Truss is going to stand up and essentially say “we froze benefit payments below inflation to pay for our tax cut to the rich”
How does anyone support that? Or sell that on the doorstep?
The last few days have been a catastrophe for the government. But that will be nothing compared to what will happen if they actually do decide to adopt a policy of slashing benefits alongside 45p and bankers bonuses. It will define the Conservative party for a generation. https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1575749395756507137
You mean it goes down from just 2 conservative mps in 2024 to nil
Truss seems to determine to wipe out the conservatives.
I am telling everyone: there will be civil disorder this winter if benefits are not upgraded to take account of CoL whilst the rich are handed £1000s.
Have their moves yet by the likes of Gauke to start a new centre, right party that is sane?
2nd like the LDs (Hoping for lots of MPs in the Tory wipeout)
Realistically, Bev, how many seats do you think the LDs can get?
Personally I'd love to see them become the official opposition and the few remaining Conservative MPs sent to one of Vlad's Gulags but I just can't see Team Davey getting above 50.
Whilst I don't expect them to pick up every seat in succession, in a "fuck the Tories" election you get all kinds of interesting results. And well into triple digits are seats held by the LibDems as recently as 2010...
That is an interesting list. Cheadle and Hazel Grove are two that were only a few miles from where I used to live and could see them being achievable. However, given that the expectation is of a massive Tory collapse, even a 10% swing only gets them up about 30 MPs and I doubt the Labour marginals will be winnable for them.
Thanks for sharing that.
Based on local election voting I'd say Cheadle is a shoe-in, not least because it's a remain-leaning seat and the local MP is a bit of a nonentity (prejudices declared: it's my constituency).
Hazel Grove maybe a little more mixed, but Wragg is quite a character who I imagine has cultivated a personal vote which could maybe help mitigate national swing - 50/50, that one.
Truss is going to stand up and essentially say “we froze benefit payments below inflation to pay for our tax cut to the rich”
How does anyone support that? Or sell that on the doorstep?
The last few days have been a catastrophe for the government. But that will be nothing compared to what will happen if they actually do decide to adopt a policy of slashing benefits alongside 45p and bankers bonuses. It will define the Conservative party for a generation. https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1575749395756507137
You mean it goes down from just 2 conservative mps in 2024 to nil
Truss seems to determine to wipe out the conservatives.
I am telling everyone: there will be civil disorder this winter if benefits are not upgraded to take account of CoL whilst the rich are handed £1000s.
Have their moves yet by the likes of Gauke to start a new centre, right party that is sane?
If party members had the final say Badenoch would now be Tory leader not Truss. It was Tory MPs who put Truss in the final 2.
Would Badenoch be doing anything different from Truss though?
No - far too naive and inexperienced
If the party had their time back Sunak was the best candidate by some distance
I don't think this is hindsight either. What we're seeing is the fevered alternative reality in which many Con members live in colliding with actual reality, hard. I wonder if lessons will be learned about leaderships elections - I suspect not; unlike the Corbyn case, Truss was very much part of the inner circle rather than an extremist outsider. In that sense it's closer to EdM - only potentially much worse; while similarly odd-seeming, Ed had a bit more substance.
Ed Milliband is one of my favourite politicians. The right-wing press did a hatchet job on him - very unfairly in my opinion.
The Treasury is proudly bragging that a "typical" first-time buyer, earning £30,000, can save £11,250 in stamp duty on a "representative" terraced house.
Truss is going to stand up and essentially say “we froze benefit payments below inflation to pay for our tax cut to the rich”
How does anyone support that? Or sell that on the doorstep?
The last few days have been a catastrophe for the government. But that will be nothing compared to what will happen if they actually do decide to adopt a policy of slashing benefits alongside 45p and bankers bonuses. It will define the Conservative party for a generation. https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1575749395756507137
You mean it goes down from just 2 conservative mps in 2024 to nil
Truss seems to determine to wipe out the conservatives.
I am telling everyone: there will be civil disorder this winter if benefits are not upgraded to take account of CoL whilst the rich are handed £1000s.
Have their moves yet by the likes of Gauke to start a new centre, right party that is sane?
I do not see a new party succeeding and if the conservative party want to have any chance of office they need to put the grown ups in charge
The OBR report is going to show that their plans are unsustainable with no evidence of them working. They plan to do the politically unwise thing of cutting benefits whilst rewarding the rich. People with mortgages await the inevitable accelerated interest rate rises.
Truss is going to stand up and essentially say “we froze benefit payments below inflation to pay for our tax cut to the rich”
How does anyone support that? Or sell that on the doorstep?
The last few days have been a catastrophe for the government. But that will be nothing compared to what will happen if they actually do decide to adopt a policy of slashing benefits alongside 45p and bankers bonuses. It will define the Conservative party for a generation. https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1575749395756507137
You mean it goes down from just 2 conservative mps in 2024 to nil
Truss seems to determine to wipe out the conservatives.
I am telling everyone: there will be civil disorder this winter if benefits are not upgraded to take account of CoL whilst the rich are handed £1000s.
Have their moves yet by the likes of Gauke to start a new centre, right party that is sane?
I do not see a new party succeeding and if the conservative party want to have any chance of office they need to put the grown ups in charge
The grown-ups were purged. The rump that remains are extremists. The Conservative Party deserves to be destroyed (and fingers crossed it happens).
The Treasury is proudly bragging that a "typical" first-time buyer, earning £30,000, can save £11,250 in stamp duty on a "representative" terraced house.
The OBR report is going to show that their plans are unsustainable with no evidence of them working. They plan to do the politically unwise thing of cutting benefits whilst rewarding the rich. People with mortgages await the inevitable accelerated interest rate rises.
There’s no way out for them, is there?
The only way to deal with this is for their mps to vote with labour to stop the 45% reduction, demand Kwarteng resigns, amend the narrative of the mini budget as it did have some positives, and put Truss on probation
2nd like the LDs (Hoping for lots of MPs in the Tory wipeout)
Realistically, Bev, how many seats do you think the LDs can get?
Personally I'd love to see them become the official opposition and the few remaining Conservative MPs sent to one of Vlad's Gulags but I just can't see Team Davey getting above 50.
What say you?
If they do, they'd probably have a worse problem given many of their candidates would be unsuitable paper candidates who would be an embarrassment to the party. Jared O'Mara multiplied considerably.
Their vetting isn't the best as it is, or Layla Moran's - ahem - interesting past would have been exposed before it became an issue.
This may well be a problem for Labour too in a real landslide. They spent a lot of time up to 1997 carefully vetting all their candidates, and it did make a difference. But that was in the pre Twitter era.
I think you will find the Lib Dems have beefed up their approval process considerably.
Truss is going to stand up and essentially say “we froze benefit payments below inflation to pay for our tax cut to the rich”
How does anyone support that? Or sell that on the doorstep?
Plainly that is unsellable. The discussion in due course will move to the trickier question of what 5 or 10 year plan for public finances can possibly satisfy the voters, the IMF, the OBR, IFS, the Bank of England, the just about managing, the unions, benefits people, tax payers, pensioners, mortgage customers and the financial markets.
At some point Labour need such a plan covering tax, spend, borrowing and debt management. I think they may need a cleverer shadow chancellor than the present one.
Winning a majority or enough to govern after the GE looks like the easy bit to me.
The energy plan without the tax cuts would have broadly satisfied the markets and the voters. The markets and the polling were not terrible before the mini-budget.
It’s not that we’re in a really difficult situation and Truss/Kwarteng didn’t quite get it right. Things were stable and Truss/Kwarteng completely f***ed it up.
The OBR report is going to show that their plans are unsustainable with no evidence of them working. They plan to do the politically unwise thing of cutting benefits whilst rewarding the rich. People with mortgages await the inevitable accelerated interest rate rises.
There’s no way out for them, is there?
The only way to deal with this is for their mps to vote with labour to stop the 45% reduction, demand Kwarteng resigns, amend the narrative of the mini budget as it did have some positives, and put Truss on probation
What we really need is a General Election. Don't trust the Tories one bit...
'Through the energy price guarantee the maximum [energy bill] will be £2,500' The prime minister incorrectly told more than one station that there would be a maximum energy bill of £2,500 after the energy price cap is lifted on 1 October.
This is a *major* fuck up. The price cap was badly understood in general. What people understood was that their bills might triple or quadruple - unpayable - but thanks to the cap have mererly doubled - unpayable.
But saying its a cash cap will enrage all the people paying more than £2,500. Who likely have bigger hiuuses, and likely were Tory supporters. The rout in the Tory numbers - and we have polls of 19 / 20 / 21 point deficits not just the Zahaw Bomba - is from firmly middle ground voters fleeing. This will make that worse.
The cap was 1900, its now 2500 with a 400 bill payment as well, whose bill is doubling?
For my 2 bedroom house with the cap and the bill payment I will be paying £90 less than last year for the same usage. Im sure there are millions of people living in small houses whose net energy costs will not now be going up compared to last winter.
Whose bill is doubling? What was the cap last winter?
This is the problem you Trussites have. You can keep saying "the sky is green" as passionately as you like. Then people look up and say "but it's blue"...
Cap (household average) to 1 October 2021 £1042 Cap to 1 April 2022 £1277 Cap to 1 October 2022 £1971 Cap from 1 October 2022 £2500
That to me looks like a 150% increase in 18 months and that is with Government intervention...
It beats me why they bother to call it a cap. It seems to keep rising rather freely.
At some point Labour need such a plan covering tax, spend, borrowing and debt management. I think they may need a cleverer shadow chancellor than the present one.
Would Starmer have the gumption to promote Ed Miliband to the post? He's one of the few at the top table, along with Cooper, to have served in cabinet before and he is certainly one of the more imaginative politicians (in a good way) currently active.
With Lord Darling serving the nation by being on the treasury team? He is 69 and still very good on the media.
Lot of people rightly saying the markets will be reassured by the fact we are now going to get an accelerated OBR forecast. But isn't the new problem what that OBR analysis will actually say. https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1575747066248282113
Indeed. It will say that unfunded tax cuts may boost demand but there is a set off of higher inflation and higher interest rates which may, on balance, reduce growth. Well, who knew?
That's just one half. The fiscal medicine required to avoid that will also be detailed by the OBR, cuts to NHS etc.
Then the government has a choice - detail those cuts or see the markets continue to panic.
The Treasury is proudly bragging that a "typical" first-time buyer, earning £30,000, can save £11,250 in stamp duty on a "representative" terraced house.
Truss is going to stand up and essentially say “we froze benefit payments below inflation to pay for our tax cut to the rich”
How does anyone support that? Or sell that on the doorstep?
The last few days have been a catastrophe for the government. But that will be nothing compared to what will happen if they actually do decide to adopt a policy of slashing benefits alongside 45p and bankers bonuses. It will define the Conservative party for a generation. https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1575749395756507137
You mean it goes down from just 2 conservative mps in 2024 to nil
Truss seems to determine to wipe out the conservatives.
I am telling everyone: there will be civil disorder this winter if benefits are not upgraded to take account of CoL whilst the rich are handed £1000s.
Have their moves yet by the likes of Gauke to start a new centre, right party that is sane?
No. If he wants back, he and the other former Tories that were ejected need to wait for the Great Rout to finish and then approach local associations and offer to stand.
Nationwide announce house prices were unchanged in September but 9.5% higher than last September
These rises were unsustainable and this crisis has ended that and likely plunged many into negative equity for years to come
We have been here before
The prices people have been paying for properties round here has astounded me, people just seem to lose the plot when buying houses and have the daft idea that house prices will always rise when all evidence shows that they don't. Houses need to be seen as a place to live not an asset to make money on.
Very quiet on here about this, and buried on the bbc. Agenda? It’s not great, but it could be worse.
Feels about right. 'It could be worse' and it will be worse, sadly.'
So much worse. After the GFC bail outs the idea has taken hold that the government can magic away any problems if they want to. It then becomes a moral failure not to. If you can bail out the banks why not me?
So you pay my wages when I can’t work, you pay my heating bill when it goes up, you are responsible for my mortgage.
It’s going to take a lot of time and pain to realise that the magic money tree has been cut down and burnt to keep us warm. The markets have said enough.
We are heading back to reality, when people have to accept they are responsible for themselves. It’s going to be a hell of a detox.
Wealth David. There's a lot out there (£17tn). Needs to be taxed.
Good morning
The problem with any wealth tax is designing it to hit the anyone but me mentality, and any party who even hints at taxing owner occupiers will plummet as fast as Truss and Kwarteng
Listening to Starmer on this subject yesterday his idea of a wealth tax is to tax divideds which in turn hits pensions
In theory there may be billions, but in practice it is unlikely anyone will come up with a wealth tax that produces anything like those who support one hope
And I would add @DavidL posts this morning are a sober reflection that the days of cheap money are over and we cannot just guarantee everyone will be shielded from energy and mortgage rises by the government
It is near certain Labour will win in 2024 but they are facing a poison chalice for years to come, indeed will the war with Russia be over by then ?
I think they need to rejig council tax to make it much more linear in property value with regular valuations and at a higher rate to fund local government, combined with the abolition of stamp duty. Beyond that I don't really favour wealth taxes - they are simply a retrospective income tax and I don't really approved of retrospective taxation. I would rather see incomes at the top end taxed more with fewer loopholes.
Next week pictures of delegates at the Tory conference applauding ministers as they proclaim huge tax cuts for the very richest and benefits cuts for the very poorest will be beamed into TV sets up and down the country.
'Through the energy price guarantee the maximum [energy bill] will be £2,500' The prime minister incorrectly told more than one station that there would be a maximum energy bill of £2,500 after the energy price cap is lifted on 1 October.
This is a *major* fuck up. The price cap was badly understood in general. What people understood was that their bills might triple or quadruple - unpayable - but thanks to the cap have mererly doubled - unpayable.
But saying its a cash cap will enrage all the people paying more than £2,500. Who likely have bigger hiuuses, and likely were Tory supporters. The rout in the Tory numbers - and we have polls of 19 / 20 / 21 point deficits not just the Zahaw Bomba - is from firmly middle ground voters fleeing. This will make that worse.
The cap was 1900, its now 2500 with a 400 bill payment as well, whose bill is doubling?
For my 2 bedroom house with the cap and the bill payment I will be paying £90 less than last year for the same usage. Im sure there are millions of people living in small houses whose net energy costs will not now be going up compared to last winter.
Whose bill is doubling? What was the cap last winter?
This is the problem you Trussites have. You can keep saying "the sky is green" as passionately as you like. Then people look up and say "but it's blue"...
Cap (household average) to 1 October 2021 £1042 Cap to 1 April 2022 £1277 Cap to 1 October 2022 £1971 Cap from 1 October 2022 £2500
That to me looks like a 150% increase in 18 months and that is with Government intervention...
It beats me why they bother to call it a cap. It seems to keep rising rather freely.
The cap was there to ensure energy companies didn't abuse customers who don't shop around.
It's now been repurposed from that original purpose because of the increase in wholesale energy prices due to the price of gas...
Next week pictures of delegates at the Tory conference applauding ministers as they proclaim huge tax cuts for the very richest and benefits cuts for the very poorest will be beamed into TV sets up and down the country.
Tax cuts for the richest at the moment may be problematic. However the benefits proposal to increase benefits in line with earnings not inflation I expect will be more popular
There is so much incriminating footage of Truss from the leaders debates that it is difficult to process. In one video she is going on about how rising mortgage interest rates due to her borrowing plans are 'project fear'. She could end up being regarded as the most ridiculed and incompetent prime minister in modern history.
Next week pictures of delegates at the Tory conference applauding ministers as they proclaim huge tax cuts for the very richest and benefits cuts for the very poorest will be beamed into TV sets up and down the country.
An interesting possible side-effect of this will be that Labour could well be pushing at very open door with some kind of wealth tax as ordinary voters finally have enough of rich bankers and well-off pensioners being stuffed with cash whilst the rest can go swivel.
Very quiet on here about this, and buried on the bbc. Agenda? It’s not great, but it could be worse.
Feels about right. 'It could be worse' and it will be worse, sadly.'
So much worse. After the GFC bail outs the idea has taken hold that the government can magic away any problems if they want to. It then becomes a moral failure not to. If you can bail out the banks why not me?
So you pay my wages when I can’t work, you pay my heating bill when it goes up, you are responsible for my mortgage.
It’s going to take a lot of time and pain to realise that the magic money tree has been cut down and burnt to keep us warm. The markets have said enough.
We are heading back to reality, when people have to accept they are responsible for themselves. It’s going to be a hell of a detox.
Well said, we are indeed. Truss and Kwasi have the right prescription for getting us back to reality, but the country doesn't want to hear it, and it might be frankly too little, too late now.
If the country wants to live in delusion that the government can magic away all our problems, then lets give Starmer a go and see if he can do it. When he can't, maybe people will realise Truss was ahead of her time and finally pay attention to what she rightly wanted to do.
The OBR report is going to show that their plans are unsustainable with no evidence of them working. They plan to do the politically unwise thing of cutting benefits whilst rewarding the rich. People with mortgages await the inevitable accelerated interest rate rises.
There’s no way out for them, is there?
The only way to deal with this is for their mps to vote with labour to stop the 45% reduction, demand Kwarteng resigns, amend the narrative of the mini budget as it did have some positives, and put Truss on probation
What we really need is a General Election. Don't trust the Tories one bit...
To be honest you never would anyway, but even Starmer and labour would be facing the prospect of cuts and austerity for years as this craters economies not just in the UK but all western economies
Germany announced a 200 billion euros package yesterday to subsidise energy and as long as the war continues matters only become worse and prolonged
It is a very sobering prospect and no matter who is in power we will all be poorer
If party members had the final say Badenoch would now be Tory leader not Truss. It was Tory MPs who put Truss in the final 2.
Would Badenoch be doing anything different from Truss though?
Yes Badenoch is more socially conservative than Truss maybe but I doubt she would have cut the 45p top rate and scrapped the bankers' bonus cap even if she reversed the NI and corporation tax rises
Very quiet on here about this, and buried on the bbc. Agenda? It’s not great, but it could be worse.
Feels about right. 'It could be worse' and it will be worse, sadly.'
So much worse. After the GFC bail outs the idea has taken hold that the government can magic away any problems if they want to. It then becomes a moral failure not to. If you can bail out the banks why not me?
So you pay my wages when I can’t work, you pay my heating bill when it goes up, you are responsible for my mortgage.
It’s going to take a lot of time and pain to realise that the magic money tree has been cut down and burnt to keep us warm. The markets have said enough.
We are heading back to reality, when people have to accept they are responsible for themselves. It’s going to be a hell of a detox.
Well said, we are indeed. Truss and Kwasi have the right prescription for getting us back to reality, but the country doesn't want to hear it, and it might be frankly too little, too late now.
If the country wants to live in delusion that the government can magic away all our problems, then lets give Starmer a go and see if he can do it. When he can't, maybe people will realise Truss was ahead of her time and finally pay attention to what she rightly wanted to do.
Tory prescription: fuck you, you're on your own. And here's some more money for the top 1% while we're at it.
Truss is going to stand up and essentially say “we froze benefit payments below inflation to pay for our tax cut to the rich”
How does anyone support that? Or sell that on the doorstep?
Plainly that is unsellable. The discussion in due course will move to the trickier question of what 5 or 10 year plan for public finances can possibly satisfy the voters, the IMF, the OBR, IFS, the Bank of England, the just about managing, the unions, benefits people, tax payers, pensioners, mortgage customers and the financial markets.
At some point Labour need such a plan covering tax, spend, borrowing and debt management. I think they may need a cleverer shadow chancellor than the present one.
Winning a majority or enough to govern after the GE looks like the easy bit to me.
The energy plan without the tax cuts would have broadly satisfied the markets and the voters. The markets and the polling were not terrible before the mini-budget.
It’s not that we’re in a really difficult situation and Truss/Kwarteng didn’t quite get it right. Things were stable and Truss/Kwarteng completely f***ed it up.
I think that is over sanguine about how things were before the deluge this last week.
A week ago every single state managed bit of expenditure was under massive pressure to increase, while there was, and is, no unborrowed money to do it with. This week merely brings current reality to the immediate surface, by making a series of carefully thought out disastrous errors.
How will Labour run the finances remains a key question.
My guess is that they will say nothing much but hide, as usual, behind the idea that until in power we haven't seen the books.
Next week pictures of delegates at the Tory conference applauding ministers as they proclaim huge tax cuts for the very richest and benefits cuts for the very poorest will be beamed into TV sets up and down the country.
Next week pictures of delegates at the Tory conference applauding ministers as they proclaim huge tax cuts for the very richest and benefits cuts for the very poorest will be beamed into TV sets up and down the country.
Tax cuts for the richest at the moment may be problematic. However the benefits proposal to increase benefits in line with earnings not inflation I expect will be more popular
It might be popular but it is very cruel. If you are well off you can afford to be a little poorer, but if you are close to poverty and prices go up more than you are being paid then that is catastrophic.
I don't think the benefits proposal is that bigger deal politically as there is some residual loathing for 'benefit scroungers' that they can usefully exploit. The ruin of the conservative party will simply be the tax cut for the very rich.
The Treasury is proudly bragging that a "typical" first-time buyer, earning £30,000, can save £11,250 in stamp duty on a "representative" terraced house.
The average terraced house in London was valued at £694,000 in 2021.
They are utterly delusional about the scale of the crisis in London's housing market.
How much would a property need to cost for a first time buyer to save that much on stamp duty? (Before we even go in to how much more their mortgage would cost).
Next week pictures of delegates at the Tory conference applauding ministers as they proclaim huge tax cuts for the very richest and benefits cuts for the very poorest will be beamed into TV sets up and down the country.
Tax cuts for the richest at the moment may be problematic. However the benefits proposal to increase benefits in line with earnings not inflation I expect will be more popular
Next week pictures of delegates at the Tory conference applauding ministers as they proclaim huge tax cuts for the very richest and benefits cuts for the very poorest will be beamed into TV sets up and down the country.
Tax cuts for the richest at the moment may be problematic. However the benefits proposal to increase benefits in line with earnings not inflation I expect will be more popular
Not if pensioners receive the triple lock
Benefits and pensions have to rise equally and anyone who cannot see that deserves to be thrown out of office
Next week pictures of delegates at the Tory conference applauding ministers as they proclaim huge tax cuts for the very richest and benefits cuts for the very poorest will be beamed into TV sets up and down the country.
The problem with any wealth tax is designing it to hit the anyone but me mentality, and any party who even hints at taxing owner occupiers will plummet as fast as Truss and Kwarteng
Listening to Starmer on this subject yesterday his idea of a wealth tax is to tax divideds which in turn hits pensions
In theory there may be billions, but in practice it is unlikely anyone will come up with a wealth tax that produces anything like those who support one hope
And I would add @DavidL posts this morning are a sober reflection that the days of cheap money are over and we cannot just guarantee everyone will be shielded from energy and mortgage rises by the government
It is near certain Labour will win in 2024 but they are facing a poison chalice for years to come, indeed will the war with Russia be over by then ?
A few thoughts in response. Essentially I think poverty and public services need to be addressed, and the rest of us need to cope with higher energy prices.
* Yes, subsidising energy is an emergency cushion but not a sensible long-term strategy. We need to aim to reduce energy demand for all the obvious reasons. * To make that possible, benefits need to at least keep pace with inflation, as otherwise you're squeezing the poorest part of society twice over. * Council tax reform is the easiest kind of wealth tax. Add two or three extra bands at the top, and levy a minimum charge on properties worth over £1m even if it's claimed that they are unoccupied. You can't evade council tax unless you sell up, which helps push house price inflation down. * Yes, don't give tax advantages to unearned income. Not everyone has a private pension, and the impact on pension funds will be limited. * Given full employment, possibly the minimum wage should also go up with inflation?
I don't think the benefits proposal is that bigger deal politically as there is some residual loathing for 'benefit scroungers' that they can usefully exploit. The ruin of the conservative party will simply be the tax cut for the very rich.
The easiest way to cut benefit costs would be to freeze housing benefit for x years or even cut it a few percentage.
That would also have a side effect of reducing the pressure on rental prices everywhere. I suspect however the Government won't do that as Landlords are elderly and vote Tory provided the sweeties keep on coming.
Very quiet on here about this, and buried on the bbc. Agenda? It’s not great, but it could be worse.
Feels about right. 'It could be worse' and it will be worse, sadly.'
So much worse. After the GFC bail outs the idea has taken hold that the government can magic away any problems if they want to. It then becomes a moral failure not to. If you can bail out the banks why not me?
So you pay my wages when I can’t work, you pay my heating bill when it goes up, you are responsible for my mortgage.
It’s going to take a lot of time and pain to realise that the magic money tree has been cut down and burnt to keep us warm. The markets have said enough.
We are heading back to reality, when people have to accept they are responsible for themselves. It’s going to be a hell of a detox.
Well said, we are indeed. Truss and Kwasi have the right prescription for getting us back to reality, but the country doesn't want to hear it, and it might be frankly too little, too late now.
If the country wants to live in delusion that the government can magic away all our problems, then lets give Starmer a go and see if he can do it. When he can't, maybe people will realise Truss was ahead of her time and finally pay attention to what she rightly wanted to do.
Can the Government magic away all our problems? No, but several of our current problems were created by the Government a week ago. This “right prescription” is going to cost us all (except the super-rich) more via inflation and higher borrowing costs than any savings to our tax bills. Everyone being poorer is going to hit growth.
Next week pictures of delegates at the Tory conference applauding ministers as they proclaim huge tax cuts for the very richest and benefits cuts for the very poorest will be beamed into TV sets up and down the country.
Tax cuts for the richest at the moment may be problematic. However the benefits proposal to increase benefits in line with earnings not inflation I expect will be more popular
Next week pictures of delegates at the Tory conference applauding ministers as they proclaim huge tax cuts for the very richest and benefits cuts for the very poorest will be beamed into TV sets up and down the country.
Tax cuts for the richest at the moment may be problematic. However the benefits proposal to increase benefits in line with earnings not inflation I expect will be more popular
Not if pensioners receive the triple lock
Benefits and pensions have to rise equally and anyone who cannot see that deserves to be thrown out of office
Very quiet on here about this, and buried on the bbc. Agenda? It’s not great, but it could be worse.
Feels about right. 'It could be worse' and it will be worse, sadly.'
So much worse. After the GFC bail outs the idea has taken hold that the government can magic away any problems if they want to. It then becomes a moral failure not to. If you can bail out the banks why not me?
So you pay my wages when I can’t work, you pay my heating bill when it goes up, you are responsible for my mortgage.
It’s going to take a lot of time and pain to realise that the magic money tree has been cut down and burnt to keep us warm. The markets have said enough.
We are heading back to reality, when people have to accept they are responsible for themselves. It’s going to be a hell of a detox.
Well said, we are indeed. Truss and Kwasi have the right prescription for getting us back to reality, but the country doesn't want to hear it, and it might be frankly too little, too late now.
If the country wants to live in delusion that the government can magic away all our problems, then lets give Starmer a go and see if he can do it. When he can't, maybe people will realise Truss was ahead of her time and finally pay attention to what she rightly wanted to do.
Truss is going to stand up and essentially say “we froze benefit payments below inflation to pay for our tax cut to the rich”
How does anyone support that? Or sell that on the doorstep?
Plainly that is unsellable. The discussion in due course will move to the trickier question of what 5 or 10 year plan for public finances can possibly satisfy the voters, the IMF, the OBR, IFS, the Bank of England, the just about managing, the unions, benefits people, tax payers, pensioners, mortgage customers and the financial markets.
At some point Labour need such a plan covering tax, spend, borrowing and debt management. I think they may need a cleverer shadow chancellor than the present one.
Winning a majority or enough to govern after the GE looks like the easy bit to me.
The energy plan without the tax cuts would have broadly satisfied the markets and the voters. The markets and the polling were not terrible before the mini-budget.
It’s not that we’re in a really difficult situation and Truss/Kwarteng didn’t quite get it right. Things were stable and Truss/Kwarteng completely f***ed it up.
I think that is over sanguine about how things were before the deluge this last week.
A week ago every single state managed bit of expenditure was under massive pressure to increase, while there was, and is, no unborrowed money to do it with. This week merely brings current reality to the immediate surface, by making a series of carefully thought out disastrous errors.
How will Labour run the finances remains a key question.
My guess is that they will say nothing much but hide, as usual, behind the idea that until in power we haven't seen the books.
You win elections with hope - if you tell people the reality you aren't going to win an election...
I had drinks with a literate lefty friend, in leafy Richmond Green last night, and his solution to our problems was “just tax the energy companies, they’re making so much profit”
And he’s got a degree and is in his 50s and seriously esteemed in a demanding career
People are utterly clueless as to how badly we are fucked, in basic ££ terms. If they do understand, they understand intuitively
The Ukraine crisis really has hit home tho. People know the nuclear details
The Treasury is proudly bragging that a "typical" first-time buyer, earning £30,000, can save £11,250 in stamp duty on a "representative" terraced house.
2nd like the LDs (Hoping for lots of MPs in the Tory wipeout)
Realistically, Bev, how many seats do you think the LDs can get?
Personally I'd love to see them become the official opposition and the few remaining Conservative MPs sent to one of Vlad's Gulags but I just can't see Team Davey getting above 50.
What say you?
If they do, they'd probably have a worse problem given many of their candidates would be unsuitable paper candidates who would be an embarrassment to the party. Jared O'Mara multiplied considerably.
Their vetting isn't the best as it is, or Layla Moran's - ahem - interesting past would have been exposed before it became an issue.
This may well be a problem for Labour too in a real landslide. They spent a lot of time up to 1997 carefully vetting all their candidates, and it did make a difference. But that was in the pre Twitter era.
I think you will find the Lib Dems have beefed up their approval process considerably.
The OBR report is going to show that their plans are unsustainable with no evidence of them working. They plan to do the politically unwise thing of cutting benefits whilst rewarding the rich. People with mortgages await the inevitable accelerated interest rate rises.
There’s no way out for them, is there?
The only way to deal with this is for their mps to vote with labour to stop the 45% reduction, demand Kwarteng resigns, amend the narrative of the mini budget as it did have some positives, and put Truss on probation
But I think it needs much more than the 45pc reduction reversing. It wasn't just that that spooked the markets. I don't think it was even the major factor. It was the most politically inept tho definitely.
Next week pictures of delegates at the Tory conference applauding ministers as they proclaim huge tax cuts for the very richest and benefits cuts for the very poorest will be beamed into TV sets up and down the country.
Tax cuts for the richest at the moment may be problematic. However the benefits proposal to increase benefits in line with earnings not inflation I expect will be more popular
Next week pictures of delegates at the Tory conference applauding ministers as they proclaim huge tax cuts for the very richest and benefits cuts for the very poorest will be beamed into TV sets up and down the country.
Tax cuts for the richest at the moment may be problematic. However the benefits proposal to increase benefits in line with earnings not inflation I expect will be more popular
Not if pensioners receive the triple lock
Benefits and pensions have to rise equally and anyone who cannot see that deserves to be thrown out of office
And I say this as a pensioner
Not if pensioners *alone* receive the triple lock, surely.
TBF the state pension *is* a 'benefit'. Paid by the same dept, topped up by the same dept ... which makes the unfair treatment even more inequitable.
Next week pictures of delegates at the Tory conference applauding ministers as they proclaim huge tax cuts for the very richest and benefits cuts for the very poorest will be beamed into TV sets up and down the country.
Tax cuts for the richest at the moment may be problematic. However the benefits proposal to increase benefits in line with earnings not inflation I expect will be more popular
Next week pictures of delegates at the Tory conference applauding ministers as they proclaim huge tax cuts for the very richest and benefits cuts for the very poorest will be beamed into TV sets up and down the country.
Tax cuts for the richest at the moment may be problematic. However the benefits proposal to increase benefits in line with earnings not inflation I expect will be more popular
Not if pensioners receive the triple lock
Benefits and pensions have to rise equally and anyone who cannot see that deserves to be thrown out of office
And I say this as a pensioner
Pensioners are the Tories core vote and of course most state Pensioners paid in via NI their whole working lives
Truss is going to stand up and essentially say “we froze benefit payments below inflation to pay for our tax cut to the rich”
How does anyone support that? Or sell that on the doorstep?
Plainly that is unsellable. The discussion in due course will move to the trickier question of what 5 or 10 year plan for public finances can possibly satisfy the voters, the IMF, the OBR, IFS, the Bank of England, the just about managing, the unions, benefits people, tax payers, pensioners, mortgage customers and the financial markets.
At some point Labour need such a plan covering tax, spend, borrowing and debt management. I think they may need a cleverer shadow chancellor than the present one.
Winning a majority or enough to govern after the GE looks like the easy bit to me.
The energy plan without the tax cuts would have broadly satisfied the markets and the voters. The markets and the polling were not terrible before the mini-budget.
It’s not that we’re in a really difficult situation and Truss/Kwarteng didn’t quite get it right. Things were stable and Truss/Kwarteng completely f***ed it up.
I think that is over sanguine about how things were before the deluge this last week.
A week ago every single state managed bit of expenditure was under massive pressure to increase, while there was, and is, no unborrowed money to do it with. This week merely brings current reality to the immediate surface, by making a series of carefully thought out disastrous errors.
How will Labour run the finances remains a key question.
My guess is that they will say nothing much but hide, as usual, behind the idea that until in power we haven't seen the books.
A week ago, we were in a much better position. Not saying it was all hunky-dory, but it was definitely way better. All of these “woe are us” claims just seem to be trying to minimise how much LT/KK have blown things up.
Those saying about how we were rooked before Truss and Kwarteng miss the main point.
A nation which had it's finances in as fragile a state as ours needed a chancellor whose first, last and only job was to retain the CONFIDENCE of our creditors. Sunak managed that, Kwarteng has utterly blown that and it will be a tough slog to get back. If there's an election in 23 or 24 and Truss/Kwarteng get back in we ARE headed to economic ruin if they don't reverse ferret.
I don't think the benefits proposal is that bigger deal politically as there is some residual loathing for 'benefit scroungers' that they can usefully exploit. The ruin of the conservative party will simply be the tax cut for the very rich.
The easiest way to cut benefit costs would be to freeze housing benefit for x years or even cut it a few percentage.
That would also have a side effect of reducing the pressure on rental prices everywhere. I suspect however the Government won't do that as Landlords are elderly and vote Tory provided the sweeties keep on coming.
Spot on. Housing benefit benefits landlords far more than those who need it, and is ridiculously expensive. A broken inflationary system, in a broken inflationary economy.
Nationwide announce house prices were unchanged in September but 9.5% higher than last September
These rises were unsustainable and this crisis has ended that and likely plunged many into negative equity for years to come
We have been here before
The prices people have been paying for properties round here has astounded me, people just seem to lose the plot when buying houses and have the daft idea that house prices will always rise when all evidence shows that they don't. Houses need to be seen as a place to live not an asset to make money on.
I agree house price rises since start of COVID have baffled me. But aren't most buyers just wanting a place to live, not doing it for speculation.
Very quiet on here about this, and buried on the bbc. Agenda? It’s not great, but it could be worse.
Feels about right. 'It could be worse' and it will be worse, sadly.'
So much worse. After the GFC bail outs the idea has taken hold that the government can magic away any problems if they want to. It then becomes a moral failure not to. If you can bail out the banks why not me?
So you pay my wages when I can’t work, you pay my heating bill when it goes up, you are responsible for my mortgage.
It’s going to take a lot of time and pain to realise that the magic money tree has been cut down and burnt to keep us warm. The markets have said enough.
We are heading back to reality, when people have to accept they are responsible for themselves. It’s going to be a hell of a detox.
Well said, we are indeed. Truss and Kwasi have the right prescription for getting us back to reality, but the country doesn't want to hear it, and it might be frankly too little, too late now.
If the country wants to live in delusion that the government can magic away all our problems, then lets give Starmer a go and see if he can do it. When he can't, maybe people will realise Truss was ahead of her time and finally pay attention to what she rightly wanted to do.
Can the Government magic away all our problems? No, but several of our current problems were created by the Government a week ago. This “right prescription” is going to cost us all (except the super-rich) more via inflation and higher borrowing costs than any savings to our tax bills. Everyone being poorer is going to hit growth.
No, the problems were already there, the Government just pulled out the rug and revealed the extend they'd been brushed under it until now.
The politics was absolutely mishandled though. The £2bn in the 45p tax change is neither here nor there, and if it attracts people to pay their tax here instead of abroad then it absolutely would be self-funding and then some, but while making economic sense it destroyed any "all in it together" narrative and allowed the media and opposition to pretend that all this was about that rounding error of a change.
Very quiet on here about this, and buried on the bbc. Agenda? It’s not great, but it could be worse.
Feels about right. 'It could be worse' and it will be worse, sadly.'
So much worse. After the GFC bail outs the idea has taken hold that the government can magic away any problems if they want to. It then becomes a moral failure not to. If you can bail out the banks why not me?
So you pay my wages when I can’t work, you pay my heating bill when it goes up, you are responsible for my mortgage.
It’s going to take a lot of time and pain to realise that the magic money tree has been cut down and burnt to keep us warm. The markets have said enough.
We are heading back to reality, when people have to accept they are responsible for themselves. It’s going to be a hell of a detox.
Well said, we are indeed. Truss and Kwasi have the right prescription for getting us back to reality, but the country doesn't want to hear it, and it might be frankly too little, too late now.
If the country wants to live in delusion that the government can magic away all our problems, then lets give Starmer a go and see if he can do it. When he can't, maybe people will realise Truss was ahead of her time and finally pay attention to what she rightly wanted to do.
And that reality is what? A bunch of tax cuts paid for by borrowing money? How is that facing up to "reality" it's more fantasy economics. Where are the spending cuts, when is the sainted NHS going to actually be forced to modernise? Where are the state pension reforms and taper for high earning retirees? Where was the NI on pension income announcement?
There was absolutely no "reality" in the Friday statement, you are seeing what you want to see, not what they actually announced which was a series of unfunded tax cuts and new spending commitments. The Truss "prescription" is no different to Corbyn, just from the other side of the political divide, Corbyn wanted to borrow hundreds of billions for nationalisation and spending, Truss is borrowing hundreds of billions for tax cuts.
Next week pictures of delegates at the Tory conference applauding ministers as they proclaim huge tax cuts for the very richest and benefits cuts for the very poorest will be beamed into TV sets up and down the country.
Tax cuts for the richest at the moment may be problematic. However the benefits proposal to increase benefits in line with earnings not inflation I expect will be more popular
Next week pictures of delegates at the Tory conference applauding ministers as they proclaim huge tax cuts for the very richest and benefits cuts for the very poorest will be beamed into TV sets up and down the country.
Tax cuts for the richest at the moment may be problematic. However the benefits proposal to increase benefits in line with earnings not inflation I expect will be more popular
Not if pensioners receive the triple lock
Benefits and pensions have to rise equally and anyone who cannot see that deserves to be thrown out of office
And I say this as a pensioner
Pensioners are the Tories core vote and of course most state Pensioners paid in via NI their whole working lives
Yes and their NI payments paid for their parents’ pensions plus all of the other state expenditure at the time. It’s my NI payments funding their pensions.
The OBR report is going to show that their plans are unsustainable with no evidence of them working. They plan to do the politically unwise thing of cutting benefits whilst rewarding the rich. People with mortgages await the inevitable accelerated interest rate rises.
There’s no way out for them, is there?
The only way to deal with this is for their mps to vote with labour to stop the 45% reduction, demand Kwarteng resigns, amend the narrative of the mini budget as it did have some positives, and put Truss on probation
But I think it needs much more than the 45pc reduction reversing. It wasn't just that that spooked the markets. I don't think it was even the major factor. It was the most politically inept tho definitely.
In order: The corporation tax reduction -> The basic rate reduction -> The NI reversal -> The announcement of absolutely no new taxes or other tax rises to compensate whatsoever.
I had drinks with a literate lefty friend, in leafy Richmond Green last night, and his solution to our problems was “just tax the energy companies, they’re making so much profit”
And he’s got a degree and is in his 50s and seriously esteemed in a demanding career
People are utterly clueless as to how badly we are fucked, in basic ££ terms. If they do understand, they understand intuitively
The Ukraine crisis really has hit home tho. People know the nuclear details
I had dinner with six friends and counterparts in finance last night, people who help to manage billion dollar portfolios and who are all personally better off as a result of the Special Fiscal Operation. Not left wing by any means. The level of contempt for this government was absolutely off the charts.
Next week pictures of delegates at the Tory conference applauding ministers as they proclaim huge tax cuts for the very richest and benefits cuts for the very poorest will be beamed into TV sets up and down the country.
An interesting possible side-effect of this will be that Labour could well be pushing at very open door with some kind of wealth tax as ordinary voters finally have enough of rich bankers and well-off pensioners being stuffed with cash whilst the rest can go swivel.
Do you actually believe that since March 2020 this Government has not given the average taxpayer thousands of pounds?
Truss is going to stand up and essentially say “we froze benefit payments below inflation to pay for our tax cut to the rich”
How does anyone support that? Or sell that on the doorstep?
Plainly that is unsellable. The discussion in due course will move to the trickier question of what 5 or 10 year plan for public finances can possibly satisfy the voters, the IMF, the OBR, IFS, the Bank of England, the just about managing, the unions, benefits people, tax payers, pensioners, mortgage customers and the financial markets.
At some point Labour need such a plan covering tax, spend, borrowing and debt management. I think they may need a cleverer shadow chancellor than the present one.
Winning a majority or enough to govern after the GE looks like the easy bit to me.
The energy plan without the tax cuts would have broadly satisfied the markets and the voters. The markets and the polling were not terrible before the mini-budget.
It’s not that we’re in a really difficult situation and Truss/Kwarteng didn’t quite get it right. Things were stable and Truss/Kwarteng completely f***ed it up.
I think that is over sanguine about how things were before the deluge this last week.
A week ago every single state managed bit of expenditure was under massive pressure to increase, while there was, and is, no unborrowed money to do it with. This week merely brings current reality to the immediate surface, by making a series of carefully thought out disastrous errors.
How will Labour run the finances remains a key question.
My guess is that they will say nothing much but hide, as usual, behind the idea that until in power we haven't seen the books.
You win elections with hope - if you tell people the reality you aren't going to win an election...
Much truth of course. But the poor old voters still want the country run well for more than 24 hours after an election is won.
And if the markets don't trust the Labour plan (Blair thought of this and SKS needs to as well) then it doesn't matter what they do, they will act before the election.
Very quiet on here about this, and buried on the bbc. Agenda? It’s not great, but it could be worse.
Feels about right. 'It could be worse' and it will be worse, sadly.'
So much worse. After the GFC bail outs the idea has taken hold that the government can magic away any problems if they want to. It then becomes a moral failure not to. If you can bail out the banks why not me?
So you pay my wages when I can’t work, you pay my heating bill when it goes up, you are responsible for my mortgage.
It’s going to take a lot of time and pain to realise that the magic money tree has been cut down and burnt to keep us warm. The markets have said enough.
We are heading back to reality, when people have to accept they are responsible for themselves. It’s going to be a hell of a detox.
Well said, we are indeed. Truss and Kwasi have the right prescription for getting us back to reality, but the country doesn't want to hear it, and it might be frankly too little, too late now.
If the country wants to live in delusion that the government can magic away all our problems, then lets give Starmer a go and see if he can do it. When he can't, maybe people will realise Truss was ahead of her time and finally pay attention to what she rightly wanted to do.
And that reality is what? A bunch of tax cuts paid for by borrowing money? How is that facing up to "reality" it's more fantasy economics. Where are the spending cuts, when is the sainted NHS going to actually be forced to modernise? Where are the state pension reforms and taper for high earning retirees? Where was the NI on pension income announcement?
There was absolutely no "reality" in the Friday statement, you are seeing what you want to see, not what they actually announced which was a series of unfunded tax cuts and new spending commitments. The Truss "prescription" is no different to Corbyn, just from the other side of the political divide, Corbyn wanted to borrow hundreds of billions for nationalisation and spending, Truss is borrowing hundreds of billions for tax cuts.
Fantasy economics is that we can tax and spend our way to growth.
The country has ratchetted up taxes to the highest level in 74 years and the notion that reversing some tax rises to the point they're still far higher than they were when Labour were last in office is "irresponsible" tax cutting is just a bad joke.
Cut taxes, grow the economy, and take a smaller slice of a bigger pie. That's how you solve it.
The Treasury is proudly bragging that a "typical" first-time buyer, earning £30,000, can save £11,250 in stamp duty on a "representative" terraced house.
The average terraced house in London was valued at £694,000 in 2021.
They are utterly delusional about the scale of the crisis in London's housing market.
"Average" in this context is a bit misleading. You can go to zone 6 and it isn't anywhere near that price.
You can buy a terraced house in a decent area like Caterham for £350k. If the rates go up to 7% I would guess the price will correct to something like £250k but, unless there is a depression and depopulation of London, the price will quickly rise back up again due to demand and lack of supply, particularly as there will be a total freezing of new build due to the build cost problem I have been constantly pointing out on this website.
If I was looking to buy in London I would do so at the point of the correction and when the market loses confidence. Those who did so in 2009 were the big winners, over the long term.
The Treasury is proudly bragging that a "typical" first-time buyer, earning £30,000, can save £11,250 in stamp duty on a "representative" terraced house.
The average terraced house in London was valued at £694,000 in 2021.
They are utterly delusional about the scale of the crisis in London's housing market.
The typical first-time buyer is not in London.
The real silliness is pretending that there are 'typical' first time buyers or 'representative' terraced houses. The housing market varies so wildly from place to place that those are utterly meaningless concepts unless you add geographical location.
Round here, for example, it would save you nothing as few terraced houses exceeded the old threshold anyway.
In London it would save you nothing as well, because if you're on £30k you can't buy a house.
In Stroud, it might save you about that amount, if you can find one.
People who can't grasp that shouldn't really be in charge of national economic policy.
Very quiet on here about this, and buried on the bbc. Agenda? It’s not great, but it could be worse.
Feels about right. 'It could be worse' and it will be worse, sadly.'
So much worse. After the GFC bail outs the idea has taken hold that the government can magic away any problems if they want to. It then becomes a moral failure not to. If you can bail out the banks why not me?
So you pay my wages when I can’t work, you pay my heating bill when it goes up, you are responsible for my mortgage.
It’s going to take a lot of time and pain to realise that the magic money tree has been cut down and burnt to keep us warm. The markets have said enough.
We are heading back to reality, when people have to accept they are responsible for themselves. It’s going to be a hell of a detox.
Well said, we are indeed. Truss and Kwasi have the right prescription for getting us back to reality, but the country doesn't want to hear it, and it might be frankly too little, too late now.
If the country wants to live in delusion that the government can magic away all our problems, then lets give Starmer a go and see if he can do it. When he can't, maybe people will realise Truss was ahead of her time and finally pay attention to what she rightly wanted to do.
And that reality is what? A bunch of tax cuts paid for by borrowing money? How is that facing up to "reality" it's more fantasy economics. Where are the spending cuts, when is the sainted NHS going to actually be forced to modernise? Where are the state pension reforms and taper for high earning retirees? Where was the NI on pension income announcement?
There was absolutely no "reality" in the Friday statement, you are seeing what you want to see, not what they actually announced which was a series of unfunded tax cuts and new spending commitments. The Truss "prescription" is no different to Corbyn, just from the other side of the political divide, Corbyn wanted to borrow hundreds of billions for nationalisation and spending, Truss is borrowing hundreds of billions for tax cuts.
I do not think Bart or myself are saying that. I certainly am not. Last Friday was deeply delusional and idiotic, done by people without even the most rudimentary understanding of economics or politics or even morality. Just beyond stupid and needing reversed. But that will not solve the problems we face.
Nationwide announce house prices were unchanged in September but 9.5% higher than last September
These rises were unsustainable and this crisis has ended that and likely plunged many into negative equity for years to come
We have been here before
The prices people have been paying for properties round here has astounded me, people just seem to lose the plot when buying houses and have the daft idea that house prices will always rise when all evidence shows that they don't. Houses need to be seen as a place to live not an asset to make money on.
The reason is that they're comparing it to renting. As long as you can pay the mortgage repayments, at the end of your mortgage term you own the house in full and no longer need to pay rent or mortgage. Thirty years of renting and you have nothing.
The difference in housing security that gives people is immense, and that's why people will pay any price they can to buy a house (and they'll pay as much as they can afford to buy the best house in the best area that they can afford)
I've been thinking about this quite a bit, and I think this is the reason why house prices will always rise in the UK to the limit of affordability, and it's why increasing supply won't easily bring down prices.
Very quiet on here about this, and buried on the bbc. Agenda? It’s not great, but it could be worse.
Feels about right. 'It could be worse' and it will be worse, sadly.'
So much worse. After the GFC bail outs the idea has taken hold that the government can magic away any problems if they want to. It then becomes a moral failure not to. If you can bail out the banks why not me?
So you pay my wages when I can’t work, you pay my heating bill when it goes up, you are responsible for my mortgage.
It’s going to take a lot of time and pain to realise that the magic money tree has been cut down and burnt to keep us warm. The markets have said enough.
We are heading back to reality, when people have to accept they are responsible for themselves. It’s going to be a hell of a detox.
Well said, we are indeed. Truss and Kwasi have the right prescription for getting us back to reality, but the country doesn't want to hear it, and it might be frankly too little, too late now.
If the country wants to live in delusion that the government can magic away all our problems, then lets give Starmer a go and see if he can do it. When he can't, maybe people will realise Truss was ahead of her time and finally pay attention to what she rightly wanted to do.
And that reality is what? A bunch of tax cuts paid for by borrowing money? How is that facing up to "reality" it's more fantasy economics. Where are the spending cuts, when is the sainted NHS going to actually be forced to modernise? Where are the state pension reforms and taper for high earning retirees? Where was the NI on pension income announcement?
There was absolutely no "reality" in the Friday statement, you are seeing what you want to see, not what they actually announced which was a series of unfunded tax cuts and new spending commitments. The Truss "prescription" is no different to Corbyn, just from the other side of the political divide, Corbyn wanted to borrow hundreds of billions for nationalisation and spending, Truss is borrowing hundreds of billions for tax cuts.
I do not think Bart or myself are saying that. I certainly am not. Last Friday was deeply delusional and idiotic, done by people without even the most rudimentary understanding of economics or politics or even morality. Just beyond stupid and needing reversed. But that will not solve the problems we face.
Actually I am saying that. Cut taxes, grow the economy, and take a smaller slice of a bigger pie. Borrow for the transition, because taxes are already choking the economy and higher than they've ever been.
What spending cuts should have been announced? Other than the traditional third rail of slashing welfare for pensioners, which I agree should be done but nobody will go near, there is not much left to cut. Taxes have risen as high as they'll go, spending has been cut as far as it will go, and we're still out of money.
The only way forward is to stop strangling the economy with taxes, let it grow, and take a smaller slice.
Very quiet on here about this, and buried on the bbc. Agenda? It’s not great, but it could be worse.
Feels about right. 'It could be worse' and it will be worse, sadly.'
So much worse. After the GFC bail outs the idea has taken hold that the government can magic away any problems if they want to. It then becomes a moral failure not to. If you can bail out the banks why not me?
So you pay my wages when I can’t work, you pay my heating bill when it goes up, you are responsible for my mortgage.
It’s going to take a lot of time and pain to realise that the magic money tree has been cut down and burnt to keep us warm. The markets have said enough.
We are heading back to reality, when people have to accept they are responsible for themselves. It’s going to be a hell of a detox.
Well said, we are indeed. Truss and Kwasi have the right prescription for getting us back to reality, but the country doesn't want to hear it, and it might be frankly too little, too late now.
If the country wants to live in delusion that the government can magic away all our problems, then lets give Starmer a go and see if he can do it. When he can't, maybe people will realise Truss was ahead of her time and finally pay attention to what she rightly wanted to do.
It's Truss and Kwarteng who are "living in delusion".
Putting forward a programme of tax cuts, when we're running a massive budget deficit, and deferring publication of any details of the "supply side measures" they claim will pay for them, without any independent analysis, is just nuts.
Even if those measures have some prospect of working, their effects will be in the medium term not the short term. The tax cuts are almost immediate.
The fiscal stimulus of the energy subsidy makes sense. It is temporary, and without it, there will be not just a recession, but a full blown depression. The markets understand that, which is why they weren't spooked pre-budget; it's far from ideal, but the alternatives are worse.
A strategy to promote growth in the medium term is not stupid; this isn't a strategy, it's just a mess.
Very quiet on here about this, and buried on the bbc. Agenda? It’s not great, but it could be worse.
Feels about right. 'It could be worse' and it will be worse, sadly.'
So much worse. After the GFC bail outs the idea has taken hold that the government can magic away any problems if they want to. It then becomes a moral failure not to. If you can bail out the banks why not me?
So you pay my wages when I can’t work, you pay my heating bill when it goes up, you are responsible for my mortgage.
It’s going to take a lot of time and pain to realise that the magic money tree has been cut down and burnt to keep us warm. The markets have said enough.
We are heading back to reality, when people have to accept they are responsible for themselves. It’s going to be a hell of a detox.
Well said, we are indeed. Truss and Kwasi have the right prescription for getting us back to reality, but the country doesn't want to hear it, and it might be frankly too little, too late now.
If the country wants to live in delusion that the government can magic away all our problems, then lets give Starmer a go and see if he can do it. When he can't, maybe people will realise Truss was ahead of her time and finally pay attention to what she rightly wanted to do.
Can the Government magic away all our problems? No, but several of our current problems were created by the Government a week ago. This “right prescription” is going to cost us all (except the super-rich) more via inflation and higher borrowing costs than any savings to our tax bills. Everyone being poorer is going to hit growth.
No, the problems were already there, the Government just pulled out the rug and revealed the extend they'd been brushed under it until now.
The politics was absolutely mishandled though. The £2bn in the 45p tax change is neither here nor there, and if it attracts people to pay their tax here instead of abroad then it absolutely would be self-funding and then some, but while making economic sense it destroyed any "all in it together" narrative and allowed the media and opposition to pretend that all this was about that rounding error of a change.
A government that depends on the kindness of foreigners for it’s continued funding is directly responsible for communicating changes to those foreigners in ways that will keep them happy.
It is not “the media”’s fauilt that the government made a compete hash of their PR, with massive consequential effects on the rest of the UK economy when the same government was repeatedly warned about the likely consequences, but chose to ignore those warnings.
& the changes did not “reveal” problems that had previously been brushed under the carpet. They took a tax setup that was (barely) self-funding & reducing the debt over time to one that would, in the abscence of other changes, lead to ever rising debt levels. This change in direction was fundamental to the bond market dislocation that followed & the failure of the government (or you, for that matter) to appreciate this is telling.
Those saying about how we were rooked before Truss and Kwarteng miss the main point.
A nation which had it's finances in as fragile a state as ours needed a chancellor whose first, last and only job was to retain the CONFIDENCE of our creditors. Sunak managed that, Kwarteng has utterly blown that and it will be a tough slog to get back. If there's an election in 23 or 24 and Truss/Kwarteng get back in we ARE headed to economic ruin if they don't reverse ferret.
Er, there’s no way they are “getting back in” bar nuclear meltdown = coalition govt or whatever
It’s over. Finito. Even if they pursue trussonomix the damage done to confidence/borrowing costs means Trussonomix won’t work, and even if the policy somehow works they haven’t got enough time to benefit
Plus: misery awaits
Starmer is a more nailed on prime minister than Jimmy Nail starring as “Nails Von Nail” in Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Nail
The Treasury is proudly bragging that a "typical" first-time buyer, earning £30,000, can save £11,250 in stamp duty on a "representative" terraced house.
The average terraced house in London was valued at £694,000 in 2021.
They are utterly delusional about the scale of the crisis in London's housing market.
The typical first-time buyer is not in London.
The real silliness is pretending that there are 'typical' first time buyers or 'representative' terraced houses. The housing market varies so wildly from place to place that those are utterly meaningless concepts unless you add geographical location.
Round here, for example, it would save you nothing as few terraced houses exceeded the old threshold anyway.
In London it would save you nothing as well, because if you're on £30k you can't buy a house.
In Stroud, it might save you about that amount, if you can find one.
People who can't grasp that shouldn't really be in charge of national economic policy.
Those saying about how we were rooked before Truss and Kwarteng miss the main point.
A nation which had it's finances in as fragile a state as ours needed a chancellor whose first, last and only job was to retain the CONFIDENCE of our creditors. Sunak managed that, Kwarteng has utterly blown that and it will be a tough slog to get back. If there's an election in 23 or 24 and Truss/Kwarteng get back in we ARE headed to economic ruin if they don't reverse ferret.
There are a lot of Tory apologists who are excusing this reckless govt. Party loyalty is fine, but at some point you have to realise the wrecking the country is too high a price to pay for political point scoring.
'Through the energy price guarantee the maximum [energy bill] will be £2,500' The prime minister incorrectly told more than one station that there would be a maximum energy bill of £2,500 after the energy price cap is lifted on 1 October.
This is a *major* fuck up. The price cap was badly understood in general. What people understood was that their bills might triple or quadruple - unpayable - but thanks to the cap have mererly doubled - unpayable.
But saying its a cash cap will enrage all the people paying more than £2,500. Who likely have bigger hiuuses, and likely were Tory supporters. The rout in the Tory numbers - and we have polls of 19 / 20 / 21 point deficits not just the Zahaw Bomba - is from firmly middle ground voters fleeing. This will make that worse.
The cap was 1900, its now 2500 with a 400 bill payment as well, whose bill is doubling?
For my 2 bedroom house with the cap and the bill payment I will be paying £90 less than last year for the same usage. Im sure there are millions of people living in small houses whose net energy costs will not now be going up compared to last winter.
Whose bill is doubling? What was the cap last winter?
This is the problem you Trussites have. You can keep saying "the sky is green" as passionately as you like. Then people look up and say "but it's blue"...
Next week pictures of delegates at the Tory conference applauding ministers as they proclaim huge tax cuts for the very richest and benefits cuts for the very poorest will be beamed into TV sets up and down the country.
Tax cuts for the richest at the moment may be problematic. However the benefits proposal to increase benefits in line with earnings not inflation I expect will be more popular
Next week pictures of delegates at the Tory conference applauding ministers as they proclaim huge tax cuts for the very richest and benefits cuts for the very poorest will be beamed into TV sets up and down the country.
Tax cuts for the richest at the moment may be problematic. However the benefits proposal to increase benefits in line with earnings not inflation I expect will be more popular
Not if pensioners receive the triple lock
Benefits and pensions have to rise equally and anyone who cannot see that deserves to be thrown out of office
And I say this as a pensioner
Pensioners are the Tories core vote and of course most state Pensioners paid in via NI their whole working lives
Forget core vote - do the right thing or get out of office
Very quiet on here about this, and buried on the bbc. Agenda? It’s not great, but it could be worse.
Feels about right. 'It could be worse' and it will be worse, sadly.'
So much worse. After the GFC bail outs the idea has taken hold that the government can magic away any problems if they want to. It then becomes a moral failure not to. If you can bail out the banks why not me?
So you pay my wages when I can’t work, you pay my heating bill when it goes up, you are responsible for my mortgage.
It’s going to take a lot of time and pain to realise that the magic money tree has been cut down and burnt to keep us warm. The markets have said enough.
We are heading back to reality, when people have to accept they are responsible for themselves. It’s going to be a hell of a detox.
Well said, we are indeed. Truss and Kwasi have the right prescription for getting us back to reality, but the country doesn't want to hear it, and it might be frankly too little, too late now.
If the country wants to live in delusion that the government can magic away all our problems, then lets give Starmer a go and see if he can do it. When he can't, maybe people will realise Truss was ahead of her time and finally pay attention to what she rightly wanted to do.
And that reality is what? A bunch of tax cuts paid for by borrowing money? How is that facing up to "reality" it's more fantasy economics. Where are the spending cuts, when is the sainted NHS going to actually be forced to modernise? Where are the state pension reforms and taper for high earning retirees? Where was the NI on pension income announcement?
There was absolutely no "reality" in the Friday statement, you are seeing what you want to see, not what they actually announced which was a series of unfunded tax cuts and new spending commitments. The Truss "prescription" is no different to Corbyn, just from the other side of the political divide, Corbyn wanted to borrow hundreds of billions for nationalisation and spending, Truss is borrowing hundreds of billions for tax cuts.
I do not think Bart or myself are saying that. I certainly am not. Last Friday was deeply delusional and idiotic, done by people without even the most rudimentary understanding of economics or politics or even morality. Just beyond stupid and needing reversed. But that will not solve the problems we face.
Actually I am saying that. Cut taxes, grow the economy, and take a smaller slice of a bigger pie. Borrow for the transition, because taxes are already choking the economy and higher than they've ever been.
What spending cuts should have been announced? Other than the traditional third rail of slashing welfare for pensioners, which I agree should be done but nobody will go near, there is not much left to cut. Taxes have risen as high as they'll go, spending has been cut as far as it will go, and we're still out of money.
The only way forward is to stop strangling the economy with taxes, let it grow, and take a smaller slice.
What they did was combine tax cuts with a massive uncosted and uncostable increase in public spending subsidising fuel costs. That is nuts. In the medium term I agree that taxes on incomes have risen too high but the market made it very clear that you cannot cut taxes and increase spending at the same time.
Those saying about how we were rooked before Truss and Kwarteng miss the main point.
A nation which had it's finances in as fragile a state as ours needed a chancellor whose first, last and only job was to retain the CONFIDENCE of our creditors. Sunak managed that, Kwarteng has utterly blown that and it will be a tough slog to get back. If there's an election in 23 or 24 and Truss/Kwarteng get back in we ARE headed to economic ruin if they don't reverse ferret.
There are a lot of Tory apologists who are excusing this reckless govt. Party loyalty is fine, but at some point you have to realise the wrecking the country is too high a price to pay for political point scoring.
I don't see any Tory apologists left on this site.
I'm a true believer in what Truss is doing. I was vehemently opposed to what Sunak did.
HYUFD was about the only loyalist left in Johnson at the end, and he seems to have washed his hand of Truss and wants Johnson back.
Everyone on this site is their own person. Nobody is just a party loyalist, at least not on the Tory side of the fence.
Nationwide announce house prices were unchanged in September but 9.5% higher than last September
These rises were unsustainable and this crisis has ended that and likely plunged many into negative equity for years to come
We have been here before
The prices people have been paying for properties round here has astounded me, people just seem to lose the plot when buying houses and have the daft idea that house prices will always rise when all evidence shows that they don't. Houses need to be seen as a place to live not an asset to make money on.
I agree house price rises since start of COVID have baffled me. But aren't most buyers just wanting a place to live, not doing it for speculation.
I wish that was the case, but people have massively overextending themselves just to get an extra bedroom or two. Housing is something that has always baffled me, I have never understood the desire to have a house that is far bigger than you actually need, even if I could afford it I wouldn't. When people buy 5 bedroom houses with massive mortgages just to have three extra rooms that they will never go in it seems madness to me. Unfortunately people forget about the previous housing crashes and young people are not taught about it. The idea that the crazy low interest rates of the last 14 years would always remain is plain stupid. The Government will get the blame and in many ways they should. I have always been in favour of a much more regulated mortgage market where 3 times income is a maximum legal rate. In the early 90s when I bought my first house I needed a £35,000 mortgage. The Halifax would not give it to me for 3 months whilst they monitored my income/spending to make sure I could afford it. Until this week huge mortgages were given out in 5 minutes. The Govenment deserves blame but so does the public for just losing all sense of value when it comes to housing.
Very quiet on here about this, and buried on the bbc. Agenda? It’s not great, but it could be worse.
Feels about right. 'It could be worse' and it will be worse, sadly.'
So much worse. After the GFC bail outs the idea has taken hold that the government can magic away any problems if they want to. It then becomes a moral failure not to. If you can bail out the banks why not me?
So you pay my wages when I can’t work, you pay my heating bill when it goes up, you are responsible for my mortgage.
It’s going to take a lot of time and pain to realise that the magic money tree has been cut down and burnt to keep us warm. The markets have said enough.
We are heading back to reality, when people have to accept they are responsible for themselves. It’s going to be a hell of a detox.
Well said, we are indeed. Truss and Kwasi have the right prescription for getting us back to reality, but the country doesn't want to hear it, and it might be frankly too little, too late now.
If the country wants to live in delusion that the government can magic away all our problems, then lets give Starmer a go and see if he can do it. When he can't, maybe people will realise Truss was ahead of her time and finally pay attention to what she rightly wanted to do.
I agree with @DavidL's analysis too, but I don't understand how anyone gets to the point where the policy of 'borrowing billions of pounds to pay for tax cuts for the rich' is in any way a solution to this problem.
Also, what is going on with subsidy of the energy bills of the rich? The strategic problem is with excessive energy consumption. All Truss is doing is borrowing billions to subsidise consumption. In Finland for instance they are closing down leisure centres and turning off streetlights for the winter. Which is the more responsible approach?
It seems to me that, far from being a Thatcher like figure, Truss is just a symptom of the problem. She cannot fix the problem because her government created it. The fix will probably have to come in the next but one government. Truss is just doing a superficial Thatcher act, I don't think anyone really believes in it.
Very quiet on here about this, and buried on the bbc. Agenda? It’s not great, but it could be worse.
Feels about right. 'It could be worse' and it will be worse, sadly.'
So much worse. After the GFC bail outs the idea has taken hold that the government can magic away any problems if they want to. It then becomes a moral failure not to. If you can bail out the banks why not me?
So you pay my wages when I can’t work, you pay my heating bill when it goes up, you are responsible for my mortgage.
It’s going to take a lot of time and pain to realise that the magic money tree has been cut down and burnt to keep us warm. The markets have said enough.
We are heading back to reality, when people have to accept they are responsible for themselves. It’s going to be a hell of a detox.
Well said, we are indeed. Truss and Kwasi have the right prescription for getting us back to reality, but the country doesn't want to hear it, and it might be frankly too little, too late now.
If the country wants to live in delusion that the government can magic away all our problems, then lets give Starmer a go and see if he can do it. When he can't, maybe people will realise Truss was ahead of her time and finally pay attention to what she rightly wanted to do.
Can the Government magic away all our problems? No, but several of our current problems were created by the Government a week ago. This “right prescription” is going to cost us all (except the super-rich) more via inflation and higher borrowing costs than any savings to our tax bills. Everyone being poorer is going to hit growth.
No, the problems were already there, the Government just pulled out the rug and revealed the extend they'd been brushed under it until now.
The politics was absolutely mishandled though. The £2bn in the 45p tax change is neither here nor there, and if it attracts people to pay their tax here instead of abroad then it absolutely would be self-funding and then some, but while making economic sense it destroyed any "all in it together" narrative and allowed the media and opposition to pretend that all this was about that rounding error of a change.
You seem to be blaming the media and opposition when it was the markets that gave their verdict . It seems strange that people who seem to like free markets only seem to like them when they agree with their opinion .
Starmer is doing very little and that's exactly the right thing. The Tories don't need help in creating their pie-in-the-sky hopes.
They're copying a Corbynite dream world. Once you reduce taxes, people will work automatically harder. Hmm? As bad as believing that Putin is a man of his word and can be trusted.
Very quiet on here about this, and buried on the bbc. Agenda? It’s not great, but it could be worse.
Feels about right. 'It could be worse' and it will be worse, sadly.'
So much worse. After the GFC bail outs the idea has taken hold that the government can magic away any problems if they want to. It then becomes a moral failure not to. If you can bail out the banks why not me?
So you pay my wages when I can’t work, you pay my heating bill when it goes up, you are responsible for my mortgage.
It’s going to take a lot of time and pain to realise that the magic money tree has been cut down and burnt to keep us warm. The markets have said enough.
We are heading back to reality, when people have to accept they are responsible for themselves. It’s going to be a hell of a detox.
Well said, we are indeed. Truss and Kwasi have the right prescription for getting us back to reality, but the country doesn't want to hear it, and it might be frankly too little, too late now.
If the country wants to live in delusion that the government can magic away all our problems, then lets give Starmer a go and see if he can do it. When he can't, maybe people will realise Truss was ahead of her time and finally pay attention to what she rightly wanted to do.
And that reality is what? A bunch of tax cuts paid for by borrowing money? How is that facing up to "reality" it's more fantasy economics. Where are the spending cuts, when is the sainted NHS going to actually be forced to modernise? Where are the state pension reforms and taper for high earning retirees? Where was the NI on pension income announcement?
There was absolutely no "reality" in the Friday statement, you are seeing what you want to see, not what they actually announced which was a series of unfunded tax cuts and new spending commitments. The Truss "prescription" is no different to Corbyn, just from the other side of the political divide, Corbyn wanted to borrow hundreds of billions for nationalisation and spending, Truss is borrowing hundreds of billions for tax cuts.
I do not think Bart or myself are saying that. I certainly am not. Last Friday was deeply delusional and idiotic, done by people without even the most rudimentary understanding of economics or politics or even morality. Just beyond stupid and needing reversed. But that will not solve the problems we face.
Actually I am saying that. Cut taxes, grow the economy, and take a smaller slice of a bigger pie. Borrow for the transition, because taxes are already choking the economy and higher than they've ever been.
What spending cuts should have been announced? Other than the traditional third rail of slashing welfare for pensioners, which I agree should be done but nobody will go near, there is not much left to cut. Taxes have risen as high as they'll go, spending has been cut as far as it will go, and we're still out of money.
The only way forward is to stop strangling the economy with taxes, let it grow, and take a smaller slice.
What they did was combine tax cuts with a massive uncosted and uncostable increase in public spending subsidising fuel costs. That is nuts. In the medium term I agree that taxes on incomes have risen too high but the market made it very clear that you cannot cut taxes and increase spending at the same time.
So what can you do?
Increase taxes yet again, strangle growth even more yet again?
If fixing the fundamentals of too high taxes can't be done, what can be done, other than manage decline by taxing working people more and more and having a state that's nothing but an NHS and pension provider?
Very quiet on here about this, and buried on the bbc. Agenda? It’s not great, but it could be worse.
Feels about right. 'It could be worse' and it will be worse, sadly.'
So much worse. After the GFC bail outs the idea has taken hold that the government can magic away any problems if they want to. It then becomes a moral failure not to. If you can bail out the banks why not me?
So you pay my wages when I can’t work, you pay my heating bill when it goes up, you are responsible for my mortgage.
It’s going to take a lot of time and pain to realise that the magic money tree has been cut down and burnt to keep us warm. The markets have said enough.
We are heading back to reality, when people have to accept they are responsible for themselves. It’s going to be a hell of a detox.
Well said, we are indeed. Truss and Kwasi have the right prescription for getting us back to reality, but the country doesn't want to hear it, and it might be frankly too little, too late now.
If the country wants to live in delusion that the government can magic away all our problems, then lets give Starmer a go and see if he can do it. When he can't, maybe people will realise Truss was ahead of her time and finally pay attention to what she rightly wanted to do.
And that reality is what? A bunch of tax cuts paid for by borrowing money? How is that facing up to "reality" it's more fantasy economics. Where are the spending cuts, when is the sainted NHS going to actually be forced to modernise? Where are the state pension reforms and taper for high earning retirees? Where was the NI on pension income announcement?
There was absolutely no "reality" in the Friday statement, you are seeing what you want to see, not what they actually announced which was a series of unfunded tax cuts and new spending commitments. The Truss "prescription" is no different to Corbyn, just from the other side of the political divide, Corbyn wanted to borrow hundreds of billions for nationalisation and spending, Truss is borrowing hundreds of billions for tax cuts.
Fantasy economics is that we can tax and spend our way to growth.
The country has ratchetted up taxes to the highest level in 74 years and the notion that reversing some tax rises to the point they're still far higher than they were when Labour were last in office is "irresponsible" tax cutting is just a bad joke.
Cut taxes, grow the economy, and take a smaller slice of a bigger pie. That's how you solve it.
Maybe, but it's also fantasy economics to make a bunch of unfunded tax cuts and push up borrowing heading into a recession. Again, I have no issue with tax cuts, I just want them to be properly funded from cuts or be able to see the maths that shows the measures will push up trend growth to enough of a degree to be worthwhile. The Friday statement had neither of these aspects and now the PM is going begging to the OBR this morning to produce the latter, which they probably can't do because none of these tax cuts will make a dent in economic growth.
The other policy we've got is a real terms cut in working age benefits while maintaining the triple lock. It's a reasonable saving but it really is going to put people in a position of choosing between eating and heating this winter.
I simply don't see how you can support any of these policies, if they were coming from a Labour government you'd be screaming bloody murder at borrowing an extra £45bn per year.
Replacing "Tax and Spend" with "Not Tax and Lots of Spend" doesn't work.
Spend? I have had it up to here with 12 years of cut after cut after cut to public services combined with cut after cut after cut to the safety net that our new PM revealingly considers to be "handouts". The pretence that they are anything but a pale shadow of what they were when your lot took over beggars belief.
Maybe, but it's also fantasy economics to make a bunch of unfunded tax cuts and push up borrowing heading into a recession. Again, I have no issue with tax cuts, I just want them to be properly funded from cuts or be able to see the maths that shows the measures will push up trend growth to enough of a degree to be worthwhile. The Friday statement had neither of these aspects and now the PM is going begging to the OBR this morning to produce the latter, which they probably can't do because none of these tax cuts will make a dent in economic growth.
The other policy we've got is a real terms cut in working age benefits while maintaining the triple lock. It's a reasonable saving but it really is going to put people in a position of choosing between eating and heating this winter.
I simply don't see how you can support any of these policies, if they were coming from a Labour government you'd be screaming bloody murder at borrowing an extra £45bn per year.
Max you have been on absolute fire these last few days!
Very quiet on here about this, and buried on the bbc. Agenda? It’s not great, but it could be worse.
Feels about right. 'It could be worse' and it will be worse, sadly.'
So much worse. After the GFC bail outs the idea has taken hold that the government can magic away any problems if they want to. It then becomes a moral failure not to. If you can bail out the banks why not me?
So you pay my wages when I can’t work, you pay my heating bill when it goes up, you are responsible for my mortgage.
It’s going to take a lot of time and pain to realise that the magic money tree has been cut down and burnt to keep us warm. The markets have said enough.
We are heading back to reality, when people have to accept they are responsible for themselves. It’s going to be a hell of a detox.
Well said, we are indeed. Truss and Kwasi have the right prescription for getting us back to reality, but the country doesn't want to hear it, and it might be frankly too little, too late now.
If the country wants to live in delusion that the government can magic away all our problems, then lets give Starmer a go and see if he can do it. When he can't, maybe people will realise Truss was ahead of her time and finally pay attention to what she rightly wanted to do.
And that reality is what? A bunch of tax cuts paid for by borrowing money? How is that facing up to "reality" it's more fantasy economics. Where are the spending cuts, when is the sainted NHS going to actually be forced to modernise? Where are the state pension reforms and taper for high earning retirees? Where was the NI on pension income announcement?
There was absolutely no "reality" in the Friday statement, you are seeing what you want to see, not what they actually announced which was a series of unfunded tax cuts and new spending commitments. The Truss "prescription" is no different to Corbyn, just from the other side of the political divide, Corbyn wanted to borrow hundreds of billions for nationalisation and spending, Truss is borrowing hundreds of billions for tax cuts.
I do not think Bart or myself are saying that. I certainly am not. Last Friday was deeply delusional and idiotic, done by people without even the most rudimentary understanding of economics or politics or even morality. Just beyond stupid and needing reversed. But that will not solve the problems we face.
Actually I am saying that. Cut taxes, grow the economy, and take a smaller slice of a bigger pie. Borrow for the transition, because taxes are already choking the economy and higher than they've ever been.
What spending cuts should have been announced? Other than the traditional third rail of slashing welfare for pensioners, which I agree should be done but nobody will go near, there is not much left to cut. Taxes have risen as high as they'll go, spending has been cut as far as it will go, and we're still out of money.
The only way forward is to stop strangling the economy with taxes, let it grow, and take a smaller slice.
What they did was combine tax cuts with a massive uncosted and uncostable increase in public spending subsidising fuel costs. That is nuts. In the medium term I agree that taxes on incomes have risen too high but the market made it very clear that you cannot cut taxes and increase spending at the same time.
So what can you do?
Increase taxes yet again, strangle growth even more yet again?
If fixing the fundamentals of too high taxes can't be done, what can be done, other than manage decline by taxing working people more and more and having a state that's nothing but an NHS and pension provider?
Make the tough choices. That's what being in government is about. Cut public sector and state pension entitlements. That's the big saving right now but the government are too scared to do it because it hits their voters.
Ppl were heading to rescue relatives, deliver aid to 🇷🇺-occup territories
Russia is losing the war, they're losing the war in the air and they're wasting effective air defence missiles to kill civilians and commit war crimes.
Even putting the morality to one side I don't see the gain for them. When they've finished using air defence missiles to kill civilians they will be more vulnerable to attack from Ukrainian jets and drones.
Nationwide announce house prices were unchanged in September but 9.5% higher than last September
These rises were unsustainable and this crisis has ended that and likely plunged many into negative equity for years to come
We have been here before
The prices people have been paying for properties round here has astounded me, people just seem to lose the plot when buying houses and have the daft idea that house prices will always rise when all evidence shows that they don't. Houses need to be seen as a place to live not an asset to make money on.
The reason is that they're comparing it to renting. As long as you can pay the mortgage repayments, at the end of your mortgage term you own the house in full and no longer need to pay rent or mortgage. Thirty years of renting and you have nothing.
The difference in housing security that gives people is immense, and that's why people will pay any price they can to buy a house (and they'll pay as much as they can afford to buy the best house in the best area that they can afford)
I've been thinking about this quite a bit, and I think this is the reason why house prices will always rise in the UK to the limit of affordability, and it's why increasing supply won't easily bring down prices.
Mortgage payments have also been cheaper than rent for the last 10 years. The identical house to mine, two doors down, costs £250 a month more in rent than I am paying on my mortgage.
That may well be about to change, of course, which will have a knock-on effect on demand.
The point about appreciation still holds, of course. If I had lived in that other house for 7 years, I would have paid around £12,000 more in rent, and not built up £125,000 in deposit.
Equally, I wouldn't have had to pay around £38,000 in repairs and improvements. So swings and roundabouts.
I had drinks with a literate lefty friend, in leafy Richmond Green last night, and his solution to our problems was “just tax the energy companies, they’re making so much profit”
And he’s got a degree and is in his 50s and seriously esteemed in a demanding career
People are utterly clueless as to how badly we are fucked, in basic ££ terms. If they do understand, they understand intuitively
The Ukraine crisis really has hit home tho. People know the nuclear details
Was it @kinabalu who has changed his mind about moving again?
I had drinks with a literate lefty friend, in leafy Richmond Green last night, and his solution to our problems was “just tax the energy companies, they’re making so much profit”
And he’s got a degree and is in his 50s and seriously esteemed in a demanding career
People are utterly clueless as to how badly we are fucked, in basic ££ terms. If they do understand, they understand intuitively
The Ukraine crisis really has hit home tho. People know the nuclear details
I had dinner with six friends and counterparts in finance last night, people who help to manage billion dollar portfolios and who are all personally better off as a result of the Special Fiscal Operation. Not left wing by any means. The level of contempt for this government was absolutely off the charts.
Oh, I don’t deny that
True Blue Tories in my family - who loathe the Left - are talking about the clowns in government and “give Labour a go”. So I’m not surprised by these polls. Truss and Kwarteng have had a full-on crash with an oncoming lorry: the bond market
The next election is lost for the Tories. Probably lost so badly they lose the one after that, as well
The OBR report is going to show that their plans are unsustainable with no evidence of them working. They plan to do the politically unwise thing of cutting benefits whilst rewarding the rich. People with mortgages await the inevitable accelerated interest rate rises.
There’s no way out for them, is there?
The only way to deal with this is for their mps to vote with labour to stop the 45% reduction, demand Kwarteng resigns, amend the narrative of the mini budget as it did have some positives, and put Truss on probation
But I think it needs much more than the 45pc reduction reversing. It wasn't just that that spooked the markets. I don't think it was even the major factor. It was the most politically inept tho definitely.
Quite right. The whole package - a raft of tax cuts that would merrily fund themselves cos that's what the Laffer Curve predicts - was always going to strike terror. This is sixth-form balloon-debate stuff and shows that Liz, and the Tory membership for that matter, are utterly out of their depth.
Next week pictures of delegates at the Tory conference applauding ministers as they proclaim huge tax cuts for the very richest and benefits cuts for the very poorest will be beamed into TV sets up and down the country.
Tax cuts for the richest at the moment may be problematic. However the benefits proposal to increase benefits in line with earnings not inflation I expect will be more popular
Next week pictures of delegates at the Tory conference applauding ministers as they proclaim huge tax cuts for the very richest and benefits cuts for the very poorest will be beamed into TV sets up and down the country.
Tax cuts for the richest at the moment may be problematic. However the benefits proposal to increase benefits in line with earnings not inflation I expect will be more popular
Not if pensioners receive the triple lock
Benefits and pensions have to rise equally and anyone who cannot see that deserves to be thrown out of office
And I say this as a pensioner
Pensioners are the Tories core vote and of course most state Pensioners paid in via NI their whole working lives
Forget core vote - do the right thing or get out of office
Very quiet on here about this, and buried on the bbc. Agenda? It’s not great, but it could be worse.
Feels about right. 'It could be worse' and it will be worse, sadly.'
So much worse. After the GFC bail outs the idea has taken hold that the government can magic away any problems if they want to. It then becomes a moral failure not to. If you can bail out the banks why not me?
So you pay my wages when I can’t work, you pay my heating bill when it goes up, you are responsible for my mortgage.
It’s going to take a lot of time and pain to realise that the magic money tree has been cut down and burnt to keep us warm. The markets have said enough.
We are heading back to reality, when people have to accept they are responsible for themselves. It’s going to be a hell of a detox.
Well said, we are indeed. Truss and Kwasi have the right prescription for getting us back to reality, but the country doesn't want to hear it, and it might be frankly too little, too late now.
If the country wants to live in delusion that the government can magic away all our problems, then lets give Starmer a go and see if he can do it. When he can't, maybe people will realise Truss was ahead of her time and finally pay attention to what she rightly wanted to do.
And that reality is what? A bunch of tax cuts paid for by borrowing money? How is that facing up to "reality" it's more fantasy economics. Where are the spending cuts, when is the sainted NHS going to actually be forced to modernise? Where are the state pension reforms and taper for high earning retirees? Where was the NI on pension income announcement?
There was absolutely no "reality" in the Friday statement, you are seeing what you want to see, not what they actually announced which was a series of unfunded tax cuts and new spending commitments. The Truss "prescription" is no different to Corbyn, just from the other side of the political divide, Corbyn wanted to borrow hundreds of billions for nationalisation and spending, Truss is borrowing hundreds of billions for tax cuts.
Fantasy economics is that we can tax and spend our way to growth.
The country has ratchetted up taxes to the highest level in 74 years and the notion that reversing some tax rises to the point they're still far higher than they were when Labour were last in office is "irresponsible" tax cutting is just a bad joke.
Cut taxes, grow the economy, and take a smaller slice of a bigger pie. That's how you solve it.
Maybe, but it's also fantasy economics to make a bunch of unfunded tax cuts and push up borrowing heading into a recession. Again, I have no issue with tax cuts, I just want them to be properly funded from cuts or be able to see the maths that shows the measures will push up trend growth to enough of a degree to be worthwhile. The Friday statement had neither of these aspects and now the PM is going begging to the OBR this morning to produce the latter, which they probably can't do because none of these tax cuts will make a dent in economic growth.
The other policy we've got is a real terms cut in working age benefits while maintaining the triple lock. It's a reasonable saving but it really is going to put people in a position of choosing between eating and heating this winter.
I simply don't see how you can support any of these policies, if they were coming from a Labour government you'd be screaming bloody murder at borrowing an extra £45bn per year.
Its a Catch-22 though Max.
If like me you believe we've gone well past the peak of the Laffer Curve then how do you properly fund tax cuts, when the spending on everything other than pensions has been cut as far as it can be cut, and high taxes are the root cause of your dilemma. Our welfare budget now is going on pensioners and nobody will touch that, all the easy cuts have been made, and we're still in trouble. Any tax rises to cut taxes is just shuffling the problem around. If you need cuts to grow the economy, then how do you self-fund those cuts, other than borrowing?
On your second point, I categorically do not support maintaining the triple lock. Not a bit.
Comments
I am telling everyone: there will be civil disorder this winter if benefits are not upgraded to take account of CoL whilst the rich are handed £1000s.
Have their moves yet by the likes of Gauke to start a new centre, right party that is sane?
Hazel Grove maybe a little more mixed, but Wragg is quite a character who I imagine has cultivated a personal vote which could maybe help mitigate national swing - 50/50, that one.
https://twitter.com/hmtreasury/status/1575493522265759744
The average terraced house in London was valued at £694,000 in 2021.
They are utterly delusional about the scale of the crisis in London's housing market.
The OBR report is going to show that their plans are unsustainable with no evidence of them working. They plan to do the politically unwise thing of cutting benefits whilst rewarding the rich. People with mortgages await the inevitable accelerated interest rate rises.
There’s no way out for them, is there?
Surprised that didn't manage to dissuade them (or else kept their peace, knowing it would blow up).
It’s not that we’re in a really difficult situation and Truss/Kwarteng didn’t quite get it right. Things were stable and Truss/Kwarteng completely f***ed it up.
Then the government has a choice - detail those cuts or see the markets continue to panic.
It's now been repurposed from that original purpose because of the increase in wholesale energy prices due to the price of gas...
If the country wants to live in delusion that the government can magic away all our problems, then lets give Starmer a go and see if he can do it. When he can't, maybe people will realise Truss was ahead of her time and finally pay attention to what she rightly wanted to do.
Germany announced a 200 billion euros package yesterday to subsidise energy and as long as the war continues matters only become worse and prolonged
It is a very sobering prospect and no matter who is in power we will all be poorer
A week ago every single state managed bit of expenditure was under massive pressure to increase, while there was, and is, no unborrowed money to do it with. This week merely brings current reality to the immediate surface, by making a series of carefully thought out disastrous errors.
How will Labour run the finances remains a key question.
My guess is that they will say nothing much but hide, as usual, behind the idea that until in power we haven't seen the books.
Impossible that this was accidental, or mistaken for a military target.
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1575760583651373061
Min. 23 🇺🇦 civilians killed, 28 wounded as Russia strikes humanitarian column in Zaporizhzhia. 16(!) S-300 missiles were launched
Ppl were heading to rescue relatives, deliver aid to 🇷🇺-occup territories
The times is reporting 25% of hospitals now have food banks for nursing (and other) staff
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/quarter-of-hospitals-have-set-up-food-banks-for-nurses-wnm0k65j8
Benefits and pensions have to rise equally and anyone who cannot see that deserves to be thrown out of office
And I say this as a pensioner
* Yes, subsidising energy is an emergency cushion but not a sensible long-term strategy. We need to aim to reduce energy demand for all the obvious reasons.
* To make that possible, benefits need to at least keep pace with inflation, as otherwise you're squeezing the poorest part of society twice over.
* Council tax reform is the easiest kind of wealth tax. Add two or three extra bands at the top, and levy a minimum charge on properties worth over £1m even if it's claimed that they are unoccupied. You can't evade council tax unless you sell up, which helps push house price inflation down.
* Yes, don't give tax advantages to unearned income. Not everyone has a private pension, and the impact on pension funds will be limited.
* Given full employment, possibly the minimum wage should also go up with inflation?
That would also have a side effect of reducing the pressure on rental prices everywhere. I suspect however the Government won't do that as Landlords are elderly and vote Tory provided the sweeties keep on coming.
And he’s got a degree and is in his 50s and seriously esteemed in a demanding career
People are utterly clueless as to how badly we are fucked, in basic ££ terms. If they do understand, they understand intuitively
The Ukraine crisis really has hit home tho. People know the nuclear details
TBF the state pension *is* a 'benefit'. Paid by the same dept, topped up by the same dept ... which makes the unfair treatment even more inequitable.
A nation which had it's finances in as fragile a state as ours needed a chancellor whose first, last and only job was to retain the CONFIDENCE of our creditors. Sunak managed that, Kwarteng has utterly blown that and it will be a tough slog to get back. If there's an election in 23 or 24 and Truss/Kwarteng get back in we ARE headed to economic ruin if they don't reverse ferret.
The politics was absolutely mishandled though. The £2bn in the 45p tax change is neither here nor there, and if it attracts people to pay their tax here instead of abroad then it absolutely would be self-funding and then some, but while making economic sense it destroyed any "all in it together" narrative and allowed the media and opposition to pretend that all this was about that rounding error of a change.
There was absolutely no "reality" in the Friday statement, you are seeing what you want to see, not what they actually announced which was a series of unfunded tax cuts and new spending commitments. The Truss "prescription" is no different to Corbyn, just from the other side of the political divide, Corbyn wanted to borrow hundreds of billions for nationalisation and spending, Truss is borrowing hundreds of billions for tax cuts.
The corporation tax reduction -> The basic rate reduction -> The NI reversal -> The announcement of absolutely no new taxes or other tax rises to compensate whatsoever.
And if the markets don't trust the Labour plan (Blair thought of this and SKS needs to as well) then it doesn't matter what they do, they will act before the election.
The country has ratchetted up taxes to the highest level in 74 years and the notion that reversing some tax rises to the point they're still far higher than they were when Labour were last in office is "irresponsible" tax cutting is just a bad joke.
Cut taxes, grow the economy, and take a smaller slice of a bigger pie. That's how you solve it.
If I was looking to buy in London I would do so at the point of the correction and when the market loses confidence. Those who did so in 2009 were the big winners, over the long term.
Round here, for example, it would save you nothing as few terraced houses exceeded the old threshold anyway.
In London it would save you nothing as well, because if you're on £30k you can't buy a house.
In Stroud, it might save you about that amount, if you can find one.
People who can't grasp that shouldn't really be in charge of national economic policy.
The difference in housing security that gives people is immense, and that's why people will pay any price they can to buy a house (and they'll pay as much as they can afford to buy the best house in the best area that they can afford)
I've been thinking about this quite a bit, and I think this is the reason why house prices will always rise in the UK to the limit of affordability, and it's why increasing supply won't easily bring down prices.
What spending cuts should have been announced? Other than the traditional third rail of slashing welfare for pensioners, which I agree should be done but nobody will go near, there is not much left to cut. Taxes have risen as high as they'll go, spending has been cut as far as it will go, and we're still out of money.
The only way forward is to stop strangling the economy with taxes, let it grow, and take a smaller slice.
Putting forward a programme of tax cuts, when we're running a massive budget deficit, and deferring publication of any details of the "supply side measures" they claim will pay for them, without any independent analysis, is just nuts.
Even if those measures have some prospect of working, their effects will be in the medium term not the short term. The tax cuts are almost immediate.
The fiscal stimulus of the energy subsidy makes sense. It is temporary, and without it, there will be not just a recession, but a full blown depression. The markets understand that, which is why they weren't spooked pre-budget; it's far from ideal, but the alternatives are worse.
A strategy to promote growth in the medium term is not stupid; this isn't a strategy, it's just a mess.
It is not “the media”’s fauilt that the government made a compete hash of their PR, with massive consequential effects on the rest of the UK economy when the same government was repeatedly warned about the likely consequences, but chose to ignore those warnings.
& the changes did not “reveal” problems that had previously been brushed under the carpet. They took a tax setup that was (barely) self-funding & reducing the debt over time to one that would, in the abscence of other changes, lead to ever rising debt levels. This change in direction was fundamental to the bond market dislocation that followed & the failure of the government (or you, for that matter) to appreciate this is telling.
It’s over. Finito. Even if they pursue trussonomix the damage done to confidence/borrowing costs means Trussonomix won’t work, and even if the policy somehow works they haven’t got enough time to benefit
Plus: misery awaits
Starmer is a more nailed on prime minister than Jimmy Nail starring as “Nails Von Nail” in Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Nail
I'm a true believer in what Truss is doing. I was vehemently opposed to what Sunak did.
HYUFD was about the only loyalist left in Johnson at the end, and he seems to have washed his hand of Truss and wants Johnson back.
Everyone on this site is their own person. Nobody is just a party loyalist, at least not on the Tory side of the fence.
Housing is something that has always baffled me, I have never understood the desire to have a house that is far bigger than you actually need, even if I could afford it I wouldn't. When people buy 5 bedroom houses with massive mortgages just to have three extra rooms that they will never go in it seems madness to me. Unfortunately people forget about the previous housing crashes and young people are not taught about it. The idea that the crazy low interest rates of the last 14 years would always remain is plain stupid. The Government will get the blame and in many ways they should. I have always been in favour of a much more regulated mortgage market where 3 times income is a maximum legal rate. In the early 90s when I bought my first house I needed a £35,000 mortgage. The Halifax would not give it to me for 3 months whilst they monitored my income/spending to make sure I could afford it. Until this week huge mortgages were given out in 5 minutes. The Govenment deserves blame but so does the public for just losing all sense of value when it comes to housing.
Also, what is going on with subsidy of the energy bills of the rich? The strategic problem is with excessive energy consumption. All Truss is doing is borrowing billions to subsidise consumption. In Finland for instance they are closing down leisure centres and turning off streetlights for the winter. Which is the more responsible approach?
It seems to me that, far from being a Thatcher like figure, Truss is just a symptom of the problem. She cannot fix the problem because her government created it. The fix will probably have to come in the next but one government. Truss is just doing a superficial Thatcher act, I don't think anyone really believes in it.
Sterling was a (second tier) reserve currency until last week. That may not be the case anymore...
They're copying a Corbynite dream world. Once you reduce taxes, people will work automatically harder. Hmm? As bad as believing that Putin is a man of his word and can be trusted.
Increase taxes yet again, strangle growth even more yet again?
If fixing the fundamentals of too high taxes can't be done, what can be done, other than manage decline by taxing working people more and more and having a state that's nothing but an NHS and pension provider?
The other policy we've got is a real terms cut in working age benefits while maintaining the triple lock. It's a reasonable saving but it really is going to put people in a position of choosing between eating and heating this winter.
I simply don't see how you can support any of these policies, if they were coming from a Labour government you'd be screaming bloody murder at borrowing an extra £45bn per year.
An amazing poll, but still a conference poll.
Let is see where we are in a fortnight or so.
Even putting the morality to one side I don't see the gain for them. When they've finished using air defence missiles to kill civilians they will be more vulnerable to attack from Ukrainian jets and drones.
As well as being evil it's just incredibly dumb.
Truss might be as mad as a box of frogs, but one of the few redeeming features of IEA libertarians is they're largely unconcerned with social issues.
That may well be about to change, of course, which will have a knock-on effect on demand.
The point about appreciation still holds, of course. If I had lived in that other house for 7 years, I would have paid around £12,000 more in rent, and not built up £125,000 in deposit.
Equally, I wouldn't have had to pay around £38,000 in repairs and improvements. So swings and roundabouts.
True Blue Tories in my family - who loathe the Left - are talking about the clowns in government and “give Labour a go”. So I’m not surprised by these polls. Truss and Kwarteng have had a full-on crash with an oncoming lorry: the bond market
The next election is lost for the Tories. Probably lost so badly they lose the one after that, as well
If like me you believe we've gone well past the peak of the Laffer Curve then how do you properly fund tax cuts, when the spending on everything other than pensions has been cut as far as it can be cut, and high taxes are the root cause of your dilemma. Our welfare budget now is going on pensioners and nobody will touch that, all the easy cuts have been made, and we're still in trouble. Any tax rises to cut taxes is just shuffling the problem around. If you need cuts to grow the economy, then how do you self-fund those cuts, other than borrowing?
On your second point, I categorically do not support maintaining the triple lock. Not a bit.