Sterling is freely floating now. Freely floating currencies can go up or down, its not a problem. The government's stated goal is to get the economy growing, if lower taxes and lower Sterling helps make that viable, then they will have achieved their goal.
Freefloating into oblivion?
Sterling used to be $5, then $2, and its now been approaching parity for a while.
It wouldn't surprise me if in my lifetime £1 = $0.20
There is still a chance for Tory MPs to save us and their party from this calamity.
The party would be utterly screwed by changing the top team 3 weeks after the last change. I mean, seriously ratnered. Holed below the waterline. Possibly terminally damaged.
You can’t pretend to be a serious party of government by deposing your leadership 3 weeks after they take the helm.
Might be better for the country mind, but for the Tories, terrible move.
It would be cross the streams bad. I know that.
But the alternative is worse. Anyway, my scenario is that after an excretable party conference and a harsh reaction from the markets, MPs say "fuck this shit" and bring down la Truss by voting down her Financial Suicide bill. And anoint Sunak. Who was their choice. Who was right about the economy. Who would prompt a big markets u-turn.
Truss would be spun as a terrible mistake imposed by the membership who were wrong. Change the rules to remove the stupid and they have a defensible line.
Or, don't. And they end.
He was the choice of barely a third of them.
He won every round of voting. Comfortably. Compared to Truss it would be very easy to make a case for Sunak being the leader the MPs wanted.
The only feasible alternative to Truss before the general election is Wallace by coronation, who MPs and members could support. Though Truss likely holds on
Genuinely interested in your take on this. You were openly a Sunak supporter. And why that was. Sunak - and you - were right. So why do you say Wallace?
Its an economic crisis on a massive scale. You need a new leader to calm the markets and bring stability to the political table. You can have your former chancellor who called this right and was the choice of MPs. Or the Defence Secretary who isn't seen as up on finance and wasn't the choice of MPs.
Why are you suggesting Wallace instead of Sunak? It would need to be a coronation though, wouldn't it?
The 1922 could change the rules to make it an MP vote over a week.
They couldn't. As has been pointed out they are responsible for admin, not for the basic structure.
EXCEPT they could say Fuck it, let's break the rules and ride roughshod over the rights of the members and appoint a new PM in the expectation a court would say to the members Sorry lads, not getting involved in politics.
The Palace would absolutely hate a scenario whereby HM was forced to appoint a PM not appointed party leader in line with the party’s constitution. I guess he’d probably be forced to though, if that person could demonstrate they had the confidence of the House.
Surely a coronation is within their rules? They did it for May.
Because Angela fell over and withdrew. You could of course fix a similar result if there were enough appetite for it....
In the real world, the media has not managed find one current senior tory to go on the record to criticise Truss and Kwarteng. Not effing one.
They have seen how Sunak's alleged disloyalty scuppered his bid. Wallace is keeping his head down and concentrating on Ukr, and possibly musing on the fact that the voluntary non-stander in 2016 was the winner in 2019. Cometh the hour...
Is Dmitry Medvedev signalling a concession by Russia when he says Russia won't tolerate nuclear weapons being put in NATO-controlled Ukraine?
Does this mark a backtracking from the stated Russian war aim of demilitarising the Ukraine?
Could there be an agreement to the effect that
* Russian territory does not come under foreign or foreign-backed attack and any local neo-Nazi forces on Russian territory either surrender or f*** off out of it
* Ukraine can ally with who TF it likes, so long as no nuclear weapons are stationed on its soil?
Cf. the resolution of the Turkey-Italy-Cuba missile crisis in 1962, which ill-informed idiots call the Cuban missile crisis, but which at least they are right to term a crisis. Turkey and Italy stayed in NATO, but burgermuncher nukes were removed from their territory.
Both Italy and Turkey had nuclear weapons on their soil through the Cold War.
There are B61s at Incirlik right now.
Italy is similarly part of the NATO nuclear sharing system - BorrowABomb from the US.
The reason that the Jupiter missiles were removed from Turkey was that, with the arrival of Minuteman and Polaris, a huge pile of emergency developed weapons systems were obsolete. The Kennedy administration policy was to get rid of the weird and dangerous junk and built lots of the stuff that worked.
Hence the end of Skybolt and a raft of other weapons that were less good than Polaris and Minuteman.
And why the missiles in Turkey were due for removal before the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Italy and Turkey did not have nuclear weapons on their soil throughout the cold war, and the idea that the missiles in Turkey (which had been placed there in 1961 if I recall correctly) were due for removal anyway, was just a bullsh*t line that the western governments told their home market. For another line of the same type, see the idea that Greville Wynne was just an innocent businessman innocently caught in a spy flap and the only reason Britain agreed to swap him for Konon Molody aka Gordon Lonsdale was to let the Soviets save face. Hahaha! Sixty years later and you still believe this crap.
Sports Personality of the Year to take place on [Wednesday] 21 December
They might as well not bother; we seem a bit rubbish at sport this year. Win some, lose the ones that matter.
What are you talking about? The test cricket was amazing
Stokes is the man
Yep. And Qatar to come. Southgate has us peaking at just the right time methinks.
What? 🥹
Yep. I'm a skilled sportswatcher and looking at England is like ... you're horses, aren't you? ... ok like seeing that one on the bridle, saving ground on the inner, middle of the pack and just starting its smooth accelerating run from about the 3f pole. I like our chances in the Sandpit. 6/1 a touch short though.
But not as "too short" as 2.8 to lay a Truss exit in 2023. I've gobbled that. Betting into overreactions is one of my fav techniques and I think we have that in spades here. They cannot change leaders again, no way. She's their bed and they have to lie in it now.
What? 🥹
BTW just out of interest, esteemed leporid, what's that squiggle in a box after your post mean, please?
It is a Face Holding Back Tears emoji, it seems. Shows up on my phone, empty square on desktop.
Not so long ago the Tories had a 15% lead over labour, now Labour have a 15 % lead over the Tories, I dont actually think either are or were true.Things are fluid, when it settles down it will more likely be a 5% lead for Labour we see consistently, just because we are interested in politics, we falsely assume the whole country is , which couldnt be further from the truth, in reality the vast majority of the population only switch on around GE time, if you are lucky. So when Uncle Rupert declares in the Sun in 2024, that the Tories are the party to get us out of this mess, that precarious labour lead will fall further
9 times out of 10 I’d agree with you. But I dunno, this really does feel very different. It’s the very real economic pain that will prevent the normally highly dependable swingback.
Maybe the Con DKs won’t end up voting Labour, but I expect a late LD surge and a heck of a lot of Con2019 abstentions. Meanwhile, Lab, SNP and LD abstentions from 2019 are likely to be back with a bang. Especially the Lab ones (Corbyn bounceback).
Time will tell, but without Labour making big inroads in Scotland, I will not be rushing to back them to win an overall majority
There is still a chance for Tory MPs to save us and their party from this calamity.
The party would be utterly screwed by changing the top team 3 weeks after the last change. I mean, seriously ratnered. Holed below the waterline. Possibly terminally damaged.
You can’t pretend to be a serious party of government by deposing your leadership 3 weeks after they take the helm.
Might be better for the country mind, but for the Tories, terrible move.
It would be cross the streams bad. I know that.
But the alternative is worse. Anyway, my scenario is that after an excretable party conference and a harsh reaction from the markets, MPs say "fuck this shit" and bring down la Truss by voting down her Financial Suicide bill. And anoint Sunak. Who was their choice. Who was right about the economy. Who would prompt a big markets u-turn.
Truss would be spun as a terrible mistake imposed by the membership who were wrong. Change the rules to remove the stupid and they have a defensible line.
Or, don't. And they end.
He was the choice of barely a third of them.
The problem is the Tory Party has absolutely zero clue what it actually wants to be anymore. This does happen to all parties in power for too long, to some extent, but this is particularly bad.
Truss and Kwarteng are low tax, low spend, free market-eers who dont believe in sound money.
Sunak is a tax and spender with roots in the Johnsonian “levelling up” “spend it on our NHS instead” boosterism (on which let’s not forget the Conservative Party was elected in 2019 - NOT the policies Truss and Kwarteng are now following).
You’ve then got a dwindling band of Cameroony moderates like Hunt, a scattering of sound money Thatcherites, and a group that probably don’t care what the economic policy of the country is so long as they can attack the other parties on what the definition of a woman is.
I know all political parties are broad churches but the Tory Party is basically schizophrenic now.
The solution to this is PR. Let the Tories and labout split, and the loonies can be idelogically pure, then the grown ups can actually form the government.
Starmer's reaction to the party vote in favour of PR is disappointing and disingenuous. Calling it "not a priority" is effectively the same as saying he opposes it, without being honest about it.
Starmer is heading for a majority now in the polls, why on earth would he want PR forcing him to make deals with the Greens or LDs to form a government?
But he still gets his majority govt, doesn't he? Just with a pledge to hold a Ref on PR - with a Yes implemented for the next election. Wouldn't that be the route?
Sports Personality of the Year to take place on [Wednesday] 21 December
They might as well not bother; we seem a bit rubbish at sport this year. Win some, lose the ones that matter.
What are you talking about? The test cricket was amazing
Stokes is the man
Yep. And Qatar to come. Southgate has us peaking at just the right time methinks.
What? 🥹
Yep. I'm a skilled sportswatcher and looking at England is like ... you're horses, aren't you? ... ok like seeing that one on the bridle, saving ground on the inner, middle of the pack and just starting its smooth accelerating run from about the 3f pole. I like our chances in the Sandpit. 6/1 a touch short though.
But not as "too short" as 2.8 to lay a Truss exit in 2023. I've gobbled that. Betting into overreactions is one of my fav techniques and I think we have that in spades here. They cannot change leaders again, no way. She's their bed and they have to lie in it now.
What? 🥹
BTW just out of interest, esteemed leporid, what's that squiggle in a box after your post mean, please?
It is a Face Holding Back Tears emoji, it seems. Shows up on my phone, empty square on desktop.
Can´t help feeling that we could be looking at the end of the modern Conservative party.
There are certainly parallels with the Liberal Party, during and after the first world war, with Johnson as the Lloyd George figure undermining the traditional heart of his party.
Longer term splits over Europe (Liberal Parallel; Ireland and the Suffragettes) have seen even former leadership contenders like Rory Stewart, Heseltine and Ken Clarke driven out from the party. These public service minded figures have been replaced by the hard-faced chancers, like JRM, Johnson and indeed Truss herself.
The divisions between Sunak and KK are fundamental, not just Wykhamist v Etonian. The party is fundamentally at odds with itself.
If I was an economically literate Tory MP, even with something like a 9K majority, I would be thinking very hard about whether it might not be better for the Parliamentary party to throw out the Populists now, before the Country does it in 2 years with the collateral damage being that I would also lose my seat.
Truss turns out to be the Militant Tendency of the modern Tories, and if not challenged the Tories could indeed go into a Canadian style meltdown. A 45-26 % split next time with a bit of tactical voting for the Lib Dems could get the Tories down into double figures.
PR then kills them.
You may be right about the split in the Tory party, but you're making an assumption that it won't be the Trussites who look vindicated in 12-months time. A lot can change domestically and internationally between now and then.
The Trussites cannot be vindicated. The Markets wont wear it. Today Dollar Parity, 3 months time, Euro Parity.
Reserves blown, rates into double figures, national humiliation, ergo KamiKwasi can not do what he is trying to do.
What if the pound going below dollar and euro parity and an increase in long-term rates is accompanied by a turnaround in UK growth? Would that not count as vindication? Her strategy will have worked.
Trashing the economy to the extent that it starts to grow from the rubble? Not ideal.
Some people here seem to be incredibly blasé about the immediate effects the collapse of the pound and the rise in the cost of borrowing are going to have on actual physical flesh-and-blood people, many of whom were already staring into the abyss because of energy costs alone. Now they are going to be much worse off.
This is about the lives of millions of real people. It's not some kind of Micky Mouse brainstorming exercise for wet-behind-the-ears self-styled economic theorists, in which they can argue academic points about the definition of success.
They, or rather we, should be honoured to have our lives blighted by economic hardship in the name of libertarian economic experimentation. Either we get to share in the sunny uplands of a low-tax, high borrowing economy or our collective misery will discredit the whole thing in the eyes of future generations. Liz Truss has afforded us the privilege of serving billions of people, and untold billions yet to come. I think we should be incredibly grateful.
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Talking about another Tory leader already is one of the silliest things this forum has ever engaged in IMO.
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Talking about another Tory leader already is one of the silliest things this forum has ever engaged in IMO.
Almost as silly as those defending the new clowns who have replaced the clown.
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
I've bet like fuck against him being the "and whisper it quietly" candidate coming to the 'rescue' this morning.
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Alistair Meeks (formerly of this parish) suggests Gove....
I suspect that option is the sane one if it's required...
I love the smell of BritNat complacency in the morning.
"Vote SNP, get Truss!"
Just thinking that some voters today - their *parents* weren't alive when the original of that was coined by Slab. IN fact, you could add grandparents to that, in a few cases - and it was pretty ripe and cheesy even then.
Why should an elderly spinster living in a large house pay more than a city banker earning £500k?
Why should an elderly spinster living in a large house not pay their own way? They can always downsize into a small bungalow if they'd prefer, freeing up the large house for a family that needs a large house.
Land should be taxed as it is part of the country and anyone who is using it is preventing anyone else from using it, it is an externality.
When this thought meets with the political need for food security a certain friction will arise.
At current food production levels per area of land would take over 100% being farming to be food secure.
If you want food security then more intensive and productive farming could give that. Plenty of our competitors globally are successfully more intensive and productive, so cutting barriers to trade and cutting subsidies to agriculture and making our agriculture sector compete on it's own merits would lead to more productivity and thus more security.
Or, more likely, a lot of rewilding, a collapse in domestic production as all our more marginal land falls out of production and an increase in imports.
The argument of protectionists down the years. So claimed protectionists in New Zealand before the country abolished its subsidies and tariffs, and now our farmers fear free trade with New Zealand as they're an agricultural exporting powerhouse.
The one thing the country has a very finite supply of is land. Subsidising unproductive, uncompetitive businesses to be using that land does nothing other than lock in a lack of productivity. If those businesses fail, then the land is still there, but its now available to be accessed and used by a potentially more productive, more sustainable enterprise instead. Or the business doesn't fail, and instead adapts.
Can´t help feeling that we could be looking at the end of the modern Conservative party.
There are certainly parallels with the Liberal Party, during and after the first world war, with Johnson as the Lloyd George figure undermining the traditional heart of his party.
Longer term splits over Europe (Liberal Parallel; Ireland and the Suffragettes) have seen even former leadership contenders like Rory Stewart, Heseltine and Ken Clarke driven out from the party. These public service minded figures have been replaced by the hard-faced chancers, like JRM, Johnson and indeed Truss herself.
The divisions between Sunak and KK are fundamental, not just Wykhamist v Etonian. The party is fundamentally at odds with itself.
If I was an economically literate Tory MP, even with something like a 9K majority, I would be thinking very hard about whether it might not be better for the Parliamentary party to throw out the Populists now, before the Country does it in 2 years with the collateral damage being that I would also lose my seat.
Truss turns out to be the Militant Tendency of the modern Tories, and if not challenged the Tories could indeed go into a Canadian style meltdown. A 45-26 % split next time with a bit of tactical voting for the Lib Dems could get the Tories down into double figures.
PR then kills them.
You may be right about the split in the Tory party, but you're making an assumption that it won't be the Trussites who look vindicated in 12-months time. A lot can change domestically and internationally between now and then.
The Trussites cannot be vindicated. The Markets wont wear it. Today Dollar Parity, 3 months time, Euro Parity.
Reserves blown, rates into double figures, national humiliation, ergo KamiKwasi can not do what he is trying to do.
What if the pound going below dollar and euro parity and an increase in long-term rates is accompanied by a turnaround in UK growth? Would that not count as vindication? Her strategy will have worked.
Trashing the economy to the extent that it starts to grow from the rubble? Not ideal.
Some people here seem to be incredibly blasé about the immediate effects the collapse of the pound and the rise in the cost of borrowing are going to have on actual physical flesh-and-blood people, many of whom were already staring into the abyss because of energy costs alone. Now they are going to be much worse off.
This is about the lives of millions of real people. It's not some kind of Micky Mouse brainstorming exercise for wet-behind-the-ears self-styled economic theorists, in which they can argue academic points about the definition of success.
They, or rather we, should be honoured to have our lives blighted by economic hardship in the name of libertarian economic experimentation. Either we get to share in the sunny uplands of a low-tax, high borrowing economy or our collective misery will discredit the whole thing in the eyes of future generations. Liz Truss has afforded us the privilege of serving billions of people, and untold billions yet to come. I think we should be incredibly grateful.
The recent discussions on guinea-pigs on this forum seem like an unconscious recognition of your insight.
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Talking about another Tory leader already is one of the silliest things this forum has ever engaged in IMO.
Almost as silly as those defending the new clowns who have replaced the clown.
The truth and reality is that all of Truss' opponents used up all their political capital to topple Boris. It ain't happening with Truss, as much as someone might want it to - the thinking is especially wishful today here.
Can´t help feeling that we could be looking at the end of the modern Conservative party.
There are certainly parallels with the Liberal Party, during and after the first world war, with Johnson as the Lloyd George figure undermining the traditional heart of his party.
Longer term splits over Europe (Liberal Parallel; Ireland and the Suffragettes) have seen even former leadership contenders like Rory Stewart, Heseltine and Ken Clarke driven out from the party. These public service minded figures have been replaced by the hard-faced chancers, like JRM, Johnson and indeed Truss herself.
The divisions between Sunak and KK are fundamental, not just Wykhamist v Etonian. The party is fundamentally at odds with itself.
If I was an economically literate Tory MP, even with something like a 9K majority, I would be thinking very hard about whether it might not be better for the Parliamentary party to throw out the Populists now, before the Country does it in 2 years with the collateral damage being that I would also lose my seat.
Truss turns out to be the Militant Tendency of the modern Tories, and if not challenged the Tories could indeed go into a Canadian style meltdown. A 45-26 % split next time with a bit of tactical voting for the Lib Dems could get the Tories down into double figures.
PR then kills them.
It was the populist right Reform Party that killed the Canadian Tories in 1993 and turned a heavy defeat into annihilation.
However PR would not just kill the current Tories but Labour too. A Nationalist Farage style Party would take votes and seats from the Tories with PR and Corbynites would leave Labour and start a new hard Left Party which would also win seats under PR
That's the point. PR allows those views to be actively represented, and form part of government, without hijacking it as Truss just did.
True but at the price of more unstable coalition governments with one party rarely ever winning a majority
The LibDeml/Conservative coalition under Cameron was a damn sight more stable than the current lot with their huge majority. Your point is unconvincing at best; some might think it ludicrous.
Sports Personality of the Year to take place on [Wednesday] 21 December
They might as well not bother; we seem a bit rubbish at sport this year. Win some, lose the ones that matter.
Bit disrespectful to the ladies World Cup winners ...
There's certainly no man I can think of that deserves to win it.
Euros, but yes, they're a shoo-in for Team of the Year - there wasn't really a stand-out individual who grabbed the headlines above her team-mates though.
Really? Beth Mead won the Golden Boot.
There are other SPOTY candidates about. Joe Fraser with triple gymnastics golds at the European Championships and Commonwealth Games. Couple of golds for Laura Muir. Jonny Bairstow hammering (and I mean hammering) 1000 Test runs to play a big part in turning England around. Ronnie O'Sullivan on vintage form more than 20 years after first World Championship win. And there was a certain romance in Non Stanford winning her last major triathlon.
I'm not saying it's one of those years where a dozen people could easily deserve it, but there are plenty of good sporting stories.
Yeah, she did, but she didn't grab the headlines in doing so - it was all just about the team.
That said, the presentation of the show on the night is critical - and you know that the women's football team will get a disproportionate share of the show.
The four tests England won in a row this summer - NZ x 3, and then India, constituted some of the best cricket I have ever seen
England's Test Team should get Team of the Year
Perhaps they should, but they won't. Remember, it's the BBC who decide, and they spent all summer plugging the idea that this was just as significant as men's football - they're not going to stop now.
Then Stokes it is, for SPOTY
I seriously cannot think of a better candidate (tho he won't win)
Cricket is more of a niche sport than women's football now. FWIW, in terms of individual sporting achievement I'd give it to Ronnie O'Sullivan or Tyson Fury.
Absolute nonsense. It's the second most popular sport in the world.
Is Dmitry Medvedev signalling a concession by Russia when he says Russia won't tolerate nuclear weapons being put in NATO-controlled Ukraine?
Does this mark a backtracking from the stated Russian war aim of demilitarising the Ukraine?
Could there be an agreement to the effect that
* Russian territory does not come under foreign or foreign-backed attack and any local neo-Nazi forces on Russian territory either surrender or f*** off out of it
* Ukraine can ally with who TF it likes, so long as no nuclear weapons are stationed on its soil?
Cf. the resolution of the Turkey-Italy-Cuba missile crisis in 1962, which ill-informed idiots call the Cuban missile crisis, but which at least they are right to term a crisis. Turkey and Italy stayed in NATO, but burgermuncher nukes were removed from their territory.
What about the Z fascists currently on Ukrainian territory?
Putin has already buggered up Russia's strategic position on nukes - he has no power to stop them being stationed on the newly NATO-ed soil of Finland and Sweden. St Petersburg is now 40 km from a NATO nuke.
"we now have four decades’ worth of experience showing that deregulation and tax cuts for the rich do not, in fact, produce higher wages and faster economic growth. So the idea that tax cuts are the secret of prosperity should be dead, yet somehow it’s still shambling along, eating Republican brains."
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Talking about another Tory leader already is one of the silliest things this forum has ever engaged in IMO.
Almost as silly as those defending the new clowns who have replaced the clown.
The truth and reality is that all of Truss' opponents used up all their political capital to topple Boris. It ain't happening with Truss, as much as someone might want it to - the thinking is especially wishful today here.
Boris had years of his critics going on TV and calling him out in public. So did May. All toppled PMs have.
All Truss is facing is anonymous "a former Tory Minister says ..." off the record briefings.
That's not even going to start troubling her. Its clickbait nonsense. She'll be PM at the next election.
Sports Personality of the Year to take place on [Wednesday] 21 December
They might as well not bother; we seem a bit rubbish at sport this year. Win some, lose the ones that matter.
What are you talking about? The test cricket was amazing
Stokes is the man
Yep. And Qatar to come. Southgate has us peaking at just the right time methinks.
What? 🥹
Yep. I'm a skilled sportswatcher and looking at England is like ... you're horses, aren't you? ... ok like seeing that one on the bridle, saving ground on the inner, middle of the pack and just starting its smooth accelerating run from about the 3f pole. I like our chances in the Sandpit. 6/1 a touch short though.
But not as "too short" as 2.8 to lay a Truss exit in 2023. I've gobbled that. Betting into overreactions is one of my fav techniques and I think we have that in spades here. They cannot change leaders again, no way. She's their bed and they have to lie in it now.
"Over millions of years, Britain’s landmass has been buried, lifted back up, buried again and eroded. This complex geological history has provided many opportunities for gas to leak away through the country’s many faults and cracks so that only the dregs remain. If the UK wants to develop a major US-style fracking industry, it is 280 million years too late. "
There is still a chance for Tory MPs to save us and their party from this calamity.
The party would be utterly screwed by changing the top team 3 weeks after the last change. I mean, seriously ratnered. Holed below the waterline. Possibly terminally damaged.
You can’t pretend to be a serious party of government by deposing your leadership 3 weeks after they take the helm.
Might be better for the country mind, but for the Tories, terrible move.
It would be cross the streams bad. I know that.
But the alternative is worse. Anyway, my scenario is that after an excretable party conference and a harsh reaction from the markets, MPs say "fuck this shit" and bring down la Truss by voting down her Financial Suicide bill. And anoint Sunak. Who was their choice. Who was right about the economy. Who would prompt a big markets u-turn.
Truss would be spun as a terrible mistake imposed by the membership who were wrong. Change the rules to remove the stupid and they have a defensible line.
Or, don't. And they end.
He was the choice of barely a third of them.
The problem is the Tory Party has absolutely zero clue what it actually wants to be anymore. This does happen to all parties in power for too long, to some extent, but this is particularly bad.
Truss and Kwarteng are low tax, low spend, free market-eers who dont believe in sound money.
Sunak is a tax and spender with roots in the Johnsonian “levelling up” “spend it on our NHS instead” boosterism (on which let’s not forget the Conservative Party was elected in 2019 - NOT the policies Truss and Kwarteng are now following).
You’ve then got a dwindling band of Cameroony moderates like Hunt, a scattering of sound money Thatcherites, and a group that probably don’t care what the economic policy of the country is so long as they can attack the other parties on what the definition of a woman is.
I know all political parties are broad churches but the Tory Party is basically schizophrenic now.
The solution to this is PR. Let the Tories and labout split, and the loonies can be idelogically pure, then the grown ups can actually form the government.
Starmer's reaction to the party vote in favour of PR is disappointing and disingenuous. Calling it "not a priority" is effectively the same as saying he opposes it, without being honest about it.
Starmer is heading for a majority now in the polls, why on earth would he want PR forcing him to make deals with the Greens or LDs to form a government?
But he still gets his majority govt, doesn't he? Just with a pledge to hold a Ref on PR - with a Yes implemented for the next election. Wouldn't that be the route?
FUDHY is a very odd Tory. He has paeans of praise for General Franco, the Sweden Democrats, Meloni, Farage and Scottish Labour, but none for his own leader.
He's an authoritarian, bordering on what gets called "far right".
Truss is a dry as dust, socially liberal Conservative. Some people here used to say the believed in that, but not him.
It is you who are the hardline libertarian who has backed a strategy which has taken the Tories to 28% in the polls, not me
Yes it is, and your point is?
I would rather see the Tories lose with a libertarian time in office, than win with an authoritarian one.
Maybe but if this strategy sees the Tories face heave defeat at the next general election that will kill off libertarianism within the Tory party for a generation
Apparerntly 1000 years for beech trees in Epping Forest.
Huh? Are you sure? I always thought that Fagus sylvatica was one of the shorter-lived of the large forest broadleaves.
Or maybe that only applies outwith its natural range, eg in Scotland, where it is a notoriously fragile and sick pest.
Although the Forestry Commission is a bit snooty about whether beech is native to Scotland, the ones at Craigevar seem to be anything but fragile and are apparently over 200 years old. Mind you the Oaks are much more impressive and they can easily be double that age.
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Talking about another Tory leader already is one of the silliest things this forum has ever engaged in IMO.
Almost as silly as those defending the new clowns who have replaced the clown.
Can´t help feeling that we could be looking at the end of the modern Conservative party.
There are certainly parallels with the Liberal Party, during and after the first world war, with Johnson as the Lloyd George figure undermining the traditional heart of his party.
Longer term splits over Europe (Liberal Parallel; Ireland and the Suffragettes) have seen even former leadership contenders like Rory Stewart, Heseltine and Ken Clarke driven out from the party. These public service minded figures have been replaced by the hard-faced chancers, like JRM, Johnson and indeed Truss herself.
The divisions between Sunak and KK are fundamental, not just Wykhamist v Etonian. The party is fundamentally at odds with itself.
If I was an economically literate Tory MP, even with something like a 9K majority, I would be thinking very hard about whether it might not be better for the Parliamentary party to throw out the Populists now, before the Country does it in 2 years with the collateral damage being that I would also lose my seat.
Truss turns out to be the Militant Tendency of the modern Tories, and if not challenged the Tories could indeed go into a Canadian style meltdown. A 45-26 % split next time with a bit of tactical voting for the Lib Dems could get the Tories down into double figures.
PR then kills them.
You may be right about the split in the Tory party, but you're making an assumption that it won't be the Trussites who look vindicated in 12-months time. A lot can change domestically and internationally between now and then.
The Trussites cannot be vindicated. The Markets wont wear it. Today Dollar Parity, 3 months time, Euro Parity.
Reserves blown, rates into double figures, national humiliation, ergo KamiKwasi can not do what he is trying to do.
What if the pound going below dollar and euro parity and an increase in long-term rates is accompanied by a turnaround in UK growth? Would that not count as vindication? Her strategy will have worked.
Trashing the economy to the extent that it starts to grow from the rubble? Not ideal.
Some people here seem to be incredibly blasé about the immediate effects the collapse of the pound and the rise in the cost of borrowing are going to have on actual physical flesh-and-blood people, many of whom were already staring into the abyss because of energy costs alone. Now they are going to be much worse off.
This is about the lives of millions of real people. It's not some kind of Micky Mouse brainstorming exercise for wet-behind-the-ears self-styled economic theorists, in which they can argue academic points about the definition of success.
Some people are a bit blasé, eh? Probably those people who are grossly overpaid for what they do, often by foreign firms, who are non-dom and have incredible tax-dodges to preserve their fortunes. People here on PB who are in a similar fortunate position as Kwasi, Mogg, Johnson, Sunak, Braverman.... The list is long, and they all have the same profile.
Sports Personality of the Year to take place on [Wednesday] 21 December
They might as well not bother; we seem a bit rubbish at sport this year. Win some, lose the ones that matter.
Bit disrespectful to the ladies World Cup winners ...
There's certainly no man I can think of that deserves to win it.
Euros, but yes, they're a shoo-in for Team of the Year - there wasn't really a stand-out individual who grabbed the headlines above her team-mates though.
Really? Beth Mead won the Golden Boot.
There are other SPOTY candidates about. Joe Fraser with triple gymnastics golds at the European Championships and Commonwealth Games. Couple of golds for Laura Muir. Jonny Bairstow hammering (and I mean hammering) 1000 Test runs to play a big part in turning England around. Ronnie O'Sullivan on vintage form more than 20 years after first World Championship win. And there was a certain romance in Non Stanford winning her last major triathlon.
I'm not saying it's one of those years where a dozen people could easily deserve it, but there are plenty of good sporting stories.
Yeah, she did, but she didn't grab the headlines in doing so - it was all just about the team.
That said, the presentation of the show on the night is critical - and you know that the women's football team will get a disproportionate share of the show.
The four tests England won in a row this summer - NZ x 3, and then India, constituted some of the best cricket I have ever seen
England's Test Team should get Team of the Year
Perhaps they should, but they won't. Remember, it's the BBC who decide, and they spent all summer plugging the idea that this was just as significant as men's football - they're not going to stop now.
Then Stokes it is, for SPOTY
I seriously cannot think of a better candidate (tho he won't win)
Cricket is more of a niche sport than women's football now. FWIW, in terms of individual sporting achievement I'd give it to Ronnie O'Sullivan or Tyson Fury.
Not sure how you come to that conclusion. Cricket is more popular than it's been for a while, especially with interest in the women's game.
Sports Personality of the Year to take place on [Wednesday] 21 December
They might as well not bother; we seem a bit rubbish at sport this year. Win some, lose the ones that matter.
Bit disrespectful to the ladies World Cup winners ...
There's certainly no man I can think of that deserves to win it.
Euros, but yes, they're a shoo-in for Team of the Year - there wasn't really a stand-out individual who grabbed the headlines above her team-mates though.
Really? Beth Mead won the Golden Boot.
There are other SPOTY candidates about. Joe Fraser with triple gymnastics golds at the European Championships and Commonwealth Games. Couple of golds for Laura Muir. Jonny Bairstow hammering (and I mean hammering) 1000 Test runs to play a big part in turning England around. Ronnie O'Sullivan on vintage form more than 20 years after first World Championship win. And there was a certain romance in Non Stanford winning her last major triathlon.
I'm not saying it's one of those years where a dozen people could easily deserve it, but there are plenty of good sporting stories.
Yeah, she did, but she didn't grab the headlines in doing so - it was all just about the team.
That said, the presentation of the show on the night is critical - and you know that the women's football team will get a disproportionate share of the show.
The four tests England won in a row this summer - NZ x 3, and then India, constituted some of the best cricket I have ever seen
England's Test Team should get Team of the Year
Perhaps they should, but they won't. Remember, it's the BBC who decide, and they spent all summer plugging the idea that this was just as significant as men's football - they're not going to stop now.
Then Stokes it is, for SPOTY
I seriously cannot think of a better candidate (tho he won't win)
Cricket is more of a niche sport than women's football now. FWIW, in terms of individual sporting achievement I'd give it to Ronnie O'Sullivan or Tyson Fury.
Absolute nonsense. It's the second most popular sport in the world.
Sterling is freely floating now. Freely floating currencies can go up or down, its not a problem. The government's stated goal is to get the economy growing, if lower taxes and lower Sterling helps make that viable, then they will have achieved their goal.
Freefloating into oblivion?
Sterling used to be $5, then $2, and its now been approaching parity for a while.
It wouldn't surprise me if in my lifetime £1 = $0.20
Can´t help feeling that we could be looking at the end of the modern Conservative party.
There are certainly parallels with the Liberal Party, during and after the first world war, with Johnson as the Lloyd George figure undermining the traditional heart of his party.
Longer term splits over Europe (Liberal Parallel; Ireland and the Suffragettes) have seen even former leadership contenders like Rory Stewart, Heseltine and Ken Clarke driven out from the party. These public service minded figures have been replaced by the hard-faced chancers, like JRM, Johnson and indeed Truss herself.
The divisions between Sunak and KK are fundamental, not just Wykhamist v Etonian. The party is fundamentally at odds with itself.
If I was an economically literate Tory MP, even with something like a 9K majority, I would be thinking very hard about whether it might not be better for the Parliamentary party to throw out the Populists now, before the Country does it in 2 years with the collateral damage being that I would also lose my seat.
Truss turns out to be the Militant Tendency of the modern Tories, and if not challenged the Tories could indeed go into a Canadian style meltdown. A 45-26 % split next time with a bit of tactical voting for the Lib Dems could get the Tories down into double figures.
PR then kills them.
You may be right about the split in the Tory party, but you're making an assumption that it won't be the Trussites who look vindicated in 12-months time. A lot can change domestically and internationally between now and then.
The Trussites cannot be vindicated. The Markets wont wear it. Today Dollar Parity, 3 months time, Euro Parity.
Reserves blown, rates into double figures, national humiliation, ergo KamiKwasi can not do what he is trying to do.
Who gives a flying f**k if we pass parity with either the dollar or the Euro? What difference does it make?
If the pound reaches a new equilibrium that encourages economic growth and exports more than consumerism and imports, then that could help not hinder Truss's agenda.
In two words: confidence and capacity.
The long term productivity numbers show that there has been insufficient investment in the UK over the past 30-odd years, so lower currency rates do not improve the competitive position of the economy sufficient to trigger growth. The economic capacity, especially the industrial capacity, is too small and too weak for Sterling based assets alone to restore a stable growth rate. The negative view of the country means that it would take a very long time to gain inward investment, especially as we are not in the single market.
The impact of a collapse of confidence in the UK means that we can no longer afford so many imports but do not have the capacity for import substitution and there will be a persistent investment gap. So the most likely impact is a very long and very deep depression.
Hard to grasp why this apparently is hard to grasp. The US Dollar is *the* global reserve currency. The exchange rate of other currencies against it matters, especially when yours is one of the other leading global currencies.
Yesterday we fell to our lowest exchange rate against the dollar since its creation. That is not a position that global traders believe to be tenable - they do not have confidence in what a growing number of very senior global finance figures have described in various kinds of choice language.
BR is one of these England uber Alles lunatics. Remember how people said bin the EEA and lets go WTO? Then tried to lecture the WTO on how the WTO worked when it was made clear to them that there are rules for global trade. Same moronity on display here.
What is the Pound? It is fiat - it only has the value that the confidence of others grant it. We have to pay our taxes in it, creditors receive their gilt interest payments in it. Confidence creates value. Take the confidence away by being bloody stupid and your scrip may not even have the value of the polymer its printed on.
In latest Brexit Bonus news, Eurostar say they have to reduce the number of trains and increase fares, because Brexit has significantly reduced capacity at St Pancras International. ~AA
Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.
Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Talking about another Tory leader already is one of the silliest things this forum has ever engaged in IMO.
You don't know how pissed off the Tory MPs are though....
They are the ones already sending in letters/plotting.
Can´t help feeling that we could be looking at the end of the modern Conservative party.
There are certainly parallels with the Liberal Party, during and after the first world war, with Johnson as the Lloyd George figure undermining the traditional heart of his party.
Longer term splits over Europe (Liberal Parallel; Ireland and the Suffragettes) have seen even former leadership contenders like Rory Stewart, Heseltine and Ken Clarke driven out from the party. These public service minded figures have been replaced by the hard-faced chancers, like JRM, Johnson and indeed Truss herself.
The divisions between Sunak and KK are fundamental, not just Wykhamist v Etonian. The party is fundamentally at odds with itself.
If I was an economically literate Tory MP, even with something like a 9K majority, I would be thinking very hard about whether it might not be better for the Parliamentary party to throw out the Populists now, before the Country does it in 2 years with the collateral damage being that I would also lose my seat.
Truss turns out to be the Militant Tendency of the modern Tories, and if not challenged the Tories could indeed go into a Canadian style meltdown. A 45-26 % split next time with a bit of tactical voting for the Lib Dems could get the Tories down into double figures.
PR then kills them.
You may be right about the split in the Tory party, but you're making an assumption that it won't be the Trussites who look vindicated in 12-months time. A lot can change domestically and internationally between now and then.
The Trussites cannot be vindicated. The Markets wont wear it. Today Dollar Parity, 3 months time, Euro Parity.
Reserves blown, rates into double figures, national humiliation, ergo KamiKwasi can not do what he is trying to do.
What if the pound going below dollar and euro parity and an increase in long-term rates is accompanied by a turnaround in UK growth? Would that not count as vindication? Her strategy will have worked.
Trashing the economy to the extent that it starts to grow from the rubble? Not ideal.
Some people here seem to be incredibly blasé about the immediate effects the collapse of the pound and the rise in the cost of borrowing are going to have on actual physical flesh-and-blood people, many of whom were already staring into the abyss because of energy costs alone. Now they are going to be much worse off.
This is about the lives of millions of real people. It's not some kind of Micky Mouse brainstorming exercise for wet-behind-the-ears self-styled economic theorists, in which they can argue academic points about the definition of success.
They, or rather we, should be honoured to have our lives blighted by economic hardship in the name of libertarian economic experimentation. Either we get to share in the sunny uplands of a low-tax, high borrowing economy or our collective misery will discredit the whole thing in the eyes of future generations. Liz Truss has afforded us the privilege of serving billions of people, and untold billions yet to come. I think we should be incredibly grateful.
Maybe that's the best way of looking at it.
And respect to Truss and Kwarteng for their bravery too. After they've finished with the country, it will probably be too poor to pay for the round-the-clock police protection they will need in retirement.
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Fuck the members. MPs always used to have primacy. Take that power back. Simply impose the correct candidate and challenge the members to see them in court if they live long enough.
Members aren't the problem - donors are. A small coterie plan to become very rich on the backs of destroying Britain, and they will withdraw their bungs if the party switches off their profits machine.
If Starmer wants to seal the deal with the red wall, he should put up giant posters of him and Rayner taking the knee in 2020, all over the north.
Game over.
So when the alternative is vote for the people who saw you lose your house and took away your hope of a decent job with decent pay and conditions, or vote Labour, your argument is that fear of woke will make people vote for the agents of their own destruction?
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Gove?
It would be saying "we know we're doomed in 2024, but let us embrace the doom with a degree of grace."
(For all the hype of Truss trashing the joint before the next GE, nothing needing controversial laws can happen, because there really isn't the time.)
I'd still prefer May to be the Caretaker/Chief Lemming. If only to see Boris's face as she gently overtakes him in the Prime Ministerial tenure chart.
The Nordstream story is gathering steam if you'll excuse the pun. Bubbles reaching the surface of the sea over diameter of 100M suggesting a very big breach and 'accidental' is no longer being considered. Europe is fucked this winter. Properly fucked. Imo scenarios leading to the collapse of the EU have moved from ridiculous and implausible to very outside possibility.
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Alistair Meeks (formerly of this parish) suggests Gove....
I suspect that option is the sane one if it's required...
What is Ravey's safe dose of turkish before he goes off his tits? Like a Tribble, keep him below his limit and I sure he will be fine.
Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.
Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.
What is this "reorganisation they have in mind" ? Unless it involves rebuilding from the rubble, it certainly wasn't evident in the 'fiscal event'. Which was a large demand stimulus, and very little to do with supply at all.
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Talking about another Tory leader already is one of the silliest things this forum has ever engaged in IMO.
Almost as silly as those defending the new clowns who have replaced the clown.
The truth and reality is that all of Truss' opponents used up all their political capital to topple Boris. It ain't happening with Truss, as much as someone might want it to - the thinking is especially wishful today here.
I can see a halfway house here. The govt fail to get the votes for the special kamikaze measures through the commons, so put them on hold as an intention when the public finances clearly allow, which the govt will hope they will by April 2023. No need for a new leader or Chancellor and a solid excuse for a clumsy u-turn.
Sterling is freely floating now. Freely floating currencies can go up or down, its not a problem. The government's stated goal is to get the economy growing, if lower taxes and lower Sterling helps make that viable, then they will have achieved their goal.
Freefloating into oblivion?
Sterling used to be $5, then $2, and its now been approaching parity for a while.
It wouldn't surprise me if in my lifetime £1 = $0.20
It hasn't been at $5 since before the Second World War, so over 80 years.
Going from $1 to 20c is the equivalent of going from $5 to $1 (80% loss of value).
I don't know how old you are, but frankly it would surprise me quite a lot if it got to 20c in any of our lifetimes.
The Nordstream story is gathering steam if you'll excuse the pun. Bubbles reaching the surface of the sea over diameter of 100M suggesting a very big breach and 'accidental' is no longer being considered. Europe is fucked this winter. Properly fucked. Imo scenarios leading to the collapse of the EU have moved from ridiculous and implausible to very outside possibility.
One of the oligarch's "yachts" had a capacity to cut seabed fibre optic cables. If Russia wanted to, it knows exactly where the pipelines sit. But probably not alone. Great scope for everyone to be paranoid about what is going on. (Personally, for maximum mischief, I favour it being SPECTRE.)
Won't be an easy repair, especially with winter coming on.
The YouGov details are all fairly predictable and of course dire for the Tories in every respect. Two things to note:
There is as much as usual self interest in the views about tax - supporting all the stuff that advantages the majority, and opposing everything that gives to someone else.
And the figure for those who "Cannot afford my costs and often have to go without essentials....." is, at 5% lower than I would have thought.
Maybe that's why I am told, counter intuitively, that our local foodbank is remarkably quiet at the moment.
So SNP down from the 45% they got in 2019, SLAB up from 18%
MoE
Yesterday, Mike and the whole of PB were excited by a 17 point Labour lead, yet I’m supposed to be worried by a 23 point SNP lead? Err… no.
SLab need a 12 point swing from the SNP to make any decent gains. A 2 point swing in a sub-sample of a poll where they are miles ahead in England is profoundly unimpressive.
The whole of PB were not excited about a Labour poll lead. Yet another gross exaggeration and typical.of the site.
Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.
Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.
What is this "reorganisation they have in mind" ? Unless it involves rebuilding from the rubble, it certainly wasn't evident in the 'fiscal event'. Which was a large demand stimulus, and very little to do with supply at all.
The reorganisation is to further steal from the middle to make the very richest even richer.
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Talking about another Tory leader already is one of the silliest things this forum has ever engaged in IMO.
You don't know how pissed off the Tory MPs are though....
They are the ones already sending in letters/plotting.
Well we know not even a single Tory MP seems to be pissed off enough to say anything on camera, as Aaron Bell MP did at the turn of the year.
The truth and reality is that all of Truss' opponents used up all their political capital to topple Boris.
BoZo toppled himself
And it took absolubtely ages after he was shown to be clearly unfit for the office. A General Election arrives before that point in this cycle. Let's look at this historically, has there ever been a PM midterm who has replaced another PM who has NOT gone on to fight a General Election ? I mean I think I've found George Canning & Viscount Goderich , but Canning died in office and Goderich invited the opposition into his gov't. Truss looks in good enough health, and I can't see her inviting Wes Streeting and Ed Davey into her Gov't - which is what the Earl of Ripon looks to have done. And that's going back to the early 19th century. Maybe there's more, but I haven't found them scanning the PM lists...
FUDHY is a very odd Tory. He has paeans of praise for General Franco, the Sweden Democrats, Meloni, Farage and Scottish Labour, but none for his own leader.
He's an authoritarian, bordering on what gets called "far right".
Truss is a dry as dust, socially liberal Conservative. Some people here used to say the believed in that, but not him.
It is you who are the hardline libertarian who has backed a strategy which has taken the Tories to 28% in the polls, not me
Yes it is, and your point is?
I would rather see the Tories lose with a libertarian time in office, than win with an authoritarian one.
Maybe but if this strategy sees the Tories face heave defeat at the next general election that will kill off libertarianism within the Tory party for a generation
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Talking about another Tory leader already is one of the silliest things this forum has ever engaged in IMO.
You don't know how pissed off the Tory MPs are though....
They are the ones already sending in letters/plotting.
Well we know not even a single Tory MP seems to be pissed off enough to say anything on camera, as Aaron Bell MP did at the turn of the year.
Give them a chance, Mr Roberts. Some of them are a bit slow in the uptake. Remember that your friend Kwasi was the pick of the bunch.
The Nordstream story is gathering steam if you'll excuse the pun. Bubbles reaching the surface of the sea over diameter of 100M suggesting a very big breach and 'accidental' is no longer being considered. Europe is fucked this winter. Properly fucked. Imo scenarios leading to the collapse of the EU have moved from ridiculous and implausible to very outside possibility.
One of the oligarch's "yachts" had a capacity to cut seabed fibre optic cables. If Russia wanted to, it knows exactly where the pipelines sit. But probably not alone. Great scope for everyone to be paranoid about what is going on. (Personally, for maximum mischief, I favour it being SPECTRE.)
Won't be an easy repair, especially with winter coming on.
If it needs turning off and a complicated repair, the EU will end up effectively criminalising turning up the heating and staying warm in an effort to meet energy use reduction targets and have rolling blackouts. Thats when the race for the exit will pick up pace. Im intensely relaxed about my mass civil unrest in the EU prediction whilst being intensely concerned at its possibility
Sterling is freely floating now. Freely floating currencies can go up or down, its not a problem. The government's stated goal is to get the economy growing, if lower taxes and lower Sterling helps make that viable, then they will have achieved their goal.
Freefloating into oblivion?
Sterling used to be $5, then $2, and its now been approaching parity for a while.
It wouldn't surprise me if in my lifetime £1 = $0.20
It hasn't been at $5 since before the Second World War, so over 80 years.
Going from $1 to 20c is the equivalent of going from $5 to $1 (80% loss of value).
I don't know how old you are, but frankly it would surprise me quite a lot if it got to 20c in any of our lifetimes.
Its taken about 15 years to get from $2 to almost parity, and doesn't seem to show any sign of slowing down.
At that rate, we could see the 50 cent jokes become reality in another fifteen, within 30 years we're at what they call a quarter. Then just a few more takes us to 20c.
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Talking about another Tory leader already is one of the silliest things this forum has ever engaged in IMO.
Almost as silly as those defending the new clowns who have replaced the clown.
The truth and reality is that all of Truss' opponents used up all their political capital to topple Boris. It ain't happening with Truss, as much as someone might want it to - the thinking is especially wishful today here.
I can see a halfway house here. The govt fail to get the votes for the special kamikaze measures through the commons, so put them on hold as an intention when the public finances clearly allow, which the govt will hope they will by April 2023. No need for a new leader or Chancellor and a solid excuse for a clumsy u-turn.
It's possible, every single Tory has had great experience of practising & defending u-turns during the Johnson ministry.
There is still a chance for Tory MPs to save us and their party from this calamity.
The party would be utterly screwed by changing the top team 3 weeks after the last change. I mean, seriously ratnered. Holed below the waterline. Possibly terminally damaged.
You can’t pretend to be a serious party of government by deposing your leadership 3 weeks after they take the helm.
Might be better for the country mind, but for the Tories, terrible move.
It would be cross the streams bad. I know that.
But the alternative is worse. Anyway, my scenario is that after an excretable party conference and a harsh reaction from the markets, MPs say "fuck this shit" and bring down la Truss by voting down her Financial Suicide bill. And anoint Sunak. Who was their choice. Who was right about the economy. Who would prompt a big markets u-turn.
Truss would be spun as a terrible mistake imposed by the membership who were wrong. Change the rules to remove the stupid and they have a defensible line.
Or, don't. And they end.
He was the choice of barely a third of them.
He won every round of voting. Comfortably. Compared to Truss it would be very easy to make a case for Sunak being the leader the MPs wanted.
The only feasible alternative to Truss before the general election is Wallace by coronation, who MPs and members could support. Though Truss likely holds on
Genuinely interested in your take on this. You were openly a Sunak supporter. And why that was. Sunak - and you - were right. So why do you say Wallace?
Its an economic crisis on a massive scale. You need a new leader to calm the markets and bring stability to the political table. You can have your former chancellor who called this right and was the choice of MPs. Or the Defence Secretary who isn't seen as up on finance and wasn't the choice of MPs.
Why are you suggesting Wallace instead of Sunak? It would need to be a coronation though, wouldn't it?
The 1922 could change the rules to make it an MP vote over a week.
They couldn't. As has been pointed out they are responsible for admin, not for the basic structure.
EXCEPT they could say Fuck it, let's break the rules and ride roughshod over the rights of the members and appoint a new PM in the expectation a court would say to the members Sorry lads, not getting involved in politics.
The Palace would absolutely hate a scenario whereby HM was forced to appoint a PM not appointed party leader in line with the party’s constitution. I guess he’d probably be forced to though, if that person could demonstrate they had the confidence of the House.
Er, who gives a shite about X party's constitution? They don't own the UK, despite the current lot very much trying to.
Constitutional monarchies tend to give a shit about parties, constitutions and politics.
But the Tory Party constitution is not the UK constitution. The PM is whomsoever the MPs vote for in toto.
2B fair the courts were happy to get stuck in with Corbyn vs NEC in 2016 despite that being interfering in the identity of the LOTO which is a formally recognised, salaried position. I don't think a "separation of powers" argument was even raised. But I still think LOTOs is one thing, PMs is another.
Interesting apparent paradox - LOTO must involve the identification of a specific party, and therefore the LB constitution is relevant; but PM doesn't - slightly paradoxically: the PM is whomsoever the house as a whole will reliably vote for. Hell, Ms Lucas could in principle be PM.
Irish budget has just zero-rated VAT on newspapers, defibrillators, period products, nicotine patches and hormone replacement patches. Who knew this was possible while a member of the EU?
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Talking about another Tory leader already is one of the silliest things this forum has ever engaged in IMO.
You don't know how pissed off the Tory MPs are though....
They are the ones already sending in letters/plotting.
Well we know not even a single Tory MP seems to be pissed off enough to say anything on camera, as Aaron Bell MP did at the turn of the year.
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Talking about another Tory leader already is one of the silliest things this forum has ever engaged in IMO.
You don't know how pissed off the Tory MPs are though....
They are the ones already sending in letters/plotting.
Well we know not even a single Tory MP seems to be pissed off enough to say anything on camera, as Aaron Bell MP did at the turn of the year.
We just aren't party to the internal Tory whatsapp groups....
Start with all those Rishi Sunak supporters. "We f*cking TOLD you. Tw@s....."
The Penny Mordaunt supporters won't be far behind. That's 2/3rds of Tory MPs.
God alone knows what the Truss backers are making of it. They aren't rushing to the media to defend her.
The discipline for once will be in making this a very private event. The quieter it is, the more is going on. The issue is - who do the pissed off get behind? If Wallace very discretely was asked - and equally discretely indicated he would take the job if it would save the Party - then Truss is basically on 24 hours notice.
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Talking about another Tory leader already is one of the silliest things this forum has ever engaged in IMO.
You don't know how pissed off the Tory MPs are though....
They are the ones already sending in letters/plotting.
Well we know not even a single Tory MP seems to be pissed off enough to say anything on camera, as Aaron Bell MP did at the turn of the year.
Give them a chance, Mr Roberts. Some of them are a bit slow in the uptake. Remember that your friend Kwasi was the pick of the bunch.
That's the point though, they've had their chance and after much rigmarole they got rid of Boris. That trigger has been pulled already.
How much time do you want to give them for a chance? 3 years? We'll be past the next election by then.
If they want to start mutterings about being unhappy leading to plots etc, they're not even at the "willing to say anything in public" stage yet, let alone credible threats. There simply isn't time before the next election for another leadership election, talk of Truss being gone by Conference 23 is pure hopecasting.
Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.
Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.
Interesting. The gist seems to be that it's all the Bank of England's fault. Presumably the author is a Truss outrider. If so, then the abolition of BoA independence can't be far off.
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Talking about another Tory leader already is one of the silliest things this forum has ever engaged in IMO.
You don't know how pissed off the Tory MPs are though....
They are the ones already sending in letters/plotting.
Well we know not even a single Tory MP seems to be pissed off enough to say anything on camera, as Aaron Bell MP did at the turn of the year.
Give them a chance, Mr Roberts. Some of them are a bit slow in the uptake. Remember that your friend Kwasi was the pick of the bunch.
That's the point though, they've had their chance and after much rigmarole they got rid of Boris. That trigger has been pulled already.
How much time do you want to give them for a chance? 3 years? We'll be past the next election by then.
If they want to start mutterings about being unhappy leading to plots etc, they're not even at the "willing to say anything in public" stage yet, let alone credible threats. There simply isn't time before the next election for another leadership election, talk of Truss being gone by Conference 23 is pure hopecasting.
Unless she is metaphorically knifed, which might happen.
Sterling is freely floating now. Freely floating currencies can go up or down, its not a problem. The government's stated goal is to get the economy growing, if lower taxes and lower Sterling helps make that viable, then they will have achieved their goal.
Freefloating into oblivion?
Sterling used to be $5, then $2, and its now been approaching parity for a while.
It wouldn't surprise me if in my lifetime £1 = $0.20
It hasn't been at $5 since before the Second World War, so over 80 years.
Going from $1 to 20c is the equivalent of going from $5 to $1 (80% loss of value).
I don't know how old you are, but frankly it would surprise me quite a lot if it got to 20c in any of our lifetimes.
Its taken about 15 years to get from $2 to almost parity, and doesn't seem to show any sign of slowing down.
At that rate, we could see the 50 cent jokes become reality in another fifteen, within 30 years we're at what they call a quarter. Then just a few more takes us to 20c.
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Talking about another Tory leader already is one of the silliest things this forum has ever engaged in IMO.
You don't know how pissed off the Tory MPs are though....
They are the ones already sending in letters/plotting.
Well we know not even a single Tory MP seems to be pissed off enough to say anything on camera, as Aaron Bell MP did at the turn of the year.
Give them a chance, Mr Roberts. Some of them are a bit slow in the uptake. Remember that your friend Kwasi was the pick of the bunch.
That's the point though, they've had their chance and after much rigmarole they got rid of Boris. That trigger has been pulled already.
How much time do you want to give them for a chance? 3 years? We'll be past the next election by then.
If they want to start mutterings about being unhappy leading to plots etc, they're not even at the "willing to say anything in public" stage yet, let alone credible threats. There simply isn't time before the next election for another leadership election, talk of Truss being gone by Conference 23 is pure hopecasting.
FFS, there isn't going to BE an election that involves the members.
They have given us this omnishambles. Admittedly, because the MPs effectively gave them a non-choice that would ensure Truss PM.
Any change of leader will be a Palace of Westminster coup.
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Talking about another Tory leader already is one of the silliest things this forum has ever engaged in IMO.
Almost as silly as those defending the new clowns who have replaced the clown.
The truth and reality is that all of Truss' opponents used up all their political capital to topple Boris. It ain't happening with Truss, as much as someone might want it to - the thinking is especially wishful today here.
And, anyhow, a new leader assumes that someone else could turn things around, when the news agenda looks stacked with bad economic news for the foreseeable. If the next election is lost for the Tories, Truss may as well be the one who soaks up the grief, and the others can focus on staking out whatever nutty agenda might secure them the LOTO job after 2024. The only argument for replacing her early is if she really is determined to turn the ship directly toward the iceberg.
Irish budget has just zero-rated VAT on newspapers, defibrillators, period products, nicotine patches and hormone replacement patches. Who knew this was possible while a member of the EU?
It wasn't, in 2016. EU Legislation has since changed.
Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.
Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.
What is this "reorganisation they have in mind" ? Unless it involves rebuilding from the rubble, it certainly wasn't evident in the 'fiscal event'. Which was a large demand stimulus, and very little to do with supply at all.
The reorganisation is to further steal from the middle to make the very richest even richer.
You might so characterise it, but I was looking at it on its own terms. The only thing of potentially great significance is the enterprise zones. But there is so far little or no detail on what these will encompass, and when they might come in.
It's asking us to take a lot on trust, and the example of the top rate tax cut (included in the blog's list of 'supply side measures') - which every independent analysis has said won't have the effect it was intended to have - doesn't inspire confidence at all.
That they didn't consult, and refused to publish OBR forecasts compounded the error.
The real criticism is not that one disagrees with the politics - that's understood - but that it leaves the majority even of the government's own supporters unconvinced by the ideas.
Sterling is freely floating now. Freely floating currencies can go up or down, its not a problem. The government's stated goal is to get the economy growing, if lower taxes and lower Sterling helps make that viable, then they will have achieved their goal.
Freefloating into oblivion?
Sterling used to be $5, then $2, and its now been approaching parity for a while.
It wouldn't surprise me if in my lifetime £1 = $0.20
It hasn't been at $5 since before the Second World War, so over 80 years.
Going from $1 to 20c is the equivalent of going from $5 to $1 (80% loss of value).
I don't know how old you are, but frankly it would surprise me quite a lot if it got to 20c in any of our lifetimes.
i dont think the exchange rate is going to swing many votes. households seeing big increases in mortgage repayments when they come to renew definitely will. and that will be a lot of households if the next election isnt until late 2024. cutting your tax by £50pm when your mortgage is up £200pm is not a vote winner.
Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng has told City investors that he is "confident" in the Government's long-term plan for growth after the markets reacted badly to Friday's fiscal event
There is still a chance for Tory MPs to save us and their party from this calamity.
The party would be utterly screwed by changing the top team 3 weeks after the last change. I mean, seriously ratnered. Holed below the waterline. Possibly terminally damaged.
You can’t pretend to be a serious party of government by deposing your leadership 3 weeks after they take the helm.
Might be better for the country mind, but for the Tories, terrible move.
It would be cross the streams bad. I know that.
But the alternative is worse. Anyway, my scenario is that after an excretable party conference and a harsh reaction from the markets, MPs say "fuck this shit" and bring down la Truss by voting down her Financial Suicide bill. And anoint Sunak. Who was their choice. Who was right about the economy. Who would prompt a big markets u-turn.
Truss would be spun as a terrible mistake imposed by the membership who were wrong. Change the rules to remove the stupid and they have a defensible line.
Or, don't. And they end.
He was the choice of barely a third of them.
The problem is the Tory Party has absolutely zero clue what it actually wants to be anymore. This does happen to all parties in power for too long, to some extent, but this is particularly bad.
Truss and Kwarteng are low tax, low spend, free market-eers who dont believe in sound money.
Sunak is a tax and spender with roots in the Johnsonian “levelling up” “spend it on our NHS instead” boosterism (on which let’s not forget the Conservative Party was elected in 2019 - NOT the policies Truss and Kwarteng are now following).
You’ve then got a dwindling band of Cameroony moderates like Hunt, a scattering of sound money Thatcherites, and a group that probably don’t care what the economic policy of the country is so long as they can attack the other parties on what the definition of a woman is.
I know all political parties are broad churches but the Tory Party is basically schizophrenic now.
The solution to this is PR. Let the Tories and labout split, and the loonies can be idelogically pure, then the grown ups can actually form the government.
Starmer's reaction to the party vote in favour of PR is disappointing and disingenuous. Calling it "not a priority" is effectively the same as saying he opposes it, without being honest about it.
Starmer is heading for a majority now in the polls, why on earth would he want PR forcing him to make deals with the Greens or LDs to form a government?
But he still gets his majority govt, doesn't he? Just with a pledge to hold a Ref on PR - with a Yes implemented for the next election. Wouldn't that be the route?
I take serious issue with the "because" in this, as it's simply not established. But the basic point isn't going to go away without some explanation or debunking.
“The hedge funds made a ton of money because they met up with #KwasiKwarteng 3 days before the announcement and they shorted Sterling big time - isn’t that insider trading in a mega way? I am appalled”
A currency is not a financial instrument for the purpose of the FCA's Market Abuse Regulation. Though some of the trading may well have been in instruments which do fall within the definition.
But the wider point is the more damaging one and it is that it looks as if the Tories are governing only for a select and wealthy elite (the tax cuts and bonus caps) with whom they are friendly and who then make money trading in a way which leads to interest rate rises in a way which harms others.
It feels similar to all those PPE contracts being given to friends of Tories and to their mates being given honours and positions in public bodies.
Criminality is not necessary for this "for the few not the many" perception to damage the Tory party.
It’s in the country’s long term interests for Truss and Kwarteng to stay in place until the next GE. It will hopefully ensure that the Tories will be hammered, and out of power for years. I am actually considering voting Labour at the next GE. There is no chance of Scottish independence for at least 10 years after Sturgeon and her acolytes are removed from the SNP leadership, and losing seats to Labour is the only way that can happen. Labour winning some seats in Scotland will help them win an overall majority.
https://twitter.com/LawyerForFuture/status/1574701718838943745 If Gazprom ever sells gas to Europe again they will face huge damage claims from gas importers like Uniper for broken contracts. Now Gazprom can shield themselves from that for the time until the repair of these new leaks of NS1 & 2 because now it’s force majeure.
Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.
Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.
That, at least, is a load of waffle just because there were no supply side reforms, just a bunch of tax cuts which will push up demand.
I'm all in favour of supply side reforms and pushing up business investment, there's was very little in the Friday statement that actually achieves any supply side fix.
Kwasi Kwarteng has told asset management and insurance firms he is "confident in our long-term strategy to drive economic growth", despite turbulence in the money markets.
Not really surprising. Not likely both would be damaged simultaneously. I'm still of a view that this is a good thing in the long term. Main question is - whodunnit?
It’s in the country’s long term interests for Truss and Kwarteng to stay in place until the next GE. It will hopefully ensure that the Tories will be hammered, and out of power for years. I am actually considering voting Labour at the next GE. There is no chance of Scottish independence for at least 10 years after Sturgeon and her acolytes are removed from the SNP leadership, and losing seats to Labour is the only way that can happen. Labour winning some seats in Scotland will help them win an overall majority.
Labour gaining partially at the expense of the SNP might hand the SCons a few seats, however - in Ayrshire etc
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Talking about another Tory leader already is one of the silliest things this forum has ever engaged in IMO.
You don't know how pissed off the Tory MPs are though....
They are the ones already sending in letters/plotting.
Well we know not even a single Tory MP seems to be pissed off enough to say anything on camera, as Aaron Bell MP did at the turn of the year.
Give them a chance, Mr Roberts. Some of them are a bit slow in the uptake. Remember that your friend Kwasi was the pick of the bunch.
That's the point though, they've had their chance and after much rigmarole they got rid of Boris. That trigger has been pulled already.
How much time do you want to give them for a chance? 3 years? We'll be past the next election by then.
If they want to start mutterings about being unhappy leading to plots etc, they're not even at the "willing to say anything in public" stage yet, let alone credible threats. There simply isn't time before the next election for another leadership election, talk of Truss being gone by Conference 23 is pure hopecasting.
FFS, there isn't going to BE an election that involves the members.
They have given us this omnishambles. Admittedly, because the MPs effectively gave them a non-choice that would ensure Truss PM.
Any change of leader will be a Palace of Westminster coup.
There isn't going to be an election, because there isn't going to be a coup. There's no unanimity amongst MPs and so there will have to be a leadership election if Truss falls, which will stay the hands of any would-be assassins.
This is it now. Truss is leader, until the next General Election at least.
Is Dmitry Medvedev signalling a concession by Russia when he says Russia won't tolerate nuclear weapons being put in NATO-controlled Ukraine?
Does this mark a backtracking from the stated Russian war aim of demilitarising the Ukraine?
Could there be an agreement to the effect that
* Russian territory does not come under foreign or foreign-backed attack and any local neo-Nazi forces on Russian territory either surrender or f*** off out of it
* Ukraine can ally with who TF it likes, so long as no nuclear weapons are stationed on its soil?
Cf. the resolution of the Turkey-Italy-Cuba missile crisis in 1962, which ill-informed idiots call the Cuban missile crisis, but which at least they are right to term a crisis. Turkey and Italy stayed in NATO, but burgermuncher nukes were removed from their territory.
Both Italy and Turkey had nuclear weapons on their soil through the Cold War.
There are B61s at Incirlik right now.
Italy is similarly part of the NATO nuclear sharing system - BorrowABomb from the US.
The reason that the Jupiter missiles were removed from Turkey was that, with the arrival of Minuteman and Polaris, a huge pile of emergency developed weapons systems were obsolete. The Kennedy administration policy was to get rid of the weird and dangerous junk and built lots of the stuff that worked.
Hence the end of Skybolt and a raft of other weapons that were less good than Polaris and Minuteman.
And why the missiles in Turkey were due for removal before the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Italy and Turkey did not have nuclear weapons on their soil throughout the cold war, and the idea that the missiles in Turkey (which had been placed there in 1961 if I recall correctly) were due for removal anyway, was just a bullsh*t line that the western governments told their home market. For another line of the same type, see the idea that Greville Wynne was just an innocent businessman innocently caught in a spy flap and the only reason Britain agreed to swap him for Konon Molody aka Gordon Lonsdale was to let the Soviets save face. Hahaha! Sixty years later and you still believe this crap.
The withdrawal of Jupiters was announced in the US as part of the McNamara reforms of the nuclear triad, before Cuba etc. The "cuts" upset quite a few congress critters - since the concentration of spending on a smaller number of weapons systems cut the opportunities for pork.
The Jupiters were replaced with weapons that had better reliability, and better safety. The incident, where a lighting strike started arming the warhead of a missile was considered a bit sub optimal.
I think an Italian friend who did his national service relating to - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGR-1_Honest_John would be interested by this. The missile were first deployed there in 1955.
Can´t help feeling that we could be looking at the end of the modern Conservative party.
There are certainly parallels with the Liberal Party, during and after the first world war, with Johnson as the Lloyd George figure undermining the traditional heart of his party.
Longer term splits over Europe (Liberal Parallel; Ireland and the Suffragettes) have seen even former leadership contenders like Rory Stewart, Heseltine and Ken Clarke driven out from the party. These public service minded figures have been replaced by the hard-faced chancers, like JRM, Johnson and indeed Truss herself.
The divisions between Sunak and KK are fundamental, not just Wykhamist v Etonian. The party is fundamentally at odds with itself.
If I was an economically literate Tory MP, even with something like a 9K majority, I would be thinking very hard about whether it might not be better for the Parliamentary party to throw out the Populists now, before the Country does it in 2 years with the collateral damage being that I would also lose my seat.
Truss turns out to be the Militant Tendency of the modern Tories, and if not challenged the Tories could indeed go into a Canadian style meltdown. A 45-26 % split next time with a bit of tactical voting for the Lib Dems could get the Tories down into double figures.
PR then kills them.
You may be right about the split in the Tory party, but you're making an assumption that it won't be the Trussites who look vindicated in 12-months time. A lot can change domestically and internationally between now and then.
The Trussites cannot be vindicated. The Markets wont wear it. Today Dollar Parity, 3 months time, Euro Parity.
Reserves blown, rates into double figures, national humiliation, ergo KamiKwasi can not do what he is trying to do.
Who gives a flying f**k if we pass parity with either the dollar or the Euro? What difference does it make?
If the pound reaches a new equilibrium that encourages economic growth and exports more than consumerism and imports, then that could help not hinder Truss's agenda.
In two words: confidence and capacity.
The long term productivity numbers show that there has been insufficient investment in the UK over the past 30-odd years, so lower currency rates do not improve the competitive position of the economy sufficient to trigger growth. The economic capacity, especially the industrial capacity, is too small and too weak for Sterling based assets alone to restore a stable growth rate. The negative view of the country means that it would take a very long time to gain inward investment, especially as we are not in the single market.
The impact of a collapse of confidence in the UK means that we can no longer afford so many imports but do not have the capacity for import substitution and there will be a persistent investment gap. So the most likely impact is a very long and very deep depression.
Hard to grasp why this apparently is hard to grasp. The US Dollar is *the* global reserve currency. The exchange rate of other currencies against it matters, especially when yours is one of the other leading global currencies.
Yesterday we fell to our lowest exchange rate against the dollar since its creation. That is not a position that global traders believe to be tenable - they do not have confidence in what a growing number of very senior global finance figures have described in various kinds of choice language.
BR is one of these England uber Alles lunatics. Remember how people said bin the EEA and lets go WTO? Then tried to lecture the WTO on how the WTO worked when it was made clear to them that there are rules for global trade. Same moronity on display here.
What is the Pound? It is fiat - it only has the value that the confidence of others grant it. We have to pay our taxes in it, creditors receive their gilt interest payments in it. Confidence creates value. Take the confidence away by being bloody stupid and your scrip may not even have the value of the polymer its printed on.
So what you are saying is that there are limits in reality of what we can achieve to grow our economy. Ok. We have a wider problem then: having bankrupted ourselves with 2 World Wars, used North Sea wealth to avoid hard decisions on government expenditure, built a rapacious welfare system and NHS that uses an increasing share of government spending while still not meeting expectations, all while having our tax system take a higher percentage of our income than ever plus borrowing at unsustainable levels - what is the end position going to be? We cannot *CANNOT* continue as we are.
Either we grow the economy or else economic reality will force 1) an increase in pension age by 10yrs - most people will die while working, 2) a smaller NHS with fewer basic treatment options at end of life - but more support to help people stay in their homes or get back out of hospital, 3) a shift to individual state pension pots funded by our own work history, 4) wealth taxes - the last resort of governments who have run out of all other options. Oh, and we will have to build millions of new houses to force property prices down.
Re a coronation - In the last leadership race however, they were hopelessly split. Who can they actually unite behind?
Can’t be Rishi - members have just rejected him…
Appears to me it can only be Wallace*. But he doesn’t want it and it’s a poisoned chalice, particularly when he is perfectly happy doing the job he likes doing at the MOD.
Penny or Kemi are other options I suppose but they are both relatively inexperienced and the hour would not call for another gamble.
*or, whisper it, the Rt Hon Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip?
Talking about another Tory leader already is one of the silliest things this forum has ever engaged in IMO.
You don't know how pissed off the Tory MPs are though....
They are the ones already sending in letters/plotting.
Well we know not even a single Tory MP seems to be pissed off enough to say anything on camera, as Aaron Bell MP did at the turn of the year.
Give them a chance, Mr Roberts. Some of them are a bit slow in the uptake. Remember that your friend Kwasi was the pick of the bunch.
That's the point though, they've had their chance and after much rigmarole they got rid of Boris. That trigger has been pulled already.
How much time do you want to give them for a chance? 3 years? We'll be past the next election by then.
If they want to start mutterings about being unhappy leading to plots etc, they're not even at the "willing to say anything in public" stage yet, let alone credible threats. There simply isn't time before the next election for another leadership election, talk of Truss being gone by Conference 23 is pure hopecasting.
FFS, there isn't going to BE an election that involves the members.
They have given us this omnishambles. Admittedly, because the MPs effectively gave them a non-choice that would ensure Truss PM.
Any change of leader will be a Palace of Westminster coup.
There isn't going to be an election, because there isn't going to be a coup. There's no unanimity amongst MPs and so there will have to be a leadership election if Truss falls, which will stay the hands of any would-be assassins.
This is it now. Truss is leader, until the next General Election at least.
Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.
Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.
Sam Bowman 🇺🇦 @s8mb I think this is a "gamble" in the same sense that quitting a job that hasn't given you a pay rise in 10 years is a "gamble".
The idea that something will come along eventually, without us doing anything different, seems at least as foolhardy as trying to change course like this.
Not really surprising. Not likely both would be damaged simultaneously. I'm still of a view that this is a good thing in the long term. Main question is - whodunnit?
Russia because few other people have the means or the motive....
Yes Ukraine supposedly has a motive but it wouldn't want to annoy anyone supplying it with the arms it needs.
Comments
It wouldn't surprise me if in my lifetime £1 = $0.20
Game over.
I suspect that option is the sane one if it's required...
The one thing the country has a very finite supply of is land. Subsidising unproductive, uncompetitive businesses to be using that land does nothing other than lock in a lack of productivity. If those businesses fail, then the land is still there, but its now available to be accessed and used by a potentially more productive, more sustainable enterprise instead. Or the business doesn't fail, and instead adapts.
Protectionism doesn't work. It never has done.
Your point is unconvincing at best; some might think it ludicrous.
Brilliant, Putin, brilliant.....
"we now have four decades’ worth of experience showing that deregulation and tax cuts for the rich do not, in fact, produce higher wages and faster economic growth. So the idea that tax cuts are the secret of prosperity should be dead, yet somehow it’s still shambling along, eating Republican brains."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/26/opinion/gop-economic-policy.html
All Truss is facing is anonymous "a former Tory Minister says ..." off the record briefings.
That's not even going to start troubling her. Its clickbait nonsense. She'll be PM at the next election.
"Over millions of years, Britain’s landmass has been buried, lifted back up, buried again and eroded. This complex geological history has provided many opportunities for gas to leak away through the country’s many faults and cracks so that only the dregs remain. If the UK wants to develop a major US-style fracking industry, it is 280 million years too late. "
https://theconversation.com/fracking-if-liz-truss-wants-a-major-shale-gas-industry-she-is-280-million-years-late-190421?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=bylinetwitterbutton
Which is rather the point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kC6YPQY0_28
Trying to style out their tragicomic prat fall. ~AA
https://twitter.com/krishgm/status/1574733456088727553
Yesterday we fell to our lowest exchange rate against the dollar since its creation. That is not a position that global traders believe to be tenable - they do not have confidence in what a growing number of very senior global finance figures have described in various kinds of choice language.
BR is one of these England uber Alles lunatics. Remember how people said bin the EEA and lets go WTO? Then tried to lecture the WTO on how the WTO worked when it was made clear to them that there are rules for global trade. Same moronity on display here.
What is the Pound? It is fiat - it only has the value that the confidence of others grant it. We have to pay our taxes in it, creditors receive their gilt interest payments in it. Confidence creates value. Take the confidence away by being bloody stupid and your scrip may not even have the value of the polymer its printed on.
https://twitter.com/eurostarjustinp/status/1574711574337495041
https://keirbradwell.substack.com/p/2-kwartengs-plan
Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.
Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.
They are the ones already sending in letters/plotting.
And respect to Truss and Kwarteng for their bravery too. After they've finished with the country, it will probably be too poor to pay for the round-the-clock police protection they will need in retirement.
It's yet to be established that his opinions carry any more weight than those of the average PB commenter. Probably less.
Members aren't the problem - donors are. A small coterie plan to become very rich on the backs of destroying Britain, and they will withdraw their bungs if the party switches off their profits machine.
Presumably signed off before mortage providers shut up shop.
https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1574736184999571461/photo/1
Doesn't sound like the red wall I know.
(For all the hype of Truss trashing the joint before the next GE, nothing needing controversial laws can happen, because there really isn't the time.)
I'd still prefer May to be the Caretaker/Chief Lemming. If only to see Boris's face as she gently overtakes him in the Prime Ministerial tenure chart.
Europe is fucked this winter. Properly fucked. Imo scenarios leading to the collapse of the EU have moved from ridiculous and implausible to very outside possibility.
Unless it involves rebuilding from the rubble, it certainly wasn't evident in the 'fiscal event'. Which was a large demand stimulus, and very little to do with supply at all.
Going from $1 to 20c is the equivalent of going from $5 to $1 (80% loss of value).
I don't know how old you are, but frankly it would surprise me quite a lot if it got to 20c in any of our lifetimes.
Won't be an easy repair, especially with winter coming on.
Let's look at this historically, has there ever been a PM midterm who has replaced another PM who has NOT gone on to fight a General Election ?
I mean I think I've found George Canning & Viscount Goderich , but Canning died in office and Goderich invited the opposition into his gov't. Truss looks in good enough health, and I can't see her inviting Wes Streeting and Ed Davey into her Gov't - which is what the Earl of Ripon looks to have done. And that's going back to the early 19th century.
Maybe there's more, but I haven't found them scanning the PM lists...
Im intensely relaxed about my mass civil unrest in the EU prediction whilst being intensely concerned at its possibility
At that rate, we could see the 50 cent jokes become reality in another fifteen, within 30 years we're at what they call a quarter. Then just a few more takes us to 20c.
Start with all those Rishi Sunak supporters. "We f*cking TOLD you. Tw@s....."
The Penny Mordaunt supporters won't be far behind. That's 2/3rds of Tory MPs.
God alone knows what the Truss backers are making of it. They aren't rushing to the media to defend her.
The discipline for once will be in making this a very private event. The quieter it is, the more is going on. The issue is - who do the pissed off get behind? If Wallace very discretely was asked - and equally discretely indicated he would take the job if it would save the Party - then Truss is basically on 24 hours notice.
How much time do you want to give them for a chance? 3 years? We'll be past the next election by then.
If they want to start mutterings about being unhappy leading to plots etc, they're not even at the "willing to say anything in public" stage yet, let alone credible threats. There simply isn't time before the next election for another leadership election, talk of Truss being gone by Conference 23 is pure hopecasting.
They have given us this omnishambles. Admittedly, because the MPs effectively gave them a non-choice that would ensure Truss PM.
Any change of leader will be a Palace of Westminster coup.
The only thing of potentially great significance is the enterprise zones. But there is so far little or no detail on what these will encompass, and when they might come in.
It's asking us to take a lot on trust, and the example of the top rate tax cut (included in the blog's list of 'supply side measures') - which every independent analysis has said won't have the effect it was intended to have - doesn't inspire confidence at all.
That they didn't consult, and refused to publish OBR forecasts compounded the error.
The real criticism is not that one disagrees with the politics - that's understood - but that it leaves the majority even of the government's own supporters unconvinced by the ideas.
Which is nice
For more on this and other news visit http://trib.al/Rx0iR33
‘Cuts to stamp duty will get the housing market moving and support first-time buyers’
-Kwasi Kwarteng
Tuesday:
‘300 mortgage deals have been pulled by banks and building societies after fall in the pound fuelled forecasts of jump in interest rates to nearly 6%’
But the wider point is the more damaging one and it is that it looks as if the Tories are governing only for a select and wealthy elite (the tax cuts and bonus caps) with whom they are friendly and who then make money trading in a way which leads to interest rate rises in a way which harms others.
It feels similar to all those PPE contracts being given to friends of Tories and to their mates being given honours and positions in public bodies.
Criminality is not necessary for this "for the few not the many" perception to damage the Tory party.
I am actually considering voting Labour at the next GE. There is no chance of Scottish independence for at least 10 years after Sturgeon and her acolytes are removed from the SNP leadership, and losing seats to Labour is the only way that can happen. Labour winning some seats in Scotland will help them win an overall majority.
The US “starve the beast” theory feels relevant in the context of the Tory election: the belief that cutting taxes will automatically lead to lower public spending as revenue is restricted. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast https://twitter.com/georgeeaton/status/1546952103477886977/photo/1
https://twitter.com/BNONews/status/1574717885016154117
BREAKING: Germany suspects damage to Nord Stream pipeline is the result of sabotage - Bloomberg
Bunch of twats.
https://twitter.com/LawyerForFuture/status/1574701718838943745
If Gazprom ever sells gas to Europe again they will face huge damage claims from gas importers like Uniper for broken contracts. Now Gazprom can shield themselves from that for the time until the repair of these new leaks of NS1 & 2 because now it’s force majeure.
I'm all in favour of supply side reforms and pushing up business investment, there's was very little in the Friday statement that actually achieves any supply side fix.
Also says the government is "committed to fiscal discipline", despite borrowing billions to fund tax cuts.
https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1574743837527797760
UK markets have lost at least $500 billion in combined value since Liz Truss took over as prime minister https://trib.al/OcpmAAt https://twitter.com/BloombergUK/status/1574711691522281479/photo/1
This is it now. Truss is leader, until the next General Election at least.
And a damn fine one I think she will be.
The Jupiters were replaced with weapons that had better reliability, and better safety. The incident, where a lighting strike started arming the warhead of a missile was considered a bit sub optimal.
The claim that nuclear sharing didn't exit is a strange one - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_sharing
I think an Italian friend who did his national service relating to - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGR-1_Honest_John would be interested by this. The missile were first deployed there in 1955.
Either we grow the economy or else economic reality will force 1) an increase in pension age by 10yrs - most people will die while working, 2) a smaller NHS with fewer basic treatment options at end of life - but more support to help people stay in their homes or get back out of hospital, 3) a shift to individual state pension pots funded by our own work history, 4) wealth taxes - the last resort of governments who have run out of all other options. Oh, and we will have to build millions of new houses to force property prices down.
A very different Britain
https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2022/09/conservatives-lost-fantasy-world-danger-country
I like this Tweet in it: https://twitter.com/s8mb/status/1573259866801684483
Sam Bowman 🇺🇦
@s8mb
I think this is a "gamble" in the same sense that quitting a job that hasn't given you a pay rise in 10 years is a "gamble".
The idea that something will come along eventually, without us doing anything different, seems at least as foolhardy as trying to change course like this.
Yes Ukraine supposedly has a motive but it wouldn't want to annoy anyone supplying it with the arms it needs.