“People’s faith in politics is at an all-time low”, Carol Vorderman, who was recently likened to a “celebrity attack dog” by Conservative MP Johnny Mercer, told Deborah Ross in The Sunday Times magazine at the weekend.
The former Countdown star is among a number of influential women who have decided to use their platform to cry foul on the way Britain is being run under Tory rule, pointing to recent cronyism scandals among other crises.
Indicators suggest that the message is cutting through, with 66 per cent of Brits saying they support a general election within the next six months – the highest percentage ever as disgust with the government grows.
Polling elsewhere suggests that the environment, Britain’s split with the European Union and the cruel treatment of people seeking asylum in the UK are increasingly concerning members of the public.
Much of that is thanks to a handful of brilliant women, who have campaigned passionately to bring these issues to the fore.
We profile them all below:
Former Countdown star Carol Vorderman says she felt compelled to speak out about the sorry state of British politics during the Covid-19 pandemic as the extent of the cronyism crisis became clear.
Speaking to The Sunday Times, she said: “There were wonderful people, good human beings, trying to help other human beings, yet for others it was a time of immense greed.
“I can’t get my head around it.
“To defraud the scared and the dying is the lowest you can go.
“And it was enabled by a Tory government that has never aplogised, not ever.
“Well, they say, we were doing our best but NO, NO, NO, NO.
“Doing their best would have been finding someone who said, ‘I think I can get access to PPE but I don’t want any profit, just my cost covered’.
“Not, ‘I’ve got this shell company, or I’ve just made up a company, and I want to make millions of pounds out of it’.
When the Conservatives successfully moved to curtail the right to protest in the UK there was only one person standing in the way; Baroness Jenny Jones.
The Green Party peer tabled a fatal motion after the government used a Ministerial decree to overturn a vote in the House of Lords.
It was the first time ever that the government has tried to use secondary legislation to directly overturn the will of Parliament.
Unfortunately, Labour peers were nowhere to be seen on the day and the legislation sailed through.
Misinformation surrounding the asylum debate has allowed the government to dangerously skew public discourse on the matter.
A September 2021 Committee gave Jonathan Gullis the opportunity to raise questions over why migrants don’t simply stay in the first safe country they reach rather than travel to the UK, as is parrotted by much of the right-wing press.
Thankfully, Zoe Gardner was on hand to expertly put him back in his box.
She later recalled similar opposition in this interview with The London Economic.
Marina Purkiss and Jemma Forte have been vocal campaigners against the Conservative Party’s shocking track record in government, using their popular podcast ‘The Trawl’ to speak out about crucial issues.
Purkiss has also been particularly vocal on the UK’s damaging split with the European Union and the effect it is having on people day-in-day-out.
Here’s her most recent TLE interview:
Corruption hasn’t been far away from UK politics over the past decade, and it extends far beyond the cronyism crisis we saw during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Here’s Grace Blakeley explaining how tax havens are so easily abused by the super-rich:
PoliticsJOE political correspondent Ava Evans is the eyes and ears inside Westminster and has been a vocal critic of the government’s asylum policy and the UK’s split from the European Union among other things.
Here she explains why the latest bid to resurface Ascension Island plans is nothing more than a waste of time and money:
Privatisation of essential services in Britain is widely viewed as an outright disaster – that is unless you are a shareholder of said companies, in which case it has been an absolute triumph.
At the heart of the fightback to reclaim the industries UK taxpayers once owned is Novara Media’s contributing editor, Ash Sarkar.
This Question Time appearance exposes how privatisation broke the water industry:
Brexit has dealt a hammer blow to UK businesses, with a fresh avalanche of rules and taxes set to hit them from October.
Environmentalist and businesswoman Deborah Meaden has been at the forefront of the charge against Britain’s split with the EU, outlining the damaging impact it is having on commerce and, as a result, people’s livelihoods.
Her ‘take no prisoners’ approach has seen her win plaudits from across the political divide.
And if videos like this are anything to go by, they are very much deserved.
Susanna Reid is an unwitting entrant on this list, namely because her balanced and unbiased reporting means that she is not anti-government per se.
But her relentless pursuit of honesty and transparency in public debate has made her a key figurehead in Britain’s political awakening, a position that is neatly shown in this clip featuring a clash with the home secretary of the United Kingdom:
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