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The public really don’t rate Liz Truss – politicalbetting.com
The public really don’t rate Liz Truss – politicalbetting.com
Longstanding readers of PB know that Mike Smithson and myself love the Ipsos/MORI net satisfaction ratings because their data goes back nearly fifty years and it allows us to help put into context current polling and are usually a greater pointer to electoral outcomes.
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Instead we got Truss who has doubled down on the worst of the clown, continuing the incompetence and retaining the cabinet of numpties, whilst abandoning even those bits of the clown’s agenda that were popular.
What is remarkable is how predictable, and predicted, this all was (except for poor Leondamus, obvs). Like a slow motion car crash, as Truss rose through the leadership contest, went before the members, and then rushed into number ten to trash everything.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11319511/Kwasi-Kwarteng-told-PM-45p-tax-policy-sacking-him.html
What were they thinking?
1 They might have thought she was genuinely up to the job
...in which case, how could we ever trust their judgement again?
2 They might have thought she was genuinely better than Mordaunt
...in which case, how can such a group of MPs be so utterly devoid of leadership talent?
3 Some might have been Sunak supporters wanting to give Rishi an easier ride
...in which case, how could we trust such Machiavellian gamblers in the future? The risks of voting for such a candidate were ridiculously high, as we're now seeing
I can't see any other possibilities...
Johnson is significantly to blame for sowing the seeds of this fiasco, deliberately choosing weak deputies for fear of having competent ones.
So many of the MPs won’t have got beyond “top tier cabinet member but not Rishi”. Blaming Rishi for Johnson’s demise is ridiculous, given that everyone wanted him gone, but that is how these people seem to think. Rishi was also too sensible for the ERG crew, unwilling to buy into their warped world view.
But, as you suggest, possibly a few Rishi supporters imagined their membership wouldn’t be foolish enough to vote for Truss, and got her into the final ahead of Mordaunt? A big mistake, up there with those Labour MPs who helped put Corbyn in front of their members, never expecting they would vote for him!
Had the latter not happened, we may not have got landed with Johnson - certainly not in such a powerful position. So, really, follow the trail and it would seem that Margaret Beckett’s stupidity is to blame for everything that followed.
But the majority that want her out want different things. ERGers who want her out want to replace her with a true believer. Sunak supporters who want her out obviously want to replace her with Sunak. Each of these two groups must fear that removing Truss results in a replacement that is even worse from their perspective. So they may well not act to remove her. Nor is it in the interests of the “payroll” to remove her. They want to keep their ministerial positions.
Hunt’s appointment appears to have gone down well with economic commentators. The markets want a clear, believable plan backed up by numbers that add up. Hunt is offering to provide just that. The markets also want stability and would be spooked, once again, by a Truss defenestration without a pre-agreed convincing replacement “unity” PM. And so far that person has yet to be identified and may not exist.
So I’m betting on Truss/Hunt being given the chance to have a go at providing a period of realistic, responsible government which seeks to repair some of the damage wrought by the mini-budget and minimise Tory losses at the next General Election.
Of course there is a significant chance that Truss is forced out soon and certainly she could go before the next General Election. But I think she has a decent chance of hanging on for the reasons argued. Hence my view that Starmer to be next PM at current odds of 7.6 is a great value bet.
https://twitter.com/StephenMcDonell/status/1581471741137760259
And now that has been dealt with, cup of tea time
Remember also that Truss/Hunt is an inherently unstable arrangement - her a prisoner of someone from the other wing of the party.
I don’t buy the last paragraph.
There is no way Tory MPs would want to face an election campaign led by loopy Liz - unless she is capable of almost incredible transformation meantime. Hence betting on Starmer for next PM, rather than next but one, is a big gamble. As a trading bet it’s also poor, because if Truss/Hunt do manage to surprise dramatically on the upside, the less nailed on punters will think is a Labour win.
I believe even JRM thought that was a good idea but Truss cancelled it
The Conservatives have taken a step in the right direction but their problem remains. A risk is that Hunt runs things, matters improve economically and politically, and Truss regains undeserved confidence and starts spouting off bright ideas again. They do need to replace her. That also involves not giving the membership a vote.
Hunt could be the chap. Next election is almost certainly a loss, recent contest indicated he probably won't win that way, but could be a safe pair of hands (Michael Howard a decade and a half later) to steady the ship.
Does require the stubborn, particularly pro-Boris types, to not have the numbers to rock the boat, though.
Poland to buy 300 Chunmoo multiple rocket launchers
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=337961
Mini 3 door 3865mm
In a small car 450mm or 18 inches is a significant difference so the small mini is a very unique project if you want a standard base to work from (and extend to longer cars)
The reality is that the BMW 1 series isn’t a VW Up size it’s a Golf
And of course it’s not permanent as in 2030 or so all European cars will be electric only at which point if Oxford is going to be used it will be building electric cars
EdM is far more culpable because of his buy-yourself-a-vote changes to the leadership election rules.
To be honest this is now a big risk for both main parties. Recent elections in both parties have led to members making disastrous mistakes. Democracy is such a flawed system!!
Maybe the pre-1964 system of choosing Tory leaders was better... in its defence it arguably only got things seriously wrong once, in installing Alec Douglas-Home in October 1963...
Blaming Beckett for Truss made me smile, but I can see the chain!!
And that’s ignoring the “bedding down” rule that gives a new leader 1 year before complaints can be processed
Surely nobody can think it would be anything other than a complete car crash.
Con MPs must know they can't let Truss lead them into the next GE.
In which case, they need to get rid of her ASAP for two reasons:
1) To give the new leader maximum time pre GE.
2) To minimise the adverse impact on the Party inflicted by Truss. The shorter her tenure the less people will remember of it. Ditto the more time between her going and the GE.
’Project Fear was right all along’
Downbeat predictions by the Treasury and others on the economic consequences of leaving the EU, contemptuously dismissed at the time by Brexit campaigners as "Project Fear", have been on a long fuse, but they have turned out to be overwhelmingly correct, and if anything have underestimated both the calamitous loss of international standing and the scale of the damage that six years of policy confusion and ineptitude has imposed on the country.
…Perhaps I exaggerate, but not since the humiliation of the International Monetary Fund bailout in 1976 have we seen an unravelling quite as spectacular. This too from a Tory Government with a substantial overall majority. It is scarcely believable.
These are dark days for Tory MPs, who will be acutely aware that loss of reputation for economic competence is electoral poison for their party. As the former Chancellor, Philip Hammond, has already observed, that reputation has been comprehensively trashed by what's just occurred.
…We'll be paying the consequences in reduced standing and prosperity for years, if not decades, to come.
You can red the unpaywalled article here: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/10/15/project-fear-right-along/
Perhaps Truss' only hope is that the Conservative Party is unable to agree on an alternative PM.
@MoonRabbit thanks for your last reply, and actually I think you got to the heart of it:
“I guess it’s a far bigger equation, how good are your assets, how exposed are you to coming commitments like a demographic time bomb. In which instance all countries will be in a different place.”
This is it, exactly, for me, though I’d also add “and what’s your plan?”
The basic equation should be: do we have a credible plan that suggests the ROI of any borrowing exceeds the rate at which we are paying interest? If yes, borrow. If no, don’t. Right now, I suspect but don’t know, that the answer is no.
Part of the reason I don’t know is the lack of any independent (i.e. OBR) oversight. And I think that’s part of why the markets are flouncing.
I think you’re arguing that any independent oversight would confirm that the answer is no, and you might well be right. But Truss and Kwarteng bear full responsibility for the fact that we don’t know the answer, and that is destabilising.
There’s one more bit to this for me. Notwithstanding my basic equation above, there are some instances where you need to overspend briefly (the extend your credit card analogy: the car you commute in breaks down, you really have no choice but to fix it because otherwise your ability to earn money will greatly reduce). It is possible to argue that the energy price guarantee is such an instance (not protecting the public from the risk of v high energy prices would cause more severe economic damage than a temporary overspend). I’m arguing that, in cases like this, it could be possible to convince the markets to bear just such a temporary overspend if you have a really credible medium-term plan to pay things back (eg wealth taxes, later retirement, or some of pagan’s more radical cost cutting ideas).
So I think you’re arguing that there is nothing the govt could have done to make the borrowing for the energy price guarantee credible. I disagree, i think there are things that could have been done (cf McDonnell’s piece recently in the guardian https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/01/corbyn-mcdonnell-crash-the-pound-truss-free-market). The fact they weren’t done is entirely the govt’s fault.
(BTW I haven’t touched your argument that the energy price guarantee itself is a silly policy, as I just don’t know whether you’re right or wrong)
I think B is more likely. I don't think she will be able to handle the pressure - no one could. We are rapidly approaching the point where - whenever she emerges in public - she is just met with howls of scorn, laughter and derision.
Edit - there are lots of stories that are simply devastating for her. Like the one from Kwarteng yesterday that she forced him in to the 45p tax cut etc. And then she sacked him for the consequences of the policy. Without giving any explanation why. The disasters are happening faster than we are able to process or assess them.
The bad feeling towards Stride, the chairman of the Treasury select committee and a key figure in the Ready for Rishi campaign, resurfaced when the prime minister was appointing Jeremy Hunt as her new chancellor on Friday.
Truss and her aides had discussed bringing George Osborne back as a “break glass in case of emergency” candidate, an echo of Gordon Brown bringing Peter Mandelson into his cabinet. Sources say Truss contemplated giving Osborne the job “for about a second” before dismissing the idea.
But asked how she would have found him a parliamentary seat, she replied: “We could have created a vacancy in central Devon” — Stride’s seat since 2010.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/party-boy-rishi-sunak-still-wants-to-be-prime-minister-bf28vq5jn
The crucial question for the day - how should Welsh sparkling wine be rebranded?
Suggestions are "pefriog", "swigod", or "Eferw" (says the BBC). Meaning sparkling, bubbles and effervescent, respectively.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-62967258
It is a very exclusive product - 180k bottles a year only, allegedly.
https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2021-09/welsh-vineyards-and-tourism-report.pdf
We now why @Leon ran away to Pembrokeshire in the lockdown.
If they couldn’t work with Liz Truss, they shouldn’t have nominated her in the first place. Trashing your own leader, repeatedly and in public, within weeks of them being elected, is really not acceptable behaviour for MPs - doubly so for all those former minsters mouthing off to the broadsheets again today, who should really know better.
This isn’t a Corbyn situation, where a couple of dozen errant extremists in the Parliamentary party wanted to ‘widen the debate’, this was the result of a choice of two candidates from those nominated.
Sadly, some of us predicted this during the campaign, with the increasingly hyperbolic language used against Truss by the Sunak supporters, as the campaign progressed.
How do you stop the Tory membership voting for another candidate offering similar policies at the subsequent leadership election.
Because the Tory party has another fractions that a single party uniting candidate doesn’t exist
To replace Truss you need to ensure her replacement is appointed unopposed and it’s that more than anything else which is keeping Truss in place
If you impose a leader most Tory voters don't want let alone Tory members that is the risk Tory MPs take. Realistically only Wallace would do. Hunt can stay Chancellor but not become leader
Remainer Hunt's spending cuts and high tax agenda also has zero chance of regaining the Leave voting working class redwall voters Boris won now voting Labour again
That’s their first major international event in three years, and the date by which they need to commit to making it possible for competitors, journalists, and tourists, to visit the place on a temporary basis. F1 have made it clear to the Chinese, that they expect the race fee to be paid, even if there’s no race, and that it will be F1 that determines if the arrangements are acceptable.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-s-petulant-attempt-to-start-a-run-on-the-pound
1) Stop threatening a trade war with our biggest trading partner over Northern Ireland
2) Have a plan that shows percentage debt to GDP falling in the medium term
It's not that complicated. Will those measures make up for the costs of leaving the single market and customs union? Probably not and the lack of compensatory benefits to leaving bodes ill for our economic future. But I remain unconvinced by the disaster analysis.
You can't wish away economic reality.
Leaving our closest biggest market crushed our trade.
Borrowing to fund tax cuts crushed our economy.
Some day, people who can count will be in charge again.
Many of the same voters who believed the BoZo bullshit and voted for Brexit believed the Truss bullshit and voted for her.
They have proven that are not fit to choose again...
Irrational faith in the providence of Brexit has trapped adherents in cognitive dissonance and denial
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a-six-year-cult-has-the-tories-in-its-grip-only-defeat-can-free-them-0l58rqdwg
Do you think they have forgotten 2017 already?
The one bit of your logic that works is that, if the Tories allow her to lead the campaign, Starmer will win.
'Simon Le Bon. Or as they say in France Simon the good.'
The combination of hubris and stupidity in that suggestion is typical of her premiership.
And Stride is one of the more inoffensive MPs the Tories have. If he’s a hate figure for you, then the problem is with you.
So let's play your scenario. The return of Farage. Leading which party - is he even a REFUK member still? Let's further assume that he is. It's a party with no reach. With no agenda (I imagine the "reform" they want has just been torpedoed by Truss). And a "none of that matters" approach to everything that matters to voters instead focusing on migrants and woke.
Nope. Farage is not a threat.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/may/31/george-osborne-bskyb-jeremy-hunt
You can't create vacancies by withdrawing the whip you would have to bump him off or frame him for a crime.
I'm laying him and Sunak, at current prices. If Boris dips down below 15/1 again I'll lay him too.
But I doubt Georgie boy would have accepted. His reputation is decent, why trash it being associated with *that*
Weak attack ads from Labour
She knows what she wants to happen and has confidence it will but the actual process of getting from A to B is beyond her. She's a bit ruby slippers, but the real world requires a car.
Nobody's gonna slow me down, oh-no
I got to keep on movin'
Ain't nothin' gonna break Mel Stride
I'm running and I won't touch ground
Oh-no, I got to keep on movin'
The MPs are elected, and hence accountable to the whole electorate in due course, whereas Tory members are accountable to no-one for the clusterf**k they have inflicted upon us. It's noticeable on ConHome that many of the ardent Trussites have melted away and the rest are doubling down with alt-right conspiracy/betrayal nonsense.
Most sitting PM vacancies occur late in the term (election-winning PMs will stick around, save for health or scandal), so the voters will have our say before long, and if they lose the election, they are normally done.
Here's what I think happens. Another day with a deluge of shit. We have Sunday politics programmes and MPs being told back in their constituencies just how grave the situation is.
Tomorrow, Mrs Brady comes back to work with that big grin of his, and the avalanche of no confidence letters and MPs telling him she has to go make it clear that it's *over*.
There appears to be two camps - Sunak / Mordaunt and Ben Wallace. Suspect that "Brady is handing the PM the pearl-handed revolver" will very quickly merge the two together. Sunak as PM. Mordaunt Home Secretary, Wallace Foreign Secretary and Hunt Chancellor running the country as a Quad.
Done. Let the remaining lunatics complain from the back benches. FGS just get on with it. Before she has to soil herself at another PMQs
It would be nice to think the National People's Congress will tell him to do one, but they won't because they're a bunch of corrupt onwards.
However as I said yesterday I think you are wrong re Hunt. Yes he would lose the wingnuts to the right, but he is sane and that attracts moderate non political voters.
Farage would then be Leader of the Opposition
Personally I don't believe it. I suspect they both thought the 45p cut would send a 'good sign'. Which shows just how out of touch they are.
Truss: Kwasi, you were a brilliant Chancellor, with fantastic policies suggested by me - just the right medicine. You really are the bee's knees. And, you're my best mate ever.
Kwarteng: Why the fuck did you sack me then?
We would still have a trade deficit, still have a growth rate that is half what it was from 1950-1999, still be coping with the fallout from Covid and Ukraine.
And, politically, Conservative MPs would still be behaving like Conservative MP's.
Starmer is particularly good as being sort of ok.
Alternatively, let Mordaunt have a go - everyone knows that had she made the final round she'd have won it.
Besides which calling things that aren’t champagne “champagne” has the perverse effect of making them seem cheap rip offs because of the association with such. See Russian “champagne” or Australian (or pea pod) “burgundy”.
Wales has a good opportunity here because the ESW name is now firmly established for English fizz and won’t be shifted now but is a bit of a mouthful. Whereas Wales still has the opportunity to differentiate.
The influential Tory MP, Robert Halfon, said that the prime minister needs to hold a ‘fireside chat’ with the British people, who he said are frightened and dismayed..
His opinion on the dangers of lockdown seem to have altered somewhat since.