It's a rubbish deal which her own officials warned her against. The only thing it delivered was yet another photo opportunity for her.
Look at the signatories to the letter - farmers who want to keep competition out and woke charities that hate free trade.
If anything I think the deal did not go nearly far enough in giving British consumers the benefits of cheaper food for decades.
Look at the substance of the letter. It is about the refusal to allow any Parliamentary scrutiny of the deal. Those who moaned endlessly about the lack of scrutiny of what the EU was up to, its high handedness, its bypassing of democratically elected Parliaments now say nothing - applaud even - when the British executive does exactly the same thing and shows utter contempt for Parliament, for MPs and for voters.
A lack of transparency leads to bad governance.
I think a further question is whether it is usual for Parliament to get involved in the negotiation of trade agreements beyond go/no go.
My view is that we are seeing sectarian interests cosplaying as "scrutiny".
In the EU they all need to pass Parliament.
Indeed, I believe the Australian parliament has to agree this deal too.
There's a difference between Parliamentary contribution to content in advance, a Parliamentary veto on XYZ can't be included, and a go/no-go decision afterwards (as happens for secondary legislation) with consultation beforehand.
The list of EU negotiations which have gone nowhere, sometimes for decades, does not to me recommend their model.
Why do Australian MPs get to debate the deal and our MPs not?
The Tories do have a massive majority, and could whip it if needed. They just wanted to avoid scrutiny.
As I pointed out before, it was a factor in handing Tiverton and Honiton to the LDs. Riding roughshod over core voters concerns because they have nowhere else to go is not a great long term strategy.
Ours did get to debate the deal afaics. There was a Parliamentary committee on it, and a debate in response to a Ministerial Statement.
What they did not get to do aiui was to write non-negotiable content into the agreement in advance.
It's a rubbish deal which her own officials warned her against. The only thing it delivered was yet another photo opportunity for her.
Look at the signatories to the letter - farmers who want to keep competition out and woke charities that hate free trade.
If anything I think the deal did not go nearly far enough in giving British consumers the benefits of cheaper food for decades.
Look at the substance of the letter. It is about the refusal to allow any Parliamentary scrutiny of the deal. Those who moaned endlessly about the lack of scrutiny of what the EU was up to, its high handedness, its bypassing of democratically elected Parliaments now say nothing - applaud even - when the British executive does exactly the same thing and shows utter contempt for Parliament, for MPs and for voters.
A lack of transparency leads to bad governance.
I think a further question is whether it is usual for Parliament to get involved in the negotiation of trade agreements beyond go/no go.
My view is that we are seeing sectarian interests cosplaying as "scrutiny".
Parliament trying to tie the hands of trade negotiating teams, is what paralysed the Brexit process for two years.
Government negotiates the Treaty, and Parliament can either give it a “yay” or a “nay”.
"I have never believed that the EU would suddenly collapse. But I thought it likely that it would gradually run out of political capacity due to lack of popular legitimacy. Many, like myself, have drawn a comparison with the Austro-Hungarian empire: divided, weak but unreformable, aiming at best to maintain (as one of its rulers put it) “a stable level of discontent” among a resigned population. This now seems optimistic."
It never occurs to nationalists like Tombs that many of those opposing the government's disastrous approach to Brexit do so because they care deeply about the UK and its future.
Robert Tombs is a professor emeritus of French history at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. He is also the recipient of the Ordre des Palmes académiques awarded by the French government. He is a respected and revered academic at the highest level, and a very intelligent man.
You may not agree with his views on the EU but he's a remarkably well-read and well-informed individual, and makes his arguments reasonably, proportionately and lucidly.
You are entirely unqualified to denigrate him with such smears.
No, I just do not share your opinion of him. I do not believe that thinking the government has handled Brexit disastrously equates to bashing, let alone hating, the UK. Equating the government to the country is nationalism.
He has done neither of those things.
You are criticising your own caricature of him, not the reality. Probably because the reality is too complex for you to deal with.
Maybe it's just that I can read ...
Self-hating Remainers are blind to the EU's flaws
Their obsession with bashing Britain has not wavered, even as their project across the Channel crashes and burns
To be slightly fair you are quoting presumably a sub editor's summary of the piece. On the other hand it is a pretty accurate summary.
What a strange conversation this is. OK this guy seems to be an historian, but it is usual to judge the output of historians on merit, not by the emeritusness or Palme holding status of the author. Anyway this isn't history it is (bad) journalism, so his talent for history is about as relevant as his talent for cake baking.
Good to see the moral excellence of the Raj reaffirmed though. My word, those silly billies got the wrong end of the stick in 1857.
It does not appear to be widely reported that lower-paid NHS workers are effectively getting a 10% pay rise, unless I have missed it. Good news for them.
"Liz Truss’s team is frantically distancing themselves from her economics guru tonight after he said her tax cuts could result in interest rates of up to 7 per cent.
Professor Patrick Minford, who was named by the Tory leadership frontrunner as endorsing her fiscal strategy, said higher rates would be a “good thing” and more expensive mortgages would be “part of the adjustment”.
However, several mortgage experts warned this would lead to further annual payments on the average mortgage of about £700 a month, crippling household finances.
Former chancellor Norman Lamont also told i it would not be a “good thing” to see interest rates go as high as 7 per cent and said it would be “interesting” to see if Truss agreed with the claims.
The Truss campaign was trying to distance themselves from Professor Minford last night, saying he had no “official role” with her campaign – despite the Foreign Secretary citing his influence as recently as Thursday."
Following the Mordaunt playbook I see - "No I never said he was an influence. How dare you point to my statement last Thursday saying the opposite. This is a brutal campaign to undermine me. It's not fair to point to things I've said. I am the People's Choice."
Bart was saying how wonderful Minford was yesterday, oh well guess he needs re-programming
What a complete re-programme new name the lot or just an upgrade? It's only 12 months since he was decommissioned after the last malfunction. The one where he declared Boris Johnson the best Prime Minister since the war.
I must admit I thought at the time it was unfixable. But apparently it was just a glitch.
Almost as crazy as saying Bojo was like Mugabe or Kim Jong Un.
Is it not obvious that the reason that Patrick Minford was able to say that a fiscal boost from cutting taxes was not inflationary was because he was adjusting monetary policy to tighten the money supply sufficiently to offset the tax cuts? Liz, not understanding that, has focused on the fiscal element without appreciating that there has to be a monetary response.
Would we be better off with lower taxes but higher interest rates? Well, that very much depends who you are. Those who have largely paid off or inflated away their mortgages would undoubtedly be. Those who haven't would be catastrophically hit. There are enough of the latter to undermine the housing market so even those without the mortgage would see a reduction in their major asset.
From an economic point of view Minford thinks that is a good thing. He identifies the asset inflation caused by extremely low interest rates over the last 14 years as part of the problem, sharply increasing inequality in society, reducing job mobility and discouraging investment in useful productive assets rather than houses. I have some considerable sympathy with these points but the challenge is how you get from here to there without bankrupting half the country and it isn't easy.
Rishi is completely at home in this territory and should be able to rip Truss a new one on Monday. If her plan is thought to be falling apart he would be back in the game. Given when the voting occurs he only has one chance. There are likely to be fireworks.
The problem is that the membership are not interested in what Thatcher called "sound money" they just want their tax cuts for the rich and a bit of Brussels bashing. As @Cyclefree pointed out, very much like the Barber Boom, which led to Britain's highest ever inflation rate, and a Labour government.
You may be right @Foxy but its Rishi's only chance and he needs to go for it.
Now the unfunded tax cuts have had their drawbacks pointed out, I see we have moved to the red tape bonfire stage.
Don't forget savage cuts to the faceless bureaucrats in the Civil Service. And deporting millions of Equality and Diversity jobsworths to Rwanda or something. Billions to be saved through those two measures.
Can we ship off the Tory selectorate to an island somewhere and name it Leaveria? We could even build a wall around it for them so no outsiders can get in. Maybe send the Mail and the Express along with them?
Is it not obvious that the reason that Patrick Minford was able to say that a fiscal boost from cutting taxes was not inflationary was because he was adjusting monetary policy to tighten the money supply sufficiently to offset the tax cuts? Liz, not understanding that, has focused on the fiscal element without appreciating that there has to be a monetary response.
Would we be better off with lower taxes but higher interest rates? Well, that very much depends who you are. Those who have largely paid off or inflated away their mortgages would undoubtedly be. Those who haven't would be catastrophically hit. There are enough of the latter to undermine the housing market so even those without the mortgage would see a reduction in their major asset.
From an economic point of view Minford thinks that is a good thing. He identifies the asset inflation caused by extremely low interest rates over the last 14 years as part of the problem, sharply increasing inequality in society, reducing job mobility and discouraging investment in useful productive assets rather than houses. I have some considerable sympathy with these points but the challenge is how you get from here to there without bankrupting half the country and it isn't easy.
Rishi is completely at home in this territory and should be able to rip Truss a new one on Monday. If her plan is thought to be falling apart he would be back in the game. Given when the voting occurs he only has one chance. There are likely to be fireworks.
The problem is that the membership are not interested in what Thatcher called "sound money" they just want their tax cuts for the rich and a bit of Brussels bashing. As @Cyclefree pointed out, very much like the Barber Boom, which led to Britain's highest ever inflation rate, and a Labour government.
The big difference being that the government, and not the Bank of England, controlled monetary policy at the time....??
We underestimate the credibility that Brown's move to make the Bank independent has bought Investors always suspected before independence that policy was set for political reasons.
It does not appear to be widely reported that lower-paid NHS workers are effectively getting a 10% pay rise, unless I have missed it. Good news for them.
Yes not quite 10% for AFC band 2, so receptionists, clinic clerks and HCAs.
Is it not obvious that the reason that Patrick Minford was able to say that a fiscal boost from cutting taxes was not inflationary was because he was adjusting monetary policy to tighten the money supply sufficiently to offset the tax cuts? Liz, not understanding that, has focused on the fiscal element without appreciating that there has to be a monetary response.
Would we be better off with lower taxes but higher interest rates? Well, that very much depends who you are. Those who have largely paid off or inflated away their mortgages would undoubtedly be. Those who haven't would be catastrophically hit. There are enough of the latter to undermine the housing market so even those without the mortgage would see a reduction in their major asset.
From an economic point of view Minford thinks that is a good thing. He identifies the asset inflation caused by extremely low interest rates over the last 14 years as part of the problem, sharply increasing inequality in society, reducing job mobility and discouraging investment in useful productive assets rather than houses. I have some considerable sympathy with these points but the challenge is how you get from here to there without bankrupting half the country and it isn't easy.
Rishi is completely at home in this territory and should be able to rip Truss a new one on Monday. If her plan is thought to be falling apart he would be back in the game. Given when the voting occurs he only has one chance. There are likely to be fireworks.
The problem is that the membership are not interested in what Thatcher called "sound money" they just want their tax cuts for the rich and a bit of Brussels bashing. As @Cyclefree pointed out, very much like the Barber Boom, which led to Britain's highest ever inflation rate, and a Labour government.
Question is- could Truss engineer a boom and win an election before the bills come in? And does she care that a win on that basis in (say) 2023 would make the 2028 election a disaster for her successor?
It does not appear to be widely reported that lower-paid NHS workers are effectively getting a 10% pay rise, unless I have missed it. Good news for them.
And starting teachers 9.8%. I suspect it isn't being widely publicised because this is what a wage/price spiral looks like.
Is it not obvious that the reason that Patrick Minford was able to say that a fiscal boost from cutting taxes was not inflationary was because he was adjusting monetary policy to tighten the money supply sufficiently to offset the tax cuts? Liz, not understanding that, has focused on the fiscal element without appreciating that there has to be a monetary response.
Would we be better off with lower taxes but higher interest rates? Well, that very much depends who you are. Those who have largely paid off or inflated away their mortgages would undoubtedly be. Those who haven't would be catastrophically hit. There are enough of the latter to undermine the housing market so even those without the mortgage would see a reduction in their major asset.
From an economic point of view Minford thinks that is a good thing. He identifies the asset inflation caused by extremely low interest rates over the last 14 years as part of the problem, sharply increasing inequality in society, reducing job mobility and discouraging investment in useful productive assets rather than houses. I have some considerable sympathy with these points but the challenge is how you get from here to there without bankrupting half the country and it isn't easy.
Rishi is completely at home in this territory and should be able to rip Truss a new one on Monday. If her plan is thought to be falling apart he would be back in the game. Given when the voting occurs he only has one chance. There are likely to be fireworks.
The problem is that the membership are not interested in what Thatcher called "sound money" they just want their tax cuts for the rich and a bit of Brussels bashing. As @Cyclefree pointed out, very much like the Barber Boom, which led to Britain's highest ever inflation rate, and a Labour government.
The big difference being that the government, and not the Bank of England, controlled monetary policy at the time....??
We underestimate the credibility that Brown's move to make the Bank independent has bought Investors always suspected before independence that policy was set for political reasons.
Yes, but the Barber Boom was in part kicked off by leaving the Bretton Woods system, which had in effect controlled monetary policy.
"I have never believed that the EU would suddenly collapse. But I thought it likely that it would gradually run out of political capacity due to lack of popular legitimacy. Many, like myself, have drawn a comparison with the Austro-Hungarian empire: divided, weak but unreformable, aiming at best to maintain (as one of its rulers put it) “a stable level of discontent” among a resigned population. This now seems optimistic."
The transformation of historians into partisan political commentators is not necessarily to their or our advantage.
Historians have long had a tendency towards partisan political commentary, as far back as ancient Roman times,
Further back than that! The great Herodotus himself was hugely political and slanted. As the editor of Book 1 wrote: he “plainly intended his work to undermine Hellenic ethnocentricity”.
And it is profoundly unlikely that Herodotus was the first partisan political commentator, it’s just that we’ve lost all earlier œuvres.
Is it not obvious that the reason that Patrick Minford was able to say that a fiscal boost from cutting taxes was not inflationary was because he was adjusting monetary policy to tighten the money supply sufficiently to offset the tax cuts? Liz, not understanding that, has focused on the fiscal element without appreciating that there has to be a monetary response.
Would we be better off with lower taxes but higher interest rates? Well, that very much depends who you are. Those who have largely paid off or inflated away their mortgages would undoubtedly be. Those who haven't would be catastrophically hit. There are enough of the latter to undermine the housing market so even those without the mortgage would see a reduction in their major asset.
From an economic point of view Minford thinks that is a good thing. He identifies the asset inflation caused by extremely low interest rates over the last 14 years as part of the problem, sharply increasing inequality in society, reducing job mobility and discouraging investment in useful productive assets rather than houses. I have some considerable sympathy with these points but the challenge is how you get from here to there without bankrupting half the country and it isn't easy.
Rishi is completely at home in this territory and should be able to rip Truss a new one on Monday. If her plan is thought to be falling apart he would be back in the game. Given when the voting occurs he only has one chance. There are likely to be fireworks.
The problem is that the membership are not interested in what Thatcher called "sound money" they just want their tax cuts for the rich and a bit of Brussels bashing. As @Cyclefree pointed out, very much like the Barber Boom, which led to Britain's highest ever inflation rate, and a Labour government.
Question is- could Truss engineer a boom and win an election before the bills come in? And does she care that a win on that basis in (say) 2023 would make the 2028 election a disaster for her successor?
Is it not obvious that the reason that Patrick Minford was able to say that a fiscal boost from cutting taxes was not inflationary was because he was adjusting monetary policy to tighten the money supply sufficiently to offset the tax cuts? Liz, not understanding that, has focused on the fiscal element without appreciating that there has to be a monetary response.
Would we be better off with lower taxes but higher interest rates? Well, that very much depends who you are. Those who have largely paid off or inflated away their mortgages would undoubtedly be. Those who haven't would be catastrophically hit. There are enough of the latter to undermine the housing market so even those without the mortgage would see a reduction in their major asset.
From an economic point of view Minford thinks that is a good thing. He identifies the asset inflation caused by extremely low interest rates over the last 14 years as part of the problem, sharply increasing inequality in society, reducing job mobility and discouraging investment in useful productive assets rather than houses. I have some considerable sympathy with these points but the challenge is how you get from here to there without bankrupting half the country and it isn't easy.
Rishi is completely at home in this territory and should be able to rip Truss a new one on Monday. If her plan is thought to be falling apart he would be back in the game. Given when the voting occurs he only has one chance. There are likely to be fireworks.
The problem is that the membership are not interested in what Thatcher called "sound money" they just want their tax cuts for the rich and a bit of Brussels bashing. As @Cyclefree pointed out, very much like the Barber Boom, which led to Britain's highest ever inflation rate, and a Labour government.
Question is- could Truss engineer a boom and win an election before the bills come in? And does she care that a win on that basis in (say) 2023 would make the 2028 election a disaster for her successor?
Hard to do with an independent Bank of England, but she could change that.
Is it not obvious that the reason that Patrick Minford was able to say that a fiscal boost from cutting taxes was not inflationary was because he was adjusting monetary policy to tighten the money supply sufficiently to offset the tax cuts? Liz, not understanding that, has focused on the fiscal element without appreciating that there has to be a monetary response.
Would we be better off with lower taxes but higher interest rates? Well, that very much depends who you are. Those who have largely paid off or inflated away their mortgages would undoubtedly be. Those who haven't would be catastrophically hit. There are enough of the latter to undermine the housing market so even those without the mortgage would see a reduction in their major asset.
From an economic point of view Minford thinks that is a good thing. He identifies the asset inflation caused by extremely low interest rates over the last 14 years as part of the problem, sharply increasing inequality in society, reducing job mobility and discouraging investment in useful productive assets rather than houses. I have some considerable sympathy with these points but the challenge is how you get from here to there without bankrupting half the country and it isn't easy.
Rishi is completely at home in this territory and should be able to rip Truss a new one on Monday. If her plan is thought to be falling apart he would be back in the game. Given when the voting occurs he only has one chance. There are likely to be fireworks.
The problem is that the membership are not interested in what Thatcher called "sound money" they just want their tax cuts for the rich and a bit of Brussels bashing. As @Cyclefree pointed out, very much like the Barber Boom, which led to Britain's highest ever inflation rate, and a Labour government.
Question is- could Truss engineer a boom and win an election before the bills come in? And does she care that a win on that basis in (say) 2023 would make the 2028 election a disaster for her successor?
Its surely unlikely that Truss could engineer a boom with some of our major trading partners (The EU and the US) staring recession in the face.
Deregulation might lead to short term outperformance, however, allowing Truss to claim things are much worse elsewhere.
Is it not obvious that the reason that Patrick Minford was able to say that a fiscal boost from cutting taxes was not inflationary was because he was adjusting monetary policy to tighten the money supply sufficiently to offset the tax cuts? Liz, not understanding that, has focused on the fiscal element without appreciating that there has to be a monetary response.
Would we be better off with lower taxes but higher interest rates? Well, that very much depends who you are. Those who have largely paid off or inflated away their mortgages would undoubtedly be. Those who haven't would be catastrophically hit. There are enough of the latter to undermine the housing market so even those without the mortgage would see a reduction in their major asset.
From an economic point of view Minford thinks that is a good thing. He identifies the asset inflation caused by extremely low interest rates over the last 14 years as part of the problem, sharply increasing inequality in society, reducing job mobility and discouraging investment in useful productive assets rather than houses. I have some considerable sympathy with these points but the challenge is how you get from here to there without bankrupting half the country and it isn't easy.
Rishi is completely at home in this territory and should be able to rip Truss a new one on Monday. If her plan is thought to be falling apart he would be back in the game. Given when the voting occurs he only has one chance. There are likely to be fireworks.
The problem is that the membership are not interested in what Thatcher called "sound money" they just want their tax cuts for the rich and a bit of Brussels bashing. As @Cyclefree pointed out, very much like the Barber Boom, which led to Britain's highest ever inflation rate, and a Labour government.
Probably not overly keen on a house price crash though. OK so interest rises and house price falls wouldn't directly affect their cost of living in the way it would those with large existing mortgages and those looking to move up the housing ladder, but wouldn't exactly be welcome. Neither would a stock market crash either.
Is it not obvious that the reason that Patrick Minford was able to say that a fiscal boost from cutting taxes was not inflationary was because he was adjusting monetary policy to tighten the money supply sufficiently to offset the tax cuts? Liz, not understanding that, has focused on the fiscal element without appreciating that there has to be a monetary response.
Would we be better off with lower taxes but higher interest rates? Well, that very much depends who you are. Those who have largely paid off or inflated away their mortgages would undoubtedly be. Those who haven't would be catastrophically hit. There are enough of the latter to undermine the housing market so even those without the mortgage would see a reduction in their major asset.
From an economic point of view Minford thinks that is a good thing. He identifies the asset inflation caused by extremely low interest rates over the last 14 years as part of the problem, sharply increasing inequality in society, reducing job mobility and discouraging investment in useful productive assets rather than houses. I have some considerable sympathy with these points but the challenge is how you get from here to there without bankrupting half the country and it isn't easy.
Rishi is completely at home in this territory and should be able to rip Truss a new one on Monday. If her plan is thought to be falling apart he would be back in the game. Given when the voting occurs he only has one chance. There are likely to be fireworks.
The problem is that the membership are not interested in what Thatcher called "sound money" they just want their tax cuts for the rich and a bit of Brussels bashing. As @Cyclefree pointed out, very much like the Barber Boom, which led to Britain's highest ever inflation rate, and a Labour government.
Question is- could Truss engineer a boom and win an election before the bills come in? And does she care that a win on that basis in (say) 2023 would make the 2028 election a disaster for her successor?
I am not actually against increased borrowing as a way of mitigating the impact of CoL on Britons. We know that inflation is being driven by commodity prices, particularly fuel and food, rather than consumer demand. Indeed retail sales have been down each month recently. Wage restriction just increases the misery without addressing the cause, at present at least.
It does not appear to be widely reported that lower-paid NHS workers are effectively getting a 10% pay rise, unless I have missed it. Good news for them.
And starting teachers 9.8%. I suspect it isn't being widely publicised because this is what a wage/price spiral looks like.
It also brings them in many cases uncomfortably close in salary to their more experienced colleagues, who are getting half that - if anything at all, which given the government are still not providing the money does not seem certain. Not necessarily something the government want to emphasise.
Is it not obvious that the reason that Patrick Minford was able to say that a fiscal boost from cutting taxes was not inflationary was because he was adjusting monetary policy to tighten the money supply sufficiently to offset the tax cuts? Liz, not understanding that, has focused on the fiscal element without appreciating that there has to be a monetary response.
Would we be better off with lower taxes but higher interest rates? Well, that very much depends who you are. Those who have largely paid off or inflated away their mortgages would undoubtedly be. Those who haven't would be catastrophically hit. There are enough of the latter to undermine the housing market so even those without the mortgage would see a reduction in their major asset.
From an economic point of view Minford thinks that is a good thing. He identifies the asset inflation caused by extremely low interest rates over the last 14 years as part of the problem, sharply increasing inequality in society, reducing job mobility and discouraging investment in useful productive assets rather than houses. I have some considerable sympathy with these points but the challenge is how you get from here to there without bankrupting half the country and it isn't easy.
Rishi is completely at home in this territory and should be able to rip Truss a new one on Monday. If her plan is thought to be falling apart he would be back in the game. Given when the voting occurs he only has one chance. There are likely to be fireworks.
The problem is that the membership are not interested in what Thatcher called "sound money" they just want their tax cuts for the rich and a bit of Brussels bashing. As @Cyclefree pointed out, very much like the Barber Boom, which led to Britain's highest ever inflation rate, and a Labour government.
Question is- could Truss engineer a boom and win an election before the bills come in? And does she care that a win on that basis in (say) 2023 would make the 2028 election a disaster for her successor?
I am not actually against increased borrowing as a way of mitigating the impact of CoL on Britons. We know that inflation is being driven by commodity prices, particularly fuel and food, rather than consumer demand. Indeed retail sales have been down each month recently. Wage restriction just increases the misery without addressing the cause, at present at least.
I completely agree with you.
Especially when restrictions are raising taxes on workers and corporations, the productive parts of society, while cutting taxes on triple locked pensioners.
We need to cut taxes on the productive parts of society and make sure the unproductive parts pay their fair share.
It does not appear to be widely reported that lower-paid NHS workers are effectively getting a 10% pay rise, unless I have missed it. Good news for them.
And starting teachers 9.8%. I suspect it isn't being widely publicised because this is what a wage/price spiral looks like.
It also brings them in many cases uncomfortably close in salary to their more experienced colleagues, who are getting half that - if anything at all, which given the government are still not providing the money does not seem certain. Not necessarily something the government want to emphasise.
Similarly, Junior doctors and non specialist grades are getting 2%, so in effect are losing in real terms a months pay each year. I think they will strike, or at least those that haven't migrated to Australia might.
It does not appear to be widely reported that lower-paid NHS workers are effectively getting a 10% pay rise, unless I have missed it. Good news for them.
And starting teachers 9.8%. I suspect it isn't being widely publicised because this is what a wage/price spiral looks like.
It also brings them in many cases uncomfortably close in salary to their more experienced colleagues, who are getting half that - if anything at all, which given the government are still not providing the money does not seem certain. Not necessarily something the government want to emphasise.
That's been true for a while in physics. The enormous tax free bursaries have meant PGCE students taking home more than their mentors.
Is it not obvious that the reason that Patrick Minford was able to say that a fiscal boost from cutting taxes was not inflationary was because he was adjusting monetary policy to tighten the money supply sufficiently to offset the tax cuts? Liz, not understanding that, has focused on the fiscal element without appreciating that there has to be a monetary response.
Would we be better off with lower taxes but higher interest rates? Well, that very much depends who you are. Those who have largely paid off or inflated away their mortgages would undoubtedly be. Those who haven't would be catastrophically hit. There are enough of the latter to undermine the housing market so even those without the mortgage would see a reduction in their major asset.
From an economic point of view Minford thinks that is a good thing. He identifies the asset inflation caused by extremely low interest rates over the last 14 years as part of the problem, sharply increasing inequality in society, reducing job mobility and discouraging investment in useful productive assets rather than houses. I have some considerable sympathy with these points but the challenge is how you get from here to there without bankrupting half the country and it isn't easy.
Rishi is completely at home in this territory and should be able to rip Truss a new one on Monday. If her plan is thought to be falling apart he would be back in the game. Given when the voting occurs he only has one chance. There are likely to be fireworks.
The problem is that the membership are not interested in what Thatcher called "sound money" they just want their tax cuts for the rich and a bit of Brussels bashing. As @Cyclefree pointed out, very much like the Barber Boom, which led to Britain's highest ever inflation rate, and a Labour government.
Question is- could Truss engineer a boom and win an election before the bills come in? And does she care that a win on that basis in (say) 2023 would make the 2028 election a disaster for her successor?
I am not actually against increased borrowing as a way of mitigating the impact of CoL on Britons. We know that inflation is being driven by commodity prices, particularly fuel and food, rather than consumer demand. Indeed retail sales have been down each month recently. Wage restriction just increases the misery without addressing the cause, at present at least.
I completely agree with you.
Especially when restrictions are raising taxes on workers and corporations, the productive parts of society, while cutting taxes on triple locked pensioners.
We need to cut taxes on the productive parts of society and make sure the unproductive parts pay their fair share.
Fascinating. Sunak is good at this. Smooth but also humorous
He’s not just the average Goldman Sachs banker
Huh....you've changed your tune.
I have? I was unaware I had a tune
I’m merely saying Sunak comes across well at a hustings. And he does. Amiable, direct, confident, clever
I genuinely don’t know which of the candidates would be better for Britain, and better able to defeat the vile lefties. So I am open to being persuaded
Is it not obvious that the reason that Patrick Minford was able to say that a fiscal boost from cutting taxes was not inflationary was because he was adjusting monetary policy to tighten the money supply sufficiently to offset the tax cuts? Liz, not understanding that, has focused on the fiscal element without appreciating that there has to be a monetary response.
Would we be better off with lower taxes but higher interest rates? Well, that very much depends who you are. Those who have largely paid off or inflated away their mortgages would undoubtedly be. Those who haven't would be catastrophically hit. There are enough of the latter to undermine the housing market so even those without the mortgage would see a reduction in their major asset.
From an economic point of view Minford thinks that is a good thing. He identifies the asset inflation caused by extremely low interest rates over the last 14 years as part of the problem, sharply increasing inequality in society, reducing job mobility and discouraging investment in useful productive assets rather than houses. I have some considerable sympathy with these points but the challenge is how you get from here to there without bankrupting half the country and it isn't easy.
Rishi is completely at home in this territory and should be able to rip Truss a new one on Monday. If her plan is thought to be falling apart he would be back in the game. Given when the voting occurs he only has one chance. There are likely to be fireworks.
The problem is that the membership are not interested in what Thatcher called "sound money" they just want their tax cuts for the rich and a bit of Brussels bashing. As @Cyclefree pointed out, very much like the Barber Boom, which led to Britain's highest ever inflation rate, and a Labour government.
Question is- could Truss engineer a boom and win an election before the bills come in? And does she care that a win on that basis in (say) 2023 would make the 2028 election a disaster for her successor?
I am not actually against increased borrowing as a way of mitigating the impact of CoL on Britons. We know that inflation is being driven by commodity prices, particularly fuel and food, rather than consumer demand. Indeed retail sales have been down each month recently. Wage restriction just increases the misery without addressing the cause, at present at least.
I completely agree with you.
Especially when restrictions are raising taxes on workers and corporations, the productive parts of society, while cutting taxes on triple locked pensioners.
We need to cut taxes on the productive parts of society and make sure the unproductive parts pay their fair share.
Perfectly logical, electorally tricky....
Whether it's tricky or not, it needs to be done.
If all the Tories stand for is higher taxes on those who work, while increasing welfare for those who don't, then what's the point of them?
I don't like the Tories for "social war" issues, I liked them because I think work is better than welfare. If they're the high welfare party now, then what's left?
Mr. Dickson, I recall Scottish law being different prior to devolution, but what others areas were administratively/politically different?
Not contesting the point, just wondering.
I would, though, say that the invention of Holyrood did (if not creating) substantially embed and deepen divisions. The 'standing up for Scotland' line of the SNP is something no British party can match because they stand in Wales and England too, so it was entirely foreseeable that Labour might not have a Celtic fiefdom forever, despite their fantasies to the contrary.
Similarly (although not quite the same as this wasn't a national point), pro-EU UK politicians could have no reply for UKIP and other sceptics when it came to the UK interest in the EU. While there is far more of a British feeling in Scotland than (across the whole UK, obviously Wales/Scotland feel somewhat differently to England) there was a European feeling in the UK, politicians utterly failed to make the case for the EU over decades and when the time came it was both too late and they had no experience of it.
Promotion of a British identity is necessary. Instead, Labour was happy to indulge a Scottish and Welsh political identity for the bits of the UK they thought they'd rule forever, while denying a corresponding identity for England. We still see this misunderstanding/disinterest in other areas. Yorkshire, for the most part, wants a Yorkshire mayor. Southern politicians insist on carving the county up because that fits with what they want.
It's a rubbish deal which her own officials warned her against. The only thing it delivered was yet another photo opportunity for her.
Look at the signatories to the letter - farmers who want to keep competition out and woke charities that hate free trade.
If anything I think the deal did not go nearly far enough in giving British consumers the benefits of cheaper food for decades.
Look at the substance of the letter. It is about the refusal to allow any Parliamentary scrutiny of the deal. Those who moaned endlessly about the lack of scrutiny of what the EU was up to, its high handedness, its bypassing of democratically elected Parliaments now say nothing - applaud even - when the British executive does exactly the same thing and shows utter contempt for Parliament, for MPs and for voters.
A lack of transparency leads to bad governance.
I think a further question is whether it is usual for Parliament to get involved in the negotiation of trade agreements beyond go/no go.
My view is that we are seeing sectarian interests cosplaying as "scrutiny".
In the EU they all need to pass Parliament.
Indeed, I believe the Australian parliament has to agree this deal too.
There's a difference between Parliamentary contribution to content in advance, a Parliamentary veto on XYZ can't be included, and a go/no-go decision afterwards (as happens for secondary legislation) with consultation beforehand.
The list of EU negotiations which have gone nowhere, sometimes for decades, does not to me recommend their model.
Why do Australian MPs get to debate the deal and our MPs not?
The Tories do have a massive majority, and could whip it if needed. They just wanted to avoid scrutiny.
As I pointed out before, it was a factor in handing Tiverton and Honiton to the LDs. Riding roughshod over core voters concerns because they have nowhere else to go is not a great long term strategy.
Ours did get to debate the deal afaics. There was a Parliamentary committee on it, and a debate in response to a Ministerial Statement.
What they did not get to do aiui was to write non-negotiable content into the agreement in advance.
The key sentence is "We also committed to providing updates to Parliament throughout negotiations and confirmed that at the end of the process Parliament would scrutinise the agreements". It's generallty accepted in Parliament that merely asking questions and expressing views doesn't provide much sccrutiny - it needs the focus of an actual vote. The Government has provided a debate without a vote, and the all-party International Trade Committee has on its own initiative examined the deal (the Minister, very unusually, declined to accept an invitation to discuss it with them) and harshly criticised the lack of consultation. I don't think there is any serious dispute that they are minimising scrutiny.
What the NFU and charities like mine are seeking is a core standards package for future deals which basically says that in order to have zero-tariff access to British markets, you need to match British standards. Otherwise, just as industry was undercut by China, British farming will be undercut by low-standard imports. The Australian deal doesn't have that provision. The Dept of Trade under Truss basically took the view that their priority was to sign deals that gave new export possibilities (whisky, financial products and more) even if it damaged farming. The long-term effect of that will be to increase dependence on low-standard imports, which even in terms of secruity of supply seems short-sighted.
Government supporters are entitled to disagree and argue that we should concentrate on our strengths (we are certainly more competitive at selling finanicial products), but should accept that there's a price in terms of farming.
That was a very slick performance in Grantham. Total command of his brief. There must be a good chance he eviscerates Truss in the debate tomorrow, just on economics
It does not appear to be widely reported that lower-paid NHS workers are effectively getting a 10% pay rise, unless I have missed it. Good news for them.
And starting teachers 9.8%. I suspect it isn't being widely publicised because this is what a wage/price spiral looks like.
It also brings them in many cases uncomfortably close in salary to their more experienced colleagues, who are getting half that - if anything at all, which given the government are still not providing the money does not seem certain. Not necessarily something the government want to emphasise.
Similarly, Junior doctors and non specialist grades are getting 2%, so in effect are losing in real terms a months pay each year. I think they will strike, or at least those that haven't migrated to Australia might.
A months pay? That’s mad when you think of it like that.
That was a very slick performance in Grantham. Total command of his brief. There must be a good chance he eviscerates Truss in the debate tomorrow, just on economics
I think the value is on the Truss share of the vote on Smarkets as above from @StuartDickson
I am on the 60%+ bands, and think 65%+ at 12 excellent value too. Tory runoff elections are never close, and there are a lot of Johnson supporters voting Truss. Slickness won't count for much.
"I have never believed that the EU would suddenly collapse. But I thought it likely that it would gradually run out of political capacity due to lack of popular legitimacy. Many, like myself, have drawn a comparison with the Austro-Hungarian empire: divided, weak but unreformable, aiming at best to maintain (as one of its rulers put it) “a stable level of discontent” among a resigned population. This now seems optimistic."
It never occurs to nationalists like Tombs that many of those opposing the government's disastrous approach to Brexit do so because they care deeply about the UK and its future.
Robert Tombs is a professor emeritus of French history at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. He is also the recipient of the Ordre des Palmes académiques awarded by the French government. He is a respected and revered academic at the highest level, and a very intelligent man.
You may not agree with his views on the EU but he's a remarkably well-read and well-informed individual, and makes his arguments reasonably, proportionately and lucidly.
You are entirely unqualified to denigrate him with such smears.
No, I just do not share your opinion of him. I do not believe that thinking the government has handled Brexit disastrously equates to bashing, let alone hating, the UK. Equating the government to the country is nationalism.
He has done neither of those things.
You are criticising your own caricature of him, not the reality. Probably because the reality is too complex for you to deal with.
Maybe it's just that I can read ...
Self-hating Remainers are blind to the EU's flaws
Their obsession with bashing Britain has not wavered, even as their project across the Channel crashes and burns
Every word of that is true. There are a plethora of Remainers on this site who want to bash everything Britain does while dismissing anything that EU politicians do wrong.
There are some on this site who get so angry at anyone who has a negative word to say even about, say, German politicians soft on Russiaz that they start ranting and raving about the Express instead.
I think you're exaggerating.
I don't think anyone here except like two people actually want to rejoin the EU. I certainly don't.
I do not think pointing out that Brexit has issues is any more problematic than you spent presumably thirty years telling us what was going wrong with remaining.
They differ slightly in how they want to rejoin, some accept the need for a slow political process, some would do it by diktat on day 1 of a Labour govt, but all would rejoin tomorrow if a wand could be waved
It's done and we have to make the best of it. It would also be good to take the heat out of the issue so that the way forward can be plotted in a calm and pragmatic way.
The pre-requisite for this to happen is imo a fairly simple one. It just needs some sort of public statement on behalf of the Leave campaign and Leave voters that ok ok we see now this was a pretty stupid thing to do.
That would do it. Not a grovelling apology or anything. It's human nature to err. Nobody wants blood. Just the admission of an error made. Truss has done it in reverse for ultra cynical political reasons, so why not do it properly for these more admirable reasons.
It does not appear to be widely reported that lower-paid NHS workers are effectively getting a 10% pay rise, unless I have missed it. Good news for them.
And starting teachers 9.8%. I suspect it isn't being widely publicised because this is what a wage/price spiral looks like.
It also brings them in many cases uncomfortably close in salary to their more experienced colleagues, who are getting half that - if anything at all, which given the government are still not providing the money does not seem certain. Not necessarily something the government want to emphasise.
Similarly, Junior doctors and non specialist grades are getting 2%, so in effect are losing in real terms a months pay each year. I think they will strike, or at least those that haven't migrated to Australia might.
Pay of junior doctors is a bit complex though isn’t it? Is a junior doctor not essentially a “temporary” career with the promise of guaranteed substantial pay rises in the future? A bit like a trainer lawyer, or accountant in a big firm or whatever? That’s not to say they aren’t under financial pressure and I don’t know how long people spend as junior doctors on average.
Also not says that they aren’t therefore ripe for being exploited as a result and taking the p*ss creates obvious resentment.
"Liz Truss’s team is frantically distancing themselves from her economics guru tonight after he said her tax cuts could result in interest rates of up to 7 per cent.
Professor Patrick Minford, who was named by the Tory leadership frontrunner as endorsing her fiscal strategy, said higher rates would be a “good thing” and more expensive mortgages would be “part of the adjustment”.
However, several mortgage experts warned this would lead to further annual payments on the average mortgage of about £700 a month, crippling household finances.
Former chancellor Norman Lamont also told i it would not be a “good thing” to see interest rates go as high as 7 per cent and said it would be “interesting” to see if Truss agreed with the claims.
The Truss campaign was trying to distance themselves from Professor Minford last night, saying he had no “official role” with her campaign – despite the Foreign Secretary citing his influence as recently as Thursday."
Let me guess: neither of them have mortgages, but do have savings?
The claim "to bring 7% interest rates" is a gormless, dishonest exaggeration of what was actually said by Minford.
But then we all know that.
But then it is playbook for the UK media shitshow - take an extreme case, get somebody to say "*this* would cause *that*", and try and hang it around the neck of the person who didn't say it in the first place.
There is a reason they are generally contemptible.
Pumping money into an economy already suffering from inflation is likely to lead to more inflation. And the ways to deal with that include cutting spending and raising interest rates. Since La Truss says she is not going to do the former, it is entirely reasonable to assume that the latter will happen and will be a direct consequence of her economic plan, a plan which seems to resemble the Barber boom of the early 1970's rather than anything more Thatcherite.
Even a small rise in interest rates will cause problems, especially on top of rising fuel bills.
The overwhelming driver of inflation is the cost of fuel. The government should have seen that as it started and stepped in to temporarily control the domestic price of energy and cut fuel duty, subsidising through borrowing as necessary.
Now instead it is lumbered with huge one-off inflation hikes to state pensions and other benefits, a slew of big pay claims and the industrial disputes that will accompany them, a possible 'can't pay - won't pay' campaign against home energy costs, motors fuel protests, interest rates rising to 7% that will sink many mortgage-payers, lead to a swathe of repossessions and drive up inflation further.
It's heartbreaking really.
Indeed, that sounds very much like what Mordaunt was proposing.
(To quibble, the author I think confuses ‘effect’ with ‘affect’.)
Its pretty obvious to me that most politics is tribalism that has a psuedo religious twist to it. But not that many people get caught up in it. For instance none of my neighbours show any tribalism at all. One young family are very green, but don't believe in electric cars. My old university friends by contrast think that they are sophisticated and knowledgeable on things like climate change, but actually they are sharing misinformation and propoganda with each other a lot of the time. Ultimately there is some fulfillment and satisfaction in just being able to think for yourself and not join any tribe.
A sub-optimal article from a generally decent writer. Yes, he is right about the delusions of the Tory membership. But wrong in the implication that in choosing Brexit we chose wrong over right. We chose (just) one choice between two neither of which were acceptable to the UK population as a whole.
Perhaps Freedland should have a word with Larry Elliott, the Guardian economics editor.
The Guardianista case against the EU is overwhelming. What is there to like about an sub-democratic, power grabbing, plutocratic bankers protectionist club of the western rich, with a highly paid Potemkin parliament, designed to help third world farmers become poorer while letting others pay for your defence?
Talk of the "reality based" community is entirely self-serving. People who favour a world without borders are as prone to wishful thinking as the next person.
"I have never believed that the EU would suddenly collapse. But I thought it likely that it would gradually run out of political capacity due to lack of popular legitimacy. Many, like myself, have drawn a comparison with the Austro-Hungarian empire: divided, weak but unreformable, aiming at best to maintain (as one of its rulers put it) “a stable level of discontent” among a resigned population. This now seems optimistic."
It never occurs to nationalists like Tombs that many of those opposing the government's disastrous approach to Brexit do so because they care deeply about the UK and its future.
Robert Tombs is a professor emeritus of French history at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. He is also the recipient of the Ordre des Palmes académiques awarded by the French government. He is a respected and revered academic at the highest level, and a very intelligent man.
You may not agree with his views on the EU but he's a remarkably well-read and well-informed individual, and makes his arguments reasonably, proportionately and lucidly.
You are entirely unqualified to denigrate him with such smears.
No, I just do not share your opinion of him. I do not believe that thinking the government has handled Brexit disastrously equates to bashing, let alone hating, the UK. Equating the government to the country is nationalism.
He has done neither of those things.
You are criticising your own caricature of him, not the reality. Probably because the reality is too complex for you to deal with.
Maybe it's just that I can read ...
Self-hating Remainers are blind to the EU's flaws
Their obsession with bashing Britain has not wavered, even as their project across the Channel crashes and burns
Every word of that is true. There are a plethora of Remainers on this site who want to bash everything Britain does while dismissing anything that EU politicians do wrong.
There are some on this site who get so angry at anyone who has a negative word to say even about, say, German politicians soft on Russiaz that they start ranting and raving about the Express instead.
I think you're exaggerating.
I don't think anyone here except like two people actually want to rejoin the EU. I certainly don't.
I do not think pointing out that Brexit has issues is any more problematic than you spent presumably thirty years telling us what was going wrong with remaining.
They differ slightly in how they want to rejoin, some accept the need for a slow political process, some would do it by diktat on day 1 of a Labour govt, but all would rejoin tomorrow if a wand could be waved
It's done and we have to make the best of it. It would also be good to take the heat out of the issue so that the way forward can be plotted in a calm and pragmatic way.
The pre-requisite for this to happen is imo a fairly simple one. It just needs some sort of public statement on behalf of the Leave campaign and Leave voters that ok ok we see now this was a pretty stupid thing to do.
That would do it. Not a grovelling apology or anything. It's human nature to error. Nobody wants blood. Just the admission of an error made. Truss has done it in reverse for ultra cynical political reasons, so why not do it properly for these more admirable reasons.
You can kick it off if you want.
We are all👂👂👂
Since I don't think it was an error, why would you want me to lie?
It does not appear to be widely reported that lower-paid NHS workers are effectively getting a 10% pay rise, unless I have missed it. Good news for them.
And starting teachers 9.8%. I suspect it isn't being widely publicised because this is what a wage/price spiral looks like.
It also brings them in many cases uncomfortably close in salary to their more experienced colleagues, who are getting half that - if anything at all, which given the government are still not providing the money does not seem certain. Not necessarily something the government want to emphasise.
Similarly, Junior doctors and non specialist grades are getting 2%, so in effect are losing in real terms a months pay each year. I think they will strike, or at least those that haven't migrated to Australia might.
A months pay? That’s mad when you think of it like that.
Yep. 8% less than inflation means a real terms pay cut of a month's pay, during a CoL crisis.
For me it is about 3 weeks pay cut in real terms. The financially sensible thing to do is retire and get CPI on my pension. A number of colleagues are doing just that.
That was a very slick performance in Grantham. Total command of his brief. There must be a good chance he eviscerates Truss in the debate tomorrow, just on economics
Truss simply has to say...yes I am sure you know a great deal about the situation we face.
It's a rubbish deal which her own officials warned her against. The only thing it delivered was yet another photo opportunity for her.
Look at the signatories to the letter - farmers who want to keep competition out and woke charities that hate free trade.
If anything I think the deal did not go nearly far enough in giving British consumers the benefits of cheaper food for decades.
Look at the substance of the letter. It is about the refusal to allow any Parliamentary scrutiny of the deal. Those who moaned endlessly about the lack of scrutiny of what the EU was up to, its high handedness, its bypassing of democratically elected Parliaments now say nothing - applaud even - when the British executive does exactly the same thing and shows utter contempt for Parliament, for MPs and for voters.
A lack of transparency leads to bad governance.
I think a further question is whether it is usual for Parliament to get involved in the negotiation of trade agreements beyond go/no go.
My view is that we are seeing sectarian interests cosplaying as "scrutiny".
In the EU they all need to pass Parliament.
Indeed, I believe the Australian parliament has to agree this deal too.
There's a difference between Parliamentary contribution to content in advance, a Parliamentary veto on XYZ can't be included, and a go/no-go decision afterwards (as happens for secondary legislation) with consultation beforehand.
The list of EU negotiations which have gone nowhere, sometimes for decades, does not to me recommend their model.
Why do Australian MPs get to debate the deal and our MPs not?
The Tories do have a massive majority, and could whip it if needed. They just wanted to avoid scrutiny.
As I pointed out before, it was a factor in handing Tiverton and Honiton to the LDs. Riding roughshod over core voters concerns because they have nowhere else to go is not a great long term strategy.
Ours did get to debate the deal afaics. There was a Parliamentary committee on it, and a debate in response to a Ministerial Statement.
What they did not get to do aiui was to write non-negotiable content into the agreement in advance.
The key sentence is "We also committed to providing updates to Parliament throughout negotiations and confirmed that at the end of the process Parliament would scrutinise the agreements". It's generallty accepted in Parliament that merely asking questions and expressing views doesn't provide much sccrutiny - it needs the focus of an actual vote. The Government has provided a debate without a vote, and the all-party International Trade Committee has on its own initiative examined the deal (the Minister, very unusually, declined to accept an invitation to discuss it with them) and harshly criticised the lack of consultation. I don't think there is any serious dispute that they are minimising scrutiny.
What the NFU and charities like mine are seeking is a core standards package for future deals which basically says that in order to have zero-tariff access to British markets, you need to match British standards. Otherwise, just as industry was undercut by China, British farming will be undercut by low-standard imports. The Australian deal doesn't have that provision. The Dept of Trade under Truss basically took the view that their priority was to sign deals that gave new export possibilities (whisky, financial products and more) even if it damaged farming. The long-term effect of that will be to increase dependence on low-standard imports, which even in terms of secruity of supply seems short-sighted.
Government supporters are entitled to disagree and argue that we should concentrate on our strengths (we are certainly more competitive at selling finanicial products), but should accept that there's a price in terms of farming.
Aye and that's why the Government rejecting what you are pushing for is entirely appropriate and the right thing to do, with respect.
Every other lobby group like yours will have its own priorities and will want their own interests favoured. The whisky lobbyists will have different priorities to yours.
Government by lobbyists is a recipe for disaster that is seen in America with their corrupt lobbyists donations and pork barrel politics.
It is for the lobbyists to express their competing interests, all of them, the executive to take that into account and negotiate with foreign executives, then for Parliament to approve or reject what the executive negotiated. Lobbyists should never have a defining role in providing a "core" of anything.
That was a very slick performance in Grantham. Total command of his brief. There must be a good chance he eviscerates Truss in the debate tomorrow, just on economics
I think the value is on the Truss share of the vote on Smarkets as above from @StuartDickson
I am on the 60%+ bands, and think 65%+ at 12 excellent value too. Tory runoff elections are never close, and there are a lot of Johnson supporters voting Truss. Slickness won't count for much.
Plucking figures out of my butt I’d say Sunak starts the race behind, by about 40/60
But how many Tory members know enough about Truss to already say ‘she’s definitely the one’? Not many. Is my guess
They are an educated, inquiring electorate - compared to normal voters - they will watch debates, and Sunak might come across MUCH better
It does not appear to be widely reported that lower-paid NHS workers are effectively getting a 10% pay rise, unless I have missed it. Good news for them.
And starting teachers 9.8%. I suspect it isn't being widely publicised because this is what a wage/price spiral looks like.
It also brings them in many cases uncomfortably close in salary to their more experienced colleagues, who are getting half that - if anything at all, which given the government are still not providing the money does not seem certain. Not necessarily something the government want to emphasise.
Similarly, Junior doctors and non specialist grades are getting 2%, so in effect are losing in real terms a months pay each year. I think they will strike, or at least those that haven't migrated to Australia might.
A months pay? That’s mad when you think of it like that.
Yep. 8% less than inflation means a real terms pay cut of a month's pay, during a CoL crisis.
For me it is about 3 weeks pay cut in real terms. The financially sensible thing to do is retire and get CPI on my pension. A number of colleagues are doing just that.
"I have never believed that the EU would suddenly collapse. But I thought it likely that it would gradually run out of political capacity due to lack of popular legitimacy. Many, like myself, have drawn a comparison with the Austro-Hungarian empire: divided, weak but unreformable, aiming at best to maintain (as one of its rulers put it) “a stable level of discontent” among a resigned population. This now seems optimistic."
It never occurs to nationalists like Tombs that many of those opposing the government's disastrous approach to Brexit do so because they care deeply about the UK and its future.
Robert Tombs is a professor emeritus of French history at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. He is also the recipient of the Ordre des Palmes académiques awarded by the French government. He is a respected and revered academic at the highest level, and a very intelligent man.
You may not agree with his views on the EU but he's a remarkably well-read and well-informed individual, and makes his arguments reasonably, proportionately and lucidly.
You are entirely unqualified to denigrate him with such smears.
No, I just do not share your opinion of him. I do not believe that thinking the government has handled Brexit disastrously equates to bashing, let alone hating, the UK. Equating the government to the country is nationalism.
He has done neither of those things.
You are criticising your own caricature of him, not the reality. Probably because the reality is too complex for you to deal with.
Maybe it's just that I can read ...
Self-hating Remainers are blind to the EU's flaws
Their obsession with bashing Britain has not wavered, even as their project across the Channel crashes and burns
Every word of that is true. There are a plethora of Remainers on this site who want to bash everything Britain does while dismissing anything that EU politicians do wrong.
There are some on this site who get so angry at anyone who has a negative word to say even about, say, German politicians soft on Russiaz that they start ranting and raving about the Express instead.
I think you're exaggerating.
I don't think anyone here except like two people actually want to rejoin the EU. I certainly don't.
I do not think pointing out that Brexit has issues is any more problematic than you spent presumably thirty years telling us what was going wrong with remaining.
They differ slightly in how they want to rejoin, some accept the need for a slow political process, some would do it by diktat on day 1 of a Labour govt, but all would rejoin tomorrow if a wand could be waved
It's done and we have to make the best of it. It would also be good to take the heat out of the issue so that the way forward can be plotted in a calm and pragmatic way.
The pre-requisite for this to happen is imo a fairly simple one. It just needs some sort of public statement on behalf of the Leave campaign and Leave voters that ok ok we see now this was a pretty stupid thing to do.
That would do it. Not a grovelling apology or anything. It's human nature to err. Nobody wants blood. Just the admission of an error made. Truss has done it in reverse for ultra cynical political reasons, so why not do it properly for these more admirable reasons.
You can kick it off if you want.
We are all👂👂👂
I didn’t put you on the list, so I’ve no idea why you’re replying to me. Stop it
It does not appear to be widely reported that lower-paid NHS workers are effectively getting a 10% pay rise, unless I have missed it. Good news for them.
And starting teachers 9.8%. I suspect it isn't being widely publicised because this is what a wage/price spiral looks like.
It also brings them in many cases uncomfortably close in salary to their more experienced colleagues, who are getting half that - if anything at all, which given the government are still not providing the money does not seem certain. Not necessarily something the government want to emphasise.
Similarly, Junior doctors and non specialist grades are getting 2%, so in effect are losing in real terms a months pay each year. I think they will strike, or at least those that haven't migrated to Australia might.
Pay of junior doctors is a bit complex though isn’t it? Is a junior doctor not essentially a “temporary” career with the promise of guaranteed substantial pay rises in the future? A bit like a trainer lawyer, or accountant in a big firm or whatever? That’s not to say they aren’t under financial pressure and I don’t know how long people spend as junior doctors on average.
Also not says that they aren’t therefore ripe for being exploited as a result and taking the p*ss creates obvious resentment.
Yes indeed, but junior doctors pay has been eroded even more than Senior doctors pay, by about 30% in real terms since the GFC. This is over a decade of sub-inflationary pay rises compounded.
And of course new graduates are carrying massive amounts of student debt too.
Sunak is immoral for raising taxes on workers while cutting taxes on triple lock retirees.
Truss isn't AFAIK proposing cutting tax rates below what they were under those notorious ERG extremists George Osborne or Philip Hammond.
PS amongst the first thing that George Osborne did when he became Chancellor was to reject and reverse the rise in the National Insurance "jobs tax" that Labour had put in place.
If it's good enough for Osborne, when there was "no money left" then why not Truss?
"Explosions have rocked a key Ukrainian port just a day after Kyiv and Moscow reached a landmark deal to allow the resumption of grain exports. ... Under the terms of Friday's deal, Russia agreed not to target ports while grain shipments are in transit."
That was a very slick performance in Grantham. Total command of his brief. There must be a good chance he eviscerates Truss in the debate tomorrow, just on economics
I think the value is on the Truss share of the vote on Smarkets as above from @StuartDickson
I am on the 60%+ bands, and think 65%+ at 12 excellent value too. Tory runoff elections are never close, and there are a lot of Johnson supporters voting Truss. Slickness won't count for much.
Plucking figures out of my butt I’d say Sunak starts the race behind, by about 40/60
But how many Tory members know enough about Truss to already say ‘she’s definitely the one’? Not many. Is my guess
They are an educated, inquiring electorate - compared to normal voters - they will watch debates, and Sunak might come across MUCH better
The members will also ask whether the candidate is sellable to their electorates.
Can I sell a billionaire banker telling my voters they can't have their money back as their finances get destroyed by the high taxation and rocketing inflation he caused?
“Research suggests that children as young as 2 recognise their trans identity. Yet, many nurseries and schools teach a binary understanding of pre-assigned gender.
LGBTQ-inclusive and affirming education is crucial for the wellbeing of all young people! 🌈”
A tweet by some mad trans crank in a basement? No. Stonewall
So when Liz “no detail” Truss says she’s going to repeal all “remaining EU laws” what does she actually mean?
In fairness, Sunak has said the same. That's 2400 laws. Three per day.
They're not going to do them one at a time. The suggestion has been a mass sunset bill
Yes I know. Complete idiocy. I was talking three a day for the necessary scrutiny. 1 Are they eminently sensible/necessary? 2 If they aren't can they be revised/updated to be made better? 3 If both are no, then get rid.
That was a very slick performance in Grantham. Total command of his brief. There must be a good chance he eviscerates Truss in the debate tomorrow, just on economics
I think the value is on the Truss share of the vote on Smarkets as above from @StuartDickson
I am on the 60%+ bands, and think 65%+ at 12 excellent value too. Tory runoff elections are never close, and there are a lot of Johnson supporters voting Truss. Slickness won't count for much.
Plucking figures out of my butt I’d say Sunak starts the race behind, by about 40/60
But how many Tory members know enough about Truss to already say ‘she’s definitely the one’? Not many. Is my guess
They are an educated, inquiring electorate - compared to normal voters - they will watch debates, and Sunak might come across MUCH better
It's your money, but every indication from the membership is that Sunak is toast.
"I have never believed that the EU would suddenly collapse. But I thought it likely that it would gradually run out of political capacity due to lack of popular legitimacy. Many, like myself, have drawn a comparison with the Austro-Hungarian empire: divided, weak but unreformable, aiming at best to maintain (as one of its rulers put it) “a stable level of discontent” among a resigned population. This now seems optimistic."
It never occurs to nationalists like Tombs that many of those opposing the government's disastrous approach to Brexit do so because they care deeply about the UK and its future.
Robert Tombs is a professor emeritus of French history at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. He is also the recipient of the Ordre des Palmes académiques awarded by the French government. He is a respected and revered academic at the highest level, and a very intelligent man.
You may not agree with his views on the EU but he's a remarkably well-read and well-informed individual, and makes his arguments reasonably, proportionately and lucidly.
You are entirely unqualified to denigrate him with such smears.
No, I just do not share your opinion of him. I do not believe that thinking the government has handled Brexit disastrously equates to bashing, let alone hating, the UK. Equating the government to the country is nationalism.
He has done neither of those things.
You are criticising your own caricature of him, not the reality. Probably because the reality is too complex for you to deal with.
Maybe it's just that I can read ...
Self-hating Remainers are blind to the EU's flaws
Their obsession with bashing Britain has not wavered, even as their project across the Channel crashes and burns
Every word of that is true. There are a plethora of Remainers on this site who want to bash everything Britain does while dismissing anything that EU politicians do wrong.
There are some on this site who get so angry at anyone who has a negative word to say even about, say, German politicians soft on Russiaz that they start ranting and raving about the Express instead.
I think you're exaggerating.
I don't think anyone here except like two people actually want to rejoin the EU. I certainly don't.
I do not think pointing out that Brexit has issues is any more problematic than you spent presumably thirty years telling us what was going wrong with remaining.
They differ slightly in how they want to rejoin, some accept the need for a slow political process, some would do it by diktat on day 1 of a Labour govt, but all would rejoin tomorrow if a wand could be waved
You forgot me and most of London.
The greatest city in the world says “f*ck off” to the calamity that is Brexit.
That was a very slick performance in Grantham. Total command of his brief. There must be a good chance he eviscerates Truss in the debate tomorrow, just on economics
I think the value is on the Truss share of the vote on Smarkets as above from @StuartDickson
I am on the 60%+ bands, and think 65%+ at 12 excellent value too. Tory runoff elections are never close, and there are a lot of Johnson supporters voting Truss. Slickness won't count for much.
Plucking figures out of my butt I’d say Sunak starts the race behind, by about 40/60
But how many Tory members know enough about Truss to already say ‘she’s definitely the one’? Not many. Is my guess
They are an educated, inquiring electorate - compared to normal voters - they will watch debates, and Sunak might come across MUCH better
It's your money, but every indication from the membership is that Sunak is toast.
Is it? I’ve only seen one poll since it became a two way race, and the campaign has just started
“Research suggests that children as young as 2 recognise their trans identity. Yet, many nurseries and schools teach a binary understanding of pre-assigned gender.
LGBTQ-inclusive and affirming education is crucial for the wellbeing of all young people! 🌈”
A tweet by some mad trans crank in a basement? No. Stonewall
Not great optics from Rishi there, putting people of Indian origin front and centre.
Race is an issue in this contest-otherwise, Rishi who is a class apart, will not start as far back as he is in every poll even against people who were unknowns until 2 weeks ago.
He has acknowledged it in his slogan "Ready for Rishi".
Will he overcome it? He certainly seems to have the heft behind him as a relatively successful chancellor in extraordinary times and presentation skills to go with it.
I have some money on him but don`t really mind if Liz wins as I believe the best two got into the final.
"Explosions have rocked a key Ukrainian port just a day after Kyiv and Moscow reached a landmark deal to allow the resumption of grain exports. ... Under the terms of Friday's deal, Russia agreed not to target ports while grain shipments are in transit."
That was a very slick performance in Grantham. Total command of his brief. There must be a good chance he eviscerates Truss in the debate tomorrow, just on economics
I think the value is on the Truss share of the vote on Smarkets as above from @StuartDickson
I am on the 60%+ bands, and think 65%+ at 12 excellent value too. Tory runoff elections are never close, and there are a lot of Johnson supporters voting Truss. Slickness won't count for much.
Plucking figures out of my butt I’d say Sunak starts the race behind, by about 40/60
But how many Tory members know enough about Truss to already say ‘she’s definitely the one’? Not many. Is my guess
They are an educated, inquiring electorate - compared to normal voters - they will watch debates, and Sunak might come across MUCH better
The members will also ask whether the candidate is sellable to their electorates.
Can I sell a billionaire banker telling my voters they can't have their money back as their finances get destroyed by the high taxation and rocketing inflation he caused?
Who knew he had such power to cause the rocketing inflation? So he started Covid which smashed the economy and screwed up supply chains increasing costs left, right and centre? Resulted in lots of foreign workers repatriating this putting pressure on wages?
Then he ordered Putin to invade Ukraine resulting in more economic damage and fuel inflation.
If only he hadn’t raised taxes to pay for all the Covid repayment that was required we could have just magicked up the money - pah, taxes - who needs taxes.
I know they say Goldmans controls the world but I didn’t realise that in just over two years as Chancellor he could manipulate the world and cause inflation. He’s an evil genius.
“Research suggests that children as young as 2 recognise their trans identity. Yet, many nurseries and schools teach a binary understanding of pre-assigned gender.
LGBTQ-inclusive and affirming education is crucial for the wellbeing of all young people! 🌈”
A tweet by some mad trans crank in a basement? No. Stonewall
We have to drain this Woke poison from our society. And we can start by abolishing Stonewall and interrogating its activists
It does seem to be a pretty horrible organisation.
Absolutely toxic. The thread beneath that says they’ve been captured by some hugely rich American trans lobby, hence their extreme, perverse behavior, since about 2015
Dunno if it’s true. But they need to be driven out of the public arena
That was a very slick performance in Grantham. Total command of his brief. There must be a good chance he eviscerates Truss in the debate tomorrow, just on economics
I think the value is on the Truss share of the vote on Smarkets as above from @StuartDickson
I am on the 60%+ bands, and think 65%+ at 12 excellent value too. Tory runoff elections are never close, and there are a lot of Johnson supporters voting Truss. Slickness won't count for much.
Plucking figures out of my butt I’d say Sunak starts the race behind, by about 40/60
But how many Tory members know enough about Truss to already say ‘she’s definitely the one’? Not many. Is my guess
They are an educated, inquiring electorate - compared to normal voters - they will watch debates, and Sunak might come across MUCH better
The members will also ask whether the candidate is sellable to their electorates.
Can I sell a billionaire banker telling my voters they can't have their money back as their finances get destroyed by the high taxation and rocketing inflation he caused?
A billionaire banker might be able to get support if he can genuinely portray we are all in it together. But he's doing the opposite.
Osborne may have froze many wages while keeping the triple lock but he cut the NI jobs tax (from Labours presecheduled rise) and increased income tax thresholds in a low inflation environment so that work paid.
Sunak wants to simultaneously freeze wages, freeze tax thresholds in a high inflation environment, and raise two jobs taxes.
Osborne had no money left but he cut jobs taxes. Sunak is ramping them up, up and up.
"Explosions have rocked a key Ukrainian port just a day after Kyiv and Moscow reached a landmark deal to allow the resumption of grain exports. ... Under the terms of Friday's deal, Russia agreed not to target ports while grain shipments are in transit."
So when Liz “no detail” Truss says she’s going to repeal all “remaining EU laws” what does she actually mean?
What does it matter? As long as she says the words the selectorate want to hear then she will win.
If Johnsonism taught anything as a political philosophy, it is "Lie today to get to tomorrow. And keep doing it"
It matters because I’ve got to suffer through it.
I have got to suffer through it too, but the evidence to date is that they do not give a Tinker's d*mn about people like us. It is a naked power grab married to a grasping selectorate. The only good thing about it is that the graspers are slowly marching into care homes and coffins and with a bit of luck the Tory Party will implode electorally. Then perhaps the rest of us can start clearing up the mess they made.
Is it not obvious that the reason that Patrick Minford was able to say that a fiscal boost from cutting taxes was not inflationary was because he was adjusting monetary policy to tighten the money supply sufficiently to offset the tax cuts? Liz, not understanding that, has focused on the fiscal element without appreciating that there has to be a monetary response.
Would we be better off with lower taxes but higher interest rates? Well, that very much depends who you are. Those who have largely paid off or inflated away their mortgages would undoubtedly be. Those who haven't would be catastrophically hit. There are enough of the latter to undermine the housing market so even those without the mortgage would see a reduction in their major asset.
From an economic point of view Minford thinks that is a good thing. He identifies the asset inflation caused by extremely low interest rates over the last 14 years as part of the problem, sharply increasing inequality in society, reducing job mobility and discouraging investment in useful productive assets rather than houses. I have some considerable sympathy with these points but the challenge is how you get from here to there without bankrupting half the country and it isn't easy.
Rishi is completely at home in this territory and should be able to rip Truss a new one on Monday. If her plan is thought to be falling apart he would be back in the game. Given when the voting occurs he only has one chance. There are likely to be fireworks.
The problem is that the membership are not interested in what Thatcher called "sound money" they just want their tax cuts for the rich and a bit of Brussels bashing. As @Cyclefree pointed out, very much like the Barber Boom, which led to Britain's highest ever inflation rate, and a Labour government.
Probably not overly keen on a house price crash though. OK so interest rises and house price falls wouldn't directly affect their cost of living in the way it would those with large existing mortgages and those looking to move up the housing ladder, but wouldn't exactly be welcome. Neither would a stock market crash either.
The number of people affected by a "house price crash" would be relatively small, depending on your defintion.
House prices are up by 20-25% in the last 2 years, so the impact is on those who have taken out very high LTV mortgages, or increased their mortgages to such, in the last 2 years,
OT For all those who like quality war films there's one on Netlix called 'The Battle for the Sheldt' English title 'The Forgotten Battle'. It's huge for a Dutch made film and full of distinctive and unique European film qualities
“Research suggests that children as young as 2 recognise their trans identity. Yet, many nurseries and schools teach a binary understanding of pre-assigned gender.
LGBTQ-inclusive and affirming education is crucial for the wellbeing of all young people! 🌈”
A tweet by some mad trans crank in a basement? No. Stonewall
We have to drain this Woke poison from our society. And we can start by abolishing Stonewall and interrogating its activists
It does seem to be a pretty horrible organisation.
Absolutely toxic. The thread beneath that says they’ve been captured by some hugely rich American trans lobby, hence their extreme, perverse behavior, since about 2015
Dunno if it’s true. But they need to be driven out of the public arena
Complaining about gender-specific toys has been part of mainstream feminism from the year dot. Obviously, that is without the trans spin.
"I have never believed that the EU would suddenly collapse. But I thought it likely that it would gradually run out of political capacity due to lack of popular legitimacy. Many, like myself, have drawn a comparison with the Austro-Hungarian empire: divided, weak but unreformable, aiming at best to maintain (as one of its rulers put it) “a stable level of discontent” among a resigned population. This now seems optimistic."
It never occurs to nationalists like Tombs that many of those opposing the government's disastrous approach to Brexit do so because they care deeply about the UK and its future.
Robert Tombs is a professor emeritus of French history at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. He is also the recipient of the Ordre des Palmes académiques awarded by the French government. He is a respected and revered academic at the highest level, and a very intelligent man.
You may not agree with his views on the EU but he's a remarkably well-read and well-informed individual, and makes his arguments reasonably, proportionately and lucidly.
You are entirely unqualified to denigrate him with such smears.
No, I just do not share your opinion of him. I do not believe that thinking the government has handled Brexit disastrously equates to bashing, let alone hating, the UK. Equating the government to the country is nationalism.
He has done neither of those things.
You are criticising your own caricature of him, not the reality. Probably because the reality is too complex for you to deal with.
Maybe it's just that I can read ...
Self-hating Remainers are blind to the EU's flaws
Their obsession with bashing Britain has not wavered, even as their project across the Channel crashes and burns
Every word of that is true. There are a plethora of Remainers on this site who want to bash everything Britain does while dismissing anything that EU politicians do wrong.
There are some on this site who get so angry at anyone who has a negative word to say even about, say, German politicians soft on Russiaz that they start ranting and raving about the Express instead.
I think you're exaggerating.
I don't think anyone here except like two people actually want to rejoin the EU. I certainly don't.
I do not think pointing out that Brexit has issues is any more problematic than you spent presumably thirty years telling us what was going wrong with remaining.
They differ slightly in how they want to rejoin, some accept the need for a slow political process, some would do it by diktat on day 1 of a Labour govt, but all would rejoin tomorrow if a wand could be waved
It's done and we have to make the best of it. It would also be good to take the heat out of the issue so that the way forward can be plotted in a calm and pragmatic way.
The pre-requisite for this to happen is imo a fairly simple one. It just needs some sort of public statement on behalf of the Leave campaign and Leave voters that ok ok we see now this was a pretty stupid thing to do.
That would do it. Not a grovelling apology or anything. It's human nature to err. Nobody wants blood. Just the admission of an error made. Truss has done it in reverse for ultra cynical political reasons, so why not do it properly for these more admirable reasons.
You can kick it off if you want.
We are all👂👂👂
Not going to happen though, is it?
Human nature is that it's hard to admit error. And for politicians and other opinionmongers, admitting a mistake on the big question of their generation would be terminal.
So we all wait until a decent interval has passed, and the population has had sufficient churn.
Would it help if Gen X historians promised to write this up as "reasonable but failed punt" rather than "stupid power grab"?
Can anyone who opposes Truss reversing Sunaks increase in the Jobs Tax, as there's a deficit, but supported Osborne reversing Labours increase in the Jobs Tax while there was no money left, please explain why the two circumstances are different in your eyes?
“Research suggests that children as young as 2 recognise their trans identity. Yet, many nurseries and schools teach a binary understanding of pre-assigned gender.
LGBTQ-inclusive and affirming education is crucial for the wellbeing of all young people! 🌈”
A tweet by some mad trans crank in a basement? No. Stonewall
We have to drain this Woke poison from our society. And we can start by abolishing Stonewall and interrogating its activists
It does seem to be a pretty horrible organisation.
Absolutely toxic. The thread beneath that says they’ve been captured by some hugely rich American trans lobby, hence their extreme, perverse behavior, since about 2015
Dunno if it’s true. But they need to be driven out of the public arena
Complaining about gender-specific toys has been part of mainstream feminism from the year dot. Obviously, that is without the trans spin.
Mainstream feminism never campaigned for the right of 14 year old girls to have their breasts suppressed by chemicals and special clothing
“Research suggests that children as young as 2 recognise their trans identity. Yet, many nurseries and schools teach a binary understanding of pre-assigned gender.
LGBTQ-inclusive and affirming education is crucial for the wellbeing of all young people! 🌈”
A tweet by some mad trans crank in a basement? No. Stonewall
We have to drain this Woke poison from our society. And we can start by abolishing Stonewall and interrogating its activists
It does seem to be a pretty horrible organisation.
Absolutely toxic. The thread beneath that says they’ve been captured by some hugely rich American trans lobby, hence their extreme, perverse behavior, since about 2015
Dunno if it’s true. But they need to be driven out of the public arena
"... hugely rich American trans lobby ..."
Would you care to name this mysterious yet influential organisation?
In the USA, hugely rich lobbies usually mean bibles or bullets, not hormone treatments......
OT For all those who like quality war films there's one on Netlix called 'The Battle for the Sheldt' English title 'The Forgotten Battle'. It's huge for a Dutch made film and full of distinctive and unique European film qualities
(Apparently watched by 55 million on Netlix)
It’s an excellent movie. Also, the Brits are portrayed as flawless heroes, which is refreshing
That was a very slick performance in Grantham. Total command of his brief. There must be a good chance he eviscerates Truss in the debate tomorrow, just on economics
I think the value is on the Truss share of the vote on Smarkets as above from @StuartDickson
I am on the 60%+ bands, and think 65%+ at 12 excellent value too. Tory runoff elections are never close, and there are a lot of Johnson supporters voting Truss. Slickness won't count for much.
Plucking figures out of my butt I’d say Sunak starts the race behind, by about 40/60
But how many Tory members know enough about Truss to already say ‘she’s definitely the one’? Not many. Is my guess
They are an educated, inquiring electorate - compared to normal voters - they will watch debates, and Sunak might come across MUCH better
Just wondering if Tory members are very different to Tory voters?
“Research suggests that children as young as 2 recognise their trans identity. Yet, many nurseries and schools teach a binary understanding of pre-assigned gender.
LGBTQ-inclusive and affirming education is crucial for the wellbeing of all young people! 🌈”
A tweet by some mad trans crank in a basement? No. Stonewall
We have to drain this Woke poison from our society. And we can start by abolishing Stonewall and interrogating its activists
It does seem to be a pretty horrible organisation.
Absolutely toxic. The thread beneath that says they’ve been captured by some hugely rich American trans lobby, hence their extreme, perverse behavior, since about 2015
Dunno if it’s true. But they need to be driven out of the public arena
"... hugely rich American trans lobby ..."
Would you care to name this mysterious yet influential organisation?
In the USA, hugely rich lobbies usually mean bibles or bullets, not hormone treatments......
No, because I can’t be arsed to do the research for a statement which I said ‘might not be true’ and was made by someone else
But while you’re here, maybe you could explain how, why and when Stonewall made the, er, transition from sensible gay rights charity to extreme & crazy trans lobbyists?
"I have never believed that the EU would suddenly collapse. But I thought it likely that it would gradually run out of political capacity due to lack of popular legitimacy. Many, like myself, have drawn a comparison with the Austro-Hungarian empire: divided, weak but unreformable, aiming at best to maintain (as one of its rulers put it) “a stable level of discontent” among a resigned population. This now seems optimistic."
It never occurs to nationalists like Tombs that many of those opposing the government's disastrous approach to Brexit do so because they care deeply about the UK and its future.
Robert Tombs is a professor emeritus of French history at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. He is also the recipient of the Ordre des Palmes académiques awarded by the French government. He is a respected and revered academic at the highest level, and a very intelligent man.
You may not agree with his views on the EU but he's a remarkably well-read and well-informed individual, and makes his arguments reasonably, proportionately and lucidly.
You are entirely unqualified to denigrate him with such smears.
No, I just do not share your opinion of him. I do not believe that thinking the government has handled Brexit disastrously equates to bashing, let alone hating, the UK. Equating the government to the country is nationalism.
He has done neither of those things.
You are criticising your own caricature of him, not the reality. Probably because the reality is too complex for you to deal with.
Maybe it's just that I can read ...
Self-hating Remainers are blind to the EU's flaws
Their obsession with bashing Britain has not wavered, even as their project across the Channel crashes and burns
Every word of that is true. There are a plethora of Remainers on this site who want to bash everything Britain does while dismissing anything that EU politicians do wrong.
There are some on this site who get so angry at anyone who has a negative word to say even about, say, German politicians soft on Russiaz that they start ranting and raving about the Express instead.
I think you're exaggerating.
I don't think anyone here except like two people actually want to rejoin the EU. I certainly don't.
I do not think pointing out that Brexit has issues is any more problematic than you spent presumably thirty years telling us what was going wrong with remaining.
They differ slightly in how they want to rejoin, some accept the need for a slow political process, some would do it by diktat on day 1 of a Labour govt, but all would rejoin tomorrow if a wand could be waved
It's done and we have to make the best of it. It would also be good to take the heat out of the issue so that the way forward can be plotted in a calm and pragmatic way.
The pre-requisite for this to happen is imo a fairly simple one. It just needs some sort of public statement on behalf of the Leave campaign and Leave voters that ok ok we see now this was a pretty stupid thing to do.
That would do it. Not a grovelling apology or anything. It's human nature to error. Nobody wants blood. Just the admission of an error made. Truss has done it in reverse for ultra cynical political reasons, so why not do it properly for these more admirable reasons.
You can kick it off if you want.
We are all👂👂👂
Since I don't think it was an error, why would you want me to lie?
I would rather hear from those who were Remainers that they made a mistake and that Project Fear predictions have not come to pass.
But I won't hold my breath on that happening.
Liz Truss deserves credit for saying that. She's admitted she was wrong and that the pre referendum predictions of doom never came to pass.
That was a very slick performance in Grantham. Total command of his brief. There must be a good chance he eviscerates Truss in the debate tomorrow, just on economics
I think the value is on the Truss share of the vote on Smarkets as above from @StuartDickson
I am on the 60%+ bands, and think 65%+ at 12 excellent value too. Tory runoff elections are never close, and there are a lot of Johnson supporters voting Truss. Slickness won't count for much.
Plucking figures out of my butt I’d say Sunak starts the race behind, by about 40/60
But how many Tory members know enough about Truss to already say ‘she’s definitely the one’? Not many. Is my guess
They are an educated, inquiring electorate - compared to normal voters - they will watch debates, and Sunak might come across MUCH better
Just wondering if Tory members are very different to Tory voters?
“Research suggests that children as young as 2 recognise their trans identity. Yet, many nurseries and schools teach a binary understanding of pre-assigned gender.
LGBTQ-inclusive and affirming education is crucial for the wellbeing of all young people! 🌈”
A tweet by some mad trans crank in a basement? No. Stonewall
We have to drain this Woke poison from our society. And we can start by abolishing Stonewall and interrogating its activists
It does seem to be a pretty horrible organisation.
Absolutely toxic. The thread beneath that says they’ve been captured by some hugely rich American trans lobby, hence their extreme, perverse behavior, since about 2015
Dunno if it’s true. But they need to be driven out of the public arena
"... hugely rich American trans lobby ..."
Would you care to name this mysterious yet influential organisation?
In the USA, hugely rich lobbies usually mean bibles or bullets, not hormone treatments......
No, because I can’t be arsed to do the research for a statement which I said ‘might not be true’ and was made by someone else
But while you’re here, maybe you could explain how, why and when Stonewall made the, er, transition from sensible gay rights charity to extreme & crazy trans lobbyists?
The same time some other people turned into anti-trans idiots?
“Research suggests that children as young as 2 recognise their trans identity. Yet, many nurseries and schools teach a binary understanding of pre-assigned gender.
LGBTQ-inclusive and affirming education is crucial for the wellbeing of all young people! 🌈”
A tweet by some mad trans crank in a basement? No. Stonewall
We have to drain this Woke poison from our society. And we can start by abolishing Stonewall and interrogating its activists
It does seem to be a pretty horrible organisation.
Absolutely toxic. The thread beneath that says they’ve been captured by some hugely rich American trans lobby, hence their extreme, perverse behavior, since about 2015
Dunno if it’s true. But they need to be driven out of the public arena
"... hugely rich American trans lobby ..."
Would you care to name this mysterious yet influential organisation?
In the USA, hugely rich lobbies usually mean bibles or bullets, not hormone treatments......
No, because I can’t be arsed to do the research for a statement which I said ‘might not be true’ and was made by someone else
But while you’re here, maybe you could explain how, why and when Stonewall made the, er, transition from sensible gay rights charity to extreme & crazy trans lobbyists?
The same time some other people turned into anti-trans idiots?
“Research suggests that children as young as 2 recognise their trans identity. Yet, many nurseries and schools teach a binary understanding of pre-assigned gender.
LGBTQ-inclusive and affirming education is crucial for the wellbeing of all young people! 🌈”
A tweet by some mad trans crank in a basement? No. Stonewall
We have to drain this Woke poison from our society. And we can start by abolishing Stonewall and interrogating its activists
It does seem to be a pretty horrible organisation.
Absolutely toxic. The thread beneath that says they’ve been captured by some hugely rich American trans lobby, hence their extreme, perverse behavior, since about 2015
Dunno if it’s true. But they need to be driven out of the public arena
Complaining about gender-specific toys has been part of mainstream feminism from the year dot. Obviously, that is without the trans spin.
Mainstream feminism never campaigned for the right of 14 year old girls to have their breasts suppressed by chemicals and special clothing
That may be true but has no obvious connection with the tweet you quoted.
“Research suggests that children as young as 2 recognise their trans identity. Yet, many nurseries and schools teach a binary understanding of pre-assigned gender.
LGBTQ-inclusive and affirming education is crucial for the wellbeing of all young people! 🌈”
A tweet by some mad trans crank in a basement? No. Stonewall
We have to drain this Woke poison from our society. And we can start by abolishing Stonewall and interrogating its activists
It does seem to be a pretty horrible organisation.
Absolutely toxic. The thread beneath that says they’ve been captured by some hugely rich American trans lobby, hence their extreme, perverse behavior, since about 2015
Dunno if it’s true. But they need to be driven out of the public arena
"... hugely rich American trans lobby ..."
Would you care to name this mysterious yet influential organisation?
In the USA, hugely rich lobbies usually mean bibles or bullets, not hormone treatments......
No, because I can’t be arsed to do the research for a statement which I said ‘might not be true’ and was made by someone else
But while you’re here, maybe you could explain how, why and when Stonewall made the, er, transition from sensible gay rights charity to extreme & crazy trans lobbyists?
Because sensible gay rights have been achieved in full so they have no reason to continue to exist campaigning for that. It would be like still having a charity campaigning for women to have the vote.
Stonewall's complete success in achieving full acceptance and equality for homosexuality has been a great achievement but left them without a purpose as an institution. Many former campaigners for homosexuality to be treated equally have left because the campaign has been won.
Nature abhors a vacuum so they've adopted an extreme trans position to give themselves a purpose.
“Research suggests that children as young as 2 recognise their trans identity. Yet, many nurseries and schools teach a binary understanding of pre-assigned gender.
LGBTQ-inclusive and affirming education is crucial for the wellbeing of all young people! 🌈”
A tweet by some mad trans crank in a basement? No. Stonewall
We have to drain this Woke poison from our society. And we can start by abolishing Stonewall and interrogating its activists
It does seem to be a pretty horrible organisation.
Absolutely toxic. The thread beneath that says they’ve been captured by some hugely rich American trans lobby, hence their extreme, perverse behavior, since about 2015
Dunno if it’s true. But they need to be driven out of the public arena
"... hugely rich American trans lobby ..."
Would you care to name this mysterious yet influential organisation?
In the USA, hugely rich lobbies usually mean bibles or bullets, not hormone treatments......
No, because I can’t be arsed to do the research for a statement which I said ‘might not be true’ and was made by someone else
But while you’re here, maybe you could explain how, why and when Stonewall made the, er, transition from sensible gay rights charity to extreme & crazy trans lobbyists?
Because sensible gay rights have been achieved in full so they have no reason to continue to exist campaigning for that. It would be like still having a charity campaigning for women to have the vote.
Stonewall's complete success in achieving full acceptance and equality for homosexuality has been a great achievement but left them without a purpose as an institution. Many former campaigners for homosexuality to be treated equally have left because the campaign has been won.
Nature abhors a vacuum so they've adopted an extreme trans position to give themselves a purpose.
Yes, I’m sure that is part of it
If they wanted a new cause, they could have dedicated themselves to helping the many gay people who are persecuted, jailed and killed in Africa, the Islamic world, etc? A truly noble purpose
But maybe that was too hard, so they’ve gone for the ‘gender-confused’ two-year-olds in kindergartens
“Research suggests that children as young as 2 recognise their trans identity. Yet, many nurseries and schools teach a binary understanding of pre-assigned gender.
LGBTQ-inclusive and affirming education is crucial for the wellbeing of all young people! 🌈”
A tweet by some mad trans crank in a basement? No. Stonewall
We have to drain this Woke poison from our society. And we can start by abolishing Stonewall and interrogating its activists
It does seem to be a pretty horrible organisation.
Absolutely toxic. The thread beneath that says they’ve been captured by some hugely rich American trans lobby, hence their extreme, perverse behavior, since about 2015
Dunno if it’s true. But they need to be driven out of the public arena
"... hugely rich American trans lobby ..."
Would you care to name this mysterious yet influential organisation?
In the USA, hugely rich lobbies usually mean bibles or bullets, not hormone treatments......
No, because I can’t be arsed to do the research for a statement which I said ‘might not be true’ and was made by someone else
But while you’re here, maybe you could explain how, why and when Stonewall made the, er, transition from sensible gay rights charity to extreme & crazy trans lobbyists?
The same time some other people turned into anti-trans idiots?
Which never happened. Next
Oh it has. If you cannot see that, then that might be because you're too heavily on the other side.
I don't agree with Stonewall on this matter: even if kids feel at odds with their assigned gender at a young age, I'm unsure it does them much harm to learn about a 'binary understanding' of gender. But if there're pro-trans idiots, there are certainly very vociferous anti-trans people and voices as well.
Sunak is immoral for raising taxes on workers while cutting taxes on triple lock retirees.
Truss isn't AFAIK proposing cutting tax rates below what they were under those notorious ERG extremists George Osborne or Philip Hammond.
PS amongst the first thing that George Osborne did when he became Chancellor was to reject and reverse the rise in the National Insurance "jobs tax" that Labour had put in place.
If it's good enough for Osborne, when there was "no money left" then why not Truss?
Because there is far, far less money left now than they was even then given how much is being spent on things like social care...
“Research suggests that children as young as 2 recognise their trans identity. Yet, many nurseries and schools teach a binary understanding of pre-assigned gender.
LGBTQ-inclusive and affirming education is crucial for the wellbeing of all young people! 🌈”
A tweet by some mad trans crank in a basement? No. Stonewall
We have to drain this Woke poison from our society. And we can start by abolishing Stonewall and interrogating its activists
It does seem to be a pretty horrible organisation.
Absolutely toxic. The thread beneath that says they’ve been captured by some hugely rich American trans lobby, hence their extreme, perverse behavior, since about 2015
Dunno if it’s true. But they need to be driven out of the public arena
"... hugely rich American trans lobby ..."
Would you care to name this mysterious yet influential organisation?
In the USA, hugely rich lobbies usually mean bibles or bullets, not hormone treatments......
No, because I can’t be arsed to do the research for a statement which I said ‘might not be true’ and was made by someone else
But while you’re here, maybe you could explain how, why and when Stonewall made the, er, transition from sensible gay rights charity to extreme & crazy trans lobbyists?
The same time some other people turned into anti-trans idiots?
Which never happened. Next
Oh it has. If you cannot see that, then that might be because you're too heavily on the other side.
I don't agree with Stonewall on this matter: even if kids feel at odds with their assigned gender at a young age, I'm unsure it does them much harm to learn about a 'binary understanding' of gender. But if there're pro-trans idiots, there are certainly very vociferous anti-trans people and voices as well.
If anyone has become transphobic in recent years, it is because of the lunatic extremism of the trans lobby. One example is my friend, X, who has recently confessed to being appalled and horrified by this generation of trans activists
Sunak is immoral for raising taxes on workers while cutting taxes on triple lock retirees.
Truss isn't AFAIK proposing cutting tax rates below what they were under those notorious ERG extremists George Osborne or Philip Hammond.
PS amongst the first thing that George Osborne did when he became Chancellor was to reject and reverse the rise in the National Insurance "jobs tax" that Labour had put in place.
If it's good enough for Osborne, when there was "no money left" then why not Truss?
Because there is far, far less money left now than they was even then given how much is being spent on things like social care...
And the way to get more money isn't to throttle workers and corporations with an ever higher tax ratchet.
...................Osborne may have froze many wages while keeping the triple lock but he cut the NI jobs tax (from Labours presecheduled rise) and increased income tax thresholds in a low inflation environment so that work paid. ...............
These were policies more or less forced on the Coalition Government by the Lib Dems. Please stop re-writing our history for us, Mr Roberts.
...................Osborne may have froze many wages while keeping the triple lock but he cut the NI jobs tax (from Labours presecheduled rise) and increased income tax thresholds in a low inflation environment so that work paid. ...............
These were policies more or less forced on the Coalition Government by the Lib Dems. Please stop re-writing our history for us, Mr Roberts.
I'm not. Why it was done was not the question, that it was done is all I said. It was the right thing to do.
Anyway philosophically I've always been split between the Tories and the Lib Dems. The 2010-15 Parliament was great in my eyes. I am happy to say the Lib Dems brought some very good ideas to the table.
The biggest problem with the Lib Dems in office is they became utterly ashamed and abashed of everything they did instead of standing up proud of their record.
Comments
Labour Surge!! 😄
What they did not get to do aiui was to write non-negotiable content into the agreement in advance.
The process seems very similar indeed to the Australian Parliamentary process, where the Govt negotiated the text, and the Australian Parliament debated it afterwards.
http://aftinet.org.au/cms/Australian-parliamentary-process-for-trade-agreements
(Unless the process in Australia has changed?)
Government negotiates the Treaty, and Parliament can either give it a “yay” or a “nay”.
We underestimate the credibility that Brown's move to make the Bank independent has bought Investors always suspected before independence that policy was set for political reasons.
Rishi Sunak gives a speech to local Conservative Party members in Grantham.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oWdrh35eaU
ETA posted a bit late; they are on to the q&a.
And does she care that a win on that basis in (say) 2023 would make the 2028 election a disaster for her successor?
I suspect it isn't being widely publicised because this is what a wage/price spiral looks like.
And it is profoundly unlikely that Herodotus was the first partisan political commentator, it’s just that we’ve lost all earlier œuvres.
Deregulation might lead to short term outperformance, however, allowing Truss to claim things are much worse elsewhere.
He’s not just the average Goldman Sachs banker
(Price in brackets yesterday morning)
60-65% 3.65 (4.7)
55-60% 3.7 (3.8)
45-50% 4.9 (5.5)
50-55% 5.2 (4.4)
65-70% 12 (10.5)
40-45% 14 (7.8)
Under 40% 20 (9.2)
Over 70% 21 (14.5)
Especially when restrictions are raising taxes on workers and corporations, the productive parts of society, while cutting taxes on triple locked pensioners.
We need to cut taxes on the productive parts of society and make sure the unproductive parts pay their fair share.
Huh....you've changed your tune.
Awks.
I’m merely saying Sunak comes across well at a hustings. And he does. Amiable, direct, confident, clever
I genuinely don’t know which of the candidates would be better for Britain, and better able to defeat the vile lefties. So I am open to being persuaded
If all the Tories stand for is higher taxes on those who work, while increasing welfare for those who don't, then what's the point of them?
I don't like the Tories for "social war" issues, I liked them because I think work is better than welfare. If they're the high welfare party now, then what's left?
Not contesting the point, just wondering.
I would, though, say that the invention of Holyrood did (if not creating) substantially embed and deepen divisions. The 'standing up for Scotland' line of the SNP is something no British party can match because they stand in Wales and England too, so it was entirely foreseeable that Labour might not have a Celtic fiefdom forever, despite their fantasies to the contrary.
Similarly (although not quite the same as this wasn't a national point), pro-EU UK politicians could have no reply for UKIP and other sceptics when it came to the UK interest in the EU. While there is far more of a British feeling in Scotland than (across the whole UK, obviously Wales/Scotland feel somewhat differently to England) there was a European feeling in the UK, politicians utterly failed to make the case for the EU over decades and when the time came it was both too late and they had no experience of it.
Promotion of a British identity is necessary. Instead, Labour was happy to indulge a Scottish and Welsh political identity for the bits of the UK they thought they'd rule forever, while denying a corresponding identity for England. We still see this misunderstanding/disinterest in other areas. Yorkshire, for the most part, wants a Yorkshire mayor. Southern politicians insist on carving the county up because that fits with what they want.
/rambly
The key sentence is "We also committed to providing updates to Parliament throughout negotiations and confirmed that at the end of the process Parliament would scrutinise the agreements". It's generallty accepted in Parliament that merely asking questions and expressing views doesn't provide much sccrutiny - it needs the focus of an actual vote. The Government has provided a debate without a vote, and the all-party International Trade Committee has on its own initiative examined the deal (the Minister, very unusually, declined to accept an invitation to discuss it with them) and harshly criticised the lack of consultation. I don't think there is any serious dispute that they are minimising scrutiny.
What the NFU and charities like mine are seeking is a core standards package for future deals which basically says that in order to have zero-tariff access to British markets, you need to match British standards. Otherwise, just as industry was undercut by China, British farming will be undercut by low-standard imports. The Australian deal doesn't have that provision. The Dept of Trade under Truss basically took the view that their priority was to sign deals that gave new export possibilities (whisky, financial products and more) even if it damaged farming. The long-term effect of that will be to increase dependence on low-standard imports, which even in terms of secruity of supply seems short-sighted.
Government supporters are entitled to disagree and argue that we should concentrate on our strengths (we are certainly more competitive at selling finanicial products), but should accept that there's a price in terms of farming.
That was a very slick performance in Grantham. Total command of his brief. There must be a good chance he eviscerates Truss in the debate tomorrow, just on economics
I am on the 60%+ bands, and think 65%+ at 12 excellent value too. Tory runoff elections are never close, and there are a lot of Johnson supporters voting Truss. Slickness won't count for much.
The pre-requisite for this to happen is imo a fairly simple one. It just needs some sort of public statement on behalf of the Leave campaign and Leave voters that ok ok we see now this was a pretty stupid thing to do.
That would do it. Not a grovelling apology or anything. It's human nature to err. Nobody wants blood. Just the admission of an error made. Truss has done it in reverse for ultra cynical political reasons, so why not do it properly for these more admirable reasons.
You can kick it off if you want.
We are all👂👂👂
That's 2400 laws. Three per day.
Also not says that they aren’t therefore ripe for being exploited as a result and taking the p*ss creates obvious resentment.
If Johnsonism taught anything as a political philosophy, it is "Lie today to get to tomorrow. And keep doing it"
For me it is about 3 weeks pay cut in real terms. The financially sensible thing to do is retire and get CPI on my pension. A number of colleagues are doing just that.
You caused it.
Every other lobby group like yours will have its own priorities and will want their own interests favoured. The whisky lobbyists will have different priorities to yours.
Government by lobbyists is a recipe for disaster that is seen in America with their corrupt lobbyists donations and pork barrel politics.
It is for the lobbyists to express their competing interests, all of them, the executive to take that into account and negotiate with foreign executives, then for Parliament to approve or reject what the executive negotiated. Lobbyists should never have a defining role in providing a "core" of anything.
But how many Tory members know enough about Truss to already say ‘she’s definitely the one’? Not many. Is my guess
They are an educated, inquiring electorate - compared to normal voters - they will watch debates, and Sunak might come across MUCH better
FFS how rich is that coming from Sunak.
And of course new graduates are carrying massive amounts of student debt too.
Truss isn't AFAIK proposing cutting tax rates below what they were under those notorious ERG extremists George Osborne or Philip Hammond.
PS amongst the first thing that George Osborne did when he became Chancellor was to reject and reverse the rise in the National Insurance "jobs tax" that Labour had put in place.
If it's good enough for Osborne, when there was "no money left" then why not Truss?
...
Under the terms of Friday's deal, Russia agreed not to target ports while grain shipments are in transit."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62276392
It sounds like the port area's on fire. Well done Russia, you are the stronkiest of the stronk!
Can I sell a billionaire banker telling my voters they can't have their money back as their finances get destroyed by the high taxation and rocketing inflation he caused?
“Research suggests that children as young as 2 recognise their trans identity. Yet, many nurseries and schools teach a binary understanding of pre-assigned gender.
LGBTQ-inclusive and affirming education is crucial for the wellbeing of all young people! 🌈”
A tweet by some mad trans crank in a basement? No. Stonewall
https://twitter.com/stonewalluk/status/1550427949819695104?s=21&t=V-rOYL8uG-GMZOcXPk5TUA
We have to drain this Woke poison from our society. And we can start by abolishing Stonewall and interrogating its activists
1 Are they eminently sensible/necessary?
2 If they aren't can they be revised/updated to be made better?
3 If both are no, then get rid.
Instead just jump to 3.
Madness.
The greatest city in the world says “f*ck off” to the calamity that is Brexit.
It’s very much the tail wagging the dog.
Race is an issue in this contest-otherwise, Rishi who is a class apart, will not start as far back as he is in every poll even against people who were unknowns until 2 weeks ago.
He has acknowledged it in his slogan "Ready for Rishi".
Will he overcome it? He certainly seems to have the heft behind him as a relatively successful chancellor in extraordinary times and presentation skills to go with it.
I have some money on him but don`t really mind if Liz wins as I believe the best two got into the final.
Then he ordered Putin to invade Ukraine resulting in more economic damage and fuel inflation.
If only he hadn’t raised taxes to pay for all the Covid repayment that was required we could have just magicked up the money - pah, taxes - who needs taxes.
I know they say Goldmans controls the world but I didn’t realise that in just over two years as Chancellor he could manipulate the world and cause inflation. He’s an evil genius.
1.45 Liz Truss 69%
3.2 Rishi Sunak 31%
Next Conservative leader
1.44 Liz Truss 69%
3.25 Rishi Sunak 31%
Dunno if it’s true. But they need to be driven out of the public arena
Osborne may have froze many wages while keeping the triple lock but he cut the NI jobs tax (from Labours presecheduled rise) and increased income tax thresholds in a low inflation environment so that work paid.
Sunak wants to simultaneously freeze wages, freeze tax thresholds in a high inflation environment, and raise two jobs taxes.
Osborne had no money left but he cut jobs taxes. Sunak is ramping them up, up and up.
House prices are up by 20-25% in the last 2 years, so the impact is on those who have taken out very high LTV mortgages, or increased their mortgages to such, in the last 2 years,
That is not a high proportion of the country.
Does anyone have the exact numbers?
(Apparently watched by 55 million on Netlix)
Human nature is that it's hard to admit error. And for politicians and other opinionmongers, admitting a mistake on the big question of their generation would be terminal.
So we all wait until a decent interval has passed, and the population has had sufficient churn.
Would it help if Gen X historians promised to write this up as "reasonable but failed punt" rather than "stupid power grab"?
Would you care to name this mysterious yet influential organisation?
In the USA, hugely rich lobbies usually mean bibles or bullets, not hormone treatments......
But while you’re here, maybe you could explain how, why and when Stonewall made the, er, transition from sensible gay rights charity to extreme & crazy trans lobbyists?
But I won't hold my breath on that happening.
Liz Truss deserves credit for saying that. She's admitted she was wrong and that the pre referendum predictions of doom never came to pass.
Stonewall's complete success in achieving full acceptance and equality for homosexuality has been a great achievement but left them without a purpose as an institution. Many former campaigners for homosexuality to be treated equally have left because the campaign has been won.
Nature abhors a vacuum so they've adopted an extreme trans position to give themselves a purpose.
If they wanted a new cause, they could have dedicated themselves to helping the many gay people who are persecuted, jailed and killed in Africa, the Islamic world, etc? A truly noble purpose
But maybe that was too hard, so they’ve gone for the ‘gender-confused’ two-year-olds in kindergartens
I don't agree with Stonewall on this matter: even if kids feel at odds with their assigned gender at a young age, I'm unsure it does them much harm to learn about a 'binary understanding' of gender. But if there're pro-trans idiots, there are certainly very vociferous anti-trans people and voices as well.
No. Sunak is far and away the candidate labour would like to face.
She’s trans. Post-op
Anyway philosophically I've always been split between the Tories and the Lib Dems. The 2010-15 Parliament was great in my eyes. I am happy to say the Lib Dems brought some very good ideas to the table.
The biggest problem with the Lib Dems in office is they became utterly ashamed and abashed of everything they did instead of standing up proud of their record.