I call my mail route that I started two weeks ago the Himalayas
I walk eleven to twelve miles and climb, according to my phone, between sixty-four and eighty-six flights of stairs a day
There's a street called Kandahar (hence Himalayas) where every single house on the top side of the street has at least fifteen steps up to the front door. There's one house on the bottom side
The street before it again has big staircases on one side, followed by long uphill pathways, about 50 metres, up to each house
My legs should look great
I see lots of funky chickens on my route. I herded this one back to its garden earlier
Historians will look back and see a point of origin to the current madness, one that explains how a new prime minister could see her administration fall apart in a matter of weeks.. When the textbooks of the future come to the chapter we are living through, in the autumn of 2022, they will start with the summer of 2016: Brexit and the specific delusion that drove it.
That self-inflicted [economic] contraction helps explain why Britain felt international shocks – surging inflation, for example – harder than most.
Brexit [also] broke the link between governance and reason, between policy and evidence. Until Brexit, politicians only rarely got away with defying the empirical facts or elementary logic.
But there is a less obvious way in which Brexit made the current great unravelling a political death foretold…call it the sovereignty delusion. The three weeks since Kwarteng delivered his mini-budget have seen the shattering of that delusion. For Truss and her now ex-chancellor were given the rudest of reminders that in our interdependent world there is no such thing as pure, untrammelled sovereignty.
As several economists have noted, Truss was acting as if Britain were the US, issuer of the world’s reserve currency, with markets falling over themselves to lend it money. Like Anthony Eden before her, she could not accept that Britain’s place is not what it was: it can never be sovereign like a king in a fairytale, able to bend the world to his will. That kind of sovereignty was always a fantasy, one that both fed Brexit and was fed by it.
She is finished, a hollow husk of a prime minister. But this is bigger than that. The Brexit bubble has burst. The country has seen that the Tory hallucination of an island able to command the tides was no more than a fever dream, and a dangerous one at that. We can pronounce Trussonomics dead. Bring on the day we can say the same of the delusion that spawned it.
Oh for goodness sake, Truss and Kwarteng cutting corporation tax to a rate still higher than Ireland and the top rate of income tax back to the level of the Blair years and still a higher rate than New Zealand and the US may not have been very responsible given the current economic situation but nor was it the next Suez. If the markets want to still behave like headless chickens even after a reversal of those tax cuts, let them!
The UK is a top 10 global economy, a G7 and G20 economy and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. We may not have an Empire or be a superpower anymore but we are not an impoverished, tiny backwater either!!
Freedland is a typical defeatist Remoaner of the worst kind
It 'is an excellent read. Brexit has screwed us all and the worst part is even your own party knew it. If you haven't noticed the slow slide in the UK travel more and you'll spot the difference
For me, the stand-out quote was: "For many MPs, it’s also a question of limiting the damage done to the Tory brand. “A bunch of libertarian entryists have taken over the Tory party,” one rebel MP said. “It’s our Corbyn problem. We now have a choice between landslide and annihilation. You can’t destroy the economy and our reputation for economic competence and expect anything less.” "
I don't think the entryist comparison really works. Whilst the existing Labour members also voted for Corbyn, the new members seemed to provide much of the enthusiasm and drive, with plenty of traditionally non-Labour folk backing him more than longer standing ones, with an entire organisation dedicated to backing him against the party 'establishment'.
Whilst Truss would I am sure love to point to her election by party members over any party establishment, has there been any influx of supporters? Or is it simply that her faction won?
Membership of the Conservative Party shot up by a third around the time of Brexit. Where the comparison perhaps breaks down is that Labour's members supported Corbyn, whereas the Conservative ones supported Boris, and voted for Liz Truss only to destroy Sunak, whom they blamed for Boris's demise.
When Johnson was on his way out and a third of the government resigned, Truss said the reason she wasn't resigning was that somebody had to be foreign secretary in case something important happened in foreign relations.
Historians will look back and see a point of origin to the current madness, one that explains how a new prime minister could see her administration fall apart in a matter of weeks.. When the textbooks of the future come to the chapter we are living through, in the autumn of 2022, they will start with the summer of 2016: Brexit and the specific delusion that drove it.
That self-inflicted [economic] contraction helps explain why Britain felt international shocks – surging inflation, for example – harder than most.
Brexit [also] broke the link between governance and reason, between policy and evidence. Until Brexit, politicians only rarely got away with defying the empirical facts or elementary logic.
But there is a less obvious way in which Brexit made the current great unravelling a political death foretold…call it the sovereignty delusion. The three weeks since Kwarteng delivered his mini-budget have seen the shattering of that delusion. For Truss and her now ex-chancellor were given the rudest of reminders that in our interdependent world there is no such thing as pure, untrammelled sovereignty.
As several economists have noted, Truss was acting as if Britain were the US, issuer of the world’s reserve currency, with markets falling over themselves to lend it money. Like Anthony Eden before her, she could not accept that Britain’s place is not what it was: it can never be sovereign like a king in a fairytale, able to bend the world to his will. That kind of sovereignty was always a fantasy, one that both fed Brexit and was fed by it.
She is finished, a hollow husk of a prime minister. But this is bigger than that. The Brexit bubble has burst. The country has seen that the Tory hallucination of an island able to command the tides was no more than a fever dream, and a dangerous one at that. We can pronounce Trussonomics dead. Bring on the day we can say the same of the delusion that spawned it.
Oh for goodness sake, Truss and Kwarteng cutting corporation tax to a rate still higher than Ireland and the top rate of income tax back to the level of the Blair years and still a higher rate than New Zealand and the US may not have been very responsible given the current economic situation but nor was it the next Suez. If the markets want to still behave like headless chickens even after a reversal of those tax cuts, let them!
The UK is a top 10 global economy, a G7 and G20 economy and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. We may not have an Empire or be a superpower anymore but we are not an impoverished, tiny backwater either!!
Freedland is a typical defeatist Remoaner of the worst kind
Remainers are definitely viewing this crisis as an opportunity for their cause.
Quite right too. If we were still in the EU and Britain’s economy was being mauled by some madcap policy making in Brussels do you think the ERG would be maintaining a studied and respectful silence?
Well, we thankfully skipped the single currency. Maybe one day Brexit supporters will go as quiet as British supporters of the single currency went after the eurozone crisis.
Historians will look back and see a point of origin to the current madness, one that explains how a new prime minister could see her administration fall apart in a matter of weeks.. When the textbooks of the future come to the chapter we are living through, in the autumn of 2022, they will start with the summer of 2016: Brexit and the specific delusion that drove it.
That self-inflicted [economic] contraction helps explain why Britain felt international shocks – surging inflation, for example – harder than most.
Brexit [also] broke the link between governance and reason, between policy and evidence. Until Brexit, politicians only rarely got away with defying the empirical facts or elementary logic.
But there is a less obvious way in which Brexit made the current great unravelling a political death foretold…call it the sovereignty delusion. The three weeks since Kwarteng delivered his mini-budget have seen the shattering of that delusion. For Truss and her now ex-chancellor were given the rudest of reminders that in our interdependent world there is no such thing as pure, untrammelled sovereignty.
As several economists have noted, Truss was acting as if Britain were the US, issuer of the world’s reserve currency, with markets falling over themselves to lend it money. Like Anthony Eden before her, she could not accept that Britain’s place is not what it was: it can never be sovereign like a king in a fairytale, able to bend the world to his will. That kind of sovereignty was always a fantasy, one that both fed Brexit and was fed by it.
She is finished, a hollow husk of a prime minister. But this is bigger than that. The Brexit bubble has burst. The country has seen that the Tory hallucination of an island able to command the tides was no more than a fever dream, and a dangerous one at that. We can pronounce Trussonomics dead. Bring on the day we can say the same of the delusion that spawned it.
Time to ignore the Brexit vote and re-join the EU, in other words.
That is not what he said. He said that Britain's delusion about bigging itself up as a world colossus has finally started to crumble. Brexit was the final act of that delusion.
I genuinely don't think many people think Britain is a world class colossus, even most of those who strike a boostering, optimistic tone about being more influential and powerful as an independent state. I think more people are content with the idea of Britain as being a significant power, which it remains, even though it will never again be a superpower. Some think that is better achieved outside the EU, and right or wrong I think the aim is a reasonable and realistic one. We can be overly pessimistic about our position, even now.
However, I do also think it is clear many of our institutions are rocking, our economy seems to be worse off than comparator nations too often for liking, and our government is increasingly unable to grasp what the problems are, or how to fix them, being prone to ideological distraction and self indulgence.
If you're the 5th biggest economy in the world you're pretty much automatically a first rate power regardless of what anyone thinks. [And of those five countries two of them aren't allowed to have unfettered military capabilities which puts you in the top 3 on that score].
The Russians thought that, militarily, they were a top dog. It is notable just how much they have been disabused of that notion.
We do not have to slide far to fall behind India and France and our economy (apparently) lacks growth. La Truss got that bit correct!
At this rate Truss won't even get the opportunity for her first scandal when her husband insisted on some bloody awful wallpaper in No.10, then she got drunk and appointed Sir Reginard Groper III as Chief Whip.
I understand Sir Reg has refused to serve under her
I wouldn’t be surprised if Hunt puts the top tax rate up in his austerity budget.
The symbolism matters.
I think he’ll go back to the Osborne/Cameron “all in this together” / “broadest shoulders carry the heaviest burden” framing.
I think it’s his only option, given that he’s going to have to impose real terms cuts to departments.
If he puts it back up to 50%, the level Brown raised it to and which Osborne cut, we would have a higher top income tax rate than France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Canada, Australia and the US, he wouldn't last 5 minutes. Tory backbenchers would demand his dismissal
Historians will look back and see a point of origin to the current madness, one that explains how a new prime minister could see her administration fall apart in a matter of weeks.. When the textbooks of the future come to the chapter we are living through, in the autumn of 2022, they will start with the summer of 2016: Brexit and the specific delusion that drove it.
That self-inflicted [economic] contraction helps explain why Britain felt international shocks – surging inflation, for example – harder than most.
Brexit [also] broke the link between governance and reason, between policy and evidence. Until Brexit, politicians only rarely got away with defying the empirical facts or elementary logic.
But there is a less obvious way in which Brexit made the current great unravelling a political death foretold…call it the sovereignty delusion. The three weeks since Kwarteng delivered his mini-budget have seen the shattering of that delusion. For Truss and her now ex-chancellor were given the rudest of reminders that in our interdependent world there is no such thing as pure, untrammelled sovereignty.
As several economists have noted, Truss was acting as if Britain were the US, issuer of the world’s reserve currency, with markets falling over themselves to lend it money. Like Anthony Eden before her, she could not accept that Britain’s place is not what it was: it can never be sovereign like a king in a fairytale, able to bend the world to his will. That kind of sovereignty was always a fantasy, one that both fed Brexit and was fed by it.
She is finished, a hollow husk of a prime minister. But this is bigger than that. The Brexit bubble has burst. The country has seen that the Tory hallucination of an island able to command the tides was no more than a fever dream, and a dangerous one at that. We can pronounce Trussonomics dead. Bring on the day we can say the same of the delusion that spawned it.
Oh for goodness sake, Truss and Kwarteng cutting corporation tax to a rate still higher than Ireland and the top rate of income tax back to the level of the Blair years and still a higher rate than New Zealand and the US may not have been very responsible given the current economic situation but nor was it the next Suez. If the markets want to still behave like headless chickens even after a reversal of those tax cuts, let them!
The UK is a top 10 global economy, a G7 and G20 economy and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. We may not have an Empire or be a superpower anymore but we are not an impoverished, tiny backwater either!!
Freedland is a typical defeatist Remoaner of the worst kind
It 'is an excellent read. Brexit has screwed us all and the worst part is even your own party knew it. If you haven't noticed the slow slide in the UK travel more and you'll spot the difference
Historians will look back and see a point of origin to the current madness, one that explains how a new prime minister could see her administration fall apart in a matter of weeks.. When the textbooks of the future come to the chapter we are living through, in the autumn of 2022, they will start with the summer of 2016: Brexit and the specific delusion that drove it.
That self-inflicted [economic] contraction helps explain why Britain felt international shocks – surging inflation, for example – harder than most.
Brexit [also] broke the link between governance and reason, between policy and evidence. Until Brexit, politicians only rarely got away with defying the empirical facts or elementary logic.
But there is a less obvious way in which Brexit made the current great unravelling a political death foretold…call it the sovereignty delusion. The three weeks since Kwarteng delivered his mini-budget have seen the shattering of that delusion. For Truss and her now ex-chancellor were given the rudest of reminders that in our interdependent world there is no such thing as pure, untrammelled sovereignty.
As several economists have noted, Truss was acting as if Britain were the US, issuer of the world’s reserve currency, with markets falling over themselves to lend it money. Like Anthony Eden before her, she could not accept that Britain’s place is not what it was: it can never be sovereign like a king in a fairytale, able to bend the world to his will. That kind of sovereignty was always a fantasy, one that both fed Brexit and was fed by it.
She is finished, a hollow husk of a prime minister. But this is bigger than that. The Brexit bubble has burst. The country has seen that the Tory hallucination of an island able to command the tides was no more than a fever dream, and a dangerous one at that. We can pronounce Trussonomics dead. Bring on the day we can say the same of the delusion that spawned it.
Oh for goodness sake, Truss and Kwarteng cutting corporation tax to a rate still higher than Ireland and the top rate of income tax back to the level of the Blair years and still a higher rate than New Zealand and the US may not have been very responsible given the current economic situation but nor was it the next Suez. If the markets want to still behave like headless chickens even after a reversal of those tax cuts, let them!
The UK is a top 10 global economy, a G7 and G20 economy and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. We may not have an Empire or be a superpower anymore but we are not an impoverished, tiny backwater either!!
Freedland is a typical defeatist Remoaner of the worst kind
It 'is an excellent read. Brexit has screwed us all and the worst part is even your own party knew it. If you haven't noticed the slow slide in the UK travel more and you'll spot the difference
Historians will look back and see a point of origin to the current madness, one that explains how a new prime minister could see her administration fall apart in a matter of weeks.. When the textbooks of the future come to the chapter we are living through, in the autumn of 2022, they will start with the summer of 2016: Brexit and the specific delusion that drove it.
That self-inflicted [economic] contraction helps explain why Britain felt international shocks – surging inflation, for example – harder than most.
Brexit [also] broke the link between governance and reason, between policy and evidence. Until Brexit, politicians only rarely got away with defying the empirical facts or elementary logic.
But there is a less obvious way in which Brexit made the current great unravelling a political death foretold…call it the sovereignty delusion. The three weeks since Kwarteng delivered his mini-budget have seen the shattering of that delusion. For Truss and her now ex-chancellor were given the rudest of reminders that in our interdependent world there is no such thing as pure, untrammelled sovereignty.
As several economists have noted, Truss was acting as if Britain were the US, issuer of the world’s reserve currency, with markets falling over themselves to lend it money. Like Anthony Eden before her, she could not accept that Britain’s place is not what it was: it can never be sovereign like a king in a fairytale, able to bend the world to his will. That kind of sovereignty was always a fantasy, one that both fed Brexit and was fed by it.
She is finished, a hollow husk of a prime minister. But this is bigger than that. The Brexit bubble has burst. The country has seen that the Tory hallucination of an island able to command the tides was no more than a fever dream, and a dangerous one at that. We can pronounce Trussonomics dead. Bring on the day we can say the same of the delusion that spawned it.
Oh for goodness sake, Truss and Kwarteng cutting corporation tax to a rate still higher than Ireland and the top rate of income tax back to the level of the Blair years and still a higher rate than New Zealand and the US may not have been very responsible given the current economic situation but nor was it the next Suez. If the markets want to still behave like headless chickens even after a reversal of those tax cuts, let them!
The UK is a top 10 global economy, a G7 and G20 economy and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. We may not have an Empire or be a superpower anymore but we are not an impoverished, tiny backwater either!!
Freedland is a typical defeatist Remoaner of the worst kind
It 'is an excellent read. Brexit has screwed us all and the worst part is even your own party knew it. If you haven't noticed the slow slide in the UK travel more and you'll spot the difference
Says a poster posting from France.
If he held the opposite opinion, would his location in France undermine that opinion?
Historians will look back and see a point of origin to the current madness, one that explains how a new prime minister could see her administration fall apart in a matter of weeks.. When the textbooks of the future come to the chapter we are living through, in the autumn of 2022, they will start with the summer of 2016: Brexit and the specific delusion that drove it.
That self-inflicted [economic] contraction helps explain why Britain felt international shocks – surging inflation, for example – harder than most.
Brexit [also] broke the link between governance and reason, between policy and evidence. Until Brexit, politicians only rarely got away with defying the empirical facts or elementary logic.
But there is a less obvious way in which Brexit made the current great unravelling a political death foretold…call it the sovereignty delusion. The three weeks since Kwarteng delivered his mini-budget have seen the shattering of that delusion. For Truss and her now ex-chancellor were given the rudest of reminders that in our interdependent world there is no such thing as pure, untrammelled sovereignty.
As several economists have noted, Truss was acting as if Britain were the US, issuer of the world’s reserve currency, with markets falling over themselves to lend it money. Like Anthony Eden before her, she could not accept that Britain’s place is not what it was: it can never be sovereign like a king in a fairytale, able to bend the world to his will. That kind of sovereignty was always a fantasy, one that both fed Brexit and was fed by it.
She is finished, a hollow husk of a prime minister. But this is bigger than that. The Brexit bubble has burst. The country has seen that the Tory hallucination of an island able to command the tides was no more than a fever dream, and a dangerous one at that. We can pronounce Trussonomics dead. Bring on the day we can say the same of the delusion that spawned it.
Oh for goodness sake, Truss and Kwarteng cutting corporation tax to a rate still higher than Ireland and the top rate of income tax back to the level of the Blair years and still a higher rate than New Zealand and the US may not have been very responsible given the current economic situation but nor was it the next Suez. If the markets want to still behave like headless chickens even after a reversal of those tax cuts, let them!
The UK is a top 10 global economy, a G7 and G20 economy and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. We may not have an Empire or be a superpower anymore but we are not an impoverished, tiny backwater either!!
Freedland is a typical defeatist Remoaner of the worst kind
It 'is an excellent read. Brexit has screwed us all and the worst part is even your own party knew it. If you haven't noticed the slow slide in the UK travel more and you'll spot the difference
Says a poster posting from France.
He is correct nonetheless
No, he isn't. You are a republican Irish nationalist who equally despises Britain, you have just as much an ideological agenda
I genuinely feel sorry for Truss. She seems like a nice enough lady who is woefully out of her depth. I suppose Rishi is the only realistic option if we aren’t to have a GE (and we aren’t).
I genuinely feel sorry for Truss. She seems like a nice enough lady who is woefully out of her depth. I suppose Rishi is the only realistic option if we aren’t to have a GE (and we aren’t).
And how does he win a coronation amongst MPs? Wallace is more realistic
I genuinely feel sorry for Truss. She seems like a nice enough lady who is woefully out of her depth. I suppose Rishi is the only realistic option if we aren’t to have a GE (and we aren’t).
I still don't see a way to make that happen though. Short of the 1922 requiring 200 nominations to stand as a leadership candidate (assuming Truss can be made to stand down), since we know they can set the threshold, I don't see how they prevent the Braverman/Badenoch crowd from wanting a go - they could argue a clean break is even more needed now. And Rishi loses if it goes to the members. I think HYUFD is probably right Wallace has more chance of a coronation - backed Truss, but not seen as a loon, and was liked by Members, so would not anger them as much if crowned.
Historians will look back and see a point of origin to the current madness, one that explains how a new prime minister could see her administration fall apart in a matter of weeks.. When the textbooks of the future come to the chapter we are living through, in the autumn of 2022, they will start with the summer of 2016: Brexit and the specific delusion that drove it.
That self-inflicted [economic] contraction helps explain why Britain felt international shocks – surging inflation, for example – harder than most.
Brexit [also] broke the link between governance and reason, between policy and evidence. Until Brexit, politicians only rarely got away with defying the empirical facts or elementary logic.
But there is a less obvious way in which Brexit made the current great unravelling a political death foretold…call it the sovereignty delusion. The three weeks since Kwarteng delivered his mini-budget have seen the shattering of that delusion. For Truss and her now ex-chancellor were given the rudest of reminders that in our interdependent world there is no such thing as pure, untrammelled sovereignty.
As several economists have noted, Truss was acting as if Britain were the US, issuer of the world’s reserve currency, with markets falling over themselves to lend it money. Like Anthony Eden before her, she could not accept that Britain’s place is not what it was: it can never be sovereign like a king in a fairytale, able to bend the world to his will. That kind of sovereignty was always a fantasy, one that both fed Brexit and was fed by it.
She is finished, a hollow husk of a prime minister. But this is bigger than that. The Brexit bubble has burst. The country has seen that the Tory hallucination of an island able to command the tides was no more than a fever dream, and a dangerous one at that. We can pronounce Trussonomics dead. Bring on the day we can say the same of the delusion that spawned it.
Oh for goodness sake, Truss and Kwarteng cutting corporation tax to a rate still higher than Ireland and the top rate of income tax back to the level of the Blair years and still a higher rate than New Zealand and the US may not have been very responsible given the current economic situation but nor was it the next Suez. If the markets want to still behave like headless chickens even after a reversal of those tax cuts, let them!
The UK is a top 10 global economy, a G7 and G20 economy and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. We may not have an Empire or be a superpower anymore but we are not an impoverished, tiny backwater either!!
Freedland is a typical defeatist Remoaner of the worst kind
It 'is an excellent read. Brexit has screwed us all and the worst part is even your own party knew it. If you haven't noticed the slow slide in the UK travel more and you'll spot the difference
Says a poster posting from France.
He is correct nonetheless
No, he isn't. You are a republican Irish nationalist who equally despises Britain, you have just as much an ideological agenda
It is people like you and your Party that turned my stomach. I do not despise Britain, but I am no longer prepared to swallow the horseh*t propaganda dished out by the delusional fools you daily subjugate yourself too.
I doubt I will ever vote Conservative again and it is the fault of people like you who appear to lack a spine and any form of conviction.
Historians will look back and see a point of origin to the current madness, one that explains how a new prime minister could see her administration fall apart in a matter of weeks.. When the textbooks of the future come to the chapter we are living through, in the autumn of 2022, they will start with the summer of 2016: Brexit and the specific delusion that drove it.
That self-inflicted [economic] contraction helps explain why Britain felt international shocks – surging inflation, for example – harder than most.
Brexit [also] broke the link between governance and reason, between policy and evidence. Until Brexit, politicians only rarely got away with defying the empirical facts or elementary logic.
But there is a less obvious way in which Brexit made the current great unravelling a political death foretold…call it the sovereignty delusion. The three weeks since Kwarteng delivered his mini-budget have seen the shattering of that delusion. For Truss and her now ex-chancellor were given the rudest of reminders that in our interdependent world there is no such thing as pure, untrammelled sovereignty.
As several economists have noted, Truss was acting as if Britain were the US, issuer of the world’s reserve currency, with markets falling over themselves to lend it money. Like Anthony Eden before her, she could not accept that Britain’s place is not what it was: it can never be sovereign like a king in a fairytale, able to bend the world to his will. That kind of sovereignty was always a fantasy, one that both fed Brexit and was fed by it.
She is finished, a hollow husk of a prime minister. But this is bigger than that. The Brexit bubble has burst. The country has seen that the Tory hallucination of an island able to command the tides was no more than a fever dream, and a dangerous one at that. We can pronounce Trussonomics dead. Bring on the day we can say the same of the delusion that spawned it.
Time to ignore the Brexit vote and re-join the EU, in other words.
That is not what he said. He said that Britain's delusion about bigging itself up as a world colossus has finally started to crumble. Brexit was the final act of that delusion.
I genuinely don't think many people think Britain is a world class colossus, even most of those who strike a boostering, optimistic tone about being more influential and powerful as an independent state. I think more people are content with the idea of Britain as being a significant power, which it remains, even though it will never again be a superpower. Some think that is better achieved outside the EU, and right or wrong I think the aim is reasonable and realistic one. We can be overly pessimistic about our position, even now.
However, I do also think it is clear many of our institutions are rocking, our economy seems to be worse off than comparator nations too often for liking, and our government is increasingly unable to grasp what the problems are, or how to fix them, being prone to ideological distraction and self indulgence.
Blair apparently said to Campbell that, after Hong Kong, Britain should give up no more territory. Campbell was, reportedly, a bit bemused by this order. Nonetheless, at that time, it felt as though Britain, while not a superpower, was a power in the world. Foremost of the Second Tier of Nations, perhaps. In 2003, it could be argued we were the second most powerful nation in the world.
What are we now? Our decline has been rapid, and even the Tories have forgotten Thatcher's words. They no longer believe that Britain has those sterling qualities. They no longer believe that this generation can match their grandfathers and great grandfathers in ability, in courage and in resolution.
Instead we're treated to a Tory Party at the end of their tether and Tory supporters believing that, because their party has not come to a solution, there are no solutions to be had. They are resigned to a shit future, because their party is shit. I believe that there are alternatives and that the UK can, once again, find a role in the world.
I actually think Starmer gets this and I think he can offer that alternative.
Also, I'm pretty drunk.
I agree. Just because the Tories have crashed their clown car into the wall of reality doesn't mean the country is also a write off. There are options elsewhere, though not Labour for me.
The mute Sir Ed found his tongue today and did a very good job of rubbishing Hunt's economic credentials. Including trying to reduce NI to 15p.
His lunacy in wanting to appoint Esther McVey as his deputy should be evidence enough that he's at least an olive or two short of a pizza
Historians will look back and see a point of origin to the current madness, one that explains how a new prime minister could see her administration fall apart in a matter of weeks.. When the textbooks of the future come to the chapter we are living through, in the autumn of 2022, they will start with the summer of 2016: Brexit and the specific delusion that drove it.
That self-inflicted [economic] contraction helps explain why Britain felt international shocks – surging inflation, for example – harder than most.
Brexit [also] broke the link between governance and reason, between policy and evidence. Until Brexit, politicians only rarely got away with defying the empirical facts or elementary logic.
But there is a less obvious way in which Brexit made the current great unravelling a political death foretold…call it the sovereignty delusion. The three weeks since Kwarteng delivered his mini-budget have seen the shattering of that delusion. For Truss and her now ex-chancellor were given the rudest of reminders that in our interdependent world there is no such thing as pure, untrammelled sovereignty.
As several economists have noted, Truss was acting as if Britain were the US, issuer of the world’s reserve currency, with markets falling over themselves to lend it money. Like Anthony Eden before her, she could not accept that Britain’s place is not what it was: it can never be sovereign like a king in a fairytale, able to bend the world to his will. That kind of sovereignty was always a fantasy, one that both fed Brexit and was fed by it.
She is finished, a hollow husk of a prime minister. But this is bigger than that. The Brexit bubble has burst. The country has seen that the Tory hallucination of an island able to command the tides was no more than a fever dream, and a dangerous one at that. We can pronounce Trussonomics dead. Bring on the day we can say the same of the delusion that spawned it.
Oh for goodness sake, Truss and Kwarteng cutting corporation tax to a rate still higher than Ireland and the top rate of income tax back to the level of the Blair years and still a higher rate than New Zealand and the US may not have been very responsible given the current economic situation but nor was it the next Suez. If the markets want to still behave like headless chickens even after a reversal of those tax cuts, let them!
The UK is a top 10 global economy, a G7 and G20 economy and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. We may not have an Empire or be a superpower anymore but we are not an impoverished, tiny backwater either!!
Freedland is a typical defeatist Remoaner of the worst kind
It 'is an excellent read. Brexit has screwed us all and the worst part is even your own party knew it. If you haven't noticed the slow slide in the UK travel more and you'll spot the difference
Says a poster posting from France.
He is correct nonetheless
No, he isn't. You are a republican Irish nationalist who equally despises Britain, you have just as much an ideological agenda
It is people like you and your Party that turned my stomach. I do not despise Britain, but I am no longer prepared to swallow the horseh*t propaganda dished out by the delusional fools you daily subjugate yourself too.
I doubt I will ever vote Conservative again and it is the fault of people like you who appear to lack a spine and any form of conviction.
Good, your posts are relentlessly anti Brexit and anti government and have been for years. So if you don't like the response, tough.
The idea that you would ever vote Conservative anyway is laughable!
I genuinely feel sorry for Truss. She seems like a nice enough lady who is woefully out of her depth. I suppose Rishi is the only realistic option if we aren’t to have a GE (and we aren’t).
And how does he win a coronation amongst MPs? Wallace is more realistic
I agree. If Rishi takes over with a coronation there could be 40 Truss supporters who might decide to stop supporting the government on many issues.
I genuinely feel sorry for Truss. She seems like a nice enough lady who is woefully out of her depth. I suppose Rishi is the only realistic option if we aren’t to have a GE (and we aren’t).
And how does he win a coronation amongst MPs? Wallace is more realistic
I agree. If Rishi takes over with a coronation there could be 40 Truss supporters who might decide to stop supporting the government on many issues.
And it only needs 20 ERG Tory MPs to nominate Braverman and that coronation is over before it began, and she goes to a membership ballot with Sunak
Historians will look back and see a point of origin to the current madness, one that explains how a new prime minister could see her administration fall apart in a matter of weeks.. When the textbooks of the future come to the chapter we are living through, in the autumn of 2022, they will start with the summer of 2016: Brexit and the specific delusion that drove it.
That self-inflicted [economic] contraction helps explain why Britain felt international shocks – surging inflation, for example – harder than most.
Brexit [also] broke the link between governance and reason, between policy and evidence. Until Brexit, politicians only rarely got away with defying the empirical facts or elementary logic.
But there is a less obvious way in which Brexit made the current great unravelling a political death foretold…call it the sovereignty delusion. The three weeks since Kwarteng delivered his mini-budget have seen the shattering of that delusion. For Truss and her now ex-chancellor were given the rudest of reminders that in our interdependent world there is no such thing as pure, untrammelled sovereignty.
As several economists have noted, Truss was acting as if Britain were the US, issuer of the world’s reserve currency, with markets falling over themselves to lend it money. Like Anthony Eden before her, she could not accept that Britain’s place is not what it was: it can never be sovereign like a king in a fairytale, able to bend the world to his will. That kind of sovereignty was always a fantasy, one that both fed Brexit and was fed by it.
She is finished, a hollow husk of a prime minister. But this is bigger than that. The Brexit bubble has burst. The country has seen that the Tory hallucination of an island able to command the tides was no more than a fever dream, and a dangerous one at that. We can pronounce Trussonomics dead. Bring on the day we can say the same of the delusion that spawned it.
Oh for goodness sake, Truss and Kwarteng cutting corporation tax to a rate still higher than Ireland and the top rate of income tax back to the level of the Blair years and still a higher rate than New Zealand and the US may not have been very responsible given the current economic situation but nor was it the next Suez. If the markets want to still behave like headless chickens even after a reversal of those tax cuts, let them!
The UK is a top 10 global economy, a G7 and G20 economy and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. We may not have an Empire or be a superpower anymore but we are not an impoverished, tiny backwater either!!
Freedland is a typical defeatist Remoaner of the worst kind
It 'is an excellent read. Brexit has screwed us all and the worst part is even your own party knew it. If you haven't noticed the slow slide in the UK travel more and you'll spot the difference
Says a poster posting from France.
He is correct nonetheless
No, he isn't. You are a republican Irish nationalist who equally despises Britain, you have just as much an ideological agenda
It is people like you and your Party that turned my stomach. I do not despise Britain, but I am no longer prepared to swallow the horseh*t propaganda dished out by the delusional fools you daily subjugate yourself too.
I doubt I will ever vote Conservative again and it is the fault of people like you who appear to lack a spine and any form of conviction.
Good, your posts are relentlessly anti Brexit and anti government and have been for years. So if you don't like the response, tough.
The idea that you would ever vote Conservative anyway is laughable!
I cannot Conservative because they no longer exist. The evidence is overwhelming and everyone except the hardcore knows it. All that remains is the zombie shell that was once a sensible political party. I am reminded of one of those caterpillars being eaten alive on the inside by maggots.
Britain's very own Trumpian revolution, run by incompetents, supported by delusional fools and gullible members. You should all be arrested for misconduct in public office.
I genuinely feel sorry for Truss. She seems like a nice enough lady who is woefully out of her depth. I suppose Rishi is the only realistic option if we aren’t to have a GE (and we aren’t).
And how does he win a coronation amongst MPs? Wallace is more realistic
I agree. If Rishi takes over with a coronation there could be 40 Truss supporters who might decide to stop supporting the government on many issues.
And it only needs 20 ERG Tory MPs to nominate Braverman and that coronation is over before it began, and she goes to a membership ballot with Sunak
Point of order, we don't know how many nominations would be required. In 2019 8 MPs were needed, in 2022 20 were needed. I think only 2 were needed in 2016. But despite the earlier joke it'd be hard to set it at a level where there could be no other candidates.
It looks as though the Mail is wavering leaving the Express alone in the ditch for Truss (as they were for Johnson). To be fair, even the tone of the Express header is defeated rather than defiant.
Who's up next? Penny Mordaunt, Rishi Sunak, Larry the Cat?
Larry the Cat clearly the most competent AND with seniority in Downing Street.
Pheobe Plummer, 21, who threw tomato soup over Van Gogh's Sunflowers "is believed to have attended St Mary’s School Ascot, the £15,000-a-term independent boarding school, before going to Mander Portman Woodward, a private college offering GCSE and A-Level courses".
Pheobe Plummer, 21, who threw tomato soup over Van Gogh's Sunflowers "is believed to have attended St Mary’s School Ascot, the £15,000-a-term independent boarding school, before going to Mander Portman Woodward, a private college offering GCSE and A-Level courses".
It'd be nice if people didn't adhere to stereotypes so often.
It looks as though the Mail is wavering leaving the Express alone in the ditch for Truss (as they were for Johnson). To be fair, even the tone of the Express header is defeated rather than defiant.
Who's up next? Penny Mordaunt, Rishi Sunak, Larry the Cat?
Larry the Cat clearly the most competent AND with seniority in Downing Street.
BUT strongly doubt he's a Tory.
Questions have been raised about Larry's competence at his actual job as a mouser. Wikipedia alleges he has been violent with other mousers, so may maintain his position through bullying and seniority alone, alas.
Pheobe Plummer, 21, who threw tomato soup over Van Gogh's Sunflowers "is believed to have attended St Mary’s School Ascot, the £15,000-a-term independent boarding school, before going to Mander Portman Woodward, a private college offering GCSE and A-Level courses".
It'd be nice if people didn't adhere to stereotypes so often.
I can't think of a posher name than Pheobe Plummer.
Pheobe Plummer, 21, who threw tomato soup over Van Gogh's Sunflowers "is believed to have attended St Mary’s School Ascot, the £15,000-a-term independent boarding school, before going to Mander Portman Woodward, a private college offering GCSE and A-Level courses".
It'd be nice if people didn't adhere to stereotypes so often.
I can't think of a posher name than Pheobe Plummer.
It looks as though the Mail is wavering leaving the Express alone in the ditch for Truss (as they were for Johnson). To be fair, even the tone of the Express header is defeated rather than defiant.
Who's up next? Penny Mordaunt, Rishi Sunak, Larry the Cat?
Larry the Cat clearly the most competent AND with seniority in Downing Street.
BUT strongly doubt he's a Tory.
Questions have been raised about Larry's competence at his actual job as a mouser. Wikipedia alleges he has been violent with other mousers, so may maintain his position through bullying and seniority alone, alas.
Fake news! Disseminated by Tory spin-chiropractors!!
Who wouldn't know competence if it up and kicked 'em in the ass.
"With the Prime Minister's latest U-turn, there is nothing left. She might as well leave now
Tory MPs have sabotaged Liz Truss's sensible economic plans. The Conservatives don't deserve to be in power. They may never come back Andrew Lilico" (£)
Pheobe Plummer, 21, who threw tomato soup over Van Gogh's Sunflowers "is believed to have attended St Mary’s School Ascot, the £15,000-a-term independent boarding school, before going to Mander Portman Woodward, a private college offering GCSE and A-Level courses".
It'd be nice if people didn't adhere to stereotypes so often.
I can't think of a posher name than Pheobe Plummer.
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson?
Ashamed to say, that if BJ had been privledged enough to matriculate at MY high school, he'd have caught considerable flack IF fellow students learned that he was named "de Pfeffel".
Similar (but much worse) than the "Fraser" episode where one of Freddy's classmates discovered that F's middle name was "Gaylord".
"With the Prime Minister's latest U-turn, there is nothing left. She might as well leave now
Tory MPs have sabotaged Liz Truss's sensible economic plans. The Conservatives don't deserve to be in power. They may never come back Andrew Lilico" (£)
The sensible economic plans that crashed the pound and spiked interest rates. When libertarian ideology clashes with reality, the ideologues say reality is wrong.
"Poppadom plot to out the PM: Rebel MPs gather around takeaway curries as they seek new leader to avert Tory 'wipeout' and discuss tactics
It was after 9pm on Monday when a takeaway was delivered to Portcullis House The 20 or so senior MPs gathered to discuss more tactics than personalities Most of those present were supporters of the former chancellor Rishi Sunak"
Historians will look back and see a point of origin to the current madness, one that explains how a new prime minister could see her administration fall apart in a matter of weeks.. When the textbooks of the future come to the chapter we are living through, in the autumn of 2022, they will start with the summer of 2016: Brexit and the specific delusion that drove it.
That self-inflicted [economic] contraction helps explain why Britain felt international shocks – surging inflation, for example – harder than most.
Brexit [also] broke the link between governance and reason, between policy and evidence. Until Brexit, politicians only rarely got away with defying the empirical facts or elementary logic.
But there is a less obvious way in which Brexit made the current great unravelling a political death foretold…call it the sovereignty delusion. The three weeks since Kwarteng delivered his mini-budget have seen the shattering of that delusion. For Truss and her now ex-chancellor were given the rudest of reminders that in our interdependent world there is no such thing as pure, untrammelled sovereignty.
As several economists have noted, Truss was acting as if Britain were the US, issuer of the world’s reserve currency, with markets falling over themselves to lend it money. Like Anthony Eden before her, she could not accept that Britain’s place is not what it was: it can never be sovereign like a king in a fairytale, able to bend the world to his will. That kind of sovereignty was always a fantasy, one that both fed Brexit and was fed by it.
She is finished, a hollow husk of a prime minister. But this is bigger than that. The Brexit bubble has burst. The country has seen that the Tory hallucination of an island able to command the tides was no more than a fever dream, and a dangerous one at that. We can pronounce Trussonomics dead. Bring on the day we can say the same of the delusion that spawned it.
Oh for goodness sake, Truss and Kwarteng cutting corporation tax to a rate still higher than Ireland and the top rate of income tax back to the level of the Blair years and still a higher rate than New Zealand and the US may not have been very responsible given the current economic situation but nor was it the next Suez. If the markets want to still behave like headless chickens even after a reversal of those tax cuts, let them!
The UK is a top 10 global economy, a G7 and G20 economy and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. We may not have an Empire or be a superpower anymore but we are not an impoverished, tiny backwater either!!
Freedland is a typical defeatist Remoaner of the worst kind
It 'is an excellent read. Brexit has screwed us all and the worst part is even your own party knew it. If you haven't noticed the slow slide in the UK travel more and you'll spot the difference
I returned to the UK yesterday with a bunch of Americans, and they are feeling better not only because their money goes so far but because the quite obvious chaos here - not just the government but the railways, postal service and the rest - makes them feel a little less bad about the state of their politics.
I genuinely feel sorry for Truss. She seems like a nice enough lady who is woefully out of her depth. I suppose Rishi is the only realistic option if we aren’t to have a GE (and we aren’t).
And how does he win a coronation amongst MPs? Wallace is more realistic
I agree. If Rishi takes over with a coronation there could be 40 Truss supporters who might decide to stop supporting the government on many issues.
And it only needs 20 ERG Tory MPs to nominate Braverman and that coronation is over before it began, and she goes to a membership ballot with Sunak
Not if the rules have been changed to require 100, or 200 nominations….
I genuinely feel sorry for Truss. She seems like a nice enough lady who is woefully out of her depth. I suppose Rishi is the only realistic option if we aren’t to have a GE (and we aren’t).
And how does he win a coronation amongst MPs? Wallace is more realistic
I agree. If Rishi takes over with a coronation there could be 40 Truss supporters who might decide to stop supporting the government on many issues.
And it only needs 20 ERG Tory MPs to nominate Braverman and that coronation is over before it began, and she goes to a membership ballot with Sunak
Point of order, we don't know how many nominations would be required. In 2019 8 MPs were needed, in 2022 20 were needed. I think only 2 were needed in 2016. But despite the earlier joke it'd be hard to set it at a level where there could be no other candidates.
Maybe, maybe not. Setting it at a level where there would be no Braverman candidature would be somewhat easier, however…
"With the Prime Minister's latest U-turn, there is nothing left. She might as well leave now
Tory MPs have sabotaged Liz Truss's sensible economic plans. The Conservatives don't deserve to be in power. They may never come back Andrew Lilico" (£)
The first lesson of British politics is that the Tories always come back. Labour made the mistake of thinking they wouldn’t, once before.
The really big question is whether Starmer will be up for an irreversible modernisation of our politics, from abolishing the Lords through a fair voting system.
Pheobe Plummer, 21, who threw tomato soup over Van Gogh's Sunflowers "is believed to have attended St Mary’s School Ascot, the £15,000-a-term independent boarding school, before going to Mander Portman Woodward, a private college offering GCSE and A-Level courses".
It'd be nice if people didn't adhere to stereotypes so often.
I can't think of a posher name than Pheobe Plummer.
Comments
I am Pat now
The symbolism matters.
I think he’ll go back to the Osborne/Cameron “all in this together” / “broadest shoulders carry the heaviest burden” framing.
I think it’s his only option, given that he’s going to have to impose real terms cuts to departments.
We do not have to slide far to fall behind India and France and our economy (apparently) lacks growth. La Truss got that bit correct!
I doubt I will ever vote Conservative again and it is the fault of people like you who appear to lack a spine and any form of conviction.
I can hardly imagine it actually happening
His lunacy in wanting to appoint Esther McVey as his deputy should be evidence enough that he's at least an olive or two short of a pizza
The idea that you would ever vote Conservative anyway is laughable!
Britain's very own Trumpian revolution, run by incompetents, supported by delusional fools and gullible members. You should all be arrested for misconduct in public office.
BUT strongly doubt he's a Tory.
Who wouldn't know competence if it up and kicked 'em in the ass.
Tory MPs have sabotaged Liz Truss's sensible economic plans. The Conservatives don't deserve to be in power. They may never come back
Andrew Lilico" (£)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/10/14/prime-ministers-latest-u-turn-nothing-left-might-leave-now/
Similar (but much worse) than the "Fraser" episode where one of Freddy's classmates discovered that F's middle name was "Gaylord".
The really big question is whether Starmer will be up for an irreversible modernisation of our politics, from abolishing the Lords through a fair voting system.