I'm not sure anyone knows how to control inflation in today's economy now, other than replaying the greatest hits from the 1990s and crossing fingers that a scorched earth policy does the trick. There's a total lack of thinking and leadership.
It's no wonder voters don't warm to that.
You supported the current lack of leadership.
This inflation is being lead by shortage in the supply of energy and food, fundamentally. Those shortages were being addressed by the Truss administration; Sunak's seems to actively embrace such shortages and demand a recession to stop the proles being able to put their heating on and buy so much food.
You're a nutcase on Truss.
That's generous of you, adding those last 2 words.
There seems to have been a transition from 'Truss didn't have time to see if her plans would work' - which ignores that she was too incompetent to stay in office for half the length of the previous shortest serving PM ever, which is a good indication she is not very good - to 'Truss's plans would definitely or were working' and I guess people just hate progress.
I didn't go into the Truss premiership thinking she'd be awful. On the contrary, I didn't really get why some people disliked her so much.
But her defenders continually rely on saying she was right about the need to do something different (despite her election platform being in part that Boris was right about everything and should not have gone*), and then maintaining that that means that what she was doing was right. Ssometimes they concede she had not prepared properly, but that's a pretty f*cking big part of taking things in a new direction, planning for it properly.
That's like saying I took the wrong turning and need to u-turn, and so I just turn into oncoming traffic without checking and cause a pile up, but that's ok because I did need to turn around.
* Sorry, i forgot, we're now pretending that mean old Rishi wouldn't let Boris change direction, and even though he was PM he really wanted to change to do what Truss planned.
Assuming I've managed to comprehend this rather incoherent sulky screed, you're accusing me of ramping up my 'Trussism' in the face of Sunak's increasing floundering, attempting to re-write history.
Actually my view has remained consistent. I always believed that Truss was right to seek to cut taxes, and that her programme of growth measures (which was fully released at a later stage) would have been extremely beneficial to our economy. She was right to warn about the dangers of windfall taxes on the energy industry, and the rise in Corporation Tax, both of which have already proven highly negative in the event. She correctly identified that we needed to produce more of our own food, and more of our own energy. It's easy to claim that such ideas are hardly rocket science, but if they are that easy, why isn't the current Government doing them?
You should try not to be such a snowflake about this subject, then it wouldn't look like you are personally offended every time someone disagrees with you and start getting into Truss like emotional defensiveness.
In fact, whilst you are a Truss defender on here and that was what prompted the preceding comment I replied to, I was thinking a bit more widely than that, which is why I spoke in generic terms and not just restricted to you, since you don't go as far as Truss herself or her political cohorts in rewriting things. That's why i said defenders, and not defender.
However, your defence of your own consistency does not in fact address things, since few argue that Truss may not have identified some issues that are right (not all, obviously). The issue, as has been done to death, is how she went about tryng to address them. Even you have admitted in the past that she did prepare her plans well enough (and incidentally it is the growing lack of that which lay behind the idea Tr.ussism is being ramped up - she, and others, are trying to make it seem strange that people did not go for her plan)
i class="Italic">That is the main complaint, it's not as though people have an inherent dislike of growing more food or love corporation taxes.
Truss, and to a lesser extent you, are still blaming people for not seeing how grand a plan it was and how visionary she was in highlighting problems, when the core problem is if she was shit at selling it, that's her fault. She was unable even to convince her own party about it. I don't see why the public are to be blamed because she cannot explain her own ideas when you think they are self evidently good.
Highlighting problems is good, she got some of that right. So what though, if her solutions were ill thought through? Which despite the rewriting, they obviously were hence the collapse.
I'd not mind if they tried Trussim Mark 2, done more competently, so it's not ideological - clearly what we are doing now is not working anymore.
1946 Take the Faroe Islands independent 1955 Keep Sweden driving on the left (despite drivers' seats also being on the left) 1956 Integrate Malta 1991 Don't rename Leningrad
But she was right about one thing: Britain needs growth and it’s pretty much the most important thing.
Few others politicians actually get that, certainly not Rishi, who seems to regard growth as an abstract quantity. Rishi is not stupid, but I do wonder whether he simply can’t - protected as he is by squillions - understand it on a primal level.
But she was right about one thing: Britain needs growth and it’s pretty much the most important thing.
Few others politicians actually get that, certainly not Rishi, who seems to regard growth as an abstract quantity. Rishi is not stupid, but I do wonder whether he simply can’t - protected as he is by squillions - understand it on a primal level.
What is really unfathomable is that both Rishi and Hunt had real world experience before politics in finance / business, but so many decisions they have made are straight out of Gordon Brown playbook with little regard that they are best not going to help growth, at worst, inhibit it further.
The NI++ was absolutely f##king moronic. Both politically and economically.
There also seem no ideas about how to tackle issues around productivity.
But she was right about one thing: Britain needs growth and it’s pretty much the most important thing.
Few others politicians actually get that, certainly not Rishi, who seems to regard growth as an abstract quantity. Rishi is not stupid, but I do wonder whether he simply can’t - protected as he is by squillions - understand it on a primal level.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
Too many here act like as Sunak is Not Truss that makes him right. It's easily possible to believe both Truss and Sunak were wrong.
Truss correctly diagnosed the illness but her prescription for addressing it was flawed and didn't work.
Sunak is like retreating into homeopathy and painkillers to numb the worst of the pain and take comforting actions without actually addressing the illness at all.
1946 Take the Faroe Islands independent 1955 Keep Sweden driving on the left (despite drivers' seats also being on the left) 1956 Integrate Malta 1991 Don't rename Leningrad
But she was right about one thing: Britain needs growth and it’s pretty much the most important thing.
Few others politicians actually get that, certainly not Rishi, who seems to regard growth as an abstract quantity. Rishi is not stupid, but I do wonder whether he simply can’t - protected as he is by squillions - understand it on a primal level.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
Too many here act like as Sunak is Not Truss that makes him right. It's easily possible to believe both Truss and Sunak were wrong.
Truss correctly diagnosed the illness but her prescription for addressing it was flawed and didn't work.
Sunak is like retreating into homeopathy and painkillers to numb the worst of the pain and take comforting actions without actually addressing the illness at all.
Neither course is correct.
Truss again was unfathomable. If she had said these are the underlying problem (which she wasn't wrong on), we need to tackle these as a medium / long term plan, thus my decisions will be guided by these principle as we move forward, she would have been fine. Instead it was right, do it yesterday, I don't have any idea how much any of these ideas will cost, just do it.
Isn't that what her hero Thatcher did? It wasn't done over the course of days, it was done over the course of 10 years.
1946 Take the Faroe Islands independent 1955 Keep Sweden driving on the left (despite drivers' seats also being on the left) 1956 Integrate Malta 1991 Don't rename Leningrad
1955. That's very interesting and helps to explain a scene in Wild Strawberries that has always puzzled me. US Virgin Islands are similar thanks to their Danish imperial past. The Americans have had 106 years to sort it out.
But she was right about one thing: Britain needs growth and it’s pretty much the most important thing.
Few others politicians actually get that, certainly not Rishi, who seems to regard growth as an abstract quantity. Rishi is not stupid, but I do wonder whether he simply can’t - protected as he is by squillions - understand it on a primal level.
What is really unfathomable is that both Rishi and Hunt had real world experience before politics in finance / business, but so many decisions they have made are straight out of Gordon Brown playbook with little regard that they are best not going to help growth, at worst, inhibit it further.
The NI++ was absolutely f##king moronic. Both politically and economically.
There also seem no ideas about how to tackle issues around productivity.
Rishi is the same age as me. He learned his economics at the peak moment of neo-liberal (or neo-classical) triumph, and he hasn’t had the time or curiosity to update.
He’s very intelligent, but I don’t think he’s very curious.
Compare with John Major, who is really only of middling intelligence but spent months reading up on foreign policy upon accepting the Foreign Secretaryship.
But she was right about one thing: Britain needs growth and it’s pretty much the most important thing.
Few others politicians actually get that, certainly not Rishi, who seems to regard growth as an abstract quantity. Rishi is not stupid, but I do wonder whether he simply can’t - protected as he is by squillions - understand it on a primal level.
What is really unfathomable is that both Rishi and Hunt had real world experience before politics in finance / business, but so many decisions they have made are straight out of Gordon Brown playbook with little regard that they are best not going to help growth, at worst, inhibit it further.
The NI++ was absolutely f##king moronic. Both politically and economically.
There also seem no ideas about how to tackle issues around productivity.
Rishi is the same age as me. He learned his economics at the peak moment of neo-liberal (or neo-classical) triumph, and he hasn’t had the time or curiosity to update.
He’s very intelligent, but I don’t think he’s very curious.
Compare with John Major, who is really only of middling intelligence but spent months reading up on foreign policy upon accepting the Foreign Secretaryship.
Also- Hunt at least built a business in the sense of creating a thing that wasn't there before and now it is, doing something. Has Rishi ever done anything that wasn't moving money around other people's doings? A free market economy needs people like that, and I can even live with the idea that we have to give them what seems like absurd sums of money. But it's definitely at the "crud economy" idea of things. (Yes, I've got excited by an idea that's new to me. Can I have a column at the Spectator?)
And, impolite as it is to mention it, one of the significant undercurrents of 2016 was that GDP growth wasn't that important- we should be like 1920s-1970s Ireland, poor but proud. Tax receipts on a couple of percent more GDP would come in awfully handy right now.
There seems to be debate about what was said before the officer shot the driver Out of interest, do the French police not wear body cams? It seems to me issuing every officer with a body cam is just the easiest way of ensuring if you get a situation like this you can quickly find out the truth.
I believe that is what happened with the guy who got shot when "hard stopped" by the police in London. His family were initially all for the police were wrong, bad, the officer needs to be charged, then they were shown the body cam footage and quickly became very quiet on the matter, as it is reported he was ramming the police cars / driving at officers.
Bodycams can help. But they are not The Answer.
Bodycams are pretty much ubiquitous in American policing. It turns out you can’t police the police into good behaviour.
It takes culture - ethical training, reinforced by a proactive policy in dealing with problems and a robust internal investigatory system.
Comments
In fact, whilst you are a Truss defender on here and that was what prompted the preceding comment I replied to, I was thinking a bit more widely than that, which is why I spoke in generic terms and not just restricted to you, since you don't go as far as Truss herself or her political cohorts in rewriting things. That's why i said defenders, and not defender.
However, your defence of your own consistency does not in fact address things, since few argue that Truss may not have identified some issues that are right (not all, obviously). The issue, as has been done to death, is how she went about tryng to address them. Even you have admitted in the past that she did prepare her plans well enough (and incidentally it is the growing lack of that which lay behind the idea Tr.ussism is being ramped up - she, and others, are trying to make it seem strange that people did not go for her plan)
i class="Italic">That is the main complaint, it's not as though people have an inherent dislike of growing more food or love corporation taxes.
Truss, and to a lesser extent you, are still blaming people for not seeing how grand a plan it was and how visionary she was in highlighting problems, when the core problem is if she was shit at selling it, that's her fault. She was unable even to convince her own party about it. I don't see why the public are to be blamed because she cannot explain her own ideas when you think they are self evidently good.
Highlighting problems is good, she got some of that right. So what though, if her solutions were ill thought through? Which despite the rewriting, they obviously were hence the collapse.
I'd not mind if they tried Trussim Mark 2, done more competently, so it's not ideological - clearly what we are doing now is not working anymore.
But she was right about one thing: Britain needs growth and it’s pretty much the most important thing.
Few others politicians actually get that, certainly not Rishi, who seems to regard growth as an abstract quantity. Rishi is not stupid, but I do wonder whether he simply can’t - protected as he is by squillions - understand it on a primal level.
The NI++ was absolutely f##king moronic. Both politically and economically.
There also seem no ideas about how to tackle issues around productivity.
Too many here act like as Sunak is Not Truss that makes him right. It's easily possible to believe both Truss and Sunak were wrong.
Truss correctly diagnosed the illness but her prescription for addressing it was flawed and didn't work.
Sunak is like retreating into homeopathy and painkillers to numb the worst of the pain and take comforting actions without actually addressing the illness at all.
Neither course is correct.
Isn't that what her hero Thatcher did? It wasn't done over the course of days, it was done over the course of 10 years.
He learned his economics at the peak moment of neo-liberal (or neo-classical) triumph, and he hasn’t had the time or curiosity to update.
He’s very intelligent, but I don’t think he’s very curious.
Compare with John Major, who is really only of middling intelligence but spent months reading up on foreign policy upon accepting the Foreign Secretaryship.
And, impolite as it is to mention it, one of the significant undercurrents of 2016 was that GDP growth wasn't that important- we should be like 1920s-1970s Ireland, poor but proud. Tax receipts on a couple of percent more GDP would come in awfully handy right now.
Bodycams are pretty much ubiquitous in American policing. It turns out you can’t police the police into good behaviour.
It takes culture - ethical training, reinforced by a proactive policy in dealing with problems and a robust internal investigatory system.
Maybe there is a lesson in there, somewhere.