Because making ourselves America's b*tch has always worked out so well for us.
Has Putinguy1983 hacked your account?
Pretty much, yes, absolutely it has, though as the article says Truss has been out in front of Biden and Blinken, and not just behind following them. Johnson was too.
I think our foreign and security policy should be guided by our own interests, not Neocon talking points. On Russia, which represents a security threat to us, we should absolutely be standing up to Putin alongside America and anyone else who is up for it. Read through my posts, I have never said anything different. But the China-US rivalry is different, as China isn't a threat to our security, and frankly a lot of the bluster on the US side is down to their own sense of supremacy being threatened. That is their problem, not ours.
China absolutely is a threat to our security, even more than Russia is.
As horrendous as Putin's invasion of Ukraine is, China invading Taiwan would be an order of magnitude worse. Ukraine is a substantial grain exporter and Russia a substantial energy exporter so this war has helped fuel a cost of living crisis with energy and food, but Taiwan is the leading global supplier of high end electronic chips that run the modern economy and China is the leading global exporter full stop.
A China/Taiwan war would be utterly catastrophic for the global economy and thus our own security in a way that would absolutely dwarf our current crisis. Joining with the USA, Japan, Australia and other allies in deterring that risk is great value for money and is another reason why Putin's invasion of Ukraine must be seen to fail, to deter China too.
The world today is all interconnected, you can't look at one alone and ignore the rest of the globe.
The deterrence value of whatever paltry forces we could project in the Taiwan Strait is not going to be the difference between China invading Taiwan or not. This is the kind of Neocon talking points that got hundreds of British servicemen and women killed in Iraq. If the world economy is that dependent on key components from a geopolitical flash point I would suggest investment in supply diversification may represent a safer and cheaper course of action.
To do my best Chandler Bing impression - Could you be any more wrong?
The deterrence value of UK forces operating alone would not be the difference, that is true.
But the UK isn't operating alone. The deterrence value of the UK and the USA, Australia, India, Japan, Poland and the rest of the civilised world standing together in unison is immense. This is one area whereby working together we are more than the sum of our parts.
You are as utterly naive and reprehensible as the so-called "realists" who wanted to sell out Ukraine at the start of the conflict as Putin's victory was "inevitable" so we may as well accept that reality.
You are being naïve if you think the US is simply defending the "free world" here rather than defending its own hegemonic position. Of course the US has every right to do this, and in many ways its hegemony is preferable to the alternatives, but I just don't think this is our conflict. Ukraine is our conflict, because it will determine the security of the whole of Europe and Russia is an expansionist power on our doorstep. Anyway, I look forward to you signing up so you can put your own life at risk in pursuit of America's foreign policy goals, rather than just other people's.
If it were only the US that were worried about the risk of China invading Taiwan you might have some credibility that it is just the US defending its own position. Its not though, its the entire civilised world who are uniting because they know the threat is very real.
Stop and look at what China has already been willing to do with the Tibetans, Hong Kong and the Uighur. That you can look at that and seriously say "China is not a threat" is baffling, you are an apologist for evil.
Apologist for evil, give me a break. You drink too much coffee. You can't divide the world up into white hats and black hats. China has done lots of bad stuff, as have other countries. I am not defending them, I find their system of government reprehensible. But they are not an aggressively expansionist power and never have been, unlike Russia or for that matter Britain. I don't think we need to get involved in some war on the other side of the world where the link to British interests is not absolutely clear. And to be honest I find it odd that people who claim to be British patriots are so ready to embrace the agenda of another foreign power on this issue.
Some parts of the world are shades of grey, but (and this must be my famous "reactionary" attitude according to @Nigel_Foremain ) I greatly dislike the antiquated term "black and white" since it implies black = bad and white = good.
The use of white/lightness for good and black/darkness for bad long predates the use of white and black to describe skin colour.
And I believe occurs in bantu and other impeccably black languages
Truss' plan of borrowing to fund tax cuts could be brilliant or a disaster. It might force higher interest rates from the BoE, mind.
Certainly a risk.
It’s not often I say something nice about Liz Truss, but she has, to her credit, said her tax cutting is going to cost £38B each and every year, which sounds like such a lot of money to find that it sounds plausible?
So the next question is how is £38B each year going to be found? If it’s entirely borrowing and added to debt, what is the impact? And can we trust it not to be made up largely from cuts and austerity instead?
Because making ourselves America's b*tch has always worked out so well for us.
Has Putinguy1983 hacked your account?
Pretty much, yes, absolutely it has, though as the article says Truss has been out in front of Biden and Blinken, and not just behind following them. Johnson was too.
I think our foreign and security policy should be guided by our own interests, not Neocon talking points. On Russia, which represents a security threat to us, we should absolutely be standing up to Putin alongside America and anyone else who is up for it. Read through my posts, I have never said anything different. But the China-US rivalry is different, as China isn't a threat to our security, and frankly a lot of the bluster on the US side is down to their own sense of supremacy being threatened. That is their problem, not ours.
China absolutely is a threat to our security, even more than Russia is.
As horrendous as Putin's invasion of Ukraine is, China invading Taiwan would be an order of magnitude worse. Ukraine is a substantial grain exporter and Russia a substantial energy exporter so this war has helped fuel a cost of living crisis with energy and food, but Taiwan is the leading global supplier of high end electronic chips that run the modern economy and China is the leading global exporter full stop.
A China/Taiwan war would be utterly catastrophic for the global economy and thus our own security in a way that would absolutely dwarf our current crisis. Joining with the USA, Japan, Australia and other allies in deterring that risk is great value for money and is another reason why Putin's invasion of Ukraine must be seen to fail, to deter China too.
The world today is all interconnected, you can't look at one alone and ignore the rest of the globe.
The deterrence value of whatever paltry forces we could project in the Taiwan Strait is not going to be the difference between China invading Taiwan or not. This is the kind of Neocon talking points that got hundreds of British servicemen and women killed in Iraq. If the world economy is that dependent on key components from a geopolitical flash point I would suggest investment in supply diversification may represent a safer and cheaper course of action.
To do my best Chandler Bing impression - Could you be any more wrong?
The deterrence value of UK forces operating alone would not be the difference, that is true.
But the UK isn't operating alone. The deterrence value of the UK and the USA, Australia, India, Japan, Poland and the rest of the civilised world standing together in unison is immense. This is one area whereby working together we are more than the sum of our parts.
You are as utterly naive and reprehensible as the so-called "realists" who wanted to sell out Ukraine at the start of the conflict as Putin's victory was "inevitable" so we may as well accept that reality.
You are being naïve if you think the US is simply defending the "free world" here rather than defending its own hegemonic position. Of course the US has every right to do this, and in many ways its hegemony is preferable to the alternatives, but I just don't think this is our conflict. Ukraine is our conflict, because it will determine the security of the whole of Europe and Russia is an expansionist power on our doorstep. Anyway, I look forward to you signing up so you can put your own life at risk in pursuit of America's foreign policy goals, rather than just other people's.
If it were only the US that were worried about the risk of China invading Taiwan you might have some credibility that it is just the US defending its own position. Its not though, its the entire civilised world who are uniting because they know the threat is very real.
Stop and look at what China has already been willing to do with the Tibetans, Hong Kong and the Uighur. That you can look at that and seriously say "China is not a threat" is baffling, you are an apologist for evil.
Apologist for evil, give me a break. You drink too much coffee. You can't divide the world up into white hats and black hats. China has done lots of bad stuff, as have other countries. I am not defending them, I find their system of government reprehensible. But they are not an aggressively expansionist power and never have been, unlike Russia or for that matter Britain. I don't think we need to get involved in some war on the other side of the world where the link to British interests is not absolutely clear. And to be honest I find it odd that people who claim to be British patriots are so ready to embrace the agenda of another foreign power on this issue.
Some parts of the world are shades of grey, but (and this must be my famous "reactionary" attitude according to @Nigel_Foremain ) I greatly dislike the antiquated term "black and white" since it implies black = bad and white = good.
The use of white/lightness for good and black/darkness for bad long predates the use of white and black to describe skin colour.
Language evolves though, we don't still speak ye olde English.
Continuing to use such language now is repugnant to me. 👎
Team Truss obviously very happy. Team Sunak very happy. But perhaps the happiest people I’ve spoken to this afternoon are Labour people… Mordaunt was, by some way, the candidate that there were most worried about. They’ve been hoping for some time it would be Sunak V Truss. https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1549791598019575808
The problem with Mourdaunt was that people projected on her all their hopes and dreams and created the image of some sort of perfect Tory leader, but the brutal reality was that didn’t stack up. That and the Daily Mail did for her.
I was very much Team Penny, I don’t think anyone thought she was perfect. I think most people thought that her many strengths outweighed her weaknesses. The viciousness of the onslaught of briefings and what masquerades as journalism was in no way proportionate. It’s a very serious stain on the broad centre right space. I’m the bitterest I’ve been as a party member in a long time.
If they'd been against Truss, they could have absolutely destroyed the woman; it's not like the material wasn't there - she was a Lib Dem ffs.
That she was a Lib Dem is not a weakness. Churchill was once a Liberal too. People who evolve are more interesting than those who don't.
Tony Blair when he was young was an avowed Trotskist, while Darling, Milburn, Reid and Mandelson were all avowed Communists when they were young too. People change.
Changing your mind is fine. The thing about Truss is how polarised the changes are. Utterly convinced about one thing and then utterly convinced about the opposite. No nuance, It’s not an evolution, it’s chaos.
It is evolution, it is perfectly normal that once you have changed you accept your new position with the "zeal of the convert".
I was a Remainer at the start of the EU referendum campaign. I now have views in line with Truss's. Its not chaos, its evolution.
Flip-flopping back and forth rapidly at the drop of every opinion poll showing +1 to one side and then +1 to the other would be chaos. Not following with a zeal your new position once you've reached it.
" I was a remainer" . Pull the other one. You are the most reactionary poster on this site. You are the original young fogey Colonel Blimp. You might think making this claim adds cred to your position but it doesn't. It just points out to us that you are honest as Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Both of whom you clearly admire in spite of their obvious problem with telling the truth.
Oh give over the broken record. The fact that you're too thick to let the fact many people, not just myself, confirm I was pro-Remain penetrate your one-dimensional caricatured worldview of people just goes to show how stupid you are. People are more complicated than you can wrap your head around it seems.
I am not reactionary, Indeed I have frequently been called "woke" in a lot of the other debates on this site.
What I am is someone who unabashedly thinks that democracy and therefore nationalism is a very good thing and so too is low tax economics. I think internationalism undermines democracy, but that isn't reactionary - I wanted to see a more democratic EU which I thought was viable until Cameron's reforms failed which is when I switched to Leave and I haven't looked back since.
That you consider nationalism to be terrible is your own weakness, not mine.
I too think nationalism is a 'bad thing' on the whole. It's been the cause of many wars and has been repeatedly, and still is, used to stoke up hatred.
Overall, I cannot see what it's good for. We can cherish our history and our cultures without nationalism.
Agreed, but I also really value times when someone I disagree with lays out their views so clearly, as @BartholomewRoberts has done. I think it raises the tone of political debate, and prompts good discussions that can move people's thinking on.
I am interested in exploring this further. I think if I had to hang my hat on one aspect of our political system that I'd fight for, it would be democracy itself. In that sense I agree with Bart. But I also agree with Benpointer that valuing democracy doesn't mean you need to value nationalism, indeed nationalism more often stymies democracy than helps it (e.g. I think the EU could function more democratically if, throughout its development, nation states had been less important, and both hyper-local and supra-national groupings had been seen as the key ones to focus on).
Bart - can you say more about why you pin democracy to nationalism in this way? Specifically, can you answer why you think democracy works better at the national level than, say, a combination of much stronger regional assemblies with an overarching supra-national assembly (I'm tempted to cite the US as an example of what I mean, but as soon as you cite specific examples it is easy to focus on their specific flaws, so maybe better to keep the discussion theoretical).
In my view democracy at the national level is precisely the wrong scale to be working at - big enough to be impersonal and to leave many constituencies out in the cold (cf Scottish nationalism), but small enough to be unable to cope with the major issues we currently face (climate change, Chinese aggression, effective taxation of global businesses).
Nationalism and democracy go hand-in-hand. Nationalism is a belief that the people of the nation should run the nation, while democracy is a belief that those who run the nation should be elected. Having those of the nation elect those who run the nation is nationalist democracy and is a very good thing.
There antithesis of nationalism used to be imperialism. Nationalism arose in conflict to imperialism - a belief in your nation ruling over other nations. Anyone who seeks to rule over other countries is engaging in imperialism and undermining other nations nationalism.
The "wars" many people ascribe to nationalism should instead be ascribed to imperialism, which is nationalisms opposite, not nationalism.
Gandhi was an Indian nationalist, he wanted India ruled by Indians rather than Brits - there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Hitler was not a nationalist. He didn't want the French ruled by the French, he wanted them ruled by the Germans. He was an imperialist. Yes the name of his party included nationalist, but it also included the term socialist, sensible people recognise that there is more than just a name involved and he wasn't a socialist in the end - he wasn't a nationalist in the end either.
The people of the nation, electing those who run the nation, is modern democracy and I cherish that.
The opposite of nationalism nowadays tends to be more internationalism rather than imperialism, having unelected international bodies determine rules and laws. That too undermines democracy.
Nations are just fluid artificial constructs, surely you see that?
EXCLUSIVE: I am told Keir Starmer will scrap the pledges to nationalise National Grid, water and Royal Mail.
Tuition fees remain in debate, I am told Labour will in the meantime focus on early education including bringing back SureStart.
Royal Mail sure, but water and the electricity backbone are surely massively strategic and sorry, what party is Starmer in charge of again ?
I think they are far too expensive to nationalise at the moment and there are better things to spend money on...
Equally the electricity backbone currently requires a lot of investment that you may not want going through the Government books especially when that company can borrow at almost Government rates.
"More than 40 percent said having a ‘strong leader’ was more important than democracy and that ‘native-born white people are being replaced by immigrants’ — a racist belief known as the ‘great replacement theory’."
That's basically almost all Republican voters. People who view the US as some kind of pinnacle of democracy that "shares our values" should live there for a few years. It is a deeply messed-up place and should act as a warning for those who think that an ultra laissez faire economic model is a recipe for a happy and functional society.
What Truss and Sunak have uncovered is the fundamental flaw in the new Tory coalition, something that was only possible because of one Jeremy Corbyn.
One half wants taxes on the rich, investment and ending austerity.
The other wants tax cuts, slashing the state and "living within our means".
There is a reason the Red Wall voted Labour for so long. The Tories have nothing to offer. And as more time goes on, it becomes clear they still don't.
The your average Tory member wishes for us to "live within our means" you can't do that by cutting taxes and not slashing the state.
Truss is very happy to cut taxes (and inappropriate ones at that) but isn't combining that with slashing the state...
Team Truss obviously very happy. Team Sunak very happy. But perhaps the happiest people I’ve spoken to this afternoon are Labour people… Mordaunt was, by some way, the candidate that there were most worried about. They’ve been hoping for some time it would be Sunak V Truss. https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1549791598019575808
The problem with Mourdaunt was that people projected on her all their hopes and dreams and created the image of some sort of perfect Tory leader, but the brutal reality was that didn’t stack up. That and the Daily Mail did for her.
I was very much Team Penny, I don’t think anyone thought she was perfect. I think most people thought that her many strengths outweighed her weaknesses. The viciousness of the onslaught of briefings and what masquerades as journalism was in no way proportionate. It’s a very serious stain on the broad centre right space. I’m the bitterest I’ve been as a party member in a long time.
If they'd been against Truss, they could have absolutely destroyed the woman; it's not like the material wasn't there - she was a Lib Dem ffs.
That she was a Lib Dem is not a weakness. Churchill was once a Liberal too. People who evolve are more interesting than those who don't.
Tony Blair when he was young was an avowed Trotskist, while Darling, Milburn, Reid and Mandelson were all avowed Communists when they were young too. People change.
Changing your mind is fine. The thing about Truss is how polarised the changes are. Utterly convinced about one thing and then utterly convinced about the opposite. No nuance, It’s not an evolution, it’s chaos.
It is evolution, it is perfectly normal that once you have changed you accept your new position with the "zeal of the convert".
I was a Remainer at the start of the EU referendum campaign. I now have views in line with Truss's. Its not chaos, its evolution.
Flip-flopping back and forth rapidly at the drop of every opinion poll showing +1 to one side and then +1 to the other would be chaos. Not following with a zeal your new position once you've reached it.
" I was a remainer" . Pull the other one. You are the most reactionary poster on this site. You are the original young fogey Colonel Blimp. You might think making this claim adds cred to your position but it doesn't. It just points out to us that you are honest as Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Both of whom you clearly admire in spite of their obvious problem with telling the truth.
Oh give over the broken record. The fact that you're too thick to let the fact many people, not just myself, confirm I was pro-Remain penetrate your one-dimensional caricatured worldview of people just goes to show how stupid you are. People are more complicated than you can wrap your head around it seems.
I am not reactionary, Indeed I have frequently been called "woke" in a lot of the other debates on this site.
What I am is someone who unabashedly thinks that democracy and therefore nationalism is a very good thing and so too is low tax economics. I think internationalism undermines democracy, but that isn't reactionary - I wanted to see a more democratic EU which I thought was viable until Cameron's reforms failed which is when I switched to Leave and I haven't looked back since.
That you consider nationalism to be terrible is your own weakness, not mine.
I too think nationalism is a 'bad thing' on the whole. It's been the cause of many wars and has been repeatedly, and still is, used to stoke up hatred.
Overall, I cannot see what it's good for. We can cherish our history and our cultures without nationalism.
Agreed, but I also really value times when someone I disagree with lays out their views so clearly, as @BartholomewRoberts has done. I think it raises the tone of political debate, and prompts good discussions that can move people's thinking on.
I am interested in exploring this further. I think if I had to hang my hat on one aspect of our political system that I'd fight for, it would be democracy itself. In that sense I agree with Bart. But I also agree with Benpointer that valuing democracy doesn't mean you need to value nationalism, indeed nationalism more often stymies democracy than helps it (e.g. I think the EU could function more democratically if, throughout its development, nation states had been less important, and both hyper-local and supra-national groupings had been seen as the key ones to focus on).
Bart - can you say more about why you pin democracy to nationalism in this way? Specifically, can you answer why you think democracy works better at the national level than, say, a combination of much stronger regional assemblies with an overarching supra-national assembly (I'm tempted to cite the US as an example of what I mean, but as soon as you cite specific examples it is easy to focus on their specific flaws, so maybe better to keep the discussion theoretical).
In my view democracy at the national level is precisely the wrong scale to be working at - big enough to be impersonal and to leave many constituencies out in the cold (cf Scottish nationalism), but small enough to be unable to cope with the major issues we currently face (climate change, Chinese aggression, effective taxation of global businesses).
Nationalism and democracy go hand-in-hand. Nationalism is a belief that the people of the nation should run the nation, while democracy is a belief that those who run the nation should be elected. Having those of the nation elect those who run the nation is nationalist democracy and is a very good thing.
There antithesis of nationalism used to be imperialism. Nationalism arose in conflict to imperialism - a belief in your nation ruling over other nations. Anyone who seeks to rule over other countries is engaging in imperialism and undermining other nations nationalism.
The "wars" many people ascribe to nationalism should instead be ascribed to imperialism, which is nationalisms opposite, not nationalism.
Gandhi was an Indian nationalist, he wanted India ruled by Indians rather than Brits - there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Hitler was not a nationalist. He didn't want the French ruled by the French, he wanted them ruled by the Germans. He was an imperialist. Yes the name of his party included nationalist, but it also included the term socialist, sensible people recognise that there is more than just a name involved and he wasn't a socialist in the end - he wasn't a nationalist in the end either.
The people of the nation, electing those who run the nation, is modern democracy and I cherish that.
The opposite of nationalism nowadays tends to be more internationalism rather than imperialism, having unelected international bodies determine rules and laws. That too undermines democracy.
Nations are just fluid artificial constructs, surely you see that. Britain is a prime example of that.
Absolutely I do which is why I strongly advocate that if the Scottish voters vote for a Scottish referendum they should be entitled to one.
The nation and its borders should be determined democratically, at the ballot box. Ballots not bullets.
If people want to consider themselves Scottish with a Scottish demos in a democratic Scottish nation then that should be their prerogative. If people want to consider themselves British with a British demos in a democratic British nation then that should be their prerogative. If people want to consider themselves European with a European demos in a democratic European nation then that should be their prerogative.
The nation should be democratic, but should be able to evolve.
Team Truss obviously very happy. Team Sunak very happy. But perhaps the happiest people I’ve spoken to this afternoon are Labour people… Mordaunt was, by some way, the candidate that there were most worried about. They’ve been hoping for some time it would be Sunak V Truss. https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1549791598019575808
The problem with Mourdaunt was that people projected on her all their hopes and dreams and created the image of some sort of perfect Tory leader, but the brutal reality was that didn’t stack up. That and the Daily Mail did for her.
I was very much Team Penny, I don’t think anyone thought she was perfect. I think most people thought that her many strengths outweighed her weaknesses. The viciousness of the onslaught of briefings and what masquerades as journalism was in no way proportionate. It’s a very serious stain on the broad centre right space. I’m the bitterest I’ve been as a party member in a long time.
The attacks on Mourdaunt were unfair and brutal, I am not surprised you are bruised. It was not acceptable. My only hope is the next time this stuff is dished out at a Labour leader you don’t buy into it.
A candidate for PM who cannot explain or defend what they said on the record in the Commons or in speeches is not fit for the job. To the extent that people questioned her on what she said there was nothing unfair or brutal about it. She was preparing her campaign for leader for a while. She ought to have had better answers than she did and not told untruths. We have had far too little scrutiny of people seeking power as it is.
"More than 40 percent said having a ‘strong leader’ was more important than democracy and that ‘native-born white people are being replaced by immigrants’ — a racist belief known as the ‘great replacement theory’."
Would be worth a breakdown of this survey. 40% overall won't be universal. I expect a much larger percentage in the shitkicker states where they are doing all they can to stop anyone who isn't "native-born white people" from voting. And then oppressing women, gays, liberals etc. And a lot less in sane states.
All this will be worked through when the southern shitkickers found Gilead.
I think our foreign and security policy should be guided by our own interests, not Neocon talking points. On Russia, which represents a security threat to us, we should absolutely be standing up to Putin alongside America and anyone else who is up for it. Read through my posts, I have never said anything different. But the China-US rivalry is different, as China isn't a threat to our security, and frankly a lot of the bluster on the US side is down to their own sense of supremacy being threatened. That is their problem, not ours.
Generally I agree with you, but not on this one.
I don't want us to go to war with China, and I can't foresee them directly invading the UK... but they are definitely a threat to global security (cyberterrorism, industrial espionage) - as well as doing some really awful things to the Uighurs. A world dominated by China's current regime is not going to be good for British people I think.
What Truss and Sunak have uncovered is the fundamental flaw in the new Tory coalition, something that was only possible because of one Jeremy Corbyn.
One half wants taxes on the rich, investment and ending austerity.
The other wants tax cuts, slashing the state and "living within our means".
There is a reason the Red Wall voted Labour for so long. The Tories have nothing to offer. And as more time goes on, it becomes clear they still don't.
The your average Tory member wishes for us to "live within our means" you can't do that by cutting taxes and not slashing the state.
Truss is very happy to cut taxes (and inappropriate ones at that) but isn't combining that with slashing the state...
AFAICS Truss is relying on the Laffer Curve, which has a lot of merit and experience, but there is no clear indication that this will work now.
What Truss and Sunak have uncovered is the fundamental flaw in the new Tory coalition, something that was only possible because of one Jeremy Corbyn.
One half wants taxes on the rich, investment and ending austerity.
The other wants tax cuts, slashing the state and "living within our means".
There is a reason the Red Wall voted Labour for so long. The Tories have nothing to offer. And as more time goes on, it becomes clear they still don't.
All electoral coalitions are full of contradictions and pressure points - you’re right to highlight there is a disconnect in the Tory coalition, certainly on the economic front, but in the same way (and one of the ways in which that coalition was built) there is a disconnect in the Labour coalition between traditional supporters and its metropolitan base - largely on the social and values front.
Nobody appears to have the magic bullet to solve this. In fact it may be that only PR will help - we could in theory see a left wing socially conservative front develop together with a right wing socially liberal faction.
What Truss and Sunak have uncovered is the fundamental flaw in the new Tory coalition, something that was only possible because of one Jeremy Corbyn.
One half wants taxes on the rich, investment and ending austerity.
The other wants tax cuts, slashing the state and "living within our means".
There is a reason the Red Wall voted Labour for so long. The Tories have nothing to offer. And as more time goes on, it becomes clear they still don't.
Living within our means ought to be something that 100% of voters and 100% of political parties believe in, because the alternative is eventually going bankrupt.
What Truss and Sunak have uncovered is the fundamental flaw in the new Tory coalition, something that was only possible because of one Jeremy Corbyn.
One half wants taxes on the rich, investment and ending austerity.
The other wants tax cuts, slashing the state and "living within our means".
There is a reason the Red Wall voted Labour for so long. The Tories have nothing to offer. And as more time goes on, it becomes clear they still don't.
The problem with that argument is that they have also realised that Labour had little to offer. Yes, the Tories have lied to them and failed to deliver salvation, but they have had their eyes opened to inept and uninterested Labour governance who basically gave up trying to lift places like the NE out of their post-industrial decline.
Getting these voters to vote for anyone is the challenge.
Truss' plan of borrowing to fund tax cuts could be brilliant or a disaster. It might force higher interest rates from the BoE, mind.
Certainly a risk.
It’s not often I say something nice about Liz Truss, but she has, to her credit, said her tax cutting is going to cost £38B each and every year, which sounds like such a lot of money to find that it sounds plausible?
So the next question is how is £38B each year going to be found? If it’s entirely borrowing and added to debt, what is the impact? And can we trust it not to be made up largely from cuts and austerity instead?
£38bn is a near as dammit the amount that would be recovered in Goverment revenue by abolishing the CGT Exemption on Main Dwellings loophole.
Solved .
If I had a question at the hustings I would be asking them how they would bring house prices down to help people who can't afford them, bearing in mind the entirely unnecessary 25% increase over the last 2 years.
"More than 40 percent said having a ‘strong leader’ was more important than democracy and that ‘native-born white people are being replaced by immigrants’ — a racist belief known as the ‘great replacement theory’."
That's basically almost all Republican voters. People who view the US as some kind of pinnacle of democracy that "shares our values" should live there for a few years. It is a deeply messed-up place and should act as a warning for those who think that an ultra laissez faire economic model is a recipe for a happy and functional society.
They seemed to be moving in the right direction in the 1990s. I don't know what went wrong since then — maybe their paranoid response to events like 9/11.
EXCLUSIVE: I am told Keir Starmer will scrap the pledges to nationalise National Grid, water and Royal Mail.
Tuition fees remain in debate, I am told Labour will in the meantime focus on early education including bringing back SureStart.
Royal Mail sure, but water and the electricity backbone are surely massively strategic and sorry, what party is Starmer in charge of again ?
I think they are far too expensive to nationalise at the moment and there are better things to spend money on...
Equally the electricity backbone currently requires a lot of investment that you may not want going through the Government books especially when that company can borrow at almost Government rates.
There is no need to nationalise them now: 1. Set a greatly strengthened and strict regulatory framework. Direct the ShareCo owners to act in the state's strategic interest. 2. Create StateCo as the regulated co-investment partner for new infrastructure. That ensures that the likes of Thames Water can't get away with refusing to invest again. 3. ShareCo investors realise the pot of gold has disappeared, start to sell, and then the assets get a CPO to be run by StateCo.
Team Truss obviously very happy. Team Sunak very happy. But perhaps the happiest people I’ve spoken to this afternoon are Labour people… Mordaunt was, by some way, the candidate that there were most worried about. They’ve been hoping for some time it would be Sunak V Truss. https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1549791598019575808
The problem with Mourdaunt was that people projected on her all their hopes and dreams and created the image of some sort of perfect Tory leader, but the brutal reality was that didn’t stack up. That and the Daily Mail did for her.
I was very much Team Penny, I don’t think anyone thought she was perfect. I think most people thought that her many strengths outweighed her weaknesses. The viciousness of the onslaught of briefings and what masquerades as journalism was in no way proportionate. It’s a very serious stain on the broad centre right space. I’m the bitterest I’ve been as a party member in a long time.
If they'd been against Truss, they could have absolutely destroyed the woman; it's not like the material wasn't there - she was a Lib Dem ffs.
That she was a Lib Dem is not a weakness. Churchill was once a Liberal too. People who evolve are more interesting than those who don't.
Tony Blair when he was young was an avowed Trotskist, while Darling, Milburn, Reid and Mandelson were all avowed Communists when they were young too. People change.
Changing your mind is fine. The thing about Truss is how polarised the changes are. Utterly convinced about one thing and then utterly convinced about the opposite. No nuance, It’s not an evolution, it’s chaos.
Let’s play fair Roger. On paper, the speech doesn’t look too bad. Selling apples with The land of the apple falling on newtons head, absolute genius! I will be Opening Pork markets in Beijing - why didn’t the audience rise to their feet? It’s written so well Chris Morris wrote in his autobiography ‘brass eye for sad guy’ it was the moment he hurtled into retirement unable to compete.
It falls down in the delivery. That Gomez Adams grin after every second word, and the scary jump into 😡 it’s wrong!
The perfect demonstration of what madness looks like on a political podium.
Because making ourselves America's b*tch has always worked out so well for us.
Has Putinguy1983 hacked your account?
Pretty much, yes, absolutely it has, though as the article says Truss has been out in front of Biden and Blinken, and not just behind following them. Johnson was too.
I think our foreign and security policy should be guided by our own interests, not Neocon talking points. On Russia, which represents a security threat to us, we should absolutely be standing up to Putin alongside America and anyone else who is up for it. Read through my posts, I have never said anything different. But the China-US rivalry is different, as China isn't a threat to our security, and frankly a lot of the bluster on the US side is down to their own sense of supremacy being threatened. That is their problem, not ours.
China absolutely is a threat to our security, even more than Russia is.
As horrendous as Putin's invasion of Ukraine is, China invading Taiwan would be an order of magnitude worse. Ukraine is a substantial grain exporter and Russia a substantial energy exporter so this war has helped fuel a cost of living crisis with energy and food, but Taiwan is the leading global supplier of high end electronic chips that run the modern economy and China is the leading global exporter full stop.
A China/Taiwan war would be utterly catastrophic for the global economy and thus our own security in a way that would absolutely dwarf our current crisis. Joining with the USA, Japan, Australia and other allies in deterring that risk is great value for money and is another reason why Putin's invasion of Ukraine must be seen to fail, to deter China too.
The world today is all interconnected, you can't look at one alone and ignore the rest of the globe.
The deterrence value of whatever paltry forces we could project in the Taiwan Strait is not going to be the difference between China invading Taiwan or not. This is the kind of Neocon talking points that got hundreds of British servicemen and women killed in Iraq. If the world economy is that dependent on key components from a geopolitical flash point I would suggest investment in supply diversification may represent a safer and cheaper course of action.
To do my best Chandler Bing impression - Could you be any more wrong?
The deterrence value of UK forces operating alone would not be the difference, that is true.
But the UK isn't operating alone. The deterrence value of the UK and the USA, Australia, India, Japan, Poland and the rest of the civilised world standing together in unison is immense. This is one area whereby working together we are more than the sum of our parts.
You are as utterly naive and reprehensible as the so-called "realists" who wanted to sell out Ukraine at the start of the conflict as Putin's victory was "inevitable" so we may as well accept that reality.
You are being naïve if you think the US is simply defending the "free world" here rather than defending its own hegemonic position. Of course the US has every right to do this, and in many ways its hegemony is preferable to the alternatives, but I just don't think this is our conflict. Ukraine is our conflict, because it will determine the security of the whole of Europe and Russia is an expansionist power on our doorstep. Anyway, I look forward to you signing up so you can put your own life at risk in pursuit of America's foreign policy goals, rather than just other people's.
If it were only the US that were worried about the risk of China invading Taiwan you might have some credibility that it is just the US defending its own position. Its not though, its the entire civilised world who are uniting because they know the threat is very real.
Stop and look at what China has already been willing to do with the Tibetans, Hong Kong and the Uighur. That you can look at that and seriously say "China is not a threat" is baffling, you are an apologist for evil.
Apologist for evil, give me a break. You drink too much coffee. You can't divide the world up into white hats and black hats. China has done lots of bad stuff, as have other countries. I am not defending them, I find their system of government reprehensible. But they are not an aggressively expansionist power and never have been, unlike Russia or for that matter Britain. I don't think we need to get involved in some war on the other side of the world where the link to British interests is not absolutely clear. And to be honest I find it odd that people who claim to be British patriots are so ready to embrace the agenda of another foreign power on this issue.
Some parts of the world are shades of grey, but (and this must be my famous "reactionary" attitude according to @Nigel_Foremain ) I greatly dislike the antiquated term "black and white" since it implies black = bad and white = good.
The use of white/lightness for good and black/darkness for bad long predates the use of white and black to describe skin colour.
Language evolves though, we don't still speak ye olde English.
Continuing to use such language now is repugnant to me. 👎
"More than 40 percent said having a ‘strong leader’ was more important than democracy and that ‘native-born white people are being replaced by immigrants’ — a racist belief known as the ‘great replacement theory’."
That's basically almost all Republican voters. People who view the US as some kind of pinnacle of democracy that "shares our values" should live there for a few years. It is a deeply messed-up place and should act as a warning for those who think that an ultra laissez faire economic model is a recipe for a happy and functional society.
They seemed to be moving in the right direction in the 1990s. I don't know what went wrong since then — maybe their paranoid response to events like 9/11.
Team Truss obviously very happy. Team Sunak very happy. But perhaps the happiest people I’ve spoken to this afternoon are Labour people… Mordaunt was, by some way, the candidate that there were most worried about. They’ve been hoping for some time it would be Sunak V Truss. https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1549791598019575808
The problem with Mourdaunt was that people projected on her all their hopes and dreams and created the image of some sort of perfect Tory leader, but the brutal reality was that didn’t stack up. That and the Daily Mail did for her.
I was very much Team Penny, I don’t think anyone thought she was perfect. I think most people thought that her many strengths outweighed her weaknesses. The viciousness of the onslaught of briefings and what masquerades as journalism was in no way proportionate. It’s a very serious stain on the broad centre right space. I’m the bitterest I’ve been as a party member in a long time.
If they'd been against Truss, they could have absolutely destroyed the woman; it's not like the material wasn't there - she was a Lib Dem ffs.
That she was a Lib Dem is not a weakness. Churchill was once a Liberal too. People who evolve are more interesting than those who don't.
Tony Blair when he was young was an avowed Trotskist, while Darling, Milburn, Reid and Mandelson were all avowed Communists when they were young too. People change.
Changing your mind is fine. The thing about Truss is how polarised the changes are. Utterly convinced about one thing and then utterly convinced about the opposite. No nuance, It’s not an evolution, it’s chaos.
"More than 40 percent said having a ‘strong leader’ was more important than democracy and that ‘native-born white people are being replaced by immigrants’ — a racist belief known as the ‘great replacement theory’."
That's basically almost all Republican voters. People who view the US as some kind of pinnacle of democracy that "shares our values" should live there for a few years. It is a deeply messed-up place and should act as a warning for those who think that an ultra laissez faire economic model is a recipe for a happy and functional society.
They seemed to be moving in the right direction in the 1990s. I don't know what went wrong since then — maybe their paranoid response to events like 9/11.
Fear of decline. An end to the old certainties of American dominance. An end of empire (it happens to them all eventually). I think 9/11 was the start of that as it started to give rise to those uncertainties. Iraq and Afghanistan were also symptoms. It is an ongoing process.
There was a very interesting interview with Martin Lewis on WATO yesterday. He said that we were looking at a 65% increase in heating costs this autumn at around the same time the new Tory leader is elected, that the financial crisis for many people would be off the scale, that this would be the most important issue facing whoever was elected and waiting until the autumn to start thinking about doing something about it was far too late. Also that all the money thrown at it had already been used up.
The new leader could be derailed by this before they have even begun.
Certainly for me fuel costs are a worry. I have done everything I can to make the house insulated. Wood is stocked up and we switched off the heating in February. For those with children or the very old and frail, this winter could be a nightmare.
FWIW Sunak is probably the better bet. But by 2024 it will be time for a change. The Tory party is a rabble really, out of ideas, energy, destructive of anything standing in their way and about as unconservative as it's possible to be. And they deserve a kicking for inflicting Boris on us despite knowing of his total unsuitability for the job. If they do this again, well-deserved oblivion should be the reward.
Team Truss obviously very happy. Team Sunak very happy. But perhaps the happiest people I’ve spoken to this afternoon are Labour people… Mordaunt was, by some way, the candidate that there were most worried about. They’ve been hoping for some time it would be Sunak V Truss. https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1549791598019575808
The problem with Mourdaunt was that people projected on her all their hopes and dreams and created the image of some sort of perfect Tory leader, but the brutal reality was that didn’t stack up. That and the Daily Mail did for her.
I was very much Team Penny, I don’t think anyone thought she was perfect. I think most people thought that her many strengths outweighed her weaknesses. The viciousness of the onslaught of briefings and what masquerades as journalism was in no way proportionate. It’s a very serious stain on the broad centre right space. I’m the bitterest I’ve been as a party member in a long time.
If they'd been against Truss, they could have absolutely destroyed the woman; it's not like the material wasn't there - she was a Lib Dem ffs.
That she was a Lib Dem is not a weakness. Churchill was once a Liberal too. People who evolve are more interesting than those who don't.
Tony Blair when he was young was an avowed Trotskist, while Darling, Milburn, Reid and Mandelson were all avowed Communists when they were young too. People change.
Changing your mind is fine. The thing about Truss is how polarised the changes are. Utterly convinced about one thing and then utterly convinced about the opposite. No nuance, It’s not an evolution, it’s chaos.
It is evolution, it is perfectly normal that once you have changed you accept your new position with the "zeal of the convert".
I was a Remainer at the start of the EU referendum campaign. I now have views in line with Truss's. Its not chaos, its evolution.
Flip-flopping back and forth rapidly at the drop of every opinion poll showing +1 to one side and then +1 to the other would be chaos. Not following with a zeal your new position once you've reached it.
" I was a remainer" . Pull the other one. You are the most reactionary poster on this site. You are the original young fogey Colonel Blimp. You might think making this claim adds cred to your position but it doesn't. It just points out to us that you are honest as Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Both of whom you clearly admire in spite of their obvious problem with telling the truth.
Oh give over the broken record. The fact that you're too thick to let the fact many people, not just myself, confirm I was pro-Remain penetrate your one-dimensional caricatured worldview of people just goes to show how stupid you are. People are more complicated than you can wrap your head around it seems.
I am not reactionary, Indeed I have frequently been called "woke" in a lot of the other debates on this site.
What I am is someone who unabashedly thinks that democracy and therefore nationalism is a very good thing and so too is low tax economics. I think internationalism undermines democracy, but that isn't reactionary - I wanted to see a more democratic EU which I thought was viable until Cameron's reforms failed which is when I switched to Leave and I haven't looked back since.
That you consider nationalism to be terrible is your own weakness, not mine.
I too think nationalism is a 'bad thing' on the whole. It's been the cause of many wars and has been repeatedly, and still is, used to stoke up hatred.
Overall, I cannot see what it's good for. We can cherish our history and our cultures without nationalism.
Agreed, but I also really value times when someone I disagree with lays out their views so clearly, as @BartholomewRoberts has done. I think it raises the tone of political debate, and prompts good discussions that can move people's thinking on.
I am interested in exploring this further. I think if I had to hang my hat on one aspect of our political system that I'd fight for, it would be democracy itself. In that sense I agree with Bart. But I also agree with Benpointer that valuing democracy doesn't mean you need to value nationalism, indeed nationalism more often stymies democracy than helps it (e.g. I think the EU could function more democratically if, throughout its development, nation states had been less important, and both hyper-local and supra-national groupings had been seen as the key ones to focus on).
Bart - can you say more about why you pin democracy to nationalism in this way? Specifically, can you answer why you think democracy works better at the national level than, say, a combination of much stronger regional assemblies with an overarching supra-national assembly (I'm tempted to cite the US as an example of what I mean, but as soon as you cite specific examples it is easy to focus on their specific flaws, so maybe better to keep the discussion theoretical).
In my view democracy at the national level is precisely the wrong scale to be working at - big enough to be impersonal and to leave many constituencies out in the cold (cf Scottish nationalism), but small enough to be unable to cope with the major issues we currently face (climate change, Chinese aggression, effective taxation of global businesses).
Nationalism and democracy go hand-in-hand. Nationalism is a belief that the people of the nation should run the nation, while democracy is a belief that those who run the nation should be elected. Having those of the nation elect those who run the nation is nationalist democracy and is a very good thing.
There antithesis of nationalism used to be imperialism. Nationalism arose in conflict to imperialism - a belief in your nation ruling over other nations. Anyone who seeks to rule over other countries is engaging in imperialism and undermining other nations nationalism.
The "wars" many people ascribe to nationalism should instead be ascribed to imperialism, which is nationalisms opposite, not nationalism.
Gandhi was an Indian nationalist, he wanted India ruled by Indians rather than Brits - there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Hitler was not a nationalist. He didn't want the French ruled by the French, he wanted them ruled by the Germans. He was an imperialist. Yes the name of his party included nationalist, but it also included the term socialist, sensible people recognise that there is more than just a name involved and he wasn't a socialist in the end - he wasn't a nationalist in the end either.
The people of the nation, electing those who run the nation, is modern democracy and I cherish that.
The opposite of nationalism nowadays tends to be more internationalism rather than imperialism, having unelected international bodies determine rules and laws. That too undermines democracy.
Thought experiment: imagine, through a quirk of history, the UK was a federated network of 50 ish regions, and had been for a couple of hundred years. Would you write the following paragraph?
"Regionalism and democracy go hand-in-hand. Regionalism is a belief that the people of the region should run the region, while democracy is a belief that those who run the region should be elected. Having those of the region elect those who run the region is regionalist democracy and is a very good thing."
I ask because I am trying to understand what motivates your nationalism. It sounds as though it is good old-fashioned conservatism (broadly, this is the way things work and we shouldn't make too many changes). I have a lot of respect for that, although in this case I disagree.
I think nationalism worked well when the sources of power that protected democracy matched the scale (broadly, large armies). I think the sources of power that protect democracy are now both more local (broadly because of social media amplifying hyper-local political causes), and more global (broadly because of the march of globalisation).
It's interesting that the examples of nationalism you use are from the past not the present. Can you think of someone today who is an ardent nationalist and who is advancing democracy because of their nationalism?
"I was then told this idea of borrowing to grow the economy then let it pay for itself is ludicrous ... What have we just heard [from the Tory leadership contest is] let’s borrow to grow the economy.
It’s extraordinary they’re repeating my agenda but at the same time, doing it in a way which, to be frank, I think is completely unrelated to the real world we’re living in which is the immediate crisis of the cost of living and climate change."
Yes, as I listened I could hear almost word-for-word reminders of some of the John McDonnell interviews. It was a mock-Thatcherite remix of his policies.
To be fair, she actually did quite well in the interview, but that doesn't alter the fact that she's peddling the same kind of magic fairy dust as McDonnell used to.
I remain convinced that post-Cameron that the Tories have been out of ideas and out of policy.
What happened was that Corbyn came along and Johnson temporarily stopped it as a result. As soon as Corbyn went the chasm reappeared, which was always there. The Tories need to go into opposition now and go back to being centre ground and somebody centrists can vote for.
Too unravellable after Brexit. There's no centre ground that will accommodate the Brexit Ultras which is the present Tory Party. They need a renaissance and a new name.
EXCLUSIVE: I am told Keir Starmer will scrap the pledges to nationalise National Grid, water and Royal Mail.
Tuition fees remain in debate, I am told Labour will in the meantime focus on early education including bringing back SureStart.
I'd scrap tuition fees but the only way to make it work is to reduce the number of people going to university back to 1990s levels and that won't be popular with a lot of people.
Team Truss obviously very happy. Team Sunak very happy. But perhaps the happiest people I’ve spoken to this afternoon are Labour people… Mordaunt was, by some way, the candidate that there were most worried about. They’ve been hoping for some time it would be Sunak V Truss. https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1549791598019575808
The problem with Mourdaunt was that people projected on her all their hopes and dreams and created the image of some sort of perfect Tory leader, but the brutal reality was that didn’t stack up. That and the Daily Mail did for her.
I was very much Team Penny, I don’t think anyone thought she was perfect. I think most people thought that her many strengths outweighed her weaknesses. The viciousness of the onslaught of briefings and what masquerades as journalism was in no way proportionate. It’s a very serious stain on the broad centre right space. I’m the bitterest I’ve been as a party member in a long time.
If they'd been against Truss, they could have absolutely destroyed the woman; it's not like the material wasn't there - she was a Lib Dem ffs.
That she was a Lib Dem is not a weakness. Churchill was once a Liberal too. People who evolve are more interesting than those who don't.
Tony Blair when he was young was an avowed Trotskist, while Darling, Milburn, Reid and Mandelson were all avowed Communists when they were young too. People change.
Changing your mind is fine. The thing about Truss is how polarised the changes are. Utterly convinced about one thing and then utterly convinced about the opposite. No nuance, It’s not an evolution, it’s chaos.
Let’s play fair Roger. On paper, the speech doesn’t look too bad. Selling apples with The land of the apple falling on newtons head, absolute genius! I will be Opening Pork markets in Beijing - why didn’t the audience rise to their feet? It’s written so well Chris Morris wrote in his autobiography ‘brass eye for sad guy’ it was the moment he hurtled into retirement unable to compete.
It falls down in the delivery. That Gomez Adams grin after every second word, and the scary jump into 😡 it’s wrong!
The perfect demonstration of what madness looks like on a political podium.
One thing that should worry the Tories - when I searched on Google for Liz Truss and it started to suggest search items as I typed, the first one was "Liz Truss Cheese".
There was a very interesting interview with Martin Lewis on WATO yesterday. He said that we were looking at a 65% increase in heating costs this autumn at around the same time the new Tory leader is elected, that the financial crisis for many people would be off the scale, that this would be the most important issue facing whoever was elected and waiting until the autumn to start thinking about doing something about it was far too late. Also that all the money thrown at it had already been used up.
The new leader could be derailed by this before they have even begun.
Certainly for me fuel costs are a worry. I have done everything I can to make the house insulated. Wood is stocked up and we switched off the heating in February. For those with children or the very old and frail, this winter could be a nightmare.
FWIW Sunak is probably the better bet. But by 2024 it will be time for a change. The Tory party is a rabble really, out of ideas, energy, destructive of anything standing in their way and about as unconservative as it's possible to be. And they deserve a kicking for inflicting Boris on us despite knowing of his total unsuitability for the job. If they do this again, well-deserved oblivion should be the reward.
"More than 40 percent said having a ‘strong leader’ was more important than democracy and that ‘native-born white people are being replaced by immigrants’ — a racist belief known as the ‘great replacement theory’."
That's basically almost all Republican voters. People who view the US as some kind of pinnacle of democracy that "shares our values" should live there for a few years. It is a deeply messed-up place and should act as a warning for those who think that an ultra laissez faire economic model is a recipe for a happy and functional society.
They seemed to be moving in the right direction in the 1990s. I don't know what went wrong since then — maybe their paranoid response to events like 9/11.
Fear of decline. An end to the old certainties of American dominance. An end of empire (it happens to them all eventually). I think 9/11 was the start of that as it started to give rise to those uncertainties. Iraq and Afghanistan were also symptoms. It is an ongoing process.
Team Truss obviously very happy. Team Sunak very happy. But perhaps the happiest people I’ve spoken to this afternoon are Labour people… Mordaunt was, by some way, the candidate that there were most worried about. They’ve been hoping for some time it would be Sunak V Truss. https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1549791598019575808
The problem with Mourdaunt was that people projected on her all their hopes and dreams and created the image of some sort of perfect Tory leader, but the brutal reality was that didn’t stack up. That and the Daily Mail did for her.
I was very much Team Penny, I don’t think anyone thought she was perfect. I think most people thought that her many strengths outweighed her weaknesses. The viciousness of the onslaught of briefings and what masquerades as journalism was in no way proportionate. It’s a very serious stain on the broad centre right space. I’m the bitterest I’ve been as a party member in a long time.
If they'd been against Truss, they could have absolutely destroyed the woman; it's not like the material wasn't there - she was a Lib Dem ffs.
That she was a Lib Dem is not a weakness. Churchill was once a Liberal too. People who evolve are more interesting than those who don't.
Tony Blair when he was young was an avowed Trotskist, while Darling, Milburn, Reid and Mandelson were all avowed Communists when they were young too. People change.
Changing your mind is fine. The thing about Truss is how polarised the changes are. Utterly convinced about one thing and then utterly convinced about the opposite. No nuance, It’s not an evolution, it’s chaos.
Let’s play fair Roger. On paper, the speech doesn’t look too bad. Selling apples with The land of the apple falling on newtons head, absolute genius! I will be Opening Pork markets in Beijing - why didn’t the audience rise to their feet? It’s written so well Chris Morris wrote in his autobiography ‘brass eye for sad guy’ it was the moment he hurtled into retirement unable to compete.
It falls down in the delivery. That Gomez Adams grin after every second word, and the scary jump into 😡 it’s wrong!
The perfect demonstration of what madness looks like on a political podium.
One thing that should worry the Tories - when I searched on Google for Liz Truss and it started to suggest search items as I typed, the first one was "Liz Truss Cheese".
If you search truss affair on twitter and scroll down about 10 tweets there's some illuminating stuff which prolly won't be there much longer
There was a very interesting interview with Martin Lewis on WATO yesterday. He said that we were looking at a 65% increase in heating costs this autumn at around the same time the new Tory leader is elected, that the financial crisis for many people would be off the scale, that this would be the most important issue facing whoever was elected and waiting until the autumn to start thinking about doing something about it was far too late. Also that all the money thrown at it had already been used up.
The new leader could be derailed by this before they have even begun.
Certainly for me fuel costs are a worry. I have done everything I can to make the house insulated. Wood is stocked up and we switched off the heating in February. For those with children or the very old and frail, this winter could be a nightmare.
FWIW Sunak is probably the better bet. But by 2024 it will be time for a change. The Tory party is a rabble really, out of ideas, energy, destructive of anything standing in their way and about as unconservative as it's possible to be. And they deserve a kicking for inflicting Boris on us despite knowing of his total unsuitability for the job. If they do this again, well-deserved oblivion should be the reward.
As you say, we can't afford to wait. There is a government in office but they have departed for the summer leaving Larry the Cat in charge. Supposedly we are going to see the energy cap so high that many people's entire UC income will be swallowed by energy bills. That is not a viable position!
Worse for the government is that the squatter PM refuses to accept there is an issue, the ex CofE thinks he has already fixed it, and the Trusster doesn't care whether its fixed or not.
We are going to see the return of many of the Beveridge giants and the Tory party are going to get the blame for the riots that will inevitably be a feature of this winter. In the past that wouldn't bother them, but now those are Tory voters.
Team Truss obviously very happy. Team Sunak very happy. But perhaps the happiest people I’ve spoken to this afternoon are Labour people… Mordaunt was, by some way, the candidate that there were most worried about. They’ve been hoping for some time it would be Sunak V Truss. https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1549791598019575808
The problem with Mourdaunt was that people projected on her all their hopes and dreams and created the image of some sort of perfect Tory leader, but the brutal reality was that didn’t stack up. That and the Daily Mail did for her.
I was very much Team Penny, I don’t think anyone thought she was perfect. I think most people thought that her many strengths outweighed her weaknesses. The viciousness of the onslaught of briefings and what masquerades as journalism was in no way proportionate. It’s a very serious stain on the broad centre right space. I’m the bitterest I’ve been as a party member in a long time.
If they'd been against Truss, they could have absolutely destroyed the woman; it's not like the material wasn't there - she was a Lib Dem ffs.
That she was a Lib Dem is not a weakness. Churchill was once a Liberal too. People who evolve are more interesting than those who don't.
Tony Blair when he was young was an avowed Trotskist, while Darling, Milburn, Reid and Mandelson were all avowed Communists when they were young too. People change.
Changing your mind is fine. The thing about Truss is how polarised the changes are. Utterly convinced about one thing and then utterly convinced about the opposite. No nuance, It’s not an evolution, it’s chaos.
It is evolution, it is perfectly normal that once you have changed you accept your new position with the "zeal of the convert".
I was a Remainer at the start of the EU referendum campaign. I now have views in line with Truss's. Its not chaos, its evolution.
Flip-flopping back and forth rapidly at the drop of every opinion poll showing +1 to one side and then +1 to the other would be chaos. Not following with a zeal your new position once you've reached it.
" I was a remainer" . Pull the other one. You are the most reactionary poster on this site. You are the original young fogey Colonel Blimp. You might think making this claim adds cred to your position but it doesn't. It just points out to us that you are honest as Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Both of whom you clearly admire in spite of their obvious problem with telling the truth.
Oh give over the broken record. The fact that you're too thick to let the fact many people, not just myself, confirm I was pro-Remain penetrate your one-dimensional caricatured worldview of people just goes to show how stupid you are. People are more complicated than you can wrap your head around it seems.
I am not reactionary, Indeed I have frequently been called "woke" in a lot of the other debates on this site.
What I am is someone who unabashedly thinks that democracy and therefore nationalism is a very good thing and so too is low tax economics. I think internationalism undermines democracy, but that isn't reactionary - I wanted to see a more democratic EU which I thought was viable until Cameron's reforms failed which is when I switched to Leave and I haven't looked back since.
That you consider nationalism to be terrible is your own weakness, not mine.
I too think nationalism is a 'bad thing' on the whole. It's been the cause of many wars and has been repeatedly, and still is, used to stoke up hatred.
Overall, I cannot see what it's good for. We can cherish our history and our cultures without nationalism.
Agreed, but I also really value times when someone I disagree with lays out their views so clearly, as @BartholomewRoberts has done. I think it raises the tone of political debate, and prompts good discussions that can move people's thinking on.
I am interested in exploring this further. I think if I had to hang my hat on one aspect of our political system that I'd fight for, it would be democracy itself. In that sense I agree with Bart. But I also agree with Benpointer that valuing democracy doesn't mean you need to value nationalism, indeed nationalism more often stymies democracy than helps it (e.g. I think the EU could function more democratically if, throughout its development, nation states had been less important, and both hyper-local and supra-national groupings had been seen as the key ones to focus on).
Bart - can you say more about why you pin democracy to nationalism in this way? Specifically, can you answer why you think democracy works better at the national level than, say, a combination of much stronger regional assemblies with an overarching supra-national assembly (I'm tempted to cite the US as an example of what I mean, but as soon as you cite specific examples it is easy to focus on their specific flaws, so maybe better to keep the discussion theoretical).
In my view democracy at the national level is precisely the wrong scale to be working at - big enough to be impersonal and to leave many constituencies out in the cold (cf Scottish nationalism), but small enough to be unable to cope with the major issues we currently face (climate change, Chinese aggression, effective taxation of global businesses).
Nationalism and democracy go hand-in-hand. Nationalism is a belief that the people of the nation should run the nation, while democracy is a belief that those who run the nation should be elected. Having those of the nation elect those who run the nation is nationalist democracy and is a very good thing.
There antithesis of nationalism used to be imperialism. Nationalism arose in conflict to imperialism - a belief in your nation ruling over other nations. Anyone who seeks to rule over other countries is engaging in imperialism and undermining other nations nationalism.
The "wars" many people ascribe to nationalism should instead be ascribed to imperialism, which is nationalisms opposite, not nationalism.
Gandhi was an Indian nationalist, he wanted India ruled by Indians rather than Brits - there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Hitler was not a nationalist. He didn't want the French ruled by the French, he wanted them ruled by the Germans. He was an imperialist. Yes the name of his party included nationalist, but it also included the term socialist, sensible people recognise that there is more than just a name involved and he wasn't a socialist in the end - he wasn't a nationalist in the end either.
The people of the nation, electing those who run the nation, is modern democracy and I cherish that.
The opposite of nationalism nowadays tends to be more internationalism rather than imperialism, having unelected international bodies determine rules and laws. That too undermines democracy.
Nations are just fluid artificial constructs, surely you see that?
Britain is a prime example of that.
So far as nations go, England is pretty concrete. But yes they chop and change relatively quickly
Cities are less fluid mind - Damascus, Luxor and Athens are all older than any current nation.
EXCLUSIVE: I am told Keir Starmer will scrap the pledges to nationalise National Grid, water and Royal Mail.
Tuition fees remain in debate, I am told Labour will in the meantime focus on early education including bringing back SureStart.
I'd scrap tuition fees but the only way to make it work is to reduce the number of people going to university back to 1990s levels and that won't be popular with a lot of people.
Bringing back Sure Start alone would persuade me to vote for a party. It was one of the best investments we made imo.
There was a very interesting interview with Martin Lewis on WATO yesterday. He said that we were looking at a 65% increase in heating costs this autumn at around the same time the new Tory leader is elected, that the financial crisis for many people would be off the scale, that this would be the most important issue facing whoever was elected and waiting until the autumn to start thinking about doing something about it was far too late. Also that all the money thrown at it had already been used up.
The new leader could be derailed by this before they have even begun.
Certainly for me fuel costs are a worry. I have done everything I can to make the house insulated. Wood is stocked up and we switched off the heating in February. For those with children or the very old and frail, this winter could be a nightmare.
FWIW Sunak is probably the better bet. But by 2024 it will be time for a change. The Tory party is a rabble really, out of ideas, energy, destructive of anything standing in their way and about as unconservative as it's possible to be. And they deserve a kicking for inflicting Boris on us despite knowing of his total unsuitability for the job. If they do this again, well-deserved oblivion should be the reward.
What Truss and Sunak have uncovered is the fundamental flaw in the new Tory coalition, something that was only possible because of one Jeremy Corbyn.
One half wants taxes on the rich, investment and ending austerity.
The other wants tax cuts, slashing the state and "living within our means".
There is a reason the Red Wall voted Labour for so long. The Tories have nothing to offer. And as more time goes on, it becomes clear they still don't.
The problem with that argument is that they have also realised that Labour had little to offer. Yes, the Tories have lied to them and failed to deliver salvation, but they have had their eyes opened to inept and uninterested Labour governance who basically gave up trying to lift places like the NE out of their post-industrial decline.
Getting these voters to vote for anyone is the challenge.
I voted Conservative in the council elections this year. I am considering not voting for the Conservatives again until they have changed their leadership election rules to give MPs the final say. Why should party members decide who is the prime minister, when a party is in government?
"The Italian prime minister Mario Draghi handed in his resignation to President Mattarella after his unity government fell apart, plunging the country into political turmoil and hitting financial markets.
Mattarella’s office said in a statement today that the head of state had “taken note” of the resignation and asked Draghi to remain in a caretaker capacity." (£)
Team Truss obviously very happy. Team Sunak very happy. But perhaps the happiest people I’ve spoken to this afternoon are Labour people… Mordaunt was, by some way, the candidate that there were most worried about. They’ve been hoping for some time it would be Sunak V Truss. https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1549791598019575808
The problem with Mourdaunt was that people projected on her all their hopes and dreams and created the image of some sort of perfect Tory leader, but the brutal reality was that didn’t stack up. That and the Daily Mail did for her.
I was very much Team Penny, I don’t think anyone thought she was perfect. I think most people thought that her many strengths outweighed her weaknesses. The viciousness of the onslaught of briefings and what masquerades as journalism was in no way proportionate. It’s a very serious stain on the broad centre right space. I’m the bitterest I’ve been as a party member in a long time.
If they'd been against Truss, they could have absolutely destroyed the woman; it's not like the material wasn't there - she was a Lib Dem ffs.
That she was a Lib Dem is not a weakness. Churchill was once a Liberal too. People who evolve are more interesting than those who don't.
Tony Blair when he was young was an avowed Trotskist, while Darling, Milburn, Reid and Mandelson were all avowed Communists when they were young too. People change.
Changing your mind is fine. The thing about Truss is how polarised the changes are. Utterly convinced about one thing and then utterly convinced about the opposite. No nuance, It’s not an evolution, it’s chaos.
Let’s play fair Roger. On paper, the speech doesn’t look too bad. Selling apples with The land of the apple falling on newtons head, absolute genius! I will be Opening Pork markets in Beijing - why didn’t the audience rise to their feet? It’s written so well Chris Morris wrote in his autobiography ‘brass eye for sad guy’ it was the moment he hurtled into retirement unable to compete.
It falls down in the delivery. That Gomez Adams grin after every second word, and the scary jump into 😡 it’s wrong!
The perfect demonstration of what madness looks like on a political podium.
One thing that should worry the Tories - when I searched on Google for Liz Truss and it started to suggest search items as I typed, the first one was "Liz Truss Cheese".
If you search truss affair on twitter and scroll down about 10 tweets there's some illuminating stuff which prolly won't be there much longer
Team Truss obviously very happy. Team Sunak very happy. But perhaps the happiest people I’ve spoken to this afternoon are Labour people… Mordaunt was, by some way, the candidate that there were most worried about. They’ve been hoping for some time it would be Sunak V Truss. https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1549791598019575808
The problem with Mourdaunt was that people projected on her all their hopes and dreams and created the image of some sort of perfect Tory leader, but the brutal reality was that didn’t stack up. That and the Daily Mail did for her.
I was very much Team Penny, I don’t think anyone thought she was perfect. I think most people thought that her many strengths outweighed her weaknesses. The viciousness of the onslaught of briefings and what masquerades as journalism was in no way proportionate. It’s a very serious stain on the broad centre right space. I’m the bitterest I’ve been as a party member in a long time.
If they'd been against Truss, they could have absolutely destroyed the woman; it's not like the material wasn't there - she was a Lib Dem ffs.
That she was a Lib Dem is not a weakness. Churchill was once a Liberal too. People who evolve are more interesting than those who don't.
Tony Blair when he was young was an avowed Trotskist, while Darling, Milburn, Reid and Mandelson were all avowed Communists when they were young too. People change.
Changing your mind is fine. The thing about Truss is how polarised the changes are. Utterly convinced about one thing and then utterly convinced about the opposite. No nuance, It’s not an evolution, it’s chaos.
Let’s play fair Roger. On paper, the speech doesn’t look too bad. Selling apples with The land of the apple falling on newtons head, absolute genius! I will be Opening Pork markets in Beijing - why didn’t the audience rise to their feet? It’s written so well Chris Morris wrote in his autobiography ‘brass eye for sad guy’ it was the moment he hurtled into retirement unable to compete.
It falls down in the delivery. That Gomez Adams grin after every second word, and the scary jump into 😡 it’s wrong!
The perfect demonstration of what madness looks like on a political podium.
One thing that should worry the Tories - when I searched on Google for Liz Truss and it started to suggest search items as I typed, the first one was "Liz Truss Cheese".
If you search truss affair on twitter and scroll down about 10 tweets there's some illuminating stuff which prolly won't be there much longer
There was a very interesting interview with Martin Lewis on WATO yesterday. He said that we were looking at a 65% increase in heating costs this autumn at around the same time the new Tory leader is elected, that the financial crisis for many people would be off the scale, that this would be the most important issue facing whoever was elected and waiting until the autumn to start thinking about doing something about it was far too late. Also that all the money thrown at it had already been used up.
The new leader could be derailed by this before they have even begun.
Certainly for me fuel costs are a worry. I have done everything I can to make the house insulated. Wood is stocked up and we switched off the heating in February. For those with children or the very old and frail, this winter could be a nightmare.
FWIW Sunak is probably the better bet. But by 2024 it will be time for a change. The Tory party is a rabble really, out of ideas, energy, destructive of anything standing in their way and about as unconservative as it's possible to be. And they deserve a kicking for inflicting Boris on us despite knowing of his total unsuitability for the job. If they do this again, well-deserved oblivion should be the reward.
The obvious action for HMG is to set the energy price cap back to 2019 levels.
How to fund it? Well, not through tax cuts, that's for sure.
This is an excellent policy. It would also have the benefit of slashing inflation this reducing the level of CPI uplift required for pensions and welfare etc, which in itself would make a major contribution to covering the cost of applying the cap at 2019 levels.
EXCLUSIVE: I am told Keir Starmer will scrap the pledges to nationalise National Grid, water and Royal Mail.
Tuition fees remain in debate, I am told Labour will in the meantime focus on early education including bringing back SureStart.
Not nationalising water is a mistake. I think it would have popular support as everyone fucking hates the water companies. Charge a fortune and don't do anything for their money.
EXCLUSIVE: I am told Keir Starmer will scrap the pledges to nationalise National Grid, water and Royal Mail.
Tuition fees remain in debate, I am told Labour will in the meantime focus on early education including bringing back SureStart.
Not nationalising water is a mistake. I think it would have popular support as everyone fucking hates the water companies. Charge a fortune and don't do anything for their money.
If water was nationalised would there be more control over pumping sewage into the environment and losing so much good water in leaks?
So our taxes would then have to go up even more so bureaucrats and quangos try to solve those problems?
EXCLUSIVE: I am told Keir Starmer will scrap the pledges to nationalise National Grid, water and Royal Mail.
Tuition fees remain in debate, I am told Labour will in the meantime focus on early education including bringing back SureStart.
I'd scrap tuition fees but the only way to make it work is to reduce the number of people going to university back to 1990s levels and that won't be popular with a lot of people.
The large increase in University numbers was created to hide the large amount of youth unemployment that would otherwise exist.
Nothing has changed there and given many companies utter reluctance to invest in training even when there is free money (via the apprenticeship levy) to do so there are no easy solutions here.
EXCLUSIVE: I am told Keir Starmer will scrap the pledges to nationalise National Grid, water and Royal Mail.
Tuition fees remain in debate, I am told Labour will in the meantime focus on early education including bringing back SureStart.
Not nationalising water is a mistake. I think it would have popular support as everyone fucking hates the water companies. Charge a fortune and don't do anything for their money.
Labour could certainly borrow the money to do it now that Tories seem about to elect someone who thinks you can borrow to cut tax.
What a dividing line: we will borrow in order to keep your water bill down; they will borrow to knock 1p off income tax.
There was a very interesting interview with Martin Lewis on WATO yesterday. He said that we were looking at a 65% increase in heating costs this autumn at around the same time the new Tory leader is elected, that the financial crisis for many people would be off the scale, that this would be the most important issue facing whoever was elected and waiting until the autumn to start thinking about doing something about it was far too late. Also that all the money thrown at it had already been used up.
The new leader could be derailed by this before they have even begun.
Certainly for me fuel costs are a worry. I have done everything I can to make the house insulated. Wood is stocked up and we switched off the heating in February. For those with children or the very old and frail, this winter could be a nightmare.
FWIW Sunak is probably the better bet. But by 2024 it will be time for a change. The Tory party is a rabble really, out of ideas, energy, destructive of anything standing in their way and about as unconservative as it's possible to be. And they deserve a kicking for inflicting Boris on us despite knowing of his total unsuitability for the job. If they do this again, well-deserved oblivion should be the reward.
The obvious action for HMG is to set the energy price cap back to 2019 levels.
How to fund it? Well, not through tax cuts, that's for sure.
What I would do is give the £20 uplift back to Universal Credit - that would cover a large part of this autumn's increase in energy prices for those who can least afford it.
The other thing I would do is to abolish the daily standing charge. This change would encourage more efficient use of energy, by increasing the unit rate, and mean that those with the lowest incomes wouldn't adjust be hundreds of pounds down before they've turned a single light on.
Everyone else has to lump it, while we spend a few years building as many wind turbines as possible to reduce our dependence on gas.
EXCLUSIVE: I am told Keir Starmer will scrap the pledges to nationalise National Grid, water and Royal Mail.
Tuition fees remain in debate, I am told Labour will in the meantime focus on early education including bringing back SureStart.
Not nationalising water is a mistake. I think it would have popular support as everyone fucking hates the water companies. Charge a fortune and don't do anything for their money.
I suspect RP has a plan below that allows a nationalisation to be prepared for long term while in the short term ensuring investment was made without massive profits.
Because making ourselves America's b*tch has always worked out so well for us.
Has Putinguy1983 hacked your account?
Pretty much, yes, absolutely it has, though as the article says Truss has been out in front of Biden and Blinken, and not just behind following them. Johnson was too.
I think our foreign and security policy should be guided by our own interests, not Neocon talking points. On Russia, which represents a security threat to us, we should absolutely be standing up to Putin alongside America and anyone else who is up for it. Read through my posts, I have never said anything different. But the China-US rivalry is different, as China isn't a threat to our security, and frankly a lot of the bluster on the US side is down to their own sense of supremacy being threatened. That is their problem, not ours.
China absolutely is a threat to our security, even more than Russia is.
As horrendous as Putin's invasion of Ukraine is, China invading Taiwan would be an order of magnitude worse. Ukraine is a substantial grain exporter and Russia a substantial energy exporter so this war has helped fuel a cost of living crisis with energy and food, but Taiwan is the leading global supplier of high end electronic chips that run the modern economy and China is the leading global exporter full stop.
A China/Taiwan war would be utterly catastrophic for the global economy and thus our own security in a way that would absolutely dwarf our current crisis. Joining with the USA, Japan, Australia and other allies in deterring that risk is great value for money and is another reason why Putin's invasion of Ukraine must be seen to fail, to deter China too.
The world today is all interconnected, you can't look at one alone and ignore the rest of the globe.
The deterrence value of whatever paltry forces we could project in the Taiwan Strait is not going to be the difference between China invading Taiwan or not. This is the kind of Neocon talking points that got hundreds of British servicemen and women killed in Iraq. If the world economy is that dependent on key components from a geopolitical flash point I would suggest investment in supply diversification may represent a safer and cheaper course of action.
To do my best Chandler Bing impression - Could you be any more wrong?
The deterrence value of UK forces operating alone would not be the difference, that is true.
But the UK isn't operating alone. The deterrence value of the UK and the USA, Australia, India, Japan, Poland and the rest of the civilised world standing together in unison is immense. This is one area whereby working together we are more than the sum of our parts.
You are as utterly naive and reprehensible as the so-called "realists" who wanted to sell out Ukraine at the start of the conflict as Putin's victory was "inevitable" so we may as well accept that reality.
You are being naïve if you think the US is simply defending the "free world" here rather than defending its own hegemonic position. Of course the US has every right to do this, and in many ways its hegemony is preferable to the alternatives, but I just don't think this is our conflict. Ukraine is our conflict, because it will determine the security of the whole of Europe and Russia is an expansionist power on our doorstep. Anyway, I look forward to you signing up so you can put your own life at risk in pursuit of America's foreign policy goals, rather than just other people's.
If it were only the US that were worried about the risk of China invading Taiwan you might have some credibility that it is just the US defending its own position. Its not though, its the entire civilised world who are uniting because they know the threat is very real.
Stop and look at what China has already been willing to do with the Tibetans, Hong Kong and the Uighur. That you can look at that and seriously say "China is not a threat" is baffling, you are an apologist for evil.
Apologist for evil, give me a break. You drink too much coffee. You can't divide the world up into white hats and black hats. China has done lots of bad stuff, as have other countries. I am not defending them, I find their system of government reprehensible. But they are not an aggressively expansionist power and never have been, unlike Russia or for that matter Britain. I don't think we need to get involved in some war on the other side of the world where the link to British interests is not absolutely clear. And to be honest I find it odd that people who claim to be British patriots are so ready to embrace the agenda of another foreign power on this issue.
Some parts of the world are shades of grey, but (and this must be my famous "reactionary" attitude according to @Nigel_Foremain ) I greatly dislike the antiquated term "black and white" since it implies black = bad and white = good.
The use of white/lightness for good and black/darkness for bad long predates the use of white and black to describe skin colour.
Language evolves though, we don't still speak ye olde English.
Continuing to use such language now is repugnant to me. 👎
Your attitude is not dissimilar to this:
I'm a tad confused, in your eyes am I supposed to be the house's resident or Thornberry?
EXCLUSIVE: I am told Keir Starmer will scrap the pledges to nationalise National Grid, water and Royal Mail.
Tuition fees remain in debate, I am told Labour will in the meantime focus on early education including bringing back SureStart.
Not nationalising water is a mistake. I think it would have popular support as everyone fucking hates the water companies. Charge a fortune and don't do anything for their money.
Also there is no "market" economics for water. You can't make water (sure you can capture some more) but you can't really transport it even if you do.
You could to some extent argue the same for electricity, but there you can make it by investing in solar, wind, etc etc etc and you feed it into a grid that is shared nationwide.
Team Truss obviously very happy. Team Sunak very happy. But perhaps the happiest people I’ve spoken to this afternoon are Labour people… Mordaunt was, by some way, the candidate that there were most worried about. They’ve been hoping for some time it would be Sunak V Truss. https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1549791598019575808
Kemi would have been the most problematic for Labour in the long-run IMO.
EXCLUSIVE: I am told Keir Starmer will scrap the pledges to nationalise National Grid, water and Royal Mail.
Tuition fees remain in debate, I am told Labour will in the meantime focus on early education including bringing back SureStart.
I'd scrap tuition fees but the only way to make it work is to reduce the number of people going to university back to 1990s levels and that won't be popular with a lot of people.
Bringing back Sure Start alone would persuade me to vote for a party. It was one of the best investments we made imo.
Agreed. Why on earth was it ever abolished? Giving children a good start in life is the best possible investment a country can make.
I'd like to see this, investment in energy and food security, equalising NI and income tax, an increase in the council tax bands, stamp duty on companies buying property, some sort of CGT on houses, a limit on the tax relief for charitable donations etc, abolish the triple lock etc. I would also like something done about the usurious rates charged on student loans.
For today's Playbook I spoke to lots of unhappy campers — Tory members who regard both Sunak and Truss as electoral liabilities. Interestingly they come from both the right and left of the party. Small thread... https://twitter.com/estwebber/status/1550060556832456704
I voted Conservative in the council elections this year. I am considering not voting for the Conservatives again until they have changed their leadership election rules to give MPs the final say. Why should party members decide who is the prime minister, when a party is in government?
Why is an electorate of 358 preferable to one of 150,000?
Because making ourselves America's b*tch has always worked out so well for us.
Has Putinguy1983 hacked your account?
Pretty much, yes, absolutely it has, though as the article says Truss has been out in front of Biden and Blinken, and not just behind following them. Johnson was too.
I think our foreign and security policy should be guided by our own interests, not Neocon talking points. On Russia, which represents a security threat to us, we should absolutely be standing up to Putin alongside America and anyone else who is up for it. Read through my posts, I have never said anything different. But the China-US rivalry is different, as China isn't a threat to our security, and frankly a lot of the bluster on the US side is down to their own sense of supremacy being threatened. That is their problem, not ours.
China absolutely is a threat to our security, even more than Russia is.
As horrendous as Putin's invasion of Ukraine is, China invading Taiwan would be an order of magnitude worse. Ukraine is a substantial grain exporter and Russia a substantial energy exporter so this war has helped fuel a cost of living crisis with energy and food, but Taiwan is the leading global supplier of high end electronic chips that run the modern economy and China is the leading global exporter full stop.
A China/Taiwan war would be utterly catastrophic for the global economy and thus our own security in a way that would absolutely dwarf our current crisis. Joining with the USA, Japan, Australia and other allies in deterring that risk is great value for money and is another reason why Putin's invasion of Ukraine must be seen to fail, to deter China too.
The world today is all interconnected, you can't look at one alone and ignore the rest of the globe.
The deterrence value of whatever paltry forces we could project in the Taiwan Strait is not going to be the difference between China invading Taiwan or not. This is the kind of Neocon talking points that got hundreds of British servicemen and women killed in Iraq. If the world economy is that dependent on key components from a geopolitical flash point I would suggest investment in supply diversification may represent a safer and cheaper course of action.
To do my best Chandler Bing impression - Could you be any more wrong?
The deterrence value of UK forces operating alone would not be the difference, that is true.
But the UK isn't operating alone. The deterrence value of the UK and the USA, Australia, India, Japan, Poland and the rest of the civilised world standing together in unison is immense. This is one area whereby working together we are more than the sum of our parts.
You are as utterly naive and reprehensible as the so-called "realists" who wanted to sell out Ukraine at the start of the conflict as Putin's victory was "inevitable" so we may as well accept that reality.
You are being naïve if you think the US is simply defending the "free world" here rather than defending its own hegemonic position. Of course the US has every right to do this, and in many ways its hegemony is preferable to the alternatives, but I just don't think this is our conflict. Ukraine is our conflict, because it will determine the security of the whole of Europe and Russia is an expansionist power on our doorstep. Anyway, I look forward to you signing up so you can put your own life at risk in pursuit of America's foreign policy goals, rather than just other people's.
If it were only the US that were worried about the risk of China invading Taiwan you might have some credibility that it is just the US defending its own position. Its not though, its the entire civilised world who are uniting because they know the threat is very real.
Stop and look at what China has already been willing to do with the Tibetans, Hong Kong and the Uighur. That you can look at that and seriously say "China is not a threat" is baffling, you are an apologist for evil.
Apologist for evil, give me a break. You drink too much coffee. You can't divide the world up into white hats and black hats. China has done lots of bad stuff, as have other countries. I am not defending them, I find their system of government reprehensible. But they are not an aggressively expansionist power and never have been, unlike Russia or for that matter Britain. I don't think we need to get involved in some war on the other side of the world where the link to British interests is not absolutely clear. And to be honest I find it odd that people who claim to be British patriots are so ready to embrace the agenda of another foreign power on this issue.
Some parts of the world are shades of grey, but (and this must be my famous "reactionary" attitude according to @Nigel_Foremain ) I greatly dislike the antiquated term "black and white" since it implies black = bad and white = good.
The use of white/lightness for good and black/darkness for bad long predates the use of white and black to describe skin colour.
Language evolves though, we don't still speak ye olde English.
Continuing to use such language now is repugnant to me. 👎
Your attitude is not dissimilar to this:
I'm a tad confused, in your eyes am I supposed to be the house's resident or Thornberry?
I know which one I'd identify more with.
Thornberry.
Her attitude was "some people who fly the English flag and drive white vans are racist, therefore this is a house where racists live"
Your attitude seems to be "some people use white and black in some contexts to be racist, therefore all uses of white and black are racist"
I voted Conservative in the council elections this year. I am considering not voting for the Conservatives again until they have changed their leadership election rules to give MPs the final say. Why should party members decide who is the prime minister, when a party is in government?
Why is an electorate of 358 preferable to one of 150,000?
The final two will now pitch themselves to Tory members - but who are they? At the last leadership election in 2019 there were around 160,000 members - though this is expected to have grown, possibly up to 200,000. Tory members therefore make up around 0.30% of the population. Research from the Mile End Institute published in The Guardian claims 44% of the membership is over 65. Some 97% are white and 54% live in London and the South.
I voted Conservative in the council elections this year. I am considering not voting for the Conservatives again until they have changed their leadership election rules to give MPs the final say. Why should party members decide who is the prime minister, when a party is in government?
Why is an electorate of 358 preferable to one of 150,000?
Because the 358 have been voted for by millions of people, and one of the things (arguably the main thing) they were elected to do is select the prime minister.
Because making ourselves America's b*tch has always worked out so well for us.
Has Putinguy1983 hacked your account?
Pretty much, yes, absolutely it has, though as the article says Truss has been out in front of Biden and Blinken, and not just behind following them. Johnson was too.
I think our foreign and security policy should be guided by our own interests, not Neocon talking points. On Russia, which represents a security threat to us, we should absolutely be standing up to Putin alongside America and anyone else who is up for it. Read through my posts, I have never said anything different. But the China-US rivalry is different, as China isn't a threat to our security, and frankly a lot of the bluster on the US side is down to their own sense of supremacy being threatened. That is their problem, not ours.
China absolutely is a threat to our security, even more than Russia is.
As horrendous as Putin's invasion of Ukraine is, China invading Taiwan would be an order of magnitude worse. Ukraine is a substantial grain exporter and Russia a substantial energy exporter so this war has helped fuel a cost of living crisis with energy and food, but Taiwan is the leading global supplier of high end electronic chips that run the modern economy and China is the leading global exporter full stop.
A China/Taiwan war would be utterly catastrophic for the global economy and thus our own security in a way that would absolutely dwarf our current crisis. Joining with the USA, Japan, Australia and other allies in deterring that risk is great value for money and is another reason why Putin's invasion of Ukraine must be seen to fail, to deter China too.
The world today is all interconnected, you can't look at one alone and ignore the rest of the globe.
The deterrence value of whatever paltry forces we could project in the Taiwan Strait is not going to be the difference between China invading Taiwan or not. This is the kind of Neocon talking points that got hundreds of British servicemen and women killed in Iraq. If the world economy is that dependent on key components from a geopolitical flash point I would suggest investment in supply diversification may represent a safer and cheaper course of action.
To do my best Chandler Bing impression - Could you be any more wrong?
The deterrence value of UK forces operating alone would not be the difference, that is true.
But the UK isn't operating alone. The deterrence value of the UK and the USA, Australia, India, Japan, Poland and the rest of the civilised world standing together in unison is immense. This is one area whereby working together we are more than the sum of our parts.
You are as utterly naive and reprehensible as the so-called "realists" who wanted to sell out Ukraine at the start of the conflict as Putin's victory was "inevitable" so we may as well accept that reality.
You are being naïve if you think the US is simply defending the "free world" here rather than defending its own hegemonic position. Of course the US has every right to do this, and in many ways its hegemony is preferable to the alternatives, but I just don't think this is our conflict. Ukraine is our conflict, because it will determine the security of the whole of Europe and Russia is an expansionist power on our doorstep. Anyway, I look forward to you signing up so you can put your own life at risk in pursuit of America's foreign policy goals, rather than just other people's.
If it were only the US that were worried about the risk of China invading Taiwan you might have some credibility that it is just the US defending its own position. Its not though, its the entire civilised world who are uniting because they know the threat is very real.
Stop and look at what China has already been willing to do with the Tibetans, Hong Kong and the Uighur. That you can look at that and seriously say "China is not a threat" is baffling, you are an apologist for evil.
Apologist for evil, give me a break. You drink too much coffee. You can't divide the world up into white hats and black hats. China has done lots of bad stuff, as have other countries. I am not defending them, I find their system of government reprehensible. But they are not an aggressively expansionist power and never have been, unlike Russia or for that matter Britain. I don't think we need to get involved in some war on the other side of the world where the link to British interests is not absolutely clear. And to be honest I find it odd that people who claim to be British patriots are so ready to embrace the agenda of another foreign power on this issue.
Some parts of the world are shades of grey, but (and this must be my famous "reactionary" attitude according to @Nigel_Foremain ) I greatly dislike the antiquated term "black and white" since it implies black = bad and white = good.
The use of white/lightness for good and black/darkness for bad long predates the use of white and black to describe skin colour.
Language evolves though, we don't still speak ye olde English.
Continuing to use such language now is repugnant to me. 👎
Your attitude is not dissimilar to this:
I'm a tad confused, in your eyes am I supposed to be the house's resident or Thornberry?
EXCLUSIVE: I am told Keir Starmer will scrap the pledges to nationalise National Grid, water and Royal Mail.
Tuition fees remain in debate, I am told Labour will in the meantime focus on early education including bringing back SureStart.
Shit. When was the last time Labour announced actual policies? They must feel on the front foot
Sounds more like scrapping actual policies.
These are terrible policies though, even I don't believe in nationalising National Grid/energy and I'm leftie.
Water I'm more luke warm on because it's failed under privatisation but hardly seems a priority at present.
Royal Mail is gone, what is nationalising it going to do? That's just pointlessly ideological.
Is that the sound of the Overton window shifting mildly to the right?
I thought nationalising natural monopolies was currently orthodoxy on the left.
Royal Mail isn't a natural monopoly though. It would make sense for only one person per day turning up at your door to deliver all the mail and parcels but in the real world there are blokes in vans dropping stuff off from all sorts of delivery firms.
She certainly knows where the tory erogenous zones are....
Wait till Sunak has beaten all these fantasy policies before boasting that.
Vast majority of 200K Tory membership are not dumb, it’s rude to push they are. Many are brainy and smart like ny Dad 🥰
(He is still convinced Liz Truss wins though)
This "affairs" stuff might snowball, coming after Shagger J and assuming Rishi is a clean skin, fornication wise.
Was it shagging that brought Boris down, or made him lovable Boris in the first place.
Sadly, a married man going around shagging everything in sight is still seen by many as a stud, or a lovable rogue. The more notches on the bedpost a man has, the better.
The same people often see women doing the same thing as tarts, unreliable, homewreckers, etc.
Team Truss obviously very happy. Team Sunak very happy. But perhaps the happiest people I’ve spoken to this afternoon are Labour people… Mordaunt was, by some way, the candidate that there were most worried about. They’ve been hoping for some time it would be Sunak V Truss. https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1549791598019575808
The problem with Mourdaunt was that people projected on her all their hopes and dreams and created the image of some sort of perfect Tory leader, but the brutal reality was that didn’t stack up. That and the Daily Mail did for her.
I was very much Team Penny, I don’t think anyone thought she was perfect. I think most people thought that her many strengths outweighed her weaknesses. The viciousness of the onslaught of briefings and what masquerades as journalism was in no way proportionate. It’s a very serious stain on the broad centre right space. I’m the bitterest I’ve been as a party member in a long time.
If they'd been against Truss, they could have absolutely destroyed the woman; it's not like the material wasn't there - she was a Lib Dem ffs.
That she was a Lib Dem is not a weakness. Churchill was once a Liberal too. People who evolve are more interesting than those who don't.
Tony Blair when he was young was an avowed Trotskist, while Darling, Milburn, Reid and Mandelson were all avowed Communists when they were young too. People change.
Changing your mind is fine. The thing about Truss is how polarised the changes are. Utterly convinced about one thing and then utterly convinced about the opposite. No nuance, It’s not an evolution, it’s chaos.
It is evolution, it is perfectly normal that once you have changed you accept your new position with the "zeal of the convert".
I was a Remainer at the start of the EU referendum campaign. I now have views in line with Truss's. Its not chaos, its evolution.
Flip-flopping back and forth rapidly at the drop of every opinion poll showing +1 to one side and then +1 to the other would be chaos. Not following with a zeal your new position once you've reached it.
" I was a remainer" . Pull the other one. You are the most reactionary poster on this site. You are the original young fogey Colonel Blimp. You might think making this claim adds cred to your position but it doesn't. It just points out to us that you are honest as Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Both of whom you clearly admire in spite of their obvious problem with telling the truth.
Oh give over the broken record. The fact that you're too thick to let the fact many people, not just myself, confirm I was pro-Remain penetrate your one-dimensional caricatured worldview of people just goes to show how stupid you are. People are more complicated than you can wrap your head around it seems.
I am not reactionary, Indeed I have frequently been called "woke" in a lot of the other debates on this site.
What I am is someone who unabashedly thinks that democracy and therefore nationalism is a very good thing and so too is low tax economics. I think internationalism undermines democracy, but that isn't reactionary - I wanted to see a more democratic EU which I thought was viable until Cameron's reforms failed which is when I switched to Leave and I haven't looked back since.
That you consider nationalism to be terrible is your own weakness, not mine.
I too think nationalism is a 'bad thing' on the whole. It's been the cause of many wars and has been repeatedly, and still is, used to stoke up hatred.
Overall, I cannot see what it's good for. We can cherish our history and our cultures without nationalism.
Agreed, but I also really value times when someone I disagree with lays out their views so clearly, as @BartholomewRoberts has done. I think it raises the tone of political debate, and prompts good discussions that can move people's thinking on.
I am interested in exploring this further. I think if I had to hang my hat on one aspect of our political system that I'd fight for, it would be democracy itself. In that sense I agree with Bart. But I also agree with Benpointer that valuing democracy doesn't mean you need to value nationalism, indeed nationalism more often stymies democracy than helps it (e.g. I think the EU could function more democratically if, throughout its development, nation states had been less important, and both hyper-local and supra-national groupings had been seen as the key ones to focus on).
Bart - can you say more about why you pin democracy to nationalism in this way? Specifically, can you answer why you think democracy works better at the national level than, say, a combination of much stronger regional assemblies with an overarching supra-national assembly (I'm tempted to cite the US as an example of what I mean, but as soon as you cite specific examples it is easy to focus on their specific flaws, so maybe better to keep the discussion theoretical).
In my view democracy at the national level is precisely the wrong scale to be working at - big enough to be impersonal and to leave many constituencies out in the cold (cf Scottish nationalism), but small enough to be unable to cope with the major issues we currently face (climate change, Chinese aggression, effective taxation of global businesses).
Nationalism and democracy go hand-in-hand. Nationalism is a belief that the people of the nation should run the nation, while democracy is a belief that those who run the nation should be elected. Having those of the nation elect those who run the nation is nationalist democracy and is a very good thing.
There antithesis of nationalism used to be imperialism. Nationalism arose in conflict to imperialism - a belief in your nation ruling over other nations. Anyone who seeks to rule over other countries is engaging in imperialism and undermining other nations nationalism.
The "wars" many people ascribe to nationalism should instead be ascribed to imperialism, which is nationalisms opposite, not nationalism.
Gandhi was an Indian nationalist, he wanted India ruled by Indians rather than Brits - there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Hitler was not a nationalist. He didn't want the French ruled by the French, he wanted them ruled by the Germans. He was an imperialist. Yes the name of his party included nationalist, but it also included the term socialist, sensible people recognise that there is more than just a name involved and he wasn't a socialist in the end - he wasn't a nationalist in the end either.
The people of the nation, electing those who run the nation, is modern democracy and I cherish that.
The opposite of nationalism nowadays tends to be more internationalism rather than imperialism, having unelected international bodies determine rules and laws. That too undermines democracy.
Thought experiment: imagine, through a quirk of history, the UK was a federated network of 50 ish regions, and had been for a couple of hundred years. Would you write the following paragraph?
"Regionalism and democracy go hand-in-hand. Regionalism is a belief that the people of the region should run the region, while democracy is a belief that those who run the region should be elected. Having those of the region elect those who run the region is regionalist democracy and is a very good thing."
I ask because I am trying to understand what motivates your nationalism. It sounds as though it is good old-fashioned conservatism (broadly, this is the way things work and we shouldn't make too many changes). I have a lot of respect for that, although in this case I disagree.
I think nationalism worked well when the sources of power that protected democracy matched the scale (broadly, large armies). I think the sources of power that protect democracy are now both more local (broadly because of social media amplifying hyper-local political causes), and more global (broadly because of the march of globalisation).
It's interesting that the examples of nationalism you use are from the past not the present. Can you think of someone today who is an ardent nationalist and who is advancing democracy because of their nationalism?
Since in your scenario regionalism would mean the same as nationalism does to me, then yes I could say that. The nation is not a static inviolable construct and if region means the same as nation, then a rose by any other name ...
I am not "conservative" in the way HYUFD is that thinks the nation should be static and inflexible and force should be used on any errant Scots that don't want to be part of the nation. I believe the nation should be a voluntary association of whoever democratically wants to be in the nation - whether than nation be called England, Scotland, Britain, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Lancashire or anything else.
Who is an ardent nationalist today who is advancing democracy because of their nationalism? Boris did at the last election with getting Brexit done, since that was the democratically expressed will of the UK nation. Nicola Sturgeon is presently doing so in Scotland. I don't like her politics, but she is wanting the people of Scotland to determine their own future as according to what they voted for at the last election, that is nationalist democracy which I support whether I like her politics or not.
People who oppose Scots being able to determine their own future are undermining democracy - our disputes should be resolved at the ballot box and not by telling others they have no choice.
If the Scots vote No in a second referendum that would be their choice, but it should be their choice to make, not mine or HYUFDs or anyone else's. Just as it was Britain's choice to be in the EU or not, not Macron's or Simon Coveney's.
PS unlike many other Leave voters I have no objection in principle to a nation called Europe, which is why I used to be pro-Remain. I believe that the EU is an evolving nascent federal nation state, and I was OK with us being a part of that with proper democratic safeguards and accountability. However Cameron's proposed reforms failed and that was for me the rapid beginning of the end of backing Remain. If we aren't going to have proper democratic accountability over a nation called Europe, we shouldn't be a part of that nation.
A betting note for future reference from the Tory leadership contest is that, for all the talk on this site in the run-up, and all the reasons why the Tories might want to look outside the usual choices, a party in office choosing a PM as well as a party leader has once again opted for someone who has very recently held one of the three great offices of state.
It follows a long, long line - Johnson had recently been Foreign Secretary, May was Home Secretary, Brown was Chancellor, Major was Chancellor, Callaghan was Foreign Secretary, Douglas-Home was Foreign Secretary, Macmillan was Chancellor, Eden was Foreign Secretary, Chamberlain was Chancellor, and Baldwin was Chancellor. Churchill was barely an exception - his most recent office was First Lord of the Admiralty, although that was in wartime and he'd been Chancellor and Home Secretary in the more distant past.
Partly due to lack of choice, but partly because there is time to grow into the role, parties have been willing to choose LOTOs who have much lighter CVs. Of election winning LOTOs, Cameron and Blair hadn't held ministerial office (shadow Education and Home respectively), Thatcher had been Education Secretary, Heath and Wilson had been Presidents of the Board of Trade.
In this leadership election so far, we've lost an Education Secretary (I know he had been Chancellor for a couple of days but it doesn't amount to experience), a Committee Chairman, a Trade Minister (and former Defence Secretary for a short time), a Minister of State, a recent Health Secretary who'd had a short stint as Chancellor a while ago, and a less recent former Foreign Secretary. We're left with a current Foreign Secretary and a man who was Chancellor until just days ago.
That, for me, is the betting lesson. In a leadership election when a party is in office, back the Big Beasts, lay the Rising Stars.
EXCLUSIVE: I am told Keir Starmer will scrap the pledges to nationalise National Grid, water and Royal Mail.
Tuition fees remain in debate, I am told Labour will in the meantime focus on early education including bringing back SureStart.
Not nationalising water is a mistake. I think it would have popular support as everyone fucking hates the water companies. Charge a fortune and don't do anything for their money.
Why pay the market rate for them? Water is a regulated industry, so regulate the fuckers. Investment of x, price cap of y. "What about our shareholders???" What about them?
Team Truss obviously very happy. Team Sunak very happy. But perhaps the happiest people I’ve spoken to this afternoon are Labour people… Mordaunt was, by some way, the candidate that there were most worried about. They’ve been hoping for some time it would be Sunak V Truss. https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1549791598019575808
Kemi would have been the most problematic for Labour in the long-run IMO.
Time for Kemi to make a comeback in 2024 after the GE wipeout! Opposition leader then hopefully PM in 2028/9 IF we can sort ourselves out and come back with sensible policies again.
She certainly knows where the tory erogenous zones are....
Wait till Sunak has beaten all these fantasy policies before boasting that.
Vast majority of 200K Tory membership are not dumb, it’s rude to push they are. Many are brainy and smart like ny Dad 🥰
(He is still convinced Liz Truss wins though)
This "affairs" stuff might snowball, coming after Shagger J and assuming Rishi is a clean skin, fornication wise.
Was it shagging that brought Boris down, or made him lovable Boris in the first place.
Sadly, a married man going around shagging everything in sight is still seen by many as a stud, or a lovable rogue. The more notches on the bedpost a man has, the better.
The same people often see women doing the same thing as tarts, unreliable, homewreckers, etc.
EXCLUSIVE: I am told Keir Starmer will scrap the pledges to nationalise National Grid, water and Royal Mail.
Tuition fees remain in debate, I am told Labour will in the meantime focus on early education including bringing back SureStart.
Shit. When was the last time Labour announced actual policies? They must feel on the front foot
Sounds more like scrapping actual policies.
These are terrible policies though, even I don't believe in nationalising National Grid/energy and I'm leftie.
Water I'm more luke warm on because it's failed under privatisation but hardly seems a priority at present.
Royal Mail is gone, what is nationalising it going to do? That's just pointlessly ideological.
Is that the sound of the Overton window shifting mildly to the right?
I thought nationalising natural monopolies was currently orthodoxy on the left.
Royal Mail isn't a natural monopoly though. It would make sense for only one person per day turning up at your door to deliver all the mail and parcels but in the real world there are blokes in vans dropping stuff off from all sorts of delivery firms.
It is, though, in terms of the state-enforced universal postage rate which doesn't penalise the rural areas, unlike many commercial couriers. Like BT, which was also a GPO element.
Team Truss obviously very happy. Team Sunak very happy. But perhaps the happiest people I’ve spoken to this afternoon are Labour people… Mordaunt was, by some way, the candidate that there were most worried about. They’ve been hoping for some time it would be Sunak V Truss. https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1549791598019575808
The problem with Mourdaunt was that people projected on her all their hopes and dreams and created the image of some sort of perfect Tory leader, but the brutal reality was that didn’t stack up. That and the Daily Mail did for her.
I was very much Team Penny, I don’t think anyone thought she was perfect. I think most people thought that her many strengths outweighed her weaknesses. The viciousness of the onslaught of briefings and what masquerades as journalism was in no way proportionate. It’s a very serious stain on the broad centre right space. I’m the bitterest I’ve been as a party member in a long time.
If they'd been against Truss, they could have absolutely destroyed the woman; it's not like the material wasn't there - she was a Lib Dem ffs.
That she was a Lib Dem is not a weakness. Churchill was once a Liberal too. People who evolve are more interesting than those who don't.
Tony Blair when he was young was an avowed Trotskist, while Darling, Milburn, Reid and Mandelson were all avowed Communists when they were young too. People change.
Changing your mind is fine. The thing about Truss is how polarised the changes are. Utterly convinced about one thing and then utterly convinced about the opposite. No nuance, It’s not an evolution, it’s chaos.
Let’s play fair Roger. On paper, the speech doesn’t look too bad. Selling apples with The land of the apple falling on newtons head, absolute genius! I will be Opening Pork markets in Beijing - why didn’t the audience rise to their feet? It’s written so well Chris Morris wrote in his autobiography ‘brass eye for sad guy’ it was the moment he hurtled into retirement unable to compete.
It falls down in the delivery. That Gomez Adams grin after every second word, and the scary jump into 😡 it’s wrong!
The perfect demonstration of what madness looks like on a political podium.
One thing that should worry the Tories - when I searched on Google for Liz Truss and it started to suggest search items as I typed, the first one was "Liz Truss Cheese".
If you search truss affair on twitter and scroll down about 10 tweets there's some illuminating stuff which prolly won't be there much longer
Might put a different light on this comment:
Sophie Morris @itssophiemorris · 3h Liz Truss on the Today programme: "I think every day when I get up in the morning 'what can I do to change things?'"
She certainly knows where the tory erogenous zones are....
Wait till Sunak has beaten all these fantasy policies before boasting that.
Vast majority of 200K Tory membership are not dumb, it’s rude to push they are. Many are brainy and smart like ny Dad 🥰
(He is still convinced Liz Truss wins though)
YOu sound like the prospective suitor who says..... 'yeah I know my rival has a Porsche, a bulging bank account and a big d8ck, but I'm much more in touch with my feminine side'
EXCLUSIVE: I am told Keir Starmer will scrap the pledges to nationalise National Grid, water and Royal Mail.
Tuition fees remain in debate, I am told Labour will in the meantime focus on early education including bringing back SureStart.
Not nationalising water is a mistake. I think it would have popular support as everyone fucking hates the water companies. Charge a fortune and don't do anything for their money.
I suspect RP has a plan below that allows a nationalisation to be prepared for long term while in the short term ensuring investment was made without massive profits.
Can you see any flaws in his solution?
The likes of Thames Water don't invest. Or if they do it is mega expensive with consumers footing the bill. So instead, one of my StateCo providers does the infrastructure over the heads of Thames Water, using government borrowing rates, and the water companies etc are simply regulated to accept it or quit.
It was the same as Labour proposed for energy. Instead of saying "we will nationalise SSE" and thus send the share price into the stratosphere, simply set up StateCo or RegionalCo competitors and regulate the private monopolies into the past.
"But what does that do for private sector investment" I hear a few shriek. And if there had been any worth its name that would be a valid argument. But there hasn't been. Hence the need for the state to take over.
Team Truss obviously very happy. Team Sunak very happy. But perhaps the happiest people I’ve spoken to this afternoon are Labour people… Mordaunt was, by some way, the candidate that there were most worried about. They’ve been hoping for some time it would be Sunak V Truss. https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1549791598019575808
The problem with Mourdaunt was that people projected on her all their hopes and dreams and created the image of some sort of perfect Tory leader, but the brutal reality was that didn’t stack up. That and the Daily Mail did for her.
I was very much Team Penny, I don’t think anyone thought she was perfect. I think most people thought that her many strengths outweighed her weaknesses. The viciousness of the onslaught of briefings and what masquerades as journalism was in no way proportionate. It’s a very serious stain on the broad centre right space. I’m the bitterest I’ve been as a party member in a long time.
If they'd been against Truss, they could have absolutely destroyed the woman; it's not like the material wasn't there - she was a Lib Dem ffs.
That she was a Lib Dem is not a weakness. Churchill was once a Liberal too. People who evolve are more interesting than those who don't.
Tony Blair when he was young was an avowed Trotskist, while Darling, Milburn, Reid and Mandelson were all avowed Communists when they were young too. People change.
Changing your mind is fine. The thing about Truss is how polarised the changes are. Utterly convinced about one thing and then utterly convinced about the opposite. No nuance, It’s not an evolution, it’s chaos.
Let’s play fair Roger. On paper, the speech doesn’t look too bad. Selling apples with The land of the apple falling on newtons head, absolute genius! I will be Opening Pork markets in Beijing - why didn’t the audience rise to their feet? It’s written so well Chris Morris wrote in his autobiography ‘brass eye for sad guy’ it was the moment he hurtled into retirement unable to compete.
It falls down in the delivery. That Gomez Adams grin after every second word, and the scary jump into 😡 it’s wrong!
The perfect demonstration of what madness looks like on a political podium.
That was a pretty good critique. I particularly like the 'Gomes Addams grin'.
Team Truss obviously very happy. Team Sunak very happy. But perhaps the happiest people I’ve spoken to this afternoon are Labour people… Mordaunt was, by some way, the candidate that there were most worried about. They’ve been hoping for some time it would be Sunak V Truss. https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1549791598019575808
The problem with Mourdaunt was that people projected on her all their hopes and dreams and created the image of some sort of perfect Tory leader, but the brutal reality was that didn’t stack up. That and the Daily Mail did for her.
I was very much Team Penny, I don’t think anyone thought she was perfect. I think most people thought that her many strengths outweighed her weaknesses. The viciousness of the onslaught of briefings and what masquerades as journalism was in no way proportionate. It’s a very serious stain on the broad centre right space. I’m the bitterest I’ve been as a party member in a long time.
If they'd been against Truss, they could have absolutely destroyed the woman; it's not like the material wasn't there - she was a Lib Dem ffs.
That she was a Lib Dem is not a weakness. Churchill was once a Liberal too. People who evolve are more interesting than those who don't.
Tony Blair when he was young was an avowed Trotskist, while Darling, Milburn, Reid and Mandelson were all avowed Communists when they were young too. People change.
Changing your mind is fine. The thing about Truss is how polarised the changes are. Utterly convinced about one thing and then utterly convinced about the opposite. No nuance, It’s not an evolution, it’s chaos.
Let’s play fair Roger. On paper, the speech doesn’t look too bad. Selling apples with The land of the apple falling on newtons head, absolute genius! I will be Opening Pork markets in Beijing - why didn’t the audience rise to their feet? It’s written so well Chris Morris wrote in his autobiography ‘brass eye for sad guy’ it was the moment he hurtled into retirement unable to compete.
It falls down in the delivery. That Gomez Adams grin after every second word, and the scary jump into 😡 it’s wrong!
The perfect demonstration of what madness looks like on a political podium.
One thing that should worry the Tories - when I searched on Google for Liz Truss and it started to suggest search items as I typed, the first one was "Liz Truss Cheese".
If you search truss affair on twitter and scroll down about 10 tweets there's some illuminating stuff which prolly won't be there much longer
Might put a different light on this comment:
Sophie Morris @itssophiemorris · 3h Liz Truss on the Today programme: "I think every day when I get up in the morning 'what can I do to change things?'"
Sounds like the motivational gibberish you see on Linkedin
I voted Conservative in the council elections this year. I am considering not voting for the Conservatives again until they have changed their leadership election rules to give MPs the final say. Why should party members decide who is the prime minister, when a party is in government?
Why is an electorate of 358 preferable to one of 150,000?
Those 358 have a stronger need to choose someone who is sort of acceptable to the general public, or a fair few of them are down the job centre soon. And at some level, they know it.
The 150,000 have a massive temptation to choose the one who makes them feel good now and who cares about 2024?
EXCLUSIVE: I am told Keir Starmer will scrap the pledges to nationalise National Grid, water and Royal Mail.
Tuition fees remain in debate, I am told Labour will in the meantime focus on early education including bringing back SureStart.
Shit. When was the last time Labour announced actual policies? They must feel on the front foot
Sounds more like scrapping actual policies.
These are terrible policies though, even I don't believe in nationalising National Grid/energy and I'm leftie.
Water I'm more luke warm on because it's failed under privatisation but hardly seems a priority at present.
Royal Mail is gone, what is nationalising it going to do? That's just pointlessly ideological.
Is that the sound of the Overton window shifting mildly to the right?
I thought nationalising natural monopolies was currently orthodoxy on the left.
Royal Mail isn't a natural monopoly though. It would make sense for only one person per day turning up at your door to deliver all the mail and parcels but in the real world there are blokes in vans dropping stuff off from all sorts of delivery firms.
It is, though, in terms of the state-enforced universal postage rate which doesn't penalise the rural areas, unlike many commercial couriers. Like BT, which was also a GPO element.
I wonder what the volume of letter delivery looks like these days compared to the past and where it is forecast to go. I have changed everything I can to electronic and get virtually no snail mail now.
So my deliveries are overwhelmingly parcels that don't come via Royal Mail, because the likes of Amazon now use the likes of their Flex programme to have people deliver them.
A betting note for future reference from the Tory leadership contest is that, for all the talk on this site in the run-up, and all the reasons why the Tories might want to look outside the usual choices, a party in office choosing a PM as well as a party leader has once again opted for someone who has very recently held one of the three great offices of state.
It follows a long, long line - Johnson had recently been Foreign Secretary, May was Home Secretary, Brown was Chancellor, Major was Chancellor, Callaghan was Foreign Secretary, Douglas-Home was Foreign Secretary, Macmillan was Chancellor, Eden was Foreign Secretary, Chamberlain was Chancellor, and Baldwin was Chancellor. Churchill was barely an exception - his most recent office was First Lord of the Admiralty, although that was in wartime and he'd been Chancellor and Home Secretary in the more distant past.
Partly due to lack of choice, but partly because there is time to grow into the role, parties have been willing to choose LOTOs who have much lighter CVs. Of election winning LOTOs, Cameron and Blair hadn't held ministerial office (shadow Education and Home respectively), Thatcher had been Education Secretary, Heath and Wilson had been Presidents of the Board of Trade.
In this leadership election so far, we've lost an Education Secretary (I know he had been Chancellor for a couple of days but it doesn't amount to experience), a Committee Chairman, a Trade Minister (and former Defence Secretary for a short time), a Minister of State, a recent Health Secretary who'd had a short stint as Chancellor a while ago, and a less recent former Foreign Secretary. We're left with a current Foreign Secretary and a man who was Chancellor until just days ago.
That, for me, is the betting lesson. In a leadership election when a party is in office, back the Big Beasts, lay the Rising Stars.
Sir Norfolk it is a veritable outrage that you missed Rehman Thingy off that list. With his experience as Minister for iPhone Videography.
Team Truss obviously very happy. Team Sunak very happy. But perhaps the happiest people I’ve spoken to this afternoon are Labour people… Mordaunt was, by some way, the candidate that there were most worried about. They’ve been hoping for some time it would be Sunak V Truss. https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1549791598019575808
The problem with Mourdaunt was that people projected on her all their hopes and dreams and created the image of some sort of perfect Tory leader, but the brutal reality was that didn’t stack up. That and the Daily Mail did for her.
I was very much Team Penny, I don’t think anyone thought she was perfect. I think most people thought that her many strengths outweighed her weaknesses. The viciousness of the onslaught of briefings and what masquerades as journalism was in no way proportionate. It’s a very serious stain on the broad centre right space. I’m the bitterest I’ve been as a party member in a long time.
If they'd been against Truss, they could have absolutely destroyed the woman; it's not like the material wasn't there - she was a Lib Dem ffs.
That she was a Lib Dem is not a weakness. Churchill was once a Liberal too. People who evolve are more interesting than those who don't.
Tony Blair when he was young was an avowed Trotskist, while Darling, Milburn, Reid and Mandelson were all avowed Communists when they were young too. People change.
Changing your mind is fine. The thing about Truss is how polarised the changes are. Utterly convinced about one thing and then utterly convinced about the opposite. No nuance, It’s not an evolution, it’s chaos.
Let’s play fair Roger. On paper, the speech doesn’t look too bad. Selling apples with The land of the apple falling on newtons head, absolute genius! I will be Opening Pork markets in Beijing - why didn’t the audience rise to their feet? It’s written so well Chris Morris wrote in his autobiography ‘brass eye for sad guy’ it was the moment he hurtled into retirement unable to compete.
It falls down in the delivery. That Gomez Adams grin after every second word, and the scary jump into 😡 it’s wrong!
The perfect demonstration of what madness looks like on a political podium.
One thing that should worry the Tories - when I searched on Google for Liz Truss and it started to suggest search items as I typed, the first one was "Liz Truss Cheese".
If you search truss affair on twitter and scroll down about 10 tweets there's some illuminating stuff which prolly won't be there much longer
Might put a different light on this comment:
Sophie Morris @itssophiemorris · 3h Liz Truss on the Today programme: "I think every day when I get up in the morning 'what can I do to change things?'"
Sounds like the motivational gibberish you see on Linkedin
Brought to you by the sort of people who ask "What's your biggest weakness" type questions....
A betting note for future reference from the Tory leadership contest is that, for all the talk on this site in the run-up, and all the reasons why the Tories might want to look outside the usual choices, a party in office choosing a PM as well as a party leader has once again opted for someone who has very recently held one of the three great offices of state.
It follows a long, long line - Johnson had recently been Foreign Secretary, May was Home Secretary, Brown was Chancellor, Major was Chancellor, Callaghan was Foreign Secretary, Douglas-Home was Foreign Secretary, Macmillan was Chancellor, Eden was Foreign Secretary, Chamberlain was Chancellor, and Baldwin was Chancellor. Churchill was barely an exception - his most recent office was First Lord of the Admiralty, although that was in wartime and he'd been Chancellor and Home Secretary in the more distant past.
Partly due to lack of choice, but partly because there is time to grow into the role, parties have been willing to choose LOTOs who have much lighter CVs. Of election winning LOTOs, Cameron and Blair hadn't held ministerial office (shadow Education and Home respectively), Thatcher had been Education Secretary, Heath and Wilson had been Presidents of the Board of Trade.
In this leadership election so far, we've lost an Education Secretary (I know he had been Chancellor for a couple of days but it doesn't amount to experience), a Committee Chairman, a Trade Minister (and former Defence Secretary for a short time), a Minister of State, a recent Health Secretary who'd had a short stint as Chancellor a while ago, and a less recent former Foreign Secretary. We're left with a current Foreign Secretary and a man who was Chancellor until just days ago.
That, for me, is the betting lesson. In a leadership election when a party is in office, back the Big Beasts, lay the Rising Stars.
Sir Norfolk it is a veritable outrage that you missed Rehman Thingy off that list. With his experience as Minister for iPhone Videography.
I thought about including him, but it would have read as if I was implying Chishti wasn't a Big Beast. Nothing could be further from the truth, and Conservatives will rue the day.
I voted Conservative in the council elections this year. I am considering not voting for the Conservatives again until they have changed their leadership election rules to give MPs the final say. Why should party members decide who is the prime minister, when a party is in government?
Why is an electorate of 358 preferable to one of 150,000?
Those 358 have a stronger need to choose someone who is sort of acceptable to the general public, or a fair few of them are down the job centre soon. And at some level, they know it.
The 150,000 have a massive temptation to choose the one who makes them feel good now and who cares about 2024?
And what's the problem with that? If they pick a duffer, they'll be out of office.
If that did happen, it would be interesting to see if moves are made to change the Tory system.
EXCLUSIVE: I am told Keir Starmer will scrap the pledges to nationalise National Grid, water and Royal Mail.
Tuition fees remain in debate, I am told Labour will in the meantime focus on early education including bringing back SureStart.
Not nationalising water is a mistake. I think it would have popular support as everyone fucking hates the water companies. Charge a fortune and don't do anything for their money.
Why pay the market rate for them? Water is a regulated industry, so regulate the fuckers. Investment of x, price cap of y. "What about our shareholders???" What about them?
EXCLUSIVE: I am told Keir Starmer will scrap the pledges to nationalise National Grid, water and Royal Mail.
Tuition fees remain in debate, I am told Labour will in the meantime focus on early education including bringing back SureStart.
Not nationalising water is a mistake. I think it would have popular support as everyone fucking hates the water companies. Charge a fortune and don't do anything for their money.
I suspect RP has a plan below that allows a nationalisation to be prepared for long term while in the short term ensuring investment was made without massive profits.
Can you see any flaws in his solution?
The likes of Thames Water don't invest. Or if they do it is mega expensive with consumers footing the bill. So instead, one of my StateCo providers does the infrastructure over the heads of Thames Water, using government borrowing rates, and the water companies etc are simply regulated to accept it or quit.
It was the same as Labour proposed for energy. Instead of saying "we will nationalise SSE" and thus send the share price into the stratosphere, simply set up StateCo or RegionalCo competitors and regulate the private monopolies into the past.
"But what does that do for private sector investment" I hear a few shriek. And if there had been any worth its name that would be a valid argument. But there hasn't been. Hence the need for the state to take over.
Of course, Scottish Water has always been nationalised (thanks to the kind of unofficial referendum so decried on here). Didn't stop Slab (in the form of their then local manager Mr Leonard) for attacking the SNP for not having it in public ownership, as I recall.
Guido Fawkes is concerned that Tory members may not be able to afford to attend the hustings because of the cost of living crisis.
"There may now be a turnout problem with these debates, however. During a cost of living crisis the Tories have decided to charge for attendance, potentially putting off those interested in seeing the two candidates perform."
Team Truss obviously very happy. Team Sunak very happy. But perhaps the happiest people I’ve spoken to this afternoon are Labour people… Mordaunt was, by some way, the candidate that there were most worried about. They’ve been hoping for some time it would be Sunak V Truss. https://twitter.com/BenKentish/status/1549791598019575808
The problem with Mourdaunt was that people projected on her all their hopes and dreams and created the image of some sort of perfect Tory leader, but the brutal reality was that didn’t stack up. That and the Daily Mail did for her.
I was very much Team Penny, I don’t think anyone thought she was perfect. I think most people thought that her many strengths outweighed her weaknesses. The viciousness of the onslaught of briefings and what masquerades as journalism was in no way proportionate. It’s a very serious stain on the broad centre right space. I’m the bitterest I’ve been as a party member in a long time.
If they'd been against Truss, they could have absolutely destroyed the woman; it's not like the material wasn't there - she was a Lib Dem ffs.
That she was a Lib Dem is not a weakness. Churchill was once a Liberal too. People who evolve are more interesting than those who don't.
Tony Blair when he was young was an avowed Trotskist, while Darling, Milburn, Reid and Mandelson were all avowed Communists when they were young too. People change.
Changing your mind is fine. The thing about Truss is how polarised the changes are. Utterly convinced about one thing and then utterly convinced about the opposite. No nuance, It’s not an evolution, it’s chaos.
It is evolution, it is perfectly normal that once you have changed you accept your new position with the "zeal of the convert".
I was a Remainer at the start of the EU referendum campaign. I now have views in line with Truss's. Its not chaos, its evolution.
Flip-flopping back and forth rapidly at the drop of every opinion poll showing +1 to one side and then +1 to the other would be chaos. Not following with a zeal your new position once you've reached it.
" I was a remainer" . Pull the other one. You are the most reactionary poster on this site. You are the original young fogey Colonel Blimp. You might think making this claim adds cred to your position but it doesn't. It just points out to us that you are honest as Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Both of whom you clearly admire in spite of their obvious problem with telling the truth.
Oh give over the broken record. The fact that you're too thick to let the fact many people, not just myself, confirm I was pro-Remain penetrate your one-dimensional caricatured worldview of people just goes to show how stupid you are. People are more complicated than you can wrap your head around it seems.
I am not reactionary, Indeed I have frequently been called "woke" in a lot of the other debates on this site.
What I am is someone who unabashedly thinks that democracy and therefore nationalism is a very good thing and so too is low tax economics. I think internationalism undermines democracy, but that isn't reactionary - I wanted to see a more democratic EU which I thought was viable until Cameron's reforms failed which is when I switched to Leave and I haven't looked back since.
That you consider nationalism to be terrible is your own weakness, not mine.
I too think nationalism is a 'bad thing' on the whole. It's been the cause of many wars and has been repeatedly, and still is, used to stoke up hatred.
Overall, I cannot see what it's good for. We can cherish our history and our cultures without nationalism.
Agreed, but I also really value times when someone I disagree with lays out their views so clearly, as @BartholomewRoberts has done. I think it raises the tone of political debate, and prompts good discussions that can move people's thinking on.
I am interested in exploring this further. I think if I had to hang my hat on one aspect of our political system that I'd fight for, it would be democracy itself. In that sense I agree with Bart. But I also agree with Benpointer that valuing democracy doesn't mean you need to value nationalism, indeed nationalism more often stymies democracy than helps it (e.g. I think the EU could function more democratically if, throughout its development, nation states had been less important, and both hyper-local and supra-national groupings had been seen as the key ones to focus on).
Bart - can you say more about why you pin democracy to nationalism in this way? Specifically, can you answer why you think democracy works better at the national level than, say, a combination of much stronger regional assemblies with an overarching supra-national assembly (I'm tempted to cite the US as an example of what I mean, but as soon as you cite specific examples it is easy to focus on their specific flaws, so maybe better to keep the discussion theoretical).
In my view democracy at the national level is precisely the wrong scale to be working at - big enough to be impersonal and to leave many constituencies out in the cold (cf Scottish nationalism), but small enough to be unable to cope with the major issues we currently face (climate change, Chinese aggression, effective taxation of global businesses).
Nationalism and democracy go hand-in-hand. Nationalism is a belief that the people of the nation should run the nation, while democracy is a belief that those who run the nation should be elected. Having those of the nation elect those who run the nation is nationalist democracy and is a very good thing.
There antithesis of nationalism used to be imperialism. Nationalism arose in conflict to imperialism - a belief in your nation ruling over other nations. Anyone who seeks to rule over other countries is engaging in imperialism and undermining other nations nationalism.
The "wars" many people ascribe to nationalism should instead be ascribed to imperialism, which is nationalisms opposite, not nationalism.
Gandhi was an Indian nationalist, he wanted India ruled by Indians rather than Brits - there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Hitler was not a nationalist. He didn't want the French ruled by the French, he wanted them ruled by the Germans. He was an imperialist. Yes the name of his party included nationalist, but it also included the term socialist, sensible people recognise that there is more than just a name involved and he wasn't a socialist in the end - he wasn't a nationalist in the end either.
The people of the nation, electing those who run the nation, is modern democracy and I cherish that.
The opposite of nationalism nowadays tends to be more internationalism rather than imperialism, having unelected international bodies determine rules and laws. That too undermines democracy.
Thought experiment: imagine, through a quirk of history, the UK was a federated network of 50 ish regions, and had been for a couple of hundred years. Would you write the following paragraph?
"Regionalism and democracy go hand-in-hand. Regionalism is a belief that the people of the region should run the region, while democracy is a belief that those who run the region should be elected. Having those of the region elect those who run the region is regionalist democracy and is a very good thing."
I ask because I am trying to understand what motivates your nationalism. It sounds as though it is good old-fashioned conservatism (broadly, this is the way things work and we shouldn't make too many changes). I have a lot of respect for that, although in this case I disagree.
I think nationalism worked well when the sources of power that protected democracy matched the scale (broadly, large armies). I think the sources of power that protect democracy are now both more local (broadly because of social media amplifying hyper-local political causes), and more global (broadly because of the march of globalisation).
It's interesting that the examples of nationalism you use are from the past not the present. Can you think of someone today who is an ardent nationalist and who is advancing democracy because of their nationalism?
Since in your scenario regionalism would mean the same as nationalism does to me, then yes I could say that. The nation is not a static inviolable construct and if region means the same as nation, then a rose by any other name ...
I am not "conservative" in the way HYUFD is that thinks the nation should be static and inflexible and force should be used on any errant Scots that don't want to be part of the nation. I believe the nation should be a voluntary association of whoever democratically wants to be in the nation - whether than nation be called England, Scotland, Britain, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Lancashire or anything else.
Who is an ardent nationalist today who is advancing democracy because of their nationalism? Boris did at the last election with getting Brexit done, since that was the democratically expressed will of the UK nation. Nicola Sturgeon is presently doing so in Scotland. I don't like her politics, but she is wanting the people of Scotland to determine their own future as according to what they voted for at the last election, that is nationalist democracy which I support whether I like her politics or not.
People who oppose Scots being able to determine their own future are undermining democracy - our disputes should be resolved at the ballot box and not by telling others they have no choice.
If the Scots vote No in a second referendum that would be their choice, but it should be their choice to make, not mine or HYUFDs or anyone else's. Just as it was Britain's choice to be in the EU or not, not Macron's or Simon Coveney's.
PS unlike many other Leave voters I have no objection in principle to a nation called Europe, which is why I used to be pro-Remain. I believe that the EU is an evolving nascent federal nation state, and I was OK with us being a part of that with proper democratic safeguards and accountability. However Cameron's proposed reforms failed and that was for me the rapid beginning of the end of backing Remain. If we aren't going to have proper democratic accountability over a nation called Europe, we shouldn't be a part of that nation.
Yes that makes sense - the nation as a construct not as a fixed entity. And I agree about Sturgeon (I think it is harder to argue that Johnson is advancing democracy, but then I don't really think he was ever a nationalist, I think it was a convenient fig leaf for his own advancement).
I still stand by my argument that our current nation state is both too small and too big to meet our needs, but I can buy into your brand of nationalism more than I can most people's! Thanks for your replies.
Because making ourselves America's b*tch has always worked out so well for us.
Has Putinguy1983 hacked your account?
Pretty much, yes, absolutely it has, though as the article says Truss has been out in front of Biden and Blinken, and not just behind following them. Johnson was too.
I think our foreign and security policy should be guided by our own interests, not Neocon talking points. On Russia, which represents a security threat to us, we should absolutely be standing up to Putin alongside America and anyone else who is up for it. Read through my posts, I have never said anything different. But the China-US rivalry is different, as China isn't a threat to our security, and frankly a lot of the bluster on the US side is down to their own sense of supremacy being threatened. That is their problem, not ours.
China absolutely is a threat to our security, even more than Russia is.
As horrendous as Putin's invasion of Ukraine is, China invading Taiwan would be an order of magnitude worse. Ukraine is a substantial grain exporter and Russia a substantial energy exporter so this war has helped fuel a cost of living crisis with energy and food, but Taiwan is the leading global supplier of high end electronic chips that run the modern economy and China is the leading global exporter full stop.
A China/Taiwan war would be utterly catastrophic for the global economy and thus our own security in a way that would absolutely dwarf our current crisis. Joining with the USA, Japan, Australia and other allies in deterring that risk is great value for money and is another reason why Putin's invasion of Ukraine must be seen to fail, to deter China too.
The world today is all interconnected, you can't look at one alone and ignore the rest of the globe.
The deterrence value of whatever paltry forces we could project in the Taiwan Strait is not going to be the difference between China invading Taiwan or not. This is the kind of Neocon talking points that got hundreds of British servicemen and women killed in Iraq. If the world economy is that dependent on key components from a geopolitical flash point I would suggest investment in supply diversification may represent a safer and cheaper course of action.
To do my best Chandler Bing impression - Could you be any more wrong?
The deterrence value of UK forces operating alone would not be the difference, that is true.
But the UK isn't operating alone. The deterrence value of the UK and the USA, Australia, India, Japan, Poland and the rest of the civilised world standing together in unison is immense. This is one area whereby working together we are more than the sum of our parts.
You are as utterly naive and reprehensible as the so-called "realists" who wanted to sell out Ukraine at the start of the conflict as Putin's victory was "inevitable" so we may as well accept that reality.
You are being naïve if you think the US is simply defending the "free world" here rather than defending its own hegemonic position. Of course the US has every right to do this, and in many ways its hegemony is preferable to the alternatives, but I just don't think this is our conflict. Ukraine is our conflict, because it will determine the security of the whole of Europe and Russia is an expansionist power on our doorstep. Anyway, I look forward to you signing up so you can put your own life at risk in pursuit of America's foreign policy goals, rather than just other people's.
If it were only the US that were worried about the risk of China invading Taiwan you might have some credibility that it is just the US defending its own position. Its not though, its the entire civilised world who are uniting because they know the threat is very real.
Stop and look at what China has already been willing to do with the Tibetans, Hong Kong and the Uighur. That you can look at that and seriously say "China is not a threat" is baffling, you are an apologist for evil.
Apologist for evil, give me a break. You drink too much coffee. You can't divide the world up into white hats and black hats. China has done lots of bad stuff, as have other countries. I am not defending them, I find their system of government reprehensible. But they are not an aggressively expansionist power and never have been, unlike Russia or for that matter Britain. I don't think we need to get involved in some war on the other side of the world where the link to British interests is not absolutely clear. And to be honest I find it odd that people who claim to be British patriots are so ready to embrace the agenda of another foreign power on this issue.
Some parts of the world are shades of grey, but (and this must be my famous "reactionary" attitude according to @Nigel_Foremain ) I greatly dislike the antiquated term "black and white" since it implies black = bad and white = good.
The use of white/lightness for good and black/darkness for bad long predates the use of white and black to describe skin colour.
Language evolves though, we don't still speak ye olde English.
Continuing to use such language now is repugnant to me. 👎
Your attitude is not dissimilar to this:
I'm a tad confused, in your eyes am I supposed to be the house's resident or Thornberry?
I know which one I'd identify more with.
Thornberry.
Her attitude was "some people who fly the English flag and drive white vans are racist, therefore this is a house where racists live"
Your attitude seems to be "some people use white and black in some contexts to be racist, therefore all uses of white and black are racist"
Not remotely the same at all.
The English flag is still the English flag, continuing to use it represents nothing more or less than being English.
White and black is antiquated and no longer appropriate good and evil paradigms, even if it used to be in the past.
Using black as a derogatory term today is not like flying the English flag, its like flying the flag of the Confederacy.
EXCLUSIVE: I am told Keir Starmer will scrap the pledges to nationalise National Grid, water and Royal Mail.
Tuition fees remain in debate, I am told Labour will in the meantime focus on early education including bringing back SureStart.
Shit. When was the last time Labour announced actual policies? They must feel on the front foot
Sounds more like scrapping actual policies.
These are terrible policies though, even I don't believe in nationalising National Grid/energy and I'm leftie.
Water I'm more luke warm on because it's failed under privatisation but hardly seems a priority at present.
Royal Mail is gone, what is nationalising it going to do? That's just pointlessly ideological.
Is that the sound of the Overton window shifting mildly to the right?
I thought nationalising natural monopolies was currently orthodoxy on the left.
Royal Mail isn't a natural monopoly though. It would make sense for only one person per day turning up at your door to deliver all the mail and parcels but in the real world there are blokes in vans dropping stuff off from all sorts of delivery firms.
It is, though, in terms of the state-enforced universal postage rate which doesn't penalise the rural areas, unlike many commercial couriers. Like BT, which was also a GPO element.
I wonder what the volume of letter delivery looks like these days compared to the past and where it is forecast to go. I have changed everything I can to electronic and get virtually no snail mail now.
So my deliveries are overwhelmingly parcels that don't come via Royal Mail, because the likes of Amazon now use the likes of their Flex programme to have people deliver them.
I get quite a lot of snail mail. Plenty of academic and society items, magazines, books, parcels.
Edit: and I don't live in the worst area for private courier charge gouging.
Which reminds me of the Telegraph article saying can't afford these common holiday locations, here are cheaper alternatives....one being can't afford Bath for a weekend, try Bradford....yeah right, I can see your typical Telegraph reader doing that.
My guess the £5 is to try and minimize idiots organising block booking all tickets via a bot, so they can boast on social media of pwning the Tories by buying up all the husting tickets and then nobody being there....or actually turning up and causing a disruption.
Even with that, its obvious now that some Isabella Harving-Symthe type is going to turn up and chain themselves to something in the name of Stop Oil.
EXCLUSIVE: I am told Keir Starmer will scrap the pledges to nationalise National Grid, water and Royal Mail.
Tuition fees remain in debate, I am told Labour will in the meantime focus on early education including bringing back SureStart.
Shit. When was the last time Labour announced actual policies? They must feel on the front foot
Sounds more like scrapping actual policies.
These are terrible policies though, even I don't believe in nationalising National Grid/energy and I'm leftie.
Water I'm more luke warm on because it's failed under privatisation but hardly seems a priority at present.
Royal Mail is gone, what is nationalising it going to do? That's just pointlessly ideological.
Is that the sound of the Overton window shifting mildly to the right?
I thought nationalising natural monopolies was currently orthodoxy on the left.
Royal Mail isn't a natural monopoly though. It would make sense for only one person per day turning up at your door to deliver all the mail and parcels but in the real world there are blokes in vans dropping stuff off from all sorts of delivery firms.
It is, though, in terms of the state-enforced universal postage rate which doesn't penalise the rural areas, unlike many commercial couriers. Like BT, which was also a GPO element.
The couriers are a nasty cartel - and that includes Royal Mail Parcels. The "highlands" courier zone is a joke. DHL charge 2.5x the fee to deliver into it. Even when the "highlands" redoubt starts in Westhill which is a suburb of Aberdeen. Even up here in Buchan we are no further away from the distribution office than places like Brechin, yet pay gonzo charges.
Even better is that the charges often apply one way - it is a fraction of the cost to send a parcel from the "highlands" to non-highlands than the other way round.
And they are all the same. And none of them will engage with consumers or even the Scottish government on why this is the case.
EXCLUSIVE: I am told Keir Starmer will scrap the pledges to nationalise National Grid, water and Royal Mail.
Tuition fees remain in debate, I am told Labour will in the meantime focus on early education including bringing back SureStart.
Shit. When was the last time Labour announced actual policies? They must feel on the front foot
Sounds more like scrapping actual policies.
These are terrible policies though, even I don't believe in nationalising National Grid/energy and I'm leftie.
Water I'm more luke warm on because it's failed under privatisation but hardly seems a priority at present.
Royal Mail is gone, what is nationalising it going to do? That's just pointlessly ideological.
Is that the sound of the Overton window shifting mildly to the right?
I thought nationalising natural monopolies was currently orthodoxy on the left.
Royal Mail isn't a natural monopoly though. It would make sense for only one person per day turning up at your door to deliver all the mail and parcels but in the real world there are blokes in vans dropping stuff off from all sorts of delivery firms.
It is, though, in terms of the state-enforced universal postage rate which doesn't penalise the rural areas, unlike many commercial couriers. Like BT, which was also a GPO element.
The couriers are a nasty cartel - and that includes Royal Mail Parcels. The "highlands" courier zone is a joke. DHL charge 2.5x the fee to deliver into it. Even when the "highlands" redoubt starts in Westhill which is a suburb of Aberdeen. Even up here in Buchan we are no further away from the distribution office than places like Brechin, yet pay gonzo charges.
Even better is that the charges often apply one way - it is a fraction of the cost to send a parcel from the "highlands" to non-highlands than the other way round.
And they are all the same. And none of them will engage with consumers or even the Scottish government on why this is the case.
Of course - I was thinking of RM *letters* and smaller items. Apologies. Quite right.
Comments
So the next question is how is £38B each year going to be found? If it’s entirely borrowing and added to debt, what is the impact? And can we trust it not to be made up largely from cuts and austerity instead?
Continuing to use such language now is repugnant to me. 👎
Britain is a prime example of that.
Equally the electricity backbone currently requires a lot of investment that you may not want going through the Government books especially when that company can borrow at almost Government rates.
People who view the US as some kind of pinnacle of democracy that "shares our values" should live there for a few years. It is a deeply messed-up place and should act as a warning for those who think that an ultra laissez faire economic model is a recipe for a happy and functional society.
Truss is very happy to cut taxes (and inappropriate ones at that) but isn't combining that with slashing the state...
The nation and its borders should be determined democratically, at the ballot box. Ballots not bullets.
If people want to consider themselves Scottish with a Scottish demos in a democratic Scottish nation then that should be their prerogative.
If people want to consider themselves British with a British demos in a democratic British nation then that should be their prerogative.
If people want to consider themselves European with a European demos in a democratic European nation then that should be their prerogative.
The nation should be democratic, but should be able to evolve.
Anyway the gossip relayed to me about Ms Truss is current - not old - and, if true, worrying. It is not the behaviour which any politician should indulge in, let alone a candidate for PM. I refer you to the Dame Laura Cox report from autumn 2018 and this header - https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2022/07/06/for-those-with-short-memories/.
I hope Truss gets proper scrutiny.
All this will be worked through when the southern shitkickers found Gilead.
I don't want us to go to war with China, and I can't foresee them directly invading the UK... but they are definitely a threat to global security (cyberterrorism, industrial espionage) - as well as doing some really awful things to the Uighurs. A world dominated by China's current regime is not going to be good for British people I think.
Nobody appears to have the magic bullet to solve this. In fact it may be that only PR will help - we could in theory see a left wing socially conservative front develop together with a right wing socially liberal faction.
Your better song suggestions for Liz Truss and/or Rishi Sunak please...
https://twitter.com/MattChorley/status/1550041782284689409
@MattChorley Personal Cheeses - Depeche Truss
Getting these voters to vote for anyone is the challenge.
https://twitter.com/kruger4devizes/status/1549777425491435520?s=21&t=uExCv2z1qVxN4gi3ezInPw
Solved
If I had a question at the hustings I would be asking them how they would bring house prices down to help people who can't afford them, bearing in mind the entirely unnecessary 25% increase over the last 2 years.
Any Conservative members care to take it on?
1. Set a greatly strengthened and strict regulatory framework. Direct the ShareCo owners to act in the state's strategic interest.
2. Create StateCo as the regulated co-investment partner for new infrastructure. That ensures that the likes of Thames Water can't get away with refusing to invest again.
3. ShareCo investors realise the pot of gold has disappeared, start to sell, and then the assets get a CPO to be run by StateCo.
Done.
It falls down in the delivery. That Gomez Adams grin after every second word, and the scary jump into 😡 it’s wrong!
The perfect demonstration of what madness looks like on a political podium.
I thought nationalising natural monopolies was currently orthodoxy on the left.
I have just realised where I've seen Truss before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc1b7GxsdO0
The new leader could be derailed by this before they have even begun.
Certainly for me fuel costs are a worry. I have done everything I can to make the house insulated. Wood is stocked up and we switched off the heating in February. For those with children or the very old and frail, this winter could be a nightmare.
FWIW Sunak is probably the better bet. But by 2024 it will be time for a change. The Tory party is a rabble really, out of ideas, energy, destructive of anything standing in their way and about as unconservative as it's possible to be. And they deserve a kicking for inflicting Boris on us despite knowing of his total unsuitability for the job. If they do this again, well-deserved oblivion should be the reward.
"Regionalism and democracy go hand-in-hand. Regionalism is a belief that the people of the region should run the region, while democracy is a belief that those who run the region should be elected. Having those of the region elect those who run the region is regionalist democracy and is a very good thing."
I ask because I am trying to understand what motivates your nationalism. It sounds as though it is good old-fashioned conservatism (broadly, this is the way things work and we shouldn't make too many changes). I have a lot of respect for that, although in this case I disagree.
I think nationalism worked well when the sources of power that protected democracy matched the scale (broadly, large armies). I think the sources of power that protect democracy are now both more local (broadly because of social media amplifying hyper-local political causes), and more global (broadly because of the march of globalisation).
It's interesting that the examples of nationalism you use are from the past not the present. Can you think of someone today who is an ardent nationalist and who is advancing democracy because of their nationalism?
The obvious action for HMG is to set the energy price cap back to 2019 levels.
How to fund it? Well, not through tax cuts, that's for sure.
Worse for the government is that the squatter PM refuses to accept there is an issue, the ex CofE thinks he has already fixed it, and the Trusster doesn't care whether its fixed or not.
We are going to see the return of many of the Beveridge giants and the Tory party are going to get the blame for the riots that will inevitably be a feature of this winter. In the past that wouldn't bother them, but now those are Tory voters.
Cities are less fluid mind - Damascus, Luxor and Athens are all older than any current nation.
Mattarella’s office said in a statement today that the head of state had “taken note” of the resignation and asked Draghi to remain in a caretaker capacity." (£)
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/embattled-italian-pm-mario-draghi-faces-down-the-populists-rkbrgqvjr
She certainly knows where the tory erogenous zones are....
So our taxes would then have to go up even more so bureaucrats and quangos try to solve those problems?
Nothing has changed there and given many companies utter reluctance to invest in training even when there is free money (via the apprenticeship levy) to do so there are no easy solutions here.
What a dividing line: we will borrow in order to keep your water bill down; they will borrow to knock 1p off income tax.
The other thing I would do is to abolish the daily standing charge. This change would encourage more efficient use of energy, by increasing the unit rate, and mean that those with the lowest incomes wouldn't adjust be hundreds of pounds down before they've turned a single light on.
Everyone else has to lump it, while we spend a few years building as many wind turbines as possible to reduce our dependence on gas.
Vast majority of 200K Tory membership are not dumb, it’s rude to push they are. Many are brainy and smart like ny Dad 🥰
(He is still convinced Liz Truss wins though)
Can you see any flaws in his solution?
I know which one I'd identify more with.
You could to some extent argue the same for electricity, but there you can make it by investing in solar, wind, etc etc etc and you feed it into a grid that is shared nationwide.
I'd like to see this, investment in energy and food security, equalising NI and income tax, an increase in the council tax bands, stamp duty on companies buying property, some sort of CGT on houses, a limit on the tax relief for charitable donations etc, abolish the triple lock etc. I would also like something done about the usurious rates charged on student loans.
https://twitter.com/estwebber/status/1550060556832456704
Her attitude was "some people who fly the English flag and drive white vans are racist, therefore this is a house where racists live"
Your attitude seems to be "some people use white and black in some contexts to be racist, therefore all uses of white and black are racist"
At the last leadership election in 2019 there were around 160,000 members - though this is expected to have grown, possibly up to 200,000.
Tory members therefore make up around 0.30% of the population.
Research from the Mile End Institute published in The Guardian claims 44% of the membership is over 65. Some 97% are white and 54% live in London and the South.
The same people often see women doing the same thing as tarts, unreliable, homewreckers, etc.
Nasty double standards.
I am not "conservative" in the way HYUFD is that thinks the nation should be static and inflexible and force should be used on any errant Scots that don't want to be part of the nation. I believe the nation should be a voluntary association of whoever democratically wants to be in the nation - whether than nation be called England, Scotland, Britain, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Lancashire or anything else.
Who is an ardent nationalist today who is advancing democracy because of their nationalism? Boris did at the last election with getting Brexit done, since that was the democratically expressed will of the UK nation. Nicola Sturgeon is presently doing so in Scotland. I don't like her politics, but she is wanting the people of Scotland to determine their own future as according to what they voted for at the last election, that is nationalist democracy which I support whether I like her politics or not.
People who oppose Scots being able to determine their own future are undermining democracy - our disputes should be resolved at the ballot box and not by telling others they have no choice.
If the Scots vote No in a second referendum that would be their choice, but it should be their choice to make, not mine or HYUFDs or anyone else's. Just as it was Britain's choice to be in the EU or not, not Macron's or Simon Coveney's.
PS unlike many other Leave voters I have no objection in principle to a nation called Europe, which is why I used to be pro-Remain. I believe that the EU is an evolving nascent federal nation state, and I was OK with us being a part of that with proper democratic safeguards and accountability. However Cameron's proposed reforms failed and that was for me the rapid beginning of the end of backing Remain. If we aren't going to have proper democratic accountability over a nation called Europe, we shouldn't be a part of that nation.
It follows a long, long line - Johnson had recently been Foreign Secretary, May was Home Secretary, Brown was Chancellor, Major was Chancellor, Callaghan was Foreign Secretary, Douglas-Home was Foreign Secretary, Macmillan was Chancellor, Eden was Foreign Secretary, Chamberlain was Chancellor, and Baldwin was Chancellor. Churchill was barely an exception - his most recent office was First Lord of the Admiralty, although that was in wartime and he'd been Chancellor and Home Secretary in the more distant past.
Partly due to lack of choice, but partly because there is time to grow into the role, parties have been willing to choose LOTOs who have much lighter CVs. Of election winning LOTOs, Cameron and Blair hadn't held ministerial office (shadow Education and Home respectively), Thatcher had been Education Secretary, Heath and Wilson had been Presidents of the Board of Trade.
In this leadership election so far, we've lost an Education Secretary (I know he had been Chancellor for a couple of days but it doesn't amount to experience), a Committee Chairman, a Trade Minister (and former Defence Secretary for a short time), a Minister of State, a recent Health Secretary who'd had a short stint as Chancellor a while ago, and a less recent former Foreign Secretary. We're left with a current Foreign Secretary and a man who was Chancellor until just days ago.
That, for me, is the betting lesson. In a leadership election when a party is in office, back the Big Beasts, lay the Rising Stars.
Sophie Morris
@itssophiemorris
· 3h
Liz Truss on the Today programme: "I think every day when I get up in the morning 'what can I do to change things?'"
It was the same as Labour proposed for energy. Instead of saying "we will nationalise SSE" and thus send the share price into the stratosphere, simply set up StateCo or RegionalCo competitors and regulate the private monopolies into the past.
"But what does that do for private sector investment" I hear a few shriek. And if there had been any worth its name that would be a valid argument. But there hasn't been. Hence the need for the state to take over.
The 150,000 have a massive temptation to choose the one who makes them feel good now and who cares about 2024?
So my deliveries are overwhelmingly parcels that don't come via Royal Mail, because the likes of Amazon now use the likes of their Flex programme to have people deliver them.
If that did happen, it would be interesting to see if moves are made to change the Tory system.
"There may now be a turnout problem with these debates, however. During a cost of living crisis the Tories have decided to charge for attendance, potentially putting off those interested in seeing the two candidates perform."
https://order-order.com/2022/07/21/team-rishis-latest-hustings-headache/
I still stand by my argument that our current nation state is both too small and too big to meet our needs, but I can buy into your brand of nationalism more than I can most people's! Thanks for your replies.
The English flag is still the English flag, continuing to use it represents nothing more or less than being English.
White and black is antiquated and no longer appropriate good and evil paradigms, even if it used to be in the past.
Using black as a derogatory term today is not like flying the English flag, its like flying the flag of the Confederacy.
Edit: and I don't live in the worst area for private courier charge gouging.
My guess the £5 is to try and minimize idiots organising block booking all tickets via a bot, so they can boast on social media of pwning the Tories by buying up all the husting tickets and then nobody being there....or actually turning up and causing a disruption.
Even with that, its obvious now that some Isabella Harving-Symthe type is going to turn up and chain themselves to something in the name of Stop Oil.
Even better is that the charges often apply one way - it is a fraction of the cost to send a parcel from the "highlands" to non-highlands than the other way round.
And they are all the same. And none of them will engage with consumers or even the Scottish government on why this is the case.