A Tory source tells the UK i newspaper: “The iceberg is getting closer and closer… and you’ve got Liz and Rishi doing a ridiculous leadership contest. We’ve got nothing, we’ve done nothing.”

UK government ministers were accused of a “dereliction of duty” today for not providing anyone for the media round this morning, leaving presenters to ask why no one from the government was prepared to face the public. This followed the energy regulator Ofgem announcing that the price cap will increase to £3,549 on 1st October.

In contrast, Lisa Nandy (Labour’s shadow chancellor) appeared on BBC Breakfast and called on the government to follow Labour’s lead and freeze energy bills. She said, “The fact that no Government minister is available to come on your programme today is just appalling. They are not here to give assurances, they are not here to set out what they are going to do. That is a dereliction of duty.”

Today, news outlets in the UK are reporting that water companies have failed to monitor the amount of sewage being discharged into the sea in popular resort towns. This is a disgrace and I’ve supported a petition calling on the Government to renationalise the water supply as the industry, in its current form, is no longer fit for purpose.

Sign the petition

One reason that energy prices in the UK have skyrocketed.

The EU price cap on gas is 43.99 Euros per mega watt hour. The UK is £263.79 per mega watt hour.

Enough Is Enough! There’s a growing pushback in the UK against the status quo.

We’re not in this together, we never have been.

Read more here

Great quote from the Daily Mirror Whitehall correspondent Mikey Smith on the campaign to keep Boris in No 10.

“Imagine there being an active campaign to get Boris Johnson to stay on as PM, and not one to bring Gordon Brown back. Not saying either is the answer, but one seems objectively less of a batshit idea than the other.”

Peppa Pig and prolonged pauses – it is, I think, time to start worrying about the prime minister.

At the end of this speech, in an interview with ITV, the interviewer, having watched the speech, and gauged the audience’s reaction, saw fit to pose the following question: “Is everything OK, prime minister?”

Read more on The Independent

Mark Barrow has spent thirty years filming underwater clips that document the state of Britain’s rivers and streams. In the last twenty years, he has seen the percentage of UK waterways classified as healthy drop from over 90% to less than 15%. Now, as water companies are effectively granted free licence to pump sewage directly into rivers, he says he has witnessed whole stretches of water completely devoid of life. View his report on YouTube

Perhaps the country is finally about to see through Boris Johnson. Everyone does in the end.

Boris Johnson is the prime minister of a country that is a genuine world leader on carbon reduction. And here he was, covering the arses of the countries that deliberately sabotaged Cop26, for no reason beyond his own juvenile boosterism.

Read the full article on the Independent

Leave Boris Johnson alone – this exotic creature is Labour’s greatest asset | The Independent

Starmer suggests PM is using Brexit fights to distract from other areas.

“There’s a little bit of me, Andrew, I am afraid that can’t help think that the prime minister is constantly trying to pick a fight on things like this so he hopes people don’t look elsewhere in the forest, which are things like the Owen Paterson affair.”