact us by email:
[email protected]
You can also find us on twitter:
@SaveDemocracyU1
support us
We would love to be able to spread the message more widely. If you feel able to support that effort, it would be massively appreciated: