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(((Dan Hodges))) reposted
Andrew Snowden MP 🇬🇧
@A_J_Snowden
·
4m
So, bets on PMQs this week?

Kemi: When did you find out Morgan McSweeneys phone had been stolen and what did you do to recover and secure the critical data on it?

Starmer: We’ve announced a new breakfast club in Barnsley.

https://x.com/A_J_Snowden/status/2036724988120629739

Doesn't it tell you all you need to know about todays Tory Party that when the world is in real peril their MPs are staying awake at night debating whether Kemi should lead PMQs on the theft of Morgan McSweeney's phone?

Irrespective of politics it should concern all of us that McSweeney's phone, with all the confidential information and government communications, was stolen and dismissed by the police with just a crime number

This phone could provide enormous potential for blackmail and should have been immediately referred to the National Crime Agency

If Katie Lam is the future of anything then they are truly fucked.

Personally I think the next Tory defection will be to LD in a strong LD area, from a moderate one nation Tory who is unable to accept Badenoch death March right right right.

There aren't many Tory MPs from strong LD areas left though, most LD leaning areas in the likes of Surrey and Oxfordshire and Hertfordshire and Berkshire already went LD at the 2024 general election. The few who did hold on in those areas like Hunt will stay Tory regardless

Here are the possible LD gains and the Tory candidates for defection to LDs:

East Hampshire: Damian Hinds
Farnham and Bordon: Gregory Stafford
Godalming and Ash : Sir Jeremy Hunt
Hamble Valley: Paul Holmes
Romsey and Southampton North : Caroline Nokes
North Cotswolds: Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
North Dorset: Simon Hoare

All unlikely defectors I think.

Indeed and less than 10% combined of the even relatively small current Tory parliamentary party, only ones I could see possibly going LD of those are Nokes and Hoare. Though if Cleverly replaced Badenoch as Tory leader after May I think even they would stay

As I predicted, mandatory WFH here we come.

If we're really lucky we might even get a de facto lockdown

Huge energy price rises pile pressure on British companies

Warning of businesses going under as cost of gas set to rise by as much as 80 per cent, while electricity bills to increase by up to 30 per cent

Businesses across the UK are facing “eye-watering” rises in their energy bills because of the conflict in the Middle East, analysis for The Times suggests.

Unlike households, companies are not insulated from volatility in gas and electricity prices, which have almost doubled since the Iran war began.

The problem is particularly acute for the thousands of companies that fix their annual price tariff at the start of the financial year in April and will face an immediate sharp rise in their bills.

Analysis by the energy consultancy Cornwall Insight found that as a result of the conflict, business users’ electricity bills would rise by up to 30 per cent, while the cost of gas could go up by as much as 80 per cent. This would mean that a business such as a larger retail and leisure site, on an average 12-month electricity contract, would have an annual bill of £578,000 — £95,000 more than early last month.

For gas, bills have risen by £376,000, reaching just over £1.02 million a year, an increase of nearly 60 per cent, based on the latest wholesale prices.

On Tuesday Wael Sawan, the chief executive of Shell, warned that Europe risked fuel shortages as soon as next month. At an industry conference in Houston, Texas, he said the global oil and gas supply squeeze had already forced parts of Asia to cut energy consumption and that the “ripple effect” threatened to spread west within days.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/huge-energy-price-rises-pile-pressure-on-british-companies-6w9m0j0xk

Forget the price and the bills that take up most of that story and focus on the end: shortages. If there is no petrol, the price doesn't matter.

The really bad news, as we saw after SMO inflation, is an upsurge in calls by misguided but influential pundits for tightening the money supply and higher interest rates to curb inflation. Idiots!

One of the great logical fallacies of our times: that imported commodity inflation is somehow the fault of over-exuberant businesses and consumers and can best be held in check by choking off money supply.

As you said, exactly the same problem in 2022: people who should know better failing to distinguish between home grown demand driven inflation and external supply shocks.

I completely agree. The correct response to an external shock like this is to cut interest rates not increase them. And to reduce taxes so that any windfall gained by the government is available to maintain demand. And of course to reopen the North Sea but that is a longer term help not immediate.

What we will get instead is a tightening of monetary policy by increases in base rates and the government spending lots of money it doesn’t have to boost consumption amongst its favoured clientele.

Idiots.

That is because of the obsession with the 2% inflation target given to the BoE. It gives little other option. A broader remit to balance inflation and growth is needed.

Growth especially. We urgently need to both reduce consumption and increase investment for future growth. Monetary policy should be focused on assisting fiscal policy in supporting that.