This constant leaking, or promotion, of swingeing tax cuts via the Tory media is pretty helpful to Labour, as it's giving Starmer and Reeves plenty of time to work out a coherent response. Which they will do. And if the tax cuts don't go ahead, then we are where we are.
Sort of on topic: If you were advising PM Sunak (honestly, of course), what date would you suggest?
And why?
(Knowing very little about the subject, I would advise waiting until after the New Year to even decide. If I knew more, I might suggest waiting until after a particular event, but I have no idea which event makes the most sense.)
Most Tories believe the key to winning back Middle England is to cut personal taxation in the next budget on March 6. A cabinet minister said: “The tax cuts in March will be enormous. Either they work or we leave Labour with a major headache.” Labour strategists think Sunak will cut 2p from the basic rate of income tax. He and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, are also considering scrapping inheritance tax, slashing or abolishing stamp duty and raising income tax thresholds, as Cummings suggested.
That has to be the port and Stilton talking, doesn't it?
I cannot think of something Labour would like more than for the Tories to announce an inheritance cut tax.
And abolishing stamp duty?
Abolishing stamp duty would actually be sensible. Ridiculous tax and has been for years. Abolishing IHT rather less so although simplifying it wouldn't do any harm.
the thing with IHT is there's a lot of people in the southeast of england whose houses are going to take them over the individual entitlement. it's not a tax that just the very rich pay, even if the majority don't pay it they still worry about paying it.
raising the threshold over £1M per person would make sense but it's also an easy target for labour (a tax cut for the top 5%)
Most Tories believe the key to winning back Middle England is to cut personal taxation in the next budget on March 6. A cabinet minister said: “The tax cuts in March will be enormous. Either they work or we leave Labour with a major headache.” Labour strategists think Sunak will cut 2p from the basic rate of income tax. He and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, are also considering scrapping inheritance tax, slashing or abolishing stamp duty and raising income tax thresholds, as Cummings suggested.
That has to be the port and Stilton talking, doesn't it?
I cannot think of something Labour would like more than for the Tories to announce an inheritance cut tax.
And abolishing stamp duty?
Abolishing stamp duty would actually be sensible. Ridiculous tax and has been for years. Abolishing IHT rather less so although simplifying it wouldn't do any harm.
The IHT problem is obvious: Avoidance is too easy and the rate is too high. A lower rate - 10%? and unavoidable and applying to all but small estates AND applying to the Duke of Westminster would be rational.
I don’t want tax cuts, I want properly working services such as the NHS, schools, councils etc. I want to see anyone who received money for substandard PPE pay the money back, plus interest. I want a government that tries to chart a sensible path between extreme views on things (trans rights, immigration etc) and more conservative views.
I’d quite like some boring competence and a boring period in politics, but to be fair, the years since 2019 have been exciting through external factors.
Sort of on topic: If you were advising PM Sunak (honestly, of course), what date would you suggest?
And why?
(Knowing very little about the subject, I would advise waiting until after the New Year to even decide. If I knew more, I might suggest waiting until after a particular event, but I have no idea which event makes the most sense.)
I’d go for May. Make your best case for why the Tories under Sunak should be given another 5 years (stop laughing at the back). Get the country back to the cycle of May elections. Avoid looking like you are just hanging on until the last in desperate hope of something, anything, turning up.
And if (when!) they lose you get the whole summer to elect your replacement in time for the September conference, plus you get the summer off…
Most Tories believe the key to winning back Middle England is to cut personal taxation in the next budget on March 6. A cabinet minister said: “The tax cuts in March will be enormous. Either they work or we leave Labour with a major headache.” Labour strategists think Sunak will cut 2p from the basic rate of income tax. He and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, are also considering scrapping inheritance tax, slashing or abolishing stamp duty and raising income tax thresholds, as Cummings suggested.
That has to be the port and Stilton talking, doesn't it?
I cannot think of something Labour would like more than for the Tories to announce an inheritance cut tax.
And abolishing stamp duty?
Abolishing stamp duty would actually be sensible. Ridiculous tax and has been for years. Abolishing IHT rather less so although simplifying it wouldn't do any harm.
the thing with IHT is there's a lot of people in the southeast of england whose houses are going to take them over the individual entitlement. it's not a tax that just the very rich pay, even if the majority don't pay it they still worry about paying it.
raising the threshold over £1M per person would make sense but it's also an easy target for labour (a tax cut for the top 5%)
Houses are, if a primary residence and left to a direct descendant, already given substantial exemptions.
Sort of on topic: If you were advising PM Sunak (honestly, of course), what date would you suggest?
And why?
(Knowing very little about the subject, I would advise waiting until after the New Year to even decide. If I knew more, I might suggest waiting until after a particular event, but I have no idea which event makes the most sense.)
If advising honestly you would advise the time when he could not possibly end up forming a government, because it is profoundly not in the national interest for this mob to go on, and it is in the Tory interest to take a break and have a chat with Ken Clarke about the future, and how to be statesmanlike, honourable and decent. Now would be right.
Most Tories believe the key to winning back Middle England is to cut personal taxation in the next budget on March 6. A cabinet minister said: “The tax cuts in March will be enormous. Either they work or we leave Labour with a major headache.” Labour strategists think Sunak will cut 2p from the basic rate of income tax. He and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, are also considering scrapping inheritance tax, slashing or abolishing stamp duty and raising income tax thresholds, as Cummings suggested.
That has to be the port and Stilton talking, doesn't it?
We have an annual deficit of £115 billion. Tax cuts are bonkers.
The government have been putting things in place so that they have options to call an election at any time next year. That's says they're looking for an opportunity to go to the country when things are not as bad as they are currently. Nothing is going to come along that will be big enough, so they'll run down the clock waiting. Decision time will come in September or so. Is it strategically best to go now or wait until December. This is all assuming the Tories don't collapse. Rwanda or a spectacularly bad local elections might do for Sunak.
I think May will be as good as it gets for the Tories. It would be sensible to go then. Hopeless optimism will win, though, and they'll hold on just in case something turns up. October or December is what I think.
Most Tories believe the key to winning back Middle England is to cut personal taxation in the next budget on March 6. A cabinet minister said: “The tax cuts in March will be enormous. Either they work or we leave Labour with a major headache.” Labour strategists think Sunak will cut 2p from the basic rate of income tax. He and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, are also considering scrapping inheritance tax, slashing or abolishing stamp duty and raising income tax thresholds, as Cummings suggested.
That has to be the port and Stilton talking, doesn't it?
I cannot think of something Labour would like more than for the Tories to announce an inheritance cut tax.
And abolishing stamp duty?
Abolishing stamp duty would actually be sensible. Ridiculous tax and has been for years. Abolishing IHT rather less so although simplifying it wouldn't do any harm.
the thing with IHT is there's a lot of people in the southeast of england whose houses are going to take them over the individual entitlement. it's not a tax that just the very rich pay, even if the majority don't pay it they still worry about paying it.
raising the threshold over £1M per person would make sense but it's also an easy target for labour (a tax cut for the top 5%)
Houses are, if a primary residence and left to a direct descendant, already given substantial exemptions.
Anyone inheriting a million pounds in whatever form can afford a bit of tax on their windfall.
If so, he would have been following most "founding fathers", including Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. (In his brilliant Cooper Union speech, Lincoln showed that a majority of "founding fathers" agreed that the federal government could ban slavery in the territories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper_Union_speech
And had banned it when the US government passed the Northwest Ordinance which, among other things, banned slavery in the vast area that covered what is now called the Midwest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Ordinance )
Most Tories believe the key to winning back Middle England is to cut personal taxation in the next budget on March 6. A cabinet minister said: “The tax cuts in March will be enormous. Either they work or we leave Labour with a major headache.” Labour strategists think Sunak will cut 2p from the basic rate of income tax. He and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, are also considering scrapping inheritance tax, slashing or abolishing stamp duty and raising income tax thresholds, as Cummings suggested.
That has to be the port and Stilton talking, doesn't it?
I cannot think of something Labour would like more than for the Tories to announce an inheritance cut tax.
And abolishing stamp duty?
Abolishing stamp duty would actually be sensible. Ridiculous tax and has been for years. Abolishing IHT rather less so although simplifying it wouldn't do any harm.
the thing with IHT is there's a lot of people in the southeast of england whose houses are going to take them over the individual entitlement. it's not a tax that just the very rich pay, even if the majority don't pay it they still worry about paying it.
raising the threshold over £1M per person would make sense but it's also an easy target for labour (a tax cut for the top 5%)
Houses are, if a primary residence and left to a direct descendant, already given substantial exemptions.
Anyone inheriting a million pounds in whatever form can afford a bit of tax on their windfall.
And that million pounds, [edit] if fully alleviated of IHT at present, includes a component specially biased towards pampering unearned capital gains on house prices, as inflated by Conservative government policy. So, quite so.
Most Tories believe the key to winning back Middle England is to cut personal taxation in the next budget on March 6. A cabinet minister said: “The tax cuts in March will be enormous. Either they work or we leave Labour with a major headache.” Labour strategists think Sunak will cut 2p from the basic rate of income tax. He and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, are also considering scrapping inheritance tax, slashing or abolishing stamp duty and raising income tax thresholds, as Cummings suggested.
That has to be the port and Stilton talking, doesn't it?
I cannot think of something Labour would like more than for the Tories to announce an inheritance cut tax.
And abolishing stamp duty?
Abolishing stamp duty would actually be sensible. Ridiculous tax and has been for years. Abolishing IHT rather less so although simplifying it wouldn't do any harm.
And tapering, too. The paperwork has to be done anyway ...
Off topic. The honest answer to “what was the cause of the Civil War?” is far more nuanced than saying in not many words, slavery. PB has done nothing yet to convince me otherwise. In fact the other way around, I suggest you all see it through the experience of Brexit to understand what the fight was about.
If the dividing line is strictly slavery or not to slavery, then why is a slave state like Delaware fighting for the Union? Because the dividing line wasn’t abolition of slavery, but happy or not to be in a federal tax regime.
There were numerous fault lines, but the actual root cause of the conflict is the fundamental principle of federal versus state, some wishing not to be in a federal economic commonwealth at all, that is taxed down here for a new harbour to be built up there, to the extent they would prefer their own governmental relationship, as in a separate country. And wanting out on that principle is such a feasible and reasoned proposition, on what grounds were they not allowed to breakaway and form their own non federal country without it coming to such a bloody conflict?
To say a “A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand' if far from meaningless spin, it literally meant that success comes from sticking together and to do anything else is to invoke disaster. But here’s the kicker, it was actually a lie, it was false ideology, the sort Brexit has crushed, to actually believe A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand . A Union cause on basis of a lie because the truth was a house divided could have gone separate ways and not been a disaster. Just like Brexit isn’t a disaster, but a huge opportunity.
The EU doesn’t even have federal taxation, but it was still too federal for many in UK. So we should have more respect for the confederate states “brexit yearnings” when we answer what the Civil War was about.
The American Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about Brexit. I feel good about putting you all correct on this. 😌
Sigh.
The border states divided according to the dominance of slavery in their society.
Throughout the South, there were those utterly opposed to slavery and the Confederacy.
Look up why there is a West Virginia. Or the State of Jones….
Even in the Deep South there were many who were anti-slavery and “Union men” - violence and coercion was used to keep them “down”.
Also plenty of Confederate sympathizers and/or appeasers in North - aka "Copperheads"; note that in 1861 the then-mayor of New York City advocated making NYC (then just Manhattan) a neutral quasi-independent statelet.
And even more pro-Southerners in Border states, which furnished plenty of soldiers and other resources for Confederacy; for example, almost certainly more West Virginians enlisted with CSA than with USA.
As for MoonRabbit's basic point, that "A House Divided" could have split with "success" however defined, well THAT's been a major topic of American history and historiography ever since before Fort Sumter. Perhaps a wee bit more involved (far less literal) than she suggests!
Posted this a couple days ago, but link below re: interesting alternative history written in early 1960s in time for the US Civil War Centennial. It's dated but still worth considering:
Greatest weakness, shared by virtually all US Civil War histories of that period = minimizing/marginalizing of the African American experience, for Blacks AND for entire nation.
Nations rarely reunite, after having fought their way apart.
IMHO, slavery would have got a massive boost worldwide, with a Confederate victory. It would cease to be viewed as an anachronism.The CSA, Brazil, and the Congo Free State would have been three big slave powers, allied to African and Middle Eastern nations who thought likewise. Paradoxically, the racist CSA would have been on the same side as African rulers.
What if the markets take fright at these tax cuts? What then?
Sunak replaced by Lord Cameron and Hunt replaced by Lord Osborne to calm the markets.
Hasn't been a Chancellor in the Lords since 1718. Admittedly, that was partly because until 1885 the traditional job of a Chancellor was to act as a deputy for the First Lord (if a lord) on financial matters.
Most Tories believe the key to winning back Middle England is to cut personal taxation in the next budget on March 6. A cabinet minister said: “The tax cuts in March will be enormous. Either they work or we leave Labour with a major headache.” Labour strategists think Sunak will cut 2p from the basic rate of income tax. He and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, are also considering scrapping inheritance tax, slashing or abolishing stamp duty and raising income tax thresholds, as Cummings suggested.
That has to be the port and Stilton talking, doesn't it?
We have an annual deficit of £115 billion. Tax cuts are bonkers.
You need to try thinking in much more short-term ways. Tsk.
Next you'll be havering about long term capital investment. Madness.
What if the markets take fright at these tax cuts? What then?
Different scenario. The Lizaster had just been appointed PM with a couple of years left to run. Rishi would have weeks left to run. The markets would express their alarm, effectively back Labour, and wait.
Russia whingeing about Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod and screaming about terrorism and Western provocations.
Honestly, they're such loathsome hypocrites. And cowards to boot.
If they want Ukraine to stop air attacks on them, then withdraw from Ukraine and end the war.
It's so easy I would have thought even that drunken overweight paederast Vladimir Putin would get it.
“The Russians entered this war under the childish delusion that they could kill Ukrainians, and not be killed themselves. At Donetsk, Bakhmut, Crimea, and half a hundred other places, they proceeded to put that rather naive theory into effect.
They sowed the wind, and now they shall reap the whirlwind.”
September is worth a punt. Summer hols; sunshine; Euros; Olympics; feelgood; back to school; polling station floor repolished. Olympics end 11 August. Possible.
"Brave Rishi goes to the polls in wake of massive terrorist outrage during Paris Olympics. Promises clampdown on small bombs."
Sort of on topic: If you were advising PM Sunak (honestly, of course), what date would you suggest?
And why?
(Knowing very little about the subject, I would advise waiting until after the New Year to even decide. If I knew more, I might suggest waiting until after a particular event, but I have no idea which event makes the most sense.)
Depends what you want to achieve, Prime Minister.
If it's to get the best likely result, May.
If it's to maximise the probability of the horse learning to sing, the small chance of actually winning, as late as you dare. But keep an ear out for singing in the stable.
If you want to have as long as possible as PM, December 19. Nobody will forgive you for an election with a Christmas break.
If you just want to make it stop, and who can blame you, I think February 15 is technically possible. Promise all those tax cuts without actually having to deliver them.
Revealed: Rishi Sunak’s secret talks to bring back Dominic Cummings
The PM was in discussions with Boris Johnson’s enforcer — then lost his nerve. Details of their conversations tell us plenty about how the Tory election script might unfold
Rishi Sunak’s political hero, the former chancellor Nigel Lawson, used to be fond of saying: “To govern is to choose.” It is a lesson Sunak has taken to heart with mixed success.
As 2024 dawns, it will soon be the electorate’s turn to choose, and their decision will be shaped by work going on behind the scenes for both the Tories and Labour.
Had the prime minister made a different choice at a meeting in July, the Tory campaign might have looked very different. That month, in utmost secrecy, Dominic Cummings, the former campaign director of Vote Leave and architect of Boris Johnson’s election victory in 2019, travelled to North Yorkshire to see Sunak. It was an audience hidden even from several members of the PM’s inner circle.
Over dinner, Sunak contemplated bringing the most controversial political aide of his generation in Downing Street back into the Conservative Party machine and sought his advice on how to win a general election. Cummings also went to see the PM and Liam Booth-Smith, his chief of staff, in London in December 2022, shortly after they moved into Downing Street.
No 10 has not denied Cummings’s account but stressed that no formal offer was made to him. “It was a broad discussion about politics and campaigning, no job was offered,” a Downing Street source said.
That month Cummings told Sunak to ditch his cautious approach to the economy and hold an emergency budget, reversing Johnson’s tax rises (which breached a 2019 manifesto pledge), and to almost double the threshold at which people pay the 40p rate of income tax from £50,271 to £100,000.
Both times Cummings told Sunak to settle the NHS strikes and make rebuilding the health service one of his core priorities, launching a national effort in the spirit of the Vaccine Taskforce. He also advocated leaving the European Convention on Human Rights.
Cummings’s price for joining the team was that Sunak put his authority behind radical Whitehall reforms. Sunak said: “The MPs and the media will go crazy. Your involvement has to be secret.”
Revealing details of this conversation for the first time, Cummings said: “He wanted a secret deal in which I delivered the election and he promised to take government seriously after the election. But I’d rather the Tories lose than continue in office without prioritising what’s important and the voters. The post-2016 Tories are summed up by the fact that Sunak, like Johnson, would rather lose than take government seriously. Both thought their MPs agreed with them, and both were right.”
A rather strange source for The Times to quote, but they’re 100% correct
“ A Labour tennis fan said: “ The biggest mistake the Tories made electorally was they panicked and got rid of Boris Johnson, who is a winner, and replaced him first with a lunatic [Liz Truss] and then with a loser [Sunak]. Sunak lost the leadership election, he got walloped in a succession of by-elections. He’s made a worst-ever start in a local election. He’s only waiting for his Wimbledon … the general election. That would give him the grand slam of losses.” “
Unless Rishi pulls off a win, which is still likely.
Well it’s not likely is it? Lab majority is 75% chance in the betting, and they’ve got NOM onside too in all probability
I think it is more likely than some think.
Labour don't have to do much to deprive the cons of a majority. in fact, just switchers from Con to Reform could do that. add in an increase for labour and they'll easily get the Tories down below 310. 310 is the point where the other parties can start forming a rainbow coalition.
anything around Lab 40%, Con 30%, LD 10% reform 8% would easily give labour a sizeable majority.
Within a couple, to form a government the Tories need 322 votes. Leaving 320 other votes (allowing 8 for SF and speaker). It is just possible, though unlikely that up to about 8 votes would come from the Prots. (These two groups richly deserve each other, but the poor old public don't). The Tories could possibly therefore scrape by with 314 seats + 8 Prots. If they lose 52 seats they are out; probably fewer - losing 44 seats leaves them with 321.
NOM is a very likely result.
Where do the Tory votes to get them to 30% come from?
Off topic. The honest answer to “what was the cause of the Civil War?” is far more nuanced than saying in not many words, slavery. PB has done nothing yet to convince me otherwise. In fact the other way around, I suggest you all see it through the experience of Brexit to understand what the fight was about.
If the dividing line is strictly slavery or not to slavery, then why is a slave state like Delaware fighting for the Union? Because the dividing line wasn’t abolition of slavery, but happy or not to be in a federal tax regime.
There were numerous fault lines, but the actual root cause of the conflict is the fundamental principle of federal versus state, some wishing not to be in a federal economic commonwealth at all, that is taxed down here for a new harbour to be built up there, to the extent they would prefer their own governmental relationship, as in a separate country. And wanting out on that principle is such a feasible and reasoned proposition, on what grounds were they not allowed to breakaway and form their own non federal country without it coming to such a bloody conflict?
To say a “A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand' if far from meaningless spin, it literally meant that success comes from sticking together and to do anything else is to invoke disaster. But here’s the kicker, it was actually a lie, it was false ideology, the sort Brexit has crushed, to actually believe A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand . A Union cause on basis of a lie because the truth was a house divided could have gone separate ways and not been a disaster. Just like Brexit isn’t a disaster, but a huge opportunity.
The EU doesn’t even have federal taxation, but it was still too federal for many in UK. So we should have more respect for the confederate states “brexit yearnings” when we answer what the Civil War was about.
The American Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about Brexit. I feel good about putting you all correct on this. 😌
Sigh.
The border states divided according to the dominance of slavery in their society.
Throughout the South, there were those utterly opposed to slavery and the Confederacy.
Look up why there is a West Virginia. Or the State of Jones….
Even in the Deep South there were many who were anti-slavery and “Union men” - violence and coercion was used to keep them “down”.
Also plenty of Confederate sympathizers and/or appeasers in North - aka "Copperheads"; note that in 1861 the then-mayor of New York City advocated making NYC (then just Manhattan) a neutral quasi-independent statelet.
And even more pro-Southerners in Border states, which furnished plenty of soldiers and other resources for Confederacy; for example, almost certainly more West Virginians enlisted with CSA than with USA.
As for MoonRabbit's basic point, that "A House Divided" could have split with "success" however defined, well THAT's been a major topic of American history and historiography ever since before Fort Sumter. Perhaps a wee bit more involved (far less literal) than she suggests!
Posted this a couple days ago, but link below re: interesting alternative history written in early 1960s in time for the US Civil War Centennial. It's dated but still worth considering:
Greatest weakness, shared by virtually all US Civil War histories of that period = minimizing/marginalizing of the African American experience, for Blacks AND for entire nation.
Although on the subject of Manhattan and slavery I just had a tour of St Patrick’s Old Cathedral… largely paid for by the famous slave and celebrity hairdresser* Pierre Toussaint.
(Probably the only hairdresser since Mary Magdalen with a decent shot at sainthood)
Off topic. The honest answer to “what was the cause of the Civil War?” is far more nuanced than saying in not many words, slavery. PB has done nothing yet to convince me otherwise. In fact the other way around, I suggest you all see it through the experience of Brexit to understand what the fight was about.
If the dividing line is strictly slavery or not to slavery, then why is a slave state like Delaware fighting for the Union? Because the dividing line wasn’t abolition of slavery, but happy or not to be in a federal tax regime.
There were numerous fault lines, but the actual root cause of the conflict is the fundamental principle of federal versus state, some wishing not to be in a federal economic commonwealth at all, that is taxed down here for a new harbour to be built up there, to the extent they would prefer their own governmental relationship, as in a separate country. And wanting out on that principle is such a feasible and reasoned proposition, on what grounds were they not allowed to breakaway and form their own non federal country without it coming to such a bloody conflict?
To say a “A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand' if far from meaningless spin, it literally meant that success comes from sticking together and to do anything else is to invoke disaster. But here’s the kicker, it was actually a lie, it was false ideology, the sort Brexit has crushed, to actually believe A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand . A Union cause on basis of a lie because the truth was a house divided could have gone separate ways and not been a disaster. Just like Brexit isn’t a disaster, but a huge opportunity.
The EU doesn’t even have federal taxation, but it was still too federal for many in UK. So we should have more respect for the confederate states “brexit yearnings” when we answer what the Civil War was about.
The American Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about Brexit. I feel good about putting you all correct on this. 😌
Sigh.
The border states divided according to the dominance of slavery in their society.
Throughout the South, there were those utterly opposed to slavery and the Confederacy.
Look up why there is a West Virginia. Or the State of Jones….
Even in the Deep South there were many who were anti-slavery and “Union men” - violence and coercion was used to keep them “down”.
Also plenty of Confederate sympathizers and/or appeasers in North - aka "Copperheads"; note that in 1861 the then-mayor of New York City advocated making NYC (then just Manhattan) a neutral quasi-independent statelet.
And even more pro-Southerners in Border states, which furnished plenty of soldiers and other resources for Confederacy; for example, almost certainly more West Virginians enlisted with CSA than with USA.
As for MoonRabbit's basic point, that "A House Divided" could have split with "success" however defined, well THAT's been a major topic of American history and historiography ever since before Fort Sumter. Perhaps a wee bit more involved (far less literal) than she suggests!
Posted this a couple days ago, but link below re: interesting alternative history written in early 1960s in time for the US Civil War Centennial. It's dated but still worth considering:
Greatest weakness, shared by virtually all US Civil War histories of that period = minimizing/marginalizing of the African American experience, for Blacks AND for entire nation.
Although on the subject of Manhattan and slavery I just had a tour of St Patrick’s Old Cathedral… largely paid for by the famous slave and celebrity hairdresser* Pierre Toussaint.
(Probably the only hairdresser since Mary Magdalen with a decent shot at sainthood)
Revealed: Rishi Sunak’s secret talks to bring back Dominic Cummings
The PM was in discussions with Boris Johnson’s enforcer — then lost his nerve. Details of their conversations tell us plenty about how the Tory election script might unfold
Rishi Sunak’s political hero, the former chancellor Nigel Lawson, used to be fond of saying: “To govern is to choose.” It is a lesson Sunak has taken to heart with mixed success.
As 2024 dawns, it will soon be the electorate’s turn to choose, and their decision will be shaped by work going on behind the scenes for both the Tories and Labour.
Had the prime minister made a different choice at a meeting in July, the Tory campaign might have looked very different. That month, in utmost secrecy, Dominic Cummings, the former campaign director of Vote Leave and architect of Boris Johnson’s election victory in 2019, travelled to North Yorkshire to see Sunak. It was an audience hidden even from several members of the PM’s inner circle.
Over dinner, Sunak contemplated bringing the most controversial political aide of his generation in Downing Street back into the Conservative Party machine and sought his advice on how to win a general election. Cummings also went to see the PM and Liam Booth-Smith, his chief of staff, in London in December 2022, shortly after they moved into Downing Street.
No 10 has not denied Cummings’s account but stressed that no formal offer was made to him. “It was a broad discussion about politics and campaigning, no job was offered,” a Downing Street source said.
That month Cummings told Sunak to ditch his cautious approach to the economy and hold an emergency budget, reversing Johnson’s tax rises (which breached a 2019 manifesto pledge), and to almost double the threshold at which people pay the 40p rate of income tax from £50,271 to £100,000.
Both times Cummings told Sunak to settle the NHS strikes and make rebuilding the health service one of his core priorities, launching a national effort in the spirit of the Vaccine Taskforce. He also advocated leaving the European Convention on Human Rights.
Cummings’s price for joining the team was that Sunak put his authority behind radical Whitehall reforms. Sunak said: “The MPs and the media will go crazy. Your involvement has to be secret.”
Revealing details of this conversation for the first time, Cummings said: “He wanted a secret deal in which I delivered the election and he promised to take government seriously after the election. But I’d rather the Tories lose than continue in office without prioritising what’s important and the voters. The post-2016 Tories are summed up by the fact that Sunak, like Johnson, would rather lose than take government seriously. Both thought their MPs agreed with them, and both were right.”
A rather strange source for The Times to quote, but they’re 100% correct
“ A Labour tennis fan said: “ The biggest mistake the Tories made electorally was they panicked and got rid of Boris Johnson, who is a winner, and replaced him first with a lunatic [Liz Truss] and then with a loser [Sunak]. Sunak lost the leadership election, he got walloped in a succession of by-elections. He’s made a worst-ever start in a local election. He’s only waiting for his Wimbledon … the general election. That would give him the grand slam of losses.” “
Unless Rishi pulls off a win, which is still likely.
Well it’s not likely is it? Lab majority is 75% chance in the betting, and they’ve got NOM onside too in all probability
I think it is more likely than some think.
Labour don't have to do much to deprive the cons of a majority. in fact, just switchers from Con to Reform could do that. add in an increase for labour and they'll easily get the Tories down below 310. 310 is the point where the other parties can start forming a rainbow coalition.
anything around Lab 40%, Con 30%, LD 10% reform 8% would easily give labour a sizeable majority.
Within a couple, to form a government the Tories need 322 votes. Leaving 320 other votes (allowing 8 for SF and speaker). It is just possible, though unlikely that up to about 8 votes would come from the Prots. (These two groups richly deserve each other, but the poor old public don't). The Tories could possibly therefore scrape by with 314 seats + 8 Prots. If they lose 52 seats they are out; probably fewer - losing 44 seats leaves them with 321.
NOM is a very likely result.
Where do the Tory votes to get them to 30% come from?
it's the top of their current range in the polls. (I was being generous). I suspect that during a campaign they'd creep back up towards that point
Most Tories believe the key to winning back Middle England is to cut personal taxation in the next budget on March 6. A cabinet minister said: “The tax cuts in March will be enormous. Either they work or we leave Labour with a major headache.” Labour strategists think Sunak will cut 2p from the basic rate of income tax. He and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, are also considering scrapping inheritance tax, slashing or abolishing stamp duty and raising income tax thresholds, as Cummings suggested.
That has to be the port and Stilton talking, doesn't it?
I cannot think of something Labour would like more than for the Tories to announce an inheritance cut tax.
And abolishing stamp duty?
Abolishing stamp duty would actually be sensible. Ridiculous tax and has been for years. Abolishing IHT rather less so although simplifying it wouldn't do any harm.
the thing with IHT is there's a lot of people in the southeast of england whose houses are going to take them over the individual entitlement. it's not a tax that just the very rich pay, even if the majority don't pay it they still worry about paying it.
raising the threshold over £1M per person would make sense but it's also an easy target for labour (a tax cut for the top 5%)
Houses are, if a primary residence and left to a direct descendant, already given substantial exemptions.
Anyone inheriting a million pounds in whatever form can afford a bit of tax on their windfall.
A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.
The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country.
Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.
Ominously for prime minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.
The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.
What if the markets take fright at these tax cuts? What then?
Different scenario. The Lizaster had just been appointed PM with a couple of years left to run. Rishi would have weeks left to run. The markets would express their alarm, effectively back Labour, and wait.
Not if he decided to hang on till January. What then?
I don’t want tax cuts, I want properly working services such as the NHS, schools, councils etc. I want to see anyone who received money for substandard PPE pay the money back, plus interest. I want a government that tries to chart a sensible path between extreme views on things (trans rights, immigration etc) and more conservative views.
I’d quite like some boring competence and a boring period in politics, but to be fair, the years since 2019 have been exciting through external factors.
If the ‘substandard’ PPE was what the govt specified and got wrong then no business should have to pay anything back.
If it was not was specified why on earth hasnt the govt already got the money back.
What if the markets take fright at these tax cuts? What then?
Different scenario. The Lizaster had just been appointed PM with a couple of years left to run. Rishi would have weeks left to run. The markets would express their alarm, effectively back Labour, and wait.
No, I think unfunded tax cuts would do to the markets exactly what they did in September 2022.
Off topic. The honest answer to “what was the cause of the Civil War?” is far more nuanced than saying in not many words, slavery. PB has done nothing yet to convince me otherwise. In fact the other way around, I suggest you all see it through the experience of Brexit to understand what the fight was about.
If the dividing line is strictly slavery or not to slavery, then why is a slave state like Delaware fighting for the Union? Because the dividing line wasn’t abolition of slavery, but happy or not to be in a federal tax regime.
There were numerous fault lines, but the actual root cause of the conflict is the fundamental principle of federal versus state, some wishing not to be in a federal economic commonwealth at all, that is taxed down here for a new harbour to be built up there, to the extent they would prefer their own governmental relationship, as in a separate country. And wanting out on that principle is such a feasible and reasoned proposition, on what grounds were they not allowed to breakaway and form their own non federal country without it coming to such a bloody conflict?
To say a “A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand' if far from meaningless spin, it literally meant that success comes from sticking together and to do anything else is to invoke disaster. But here’s the kicker, it was actually a lie, it was false ideology, the sort Brexit has crushed, to actually believe A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand . A Union cause on basis of a lie because the truth was a house divided could have gone separate ways and not been a disaster. Just like Brexit isn’t a disaster, but a huge opportunity.
The EU doesn’t even have federal taxation, but it was still too federal for many in UK. So we should have more respect for the confederate states “brexit yearnings” when we answer what the Civil War was about.
The American Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about Brexit. I feel good about putting you all correct on this. 😌
Sigh.
The border states divided according to the dominance of slavery in their society.
Throughout the South, there were those utterly opposed to slavery and the Confederacy.
Look up why there is a West Virginia. Or the State of Jones….
Even in the Deep South there were many who were anti-slavery and “Union men” - violence and coercion was used to keep them “down”.
Also plenty of Confederate sympathizers and/or appeasers in North - aka "Copperheads"; note that in 1861 the then-mayor of New York City advocated making NYC (then just Manhattan) a neutral quasi-independent statelet.
And even more pro-Southerners in Border states, which furnished plenty of soldiers and other resources for Confederacy; for example, almost certainly more West Virginians enlisted with CSA than with USA.
As for MoonRabbit's basic point, that "A House Divided" could have split with "success" however defined, well THAT's been a major topic of American history and historiography ever since before Fort Sumter. Perhaps a wee bit more involved (far less literal) than she suggests!
Posted this a couple days ago, but link below re: interesting alternative history written in early 1960s in time for the US Civil War Centennial. It's dated but still worth considering:
Greatest weakness, shared by virtually all US Civil War histories of that period = minimizing/marginalizing of the African American experience, for Blacks AND for entire nation.
Although on the subject of Manhattan and slavery I just had a tour of St Patrick’s Old Cathedral… largely paid for by the famous slave and celebrity hairdresser* Pierre Toussaint.
(Probably the only hairdresser since Mary Magdalen with a decent shot at sainthood)
She is indeed viewed as the Patron Saint of Beauticians.
However she has competition from St Martin de Porres, who allegedly provided haircase services to the brothers in his monastery.
St. Martin de Porres was born at Lima, Peru, in 1579. His father was a Spanish gentleman and his mother a black freed-woman from Panama. At fifteen, he became a lay brother at the Dominican Friary at Lima and spent his whole life there-as a barber, farm laborer, and infirmarian among other things.
A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.
The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country.
Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.
Ominously for prime minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.
The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.
The issue for any potential Rejoin campaign is that now, after a decade of unpopular Tory rule, is likely the strongest point of anti-Brexit feeling. And the pro-EU side still hasn't broken 50%.
Most Tories believe the key to winning back Middle England is to cut personal taxation in the next budget on March 6. A cabinet minister said: “The tax cuts in March will be enormous. Either they work or we leave Labour with a major headache.” Labour strategists think Sunak will cut 2p from the basic rate of income tax. He and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, are also considering scrapping inheritance tax, slashing or abolishing stamp duty and raising income tax thresholds, as Cummings suggested.
That has to be the port and Stilton talking, doesn't it?
I cannot think of something Labour would like more than for the Tories to announce an inheritance cut tax.
And abolishing stamp duty?
Abolishing stamp duty would actually be sensible. Ridiculous tax and has been for years. Abolishing IHT rather less so although simplifying it wouldn't do any harm.
the thing with IHT is there's a lot of people in the southeast of england whose houses are going to take them over the individual entitlement. it's not a tax that just the very rich pay, even if the majority don't pay it they still worry about paying it.
raising the threshold over £1M per person would make sense but it's also an easy target for labour (a tax cut for the top 5%)
A cuter idea (which you could sell as being simultaneously fairer and also a bung to middle England) would be:
A) exclude the principal private residence (“family home”)
reduce the threshold for other assets to - say - £100k
It would be dreadful economics but the politics could work
I don’t want tax cuts, I want properly working services such as the NHS, schools, councils etc. I want to see anyone who received money for substandard PPE pay the money back, plus interest. I want a government that tries to chart a sensible path between extreme views on things (trans rights, immigration etc) and more conservative views.
I’d quite like some boring competence and a boring period in politics, but to be fair, the years since 2019 have been exciting through external factors.
If the ‘substandard’ PPE was what the govt specified and got wrong then no business should have to pay anything back.
If it was not was specified why on earth hasnt the govt already got the money back.
Well, quite. In the Mone case, allegedly the gowns were rejected as substandard. But I guess we don’t know the whole story yet.
Actually I think any anti-Brexit feeling will quickly recede when SKS comes in, doesn't undo Brexit but instead makes it less damaging and more "Labour". Labour is the only party that has any chance of making it "work".
A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.
The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country.
Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.
Ominously for prime minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.
The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.
The issue for any potential Rejoin campaign is that now, after a decade of unpopular Tory rule, is likely the strongest point of anti-Brexit feeling. And the pro-EU side still hasn't broken 50%.
But the Tory party is the Brexit party. And Brexit is hardly a vote winner for them going into next years election. Maybe even all the elections after that. When will it ever be? Maybe there is a lot of voters they have lost forever over this.
What if the markets take fright at these tax cuts? What then?
Different scenario. The Lizaster had just been appointed PM with a couple of years left to run. Rishi would have weeks left to run. The markets would express their alarm, effectively back Labour, and wait.
No, I think unfunded tax cuts would do to the markets exactly what they did in September 2022.
The Bank of England's bond flog-off dwarved any 'unfunded' tax cuts in fiscal terms. Under the Treasury's commitment to indemnify the Bank against it's losses, what had been announced the day before the minibudget was set to cost the Treasury over £80bn (it has cost more in the event). Any marketeers paying attention would have noted that fact.
Most Tories believe the key to winning back Middle England is to cut personal taxation in the next budget on March 6. A cabinet minister said: “The tax cuts in March will be enormous. Either they work or we leave Labour with a major headache.” Labour strategists think Sunak will cut 2p from the basic rate of income tax. He and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, are also considering scrapping inheritance tax, slashing or abolishing stamp duty and raising income tax thresholds, as Cummings suggested.
That has to be the port and Stilton talking, doesn't it?
I cannot think of something Labour would like more than for the Tories to announce an inheritance cut tax.
And abolishing stamp duty?
Abolishing stamp duty would actually be sensible. Ridiculous tax and has been for years. Abolishing IHT rather less so although simplifying it wouldn't do any harm.
The IHT problem is obvious: Avoidance is too easy and the rate is too high. A lower rate - 10%? and unavoidable and applying to all but small estates AND applying to the Duke of Westminster would be rational.
The Duke pays Trust tax instead - 6% of the value of the estate every 10 years. Works out as roughly equivalent but allows phasing to avoid damaging the estate
Classic Rishi would be to effectively commit to a May 2 election, on the basis of tax cuts in the March budget being popular enough to give him a chance, then the markets doing a Truss to him and guaranteeing a huge Labour victory.
Classic Rishi would be to effectively commit to a May 2 election, on the basis of tax cuts in the March budget being popular enough to give him a chance, then the markets doing a Truss to him and guaranteeing a huge Labour victory.
I don’t want tax cuts, I want properly working services such as the NHS, schools, councils etc. I want to see anyone who received money for substandard PPE pay the money back, plus interest. I want a government that tries to chart a sensible path between extreme views on things (trans rights, immigration etc) and more conservative views.
I’d quite like some boring competence and a boring period in politics, but to be fair, the years since 2019 have been exciting through external factors.
If the ‘substandard’ PPE was what the govt specified and got wrong then no business should have to pay anything back.
If it was not was specified why on earth hasnt the govt already got the money back.
Well, quite. In the Mone case, allegedly the gowns were rejected as substandard. But I guess we don’t know the whole story yet.
The issue is that they were single wrapped, while they needed to be double wrapped for sterile use.
Classic Rishi would be to effectively commit to a May 2 election, on the basis of tax cuts in the March budget being popular enough to give him a chance, then the markets doing a Truss to him and guaranteeing a huge Labour victory.
Classic Rishi would be to effectively commit to a May 2 election, on the basis of tax cuts in the March budget being popular enough to give him a chance, then raising taxes in that budget...
I don’t want tax cuts, I want properly working services such as the NHS, schools, councils etc. I want to see anyone who received money for substandard PPE pay the money back, plus interest. I want a government that tries to chart a sensible path between extreme views on things (trans rights, immigration etc) and more conservative views.
I’d quite like some boring competence and a boring period in politics, but to be fair, the years since 2019 have been exciting through external factors.
If the ‘substandard’ PPE was what the govt specified and got wrong then no business should have to pay anything back.
If it was not was specified why on earth hasnt the govt already got the money back.
Well, quite. In the Mone case, allegedly the gowns were rejected as substandard. But I guess we don’t know the whole story yet.
The issue is that they were single wrapped, while they needed to be double wrapped for sterile use.
Do you know what was the specification? I.e. who was at fault?
Off topic. The honest answer to “what was the cause of the Civil War?” is far more nuanced than saying in not many words, slavery. PB has done nothing yet to convince me otherwise. In fact the other way around, I suggest you all see it through the experience of Brexit to understand what the fight was about.
If the dividing line is strictly slavery or not to slavery, then why is a slave state like Delaware fighting for the Union? Because the dividing line wasn’t abolition of slavery, but happy or not to be in a federal tax regime.
There were numerous fault lines, but the actual root cause of the conflict is the fundamental principle of federal versus state, some wishing not to be in a federal economic commonwealth at all, that is taxed down here for a new harbour to be built up there, to the extent they would prefer their own governmental relationship, as in a separate country. And wanting out on that principle is such a feasible and reasoned proposition, on what grounds were they not allowed to breakaway and form their own non federal country without it coming to such a bloody conflict?
To say a “A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand' if far from meaningless spin, it literally meant that success comes from sticking together and to do anything else is to invoke disaster. But here’s the kicker, it was actually a lie, it was false ideology, the sort Brexit has crushed, to actually believe A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand . A Union cause on basis of a lie because the truth was a house divided could have gone separate ways and not been a disaster. Just like Brexit isn’t a disaster, but a huge opportunity.
The EU doesn’t even have federal taxation, but it was still too federal for many in UK. So we should have more respect for the confederate states “brexit yearnings” when we answer what the Civil War was about.
The American Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about Brexit. I feel good about putting you all correct on this. 😌
Sigh.
The border states divided according to the dominance of slavery in their society.
Throughout the South, there were those utterly opposed to slavery and the Confederacy.
Look up why there is a West Virginia. Or the State of Jones….
Even in the Deep South there were many who were anti-slavery and “Union men” - violence and coercion was used to keep them “down”.
Also plenty of Confederate sympathizers and/or appeasers in North - aka "Copperheads"; note that in 1861 the then-mayor of New York City advocated making NYC (then just Manhattan) a neutral quasi-independent statelet.
And even more pro-Southerners in Border states, which furnished plenty of soldiers and other resources for Confederacy; for example, almost certainly more West Virginians enlisted with CSA than with USA.
As for MoonRabbit's basic point, that "A House Divided" could have split with "success" however defined, well THAT's been a major topic of American history and historiography ever since before Fort Sumter. Perhaps a wee bit more involved (far less literal) than she suggests!
Posted this a couple days ago, but link below re: interesting alternative history written in early 1960s in time for the US Civil War Centennial. It's dated but still worth considering:
Greatest weakness, shared by virtually all US Civil War histories of that period = minimizing/marginalizing of the African American experience, for Blacks AND for entire nation.
I belatedly thank you for this helpful post.
I have been away a bit watching masked singer.
There’s a lot of feelings and idea’s happening at once in the American civil war. In politically attacking Haley as though there was a slam dunk answer, opponents need to be a bit careful. There were anti federalists at the formation of the United States, certainly at the time of the civil war, and even today. There was a master race vein of thinking running through the secessionists of the civil war, true, to only focus on this to exclusion of all else is saying the conflict was just about slavery. Do you mean by “just about slavery” it means a war to end slavery, like it was the struggle for the soul of a country? I think that’s a mistake. A mistake proven to us by the definition of victory, the history of what happened next after the war.
One thing we can agree on even on PB, the true history is in defeat in war the breakaway was thwarted. But did the soul of the whole country change, was their large cultural change following the war, did the “superior race” ideology disappear from America after its defeat in the war, did the class and status of black citizens dramatically change? Did they all leave the plantations of the confederacy racists? Did they have anywhere to go? Indeed was this racism gone a hundred years later in 1960s? Is “the house” still not divided over race and rights even today?
What I suspect is happening here, through the 20th century and the 21st, history is being rewritten. History has always been rewritten, often by victors, or by authorities using the point of a sword. But also by Hollywood and others streams of culture. Where do people get their history from? Politicians? Historians? Hollywood and other culture? Do politicians and historians and T/v shows ever agree with one another about history? Down centuries history is always viewed through different eyes by people with different knowledge, if it means the “ending slavery” element of the civil war is so much more meaningful to people today than at the time, i think this is borne out as fact by looking to what actually changed following a war for the soul of America, where slavery and master race thinking was, you are struggling to convince me, defeated.
Certainly the breakaway was prevented from happening, what else changed?
A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.
The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country.
Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.
Ominously for prime minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.
The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.
Sooner or later there will be an electoral reckoning for the fiasco of Brexit. 2024 may well be it.
What if the markets take fright at these tax cuts? What then?
Different scenario. The Lizaster had just been appointed PM with a couple of years left to run. Rishi would have weeks left to run. The markets would express their alarm, effectively back Labour, and wait.
No, I think unfunded tax cuts would do to the markets exactly what they did in September 2022.
The Bank of England's bond flog-off dwarved any 'unfunded' tax cuts in fiscal terms. Under the Treasury's commitment to indemnify the Bank against it's losses, what had been announced the day before the minibudget was set to cost the Treasury over £80bn (it has cost more in the event). Any marketeers paying attention would have noted that fact.
So on the day of the Treasury's announcement, day before the mini-budget, GBP gained slightly against the USD; on the day of the budget it lost 3% against the USD.
Those markets were a bit slow to react to the Treasury announcement, what kept them?
I don’t want tax cuts, I want properly working services such as the NHS, schools, councils etc. I want to see anyone who received money for substandard PPE pay the money back, plus interest. I want a government that tries to chart a sensible path between extreme views on things (trans rights, immigration etc) and more conservative views.
I’d quite like some boring competence and a boring period in politics, but to be fair, the years since 2019 have been exciting through external factors.
If the ‘substandard’ PPE was what the govt specified and got wrong then no business should have to pay anything back.
If it was not was specified why on earth hasnt the govt already got the money back.
Well, quite. In the Mone case, allegedly the gowns were rejected as substandard. But I guess we don’t know the whole story yet.
The issue is that they were single wrapped, while they needed to be double wrapped for sterile use.
Do you know what was the specification? I.e. who was at fault?
A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.
The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country.
Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.
Ominously for prime minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.
The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.
Sooner or later there will be an electoral reckoning for the fiasco of Brexit. 2024 may well be it.
it won't be 2024, Labour and Tory don't want to bring it up at the moment. it's too early to predict but It'll be a couple away. there's no way Tories are bringing it up at a GE to reverse it. Labour will probably do a 'we need to renegotiate' and nudge us closer to the EU but won't need to at the moment.
If I was going to make more certain predictions I'd say we're talking well into the 2030's before brexit becomes an issue again.
Revealed: Rishi Sunak’s secret talks to bring back Dominic Cummings
The PM was in discussions with Boris Johnson’s enforcer — then lost his nerve. Details of their conversations tell us plenty about how the Tory election script might unfold
Rishi Sunak’s political hero, the former chancellor Nigel Lawson, used to be fond of saying: “To govern is to choose.” It is a lesson Sunak has taken to heart with mixed success.
As 2024 dawns, it will soon be the electorate’s turn to choose, and their decision will be shaped by work going on behind the scenes for both the Tories and Labour.
Had the prime minister made a different choice at a meeting in July, the Tory campaign might have looked very different. That month, in utmost secrecy, Dominic Cummings, the former campaign director of Vote Leave and architect of Boris Johnson’s election victory in 2019, travelled to North Yorkshire to see Sunak. It was an audience hidden even from several members of the PM’s inner circle.
Over dinner, Sunak contemplated bringing the most controversial political aide of his generation in Downing Street back into the Conservative Party machine and sought his advice on how to win a general election. Cummings also went to see the PM and Liam Booth-Smith, his chief of staff, in London in December 2022, shortly after they moved into Downing Street.
No 10 has not denied Cummings’s account but stressed that no formal offer was made to him. “It was a broad discussion about politics and campaigning, no job was offered,” a Downing Street source said.
That month Cummings told Sunak to ditch his cautious approach to the economy and hold an emergency budget, reversing Johnson’s tax rises (which breached a 2019 manifesto pledge), and to almost double the threshold at which people pay the 40p rate of income tax from £50,271 to £100,000.
Both times Cummings told Sunak to settle the NHS strikes and make rebuilding the health service one of his core priorities, launching a national effort in the spirit of the Vaccine Taskforce. He also advocated leaving the European Convention on Human Rights.
Cummings’s price for joining the team was that Sunak put his authority behind radical Whitehall reforms. Sunak said: “The MPs and the media will go crazy. Your involvement has to be secret.”
Revealing details of this conversation for the first time, Cummings said: “He wanted a secret deal in which I delivered the election and he promised to take government seriously after the election. But I’d rather the Tories lose than continue in office without prioritising what’s important and the voters. The post-2016 Tories are summed up by the fact that Sunak, like Johnson, would rather lose than take government seriously. Both thought their MPs agreed with them, and both were right.”
A rather strange source for The Times to quote, but they’re 100% correct
“ A Labour tennis fan said: “ The biggest mistake the Tories made electorally was they panicked and got rid of Boris Johnson, who is a winner, and replaced him first with a lunatic [Liz Truss] and then with a loser [Sunak]. Sunak lost the leadership election, he got walloped in a succession of by-elections. He’s made a worst-ever start in a local election. He’s only waiting for his Wimbledon … the general election. That would give him the grand slam of losses.” “
Unless Rishi pulls off a win, which is still likely.
Well it’s not likely is it? Lab majority is 75% chance in the betting, and they’ve got NOM onside too in all probability
I think it is more likely than some think.
Labour don't have to do much to deprive the cons of a majority. in fact, just switchers from Con to Reform could do that. add in an increase for labour and they'll easily get the Tories down below 310. 310 is the point where the other parties can start forming a rainbow coalition.
anything around Lab 40%, Con 30%, LD 10% reform 8% would easily give labour a sizeable majority.
Within a couple, to form a government the Tories need 322 votes. Leaving 320 other votes (allowing 8 for SF and speaker). It is just possible, though unlikely that up to about 8 votes would come from the Prots. (These two groups richly deserve each other, but the poor old public don't). The Tories could possibly therefore scrape by with 314 seats + 8 Prots. If they lose 52 seats they are out; probably fewer - losing 44 seats leaves them with 321.
NOM is a very likely result.
Where do the Tory votes to get them to 30% come from?
Of the last 11 polls (Wiki) 6 have had the Tories at 27, 28 or 29%. IMHO the Tory vote in GE 2024 will be rather over 30%. Those votes will come from current DKs and Reform supporters voting Tory.
A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.
The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country.
Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.
Ominously for prime minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.
The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.
Sooner or later there will be an electoral reckoning for the fiasco of Brexit. 2024 may well be it.
it won't be 2024, Labour and Tory don't want to bring it up at the moment. it's too early to predict but It'll be a couple away. there's no way Tories are bringing it up at a GE to reverse it. Labour will probably do a 'we need to renegotiate' and nudge us closer to the EU but won't need to at the moment.
If I was going to make more certain predictions I'd say we're talking well into the 2030's before brexit becomes an issue again.
Knowing the Tories they will about turn and blame Brexit on Labour and Labour will lose big because of Brexit
On topic, a GE two weeks before the US election? No, I don't think so.
Late September / early October maybe - 3rd October at the latest.
in order to get election day at the end of september or beginning of october don't they have to call it while parliament is out of session?
Good point, I hadn't thought of that. I guess Parliament could be recalled early from the summer recess.
I don't know if parliament has to be recalled from to dissolve. Anyone know?
But just like the problem of the king being abroad, necessity is the mother of invention. People make it to royal funerals whatever they had on. Same with election duty.
On topic, a GE two weeks before the US election? No, I don't think so.
Late September / early October maybe - 3rd October at the latest.
in order to get election day at the end of september or beginning of october don't they have to call it while parliament is out of session?
Good point, I hadn't thought of that. I guess Parliament could be recalled early from the summer recess.
following the dissolution of parliament there's 25 working days before the election. so in order to get the 3rd october you need to dissolve on 29th August. you'd also need to wrap up all of the outstanding bills which will require up to another week.
A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.
The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country.
Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.
Ominously for prime minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.
The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.
Sooner or later there will be an electoral reckoning for the fiasco of Brexit. 2024 may well be it.
it won't be 2024, Labour and Tory don't want to bring it up at the moment. it's too early to predict but It'll be a couple away. there's no way Tories are bringing it up at a GE to reverse it. Labour will probably do a 'we need to renegotiate' and nudge us closer to the EU but won't need to at the moment.
If I was going to make more certain predictions I'd say we're talking well into the 2030's before brexit becomes an issue again.
Neither needs to bring it up. Voters know who is responsible for Brexit, and it isn't Keir Starmer.
A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.
The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country.
Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.
Ominously for prime minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.
The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.
Sooner or later there will be an electoral reckoning for the fiasco of Brexit. 2024 may well be it.
it won't be 2024, Labour and Tory don't want to bring it up at the moment. it's too early to predict but It'll be a couple away. there's no way Tories are bringing it up at a GE to reverse it. Labour will probably do a 'we need to renegotiate' and nudge us closer to the EU but won't need to at the moment.
If I was going to make more certain predictions I'd say we're talking well into the 2030's before brexit becomes an issue again.
Support for Brexit runs a long way above support for the Conservative party. It even runs above combined support for the Conservatives and Reform. One can see why Starmer does not wish to go there, for he'd reunite the right, and have a real battle on his hands to win the next election.
A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.
The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country.
Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.
Ominously for prime minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.
The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.
Sooner or later there will be an electoral reckoning for the fiasco of Brexit. 2024 may well be it.
it won't be 2024, Labour and Tory don't want to bring it up at the moment. it's too early to predict but It'll be a couple away. there's no way Tories are bringing it up at a GE to reverse it. Labour will probably do a 'we need to renegotiate' and nudge us closer to the EU but won't need to at the moment.
If I was going to make more certain predictions I'd say we're talking well into the 2030's before brexit becomes an issue again.
Longer term economic forecasts are mystic Meg territory but models are now being revised to reflect the reality that Brexit has had no meaningful economic effect, as some of us predicted. If the new forecasts are correct then the UK will outgrow most of the EZ over the next 10 years.
The other issue is immigration which is not going away but selling freedom of movement in that decade is going to be hard. I think Brexit is done and buried even if some people are finding it hard to get over.
Revealed: Rishi Sunak’s secret talks to bring back Dominic Cummings
The PM was in discussions with Boris Johnson’s enforcer — then lost his nerve. Details of their conversations tell us plenty about how the Tory election script might unfold
Rishi Sunak’s political hero, the former chancellor Nigel Lawson, used to be fond of saying: “To govern is to choose.” It is a lesson Sunak has taken to heart with mixed success.
As 2024 dawns, it will soon be the electorate’s turn to choose, and their decision will be shaped by work going on behind the scenes for both the Tories and Labour.
Had the prime minister made a different choice at a meeting in July, the Tory campaign might have looked very different. That month, in utmost secrecy, Dominic Cummings, the former campaign director of Vote Leave and architect of Boris Johnson’s election victory in 2019, travelled to North Yorkshire to see Sunak. It was an audience hidden even from several members of the PM’s inner circle.
Over dinner, Sunak contemplated bringing the most controversial political aide of his generation in Downing Street back into the Conservative Party machine and sought his advice on how to win a general election. Cummings also went to see the PM and Liam Booth-Smith, his chief of staff, in London in December 2022, shortly after they moved into Downing Street.
No 10 has not denied Cummings’s account but stressed that no formal offer was made to him. “It was a broad discussion about politics and campaigning, no job was offered,” a Downing Street source said.
That month Cummings told Sunak to ditch his cautious approach to the economy and hold an emergency budget, reversing Johnson’s tax rises (which breached a 2019 manifesto pledge), and to almost double the threshold at which people pay the 40p rate of income tax from £50,271 to £100,000.
Both times Cummings told Sunak to settle the NHS strikes and make rebuilding the health service one of his core priorities, launching a national effort in the spirit of the Vaccine Taskforce. He also advocated leaving the European Convention on Human Rights.
Cummings’s price for joining the team was that Sunak put his authority behind radical Whitehall reforms. Sunak said: “The MPs and the media will go crazy. Your involvement has to be secret.”
Revealing details of this conversation for the first time, Cummings said: “He wanted a secret deal in which I delivered the election and he promised to take government seriously after the election. But I’d rather the Tories lose than continue in office without prioritising what’s important and the voters. The post-2016 Tories are summed up by the fact that Sunak, like Johnson, would rather lose than take government seriously. Both thought their MPs agreed with them, and both were right.”
A rather strange source for The Times to quote, but they’re 100% correct
“ A Labour tennis fan said: “ The biggest mistake the Tories made electorally was they panicked and got rid of Boris Johnson, who is a winner, and replaced him first with a lunatic [Liz Truss] and then with a loser [Sunak]. Sunak lost the leadership election, he got walloped in a succession of by-elections. He’s made a worst-ever start in a local election. He’s only waiting for his Wimbledon … the general election. That would give him the grand slam of losses.” “
Unless Rishi pulls off a win, which is still likely.
Well it’s not likely is it? Lab majority is 75% chance in the betting, and they’ve got NOM onside too in all probability
I think it is more likely than some think.
Labour don't have to do much to deprive the cons of a majority. in fact, just switchers from Con to Reform could do that. add in an increase for labour and they'll easily get the Tories down below 310. 310 is the point where the other parties can start forming a rainbow coalition.
anything around Lab 40%, Con 30%, LD 10% reform 8% would easily give labour a sizeable majority.
Within a couple, to form a government the Tories need 322 votes. Leaving 320 other votes (allowing 8 for SF and speaker). It is just possible, though unlikely that up to about 8 votes would come from the Prots. (These two groups richly deserve each other, but the poor old public don't). The Tories could possibly therefore scrape by with 314 seats + 8 Prots. If they lose 52 seats they are out; probably fewer - losing 44 seats leaves them with 321.
NOM is a very likely result.
Where do the Tory votes to get them to 30% come from?
Of the last 11 polls (Wiki) 6 have had the Tories at 27, 28 or 29%. IMHO the Tory vote in GE 2024 will be rather over 30%. Those votes will come from current DKs and Reform supporters voting Tory.
Why do you believe those 6 rather than the other 5?
On topic, a GE two weeks before the US election? No, I don't think so.
Late September / early October maybe - 3rd October at the latest.
in order to get election day at the end of september or beginning of october don't they have to call it while parliament is out of session?
Good point, I hadn't thought of that. I guess Parliament could be recalled early from the summer recess.
I don't know if parliament has to be recalled from to dissolve. Anyone know?
But just like the problem of the king being abroad, necessity is the mother of invention. People make it to royal funerals whatever they had on. Same with election duty.
you need to have a prorogation of parliament before the formal dissolution (which the King does). could you prorogue parliament in July and have the formal dissolution in September? I suspect not
Most Tories believe the key to winning back Middle England is to cut personal taxation in the next budget on March 6. A cabinet minister said: “The tax cuts in March will be enormous. Either they work or we leave Labour with a major headache.” Labour strategists think Sunak will cut 2p from the basic rate of income tax. He and Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, are also considering scrapping inheritance tax, slashing or abolishing stamp duty and raising income tax thresholds, as Cummings suggested.
That has to be the port and Stilton talking, doesn't it?
I cannot think of something Labour would like more than for the Tories to announce an inheritance cut tax.
And abolishing stamp duty?
Abolishing stamp duty would actually be sensible. Ridiculous tax and has been for years. Abolishing IHT rather less so although simplifying it wouldn't do any harm.
the thing with IHT is there's a lot of people in the southeast of england whose houses are going to take them over the individual entitlement. it's not a tax that just the very rich pay, even if the majority don't pay it they still worry about paying it.
raising the threshold over £1M per person would make sense but it's also an easy target for labour (a tax cut for the top 5%)
A cuter idea (which you could sell as being simultaneously fairer and also a bung to middle England) would be:
A) exclude the principal private residence (“family home”)
reduce the threshold for other assets to - say - £100k
It would be dreadful economics but the politics could work
No it wouldn't. 40% of everything over £100K is a lot of voters.
A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.
The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country.
Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.
Ominously for prime minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.
The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.
Sooner or later there will be an electoral reckoning for the fiasco of Brexit. 2024 may well be it.
it won't be 2024, Labour and Tory don't want to bring it up at the moment. it's too early to predict but It'll be a couple away. there's no way Tories are bringing it up at a GE to reverse it. Labour will probably do a 'we need to renegotiate' and nudge us closer to the EU but won't need to at the moment.
If I was going to make more certain predictions I'd say we're talking well into the 2030's before brexit becomes an issue again.
Neither needs to bring it up. Voters know who is responsible for Brexit, and it isn't Keir Starmer.
Responsible for what specifically? Deciding to leave the EU? Doing it in a way that avoided any of the major disruption that was being talked up?
What if the markets take fright at these tax cuts? What then?
Different scenario. The Lizaster had just been appointed PM with a couple of years left to run. Rishi would have weeks left to run. The markets would express their alarm, effectively back Labour, and wait.
No, I think unfunded tax cuts would do to the markets exactly what they did in September 2022.
The Bank of England's bond flog-off dwarved any 'unfunded' tax cuts in fiscal terms. Under the Treasury's commitment to indemnify the Bank against it's losses, what had been announced the day before the minibudget was set to cost the Treasury over £80bn (it has cost more in the event). Any marketeers paying attention would have noted that fact.
So on the day of the Treasury's announcement, day before the mini-budget, GBP gained slightly against the USD; on the day of the budget it lost 3% against the USD.
Those markets were a bit slow to react to the Treasury announcement, what kept them?
There are various reasons for a delayed (very slightly delayed) market response to the BOE announcement, but that's not something I even need to explain to defend my argument. You state that 'unfunded tax cuts' spooked the markets. From memory, there were about £40bn of tax cuts in the mini budget. Within the BOE announcement, there was £80bn of 'unfunded' cost to the exchequer. That's just comparing apples and apples - a completely separate issue from any impact on the market price of UK bonds based on the fact that their biggest holder and purchaser had decided to divest.
A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.
The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country.
Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.
Ominously for prime minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.
The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.
Sooner or later there will be an electoral reckoning for the fiasco of Brexit. 2024 may well be it.
it won't be 2024, Labour and Tory don't want to bring it up at the moment. it's too early to predict but It'll be a couple away. there's no way Tories are bringing it up at a GE to reverse it. Labour will probably do a 'we need to renegotiate' and nudge us closer to the EU but won't need to at the moment.
If I was going to make more certain predictions I'd say we're talking well into the 2030's before brexit becomes an issue again.
Longer term economic forecasts are mystic Meg territory but models are now being revised to reflect the reality that Brexit has had no meaningful economic effect, as some of us predicted. If the new forecasts are correct then the UK will outgrow most of the EZ over the next 10 years.
The other issue is immigration which is not going away but selling freedom of movement in that decade is going to be hard. I think Brexit is done and buried even if some people are finding it hard to get over.
A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.
The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country.
Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.
Ominously for prime minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.
The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.
Sooner or later there will be an electoral reckoning for the fiasco of Brexit. 2024 may well be it.
it won't be 2024, Labour and Tory don't want to bring it up at the moment. it's too early to predict but It'll be a couple away. there's no way Tories are bringing it up at a GE to reverse it. Labour will probably do a 'we need to renegotiate' and nudge us closer to the EU but won't need to at the moment.
If I was going to make more certain predictions I'd say we're talking well into the 2030's before brexit becomes an issue again.
Longer term economic forecasts are mystic Meg territory but models are now being revised to reflect the reality that Brexit has had no meaningful economic effect, as some of us predicted. If the new forecasts are correct then the UK will outgrow most of the EZ over the next 10 years.
The other issue is immigration which is not going away but selling freedom of movement in that decade is going to be hard. I think Brexit is done and buried even if some people are finding it hard to get over.
The polls also swung against membership after the 1975 referendum, but it didn't become a major live political issue again until the 90s, in spite of the fact that Labour had withdrawal in their 1983 manifesto. The current polling doesn't really tell us much except that the government is unpopular.
A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.
The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country.
Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.
Ominously for prime minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.
The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.
Sooner or later there will be an electoral reckoning for the fiasco of Brexit. 2024 may well be it.
it won't be 2024, Labour and Tory don't want to bring it up at the moment. it's too early to predict but It'll be a couple away. there's no way Tories are bringing it up at a GE to reverse it. Labour will probably do a 'we need to renegotiate' and nudge us closer to the EU but won't need to at the moment.
If I was going to make more certain predictions I'd say we're talking well into the 2030's before brexit becomes an issue again.
Longer term economic forecasts are mystic Meg territory but models are now being revised to reflect the reality that Brexit has had no meaningful economic effect, as some of us predicted. If the new forecasts are correct then the UK will outgrow most of the EZ over the next 10 years.
The other issue is immigration which is not going away but selling freedom of movement in that decade is going to be hard. I think Brexit is done and buried even if some people are finding it hard to get over.
Sure, but that is because they read every day what an economic disaster Brexit has been and the actual figures, showing our performance is at least average and often better get very little attention. But the truth is in the numbers and it is getting harder and harder to hide that.
A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.
The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country.
Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.
Ominously for prime minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.
The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.
Sooner or later there will be an electoral reckoning for the fiasco of Brexit. 2024 may well be it.
it won't be 2024, Labour and Tory don't want to bring it up at the moment. it's too early to predict but It'll be a couple away. there's no way Tories are bringing it up at a GE to reverse it. Labour will probably do a 'we need to renegotiate' and nudge us closer to the EU but won't need to at the moment.
If I was going to make more certain predictions I'd say we're talking well into the 2030's before brexit becomes an issue again.
Longer term economic forecasts are mystic Meg territory but models are now being revised to reflect the reality that Brexit has had no meaningful economic effect, as some of us predicted. If the new forecasts are correct then the UK will outgrow most of the EZ over the next 10 years.
The other issue is immigration which is not going away but selling freedom of movement in that decade is going to be hard. I think Brexit is done and buried even if some people are finding it hard to get over.
The polls also swung against membership after the 1975 referendum, but it didn't become a major live political issue again until the 90s, in spite of the fact that Labour had withdrawal in their 1983 manifesto. The current polling doesn't really tell us much except that the government is unpopular.
My point is that people who hate and blame Brexit don't need it to feature in the campaign. They know where the blame belongs and will have their revenge served cold.
A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.
The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country.
Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.
Ominously for prime minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.
The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.
Sooner or later there will be an electoral reckoning for the fiasco of Brexit. 2024 may well be it.
it won't be 2024, Labour and Tory don't want to bring it up at the moment. it's too early to predict but It'll be a couple away. there's no way Tories are bringing it up at a GE to reverse it. Labour will probably do a 'we need to renegotiate' and nudge us closer to the EU but won't need to at the moment.
If I was going to make more certain predictions I'd say we're talking well into the 2030's before brexit becomes an issue again.
Longer term economic forecasts are mystic Meg territory but models are now being revised to reflect the reality that Brexit has had no meaningful economic effect, as some of us predicted. If the new forecasts are correct then the UK will outgrow most of the EZ over the next 10 years.
The other issue is immigration which is not going away but selling freedom of movement in that decade is going to be hard. I think Brexit is done and buried even if some people are finding it hard to get over.
Sure, but that is because they read every day what an economic disaster Brexit has been and the actual figures, showing our performance is at least average and often better get very little attention. But the truth is in the numbers and it is getting harder and harder to hide that.
Sure there are other reasons the economy is flat-lining, but Brexit is the new EU that can be blamed for everything.
It will be the dead albatross about the Tory's neck for a long time yet.
A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.
The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country.
Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.
Ominously for prime minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.
The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.
Sooner or later there will be an electoral reckoning for the fiasco of Brexit. 2024 may well be it.
it won't be 2024, Labour and Tory don't want to bring it up at the moment. it's too early to predict but It'll be a couple away. there's no way Tories are bringing it up at a GE to reverse it. Labour will probably do a 'we need to renegotiate' and nudge us closer to the EU but won't need to at the moment.
If I was going to make more certain predictions I'd say we're talking well into the 2030's before brexit becomes an issue again.
Longer term economic forecasts are mystic Meg territory but models are now being revised to reflect the reality that Brexit has had no meaningful economic effect, as some of us predicted. If the new forecasts are correct then the UK will outgrow most of the EZ over the next 10 years.
The other issue is immigration which is not going away but selling freedom of movement in that decade is going to be hard. I think Brexit is done and buried even if some people are finding it hard to get over.
Minds change. This was OGH's error for years prior to the Brexit vote. His claims that people 'didn't give a Monkey's' about EU membership as an issue.
As I have said before, the further we get from Brexit the less people will care about rejoining. All the more so once we are rid of this current succession of incompetent administrations. And with long term economic results showing Brexit was not the disaster the Remoaners cling to, their arguments will start to look very hollow indeed.
A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.
The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country.
Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.
Ominously for prime minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.
The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.
Sooner or later there will be an electoral reckoning for the fiasco of Brexit. 2024 may well be it.
it won't be 2024, Labour and Tory don't want to bring it up at the moment. it's too early to predict but It'll be a couple away. there's no way Tories are bringing it up at a GE to reverse it. Labour will probably do a 'we need to renegotiate' and nudge us closer to the EU but won't need to at the moment.
If I was going to make more certain predictions I'd say we're talking well into the 2030's before brexit becomes an issue again.
Longer term economic forecasts are mystic Meg territory but models are now being revised to reflect the reality that Brexit has had no meaningful economic effect, as some of us predicted. If the new forecasts are correct then the UK will outgrow most of the EZ over the next 10 years.
The other issue is immigration which is not going away but selling freedom of movement in that decade is going to be hard. I think Brexit is done and buried even if some people are finding it hard to get over.
I suspect that there will be another UK/EU treaty bringing us closer to an EFTA style membership, ironically caused by low paid immigration. there are lots of jobs in our economy which are struggling to get workers because they have been generally done by immigrants. Social Care, Factory Work, Flower/Veg Picking to name a few. a government of one kind or another are going to be forced into letting more immigrants in to get these jobs done.
Off topic. The honest answer to “what was the cause of the Civil War?” is far more nuanced than saying in not many words, slavery. PB has done nothing yet to convince me otherwise. In fact the other way around, I suggest you all see it through the experience of Brexit to understand what the fight was about.
If the dividing line is strictly slavery or not to slavery, then why is a slave state like Delaware fighting for the Union? Because the dividing line wasn’t abolition of slavery, but happy or not to be in a federal tax regime.
There were numerous fault lines, but the actual root cause of the conflict is the fundamental principle of federal versus state, some wishing not to be in a federal economic commonwealth at all, that is taxed down here for a new harbour to be built up there, to the extent they would prefer their own governmental relationship, as in a separate country. And wanting out on that principle is such a feasible and reasoned proposition, on what grounds were they not allowed to breakaway and form their own non federal country without it coming to such a bloody conflict?
To say a “A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand' if far from meaningless spin, it literally meant that success comes from sticking together and to do anything else is to invoke disaster. But here’s the kicker, it was actually a lie, it was false ideology, the sort Brexit has crushed, to actually believe A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand . A Union cause on basis of a lie because the truth was a house divided could have gone separate ways and not been a disaster. Just like Brexit isn’t a disaster, but a huge opportunity.
The EU doesn’t even have federal taxation, but it was still too federal for many in UK. So we should have more respect for the confederate states “brexit yearnings” when we answer what the Civil War was about.
The American Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about Brexit. I feel good about putting you all correct on this. 😌
Sigh.
The border states divided according to the dominance of slavery in their society.
Throughout the South, there were those utterly opposed to slavery and the Confederacy.
Look up why there is a West Virginia. Or the State of Jones….
Even in the Deep South there were many who were anti-slavery and “Union men” - violence and coercion was used to keep them “down”.
Also plenty of Confederate sympathizers and/or appeasers in North - aka "Copperheads"; note that in 1861 the then-mayor of New York City advocated making NYC (then just Manhattan) a neutral quasi-independent statelet.
And even more pro-Southerners in Border states, which furnished plenty of soldiers and other resources for Confederacy; for example, almost certainly more West Virginians enlisted with CSA than with USA.
As for MoonRabbit's basic point, that "A House Divided" could have split with "success" however defined, well THAT's been a major topic of American history and historiography ever since before Fort Sumter. Perhaps a wee bit more involved (far less literal) than she suggests!
Posted this a couple days ago, but link below re: interesting alternative history written in early 1960s in time for the US Civil War Centennial. It's dated but still worth considering:
Greatest weakness, shared by virtually all US Civil War histories of that period = minimizing/marginalizing of the African American experience, for Blacks AND for entire nation.
I belatedly thank you for this helpful post.
I have been away a bit watching masked singer.
There’s a lot of feelings and idea’s happening at once in the American civil war. In politically attacking Haley as though there was a slam dunk answer, opponents need to be a bit careful. There were anti federalists at the formation of the United States, certainly at the time of the civil war, and even today. There was a master race vein of thinking running through the secessionists of the civil war, true, to only focus on this to exclusion of all else is saying the conflict was just about slavery. Do you mean by “just about slavery” it means a war to end slavery, like it was the struggle for the soul of a country? I think that’s a mistake. A mistake proven to us by the definition of victory, the history of what happened next after the war.
One thing we can agree on even on PB, the true history is in defeat in war the breakaway was thwarted. But did the soul of the whole country change, was their large cultural change following the war, did the “superior race” ideology disappear from America after its defeat in the war, did the class and status of black citizens dramatically change? Did they all leave the plantations of the confederacy racists? Did they have anywhere to go? Indeed was this racism gone a hundred years later in 1960s? Is “the house” still not divided over race and rights even today?
What I suspect is happening here, through the 20th century and the 21st, history is being rewritten. History has always been rewritten, often by victors, or by authorities using the point of a sword. But also by Hollywood and others streams of culture. Where do people get their history from? Politicians? Historians? Hollywood and other culture? Do politicians and historians and T/v shows ever agree with one another about history? Down centuries history is always viewed through different eyes by people with different knowledge, if it means the “ending slavery” element of the civil war is so much more meaningful to people today than at the time, i think this is borne out as fact by looking to what actually changed following a war for the soul of America, where slavery and master race thinking was, you are struggling to convince me, defeated.
Certainly the breakaway was prevented from happening, what else changed?
In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, you had Black people elected to national office also from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia.
From slavery to the Senate and Congress.
It was only after 1876 that the South pushed back the first cvil rights era.
What if the markets take fright at these tax cuts? What then?
Different scenario. The Lizaster had just been appointed PM with a couple of years left to run. Rishi would have weeks left to run. The markets would express their alarm, effectively back Labour, and wait.
No, I think unfunded tax cuts would do to the markets exactly what they did in September 2022.
The Bank of England's bond flog-off dwarved any 'unfunded' tax cuts in fiscal terms. Under the Treasury's commitment to indemnify the Bank against it's losses, what had been announced the day before the minibudget was set to cost the Treasury over £80bn (it has cost more in the event). Any marketeers paying attention would have noted that fact.
So on the day of the Treasury's announcement, day before the mini-budget, GBP gained slightly against the USD; on the day of the budget it lost 3% against the USD.
Those markets were a bit slow to react to the Treasury announcement, what kept them?
There are various reasons for a delayed (very slightly delayed) market response to the BOE announcement, but that's not something I even need to explain to defend my argument. You state that 'unfunded tax cuts' spooked the markets. From memory, there were about £40bn of tax cuts in the mini budget. Within the BOE announcement, there was £80bn of 'unfunded' cost to the exchequer. That's just comparing apples and apples - a completely separate issue from any impact on the market price of UK bonds based on the fact that their biggest holder and purchaser had decided to divest.
One off vs. potentially ongoing?
More importantly, the bumps down and up in market sentiment tracked the announcements by Kwateng and Hunt. They may have been mistaken in doing that- tough.
Financial markets are right, even when they are wrong. As a better Thatcherite than me, I'm sure you remember the Good Lady's views on the buckability of the market.
Revealed: Rishi Sunak’s secret talks to bring back Dominic Cummings
The PM was in discussions with Boris Johnson’s enforcer — then lost his nerve. Details of their conversations tell us plenty about how the Tory election script might unfold
Rishi Sunak’s political hero, the former chancellor Nigel Lawson, used to be fond of saying: “To govern is to choose.” It is a lesson Sunak has taken to heart with mixed success.
As 2024 dawns, it will soon be the electorate’s turn to choose, and their decision will be shaped by work going on behind the scenes for both the Tories and Labour.
Had the prime minister made a different choice at a meeting in July, the Tory campaign might have looked very different. That month, in utmost secrecy, Dominic Cummings, the former campaign director of Vote Leave and architect of Boris Johnson’s election victory in 2019, travelled to North Yorkshire to see Sunak. It was an audience hidden even from several members of the PM’s inner circle.
Over dinner, Sunak contemplated bringing the most controversial political aide of his generation in Downing Street back into the Conservative Party machine and sought his advice on how to win a general election. Cummings also went to see the PM and Liam Booth-Smith, his chief of staff, in London in December 2022, shortly after they moved into Downing Street.
No 10 has not denied Cummings’s account but stressed that no formal offer was made to him. “It was a broad discussion about politics and campaigning, no job was offered,” a Downing Street source said.
That month Cummings told Sunak to ditch his cautious approach to the economy and hold an emergency budget, reversing Johnson’s tax rises (which breached a 2019 manifesto pledge), and to almost double the threshold at which people pay the 40p rate of income tax from £50,271 to £100,000.
Both times Cummings told Sunak to settle the NHS strikes and make rebuilding the health service one of his core priorities, launching a national effort in the spirit of the Vaccine Taskforce. He also advocated leaving the European Convention on Human Rights.
Cummings’s price for joining the team was that Sunak put his authority behind radical Whitehall reforms. Sunak said: “The MPs and the media will go crazy. Your involvement has to be secret.”
Revealing details of this conversation for the first time, Cummings said: “He wanted a secret deal in which I delivered the election and he promised to take government seriously after the election. But I’d rather the Tories lose than continue in office without prioritising what’s important and the voters. The post-2016 Tories are summed up by the fact that Sunak, like Johnson, would rather lose than take government seriously. Both thought their MPs agreed with them, and both were right.”
A rather strange source for The Times to quote, but they’re 100% correct
“ A Labour tennis fan said: “ The biggest mistake the Tories made electorally was they panicked and got rid of Boris Johnson, who is a winner, and replaced him first with a lunatic [Liz Truss] and then with a loser [Sunak]. Sunak lost the leadership election, he got walloped in a succession of by-elections. He’s made a worst-ever start in a local election. He’s only waiting for his Wimbledon … the general election. That would give him the grand slam of losses.” “
Unless Rishi pulls off a win, which is still likely.
Well it’s not likely is it? Lab majority is 75% chance in the betting, and they’ve got NOM onside too in all probability
I think it is more likely than some think.
Labour don't have to do much to deprive the cons of a majority. in fact, just switchers from Con to Reform could do that. add in an increase for labour and they'll easily get the Tories down below 310. 310 is the point where the other parties can start forming a rainbow coalition.
anything around Lab 40%, Con 30%, LD 10% reform 8% would easily give labour a sizeable majority.
Within a couple, to form a government the Tories need 322 votes. Leaving 320 other votes (allowing 8 for SF and speaker). It is just possible, though unlikely that up to about 8 votes would come from the Prots. (These two groups richly deserve each other, but the poor old public don't). The Tories could possibly therefore scrape by with 314 seats + 8 Prots. If they lose 52 seats they are out; probably fewer - losing 44 seats leaves them with 321.
NOM is a very likely result.
Where do the Tory votes to get them to 30% come from?
Of the last 11 polls (Wiki) 6 have had the Tories at 27, 28 or 29%. IMHO the Tory vote in GE 2024 will be rather over 30%. Those votes will come from current DKs and Reform supporters voting Tory.
Why do you believe those 6 rather than the other 5?
The question I was dealing with asked Where do the Tories get the votes to get to 30% in the GE voting? The answer said nothing about what I believe but drew attention to the upper end of the numbers which are persistently appearing in the polls. From this it is rational (not certain!) to believe that by the GE the Tories can get to 30%. I think they will do rather better than that. Current averages + ex Reform + DKs + extra turnout following the customary bribes with their own money + attacks on Starmer from the usual suspects=A high chance of enough votes to top 30% and, crucially, a narrow enough gap to achieve NOM - which must be their best hope.
Minds change. This was OGH's error for years prior to the Brexit vote. His claims that people 'didn't give a Monkey's' about EU membership as an issue.
They didn't.
The vote was about immigration, which people cared about a lot.
A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.
The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country.
Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.
Ominously for prime minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.
The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.
Sooner or later there will be an electoral reckoning for the fiasco of Brexit. 2024 may well be it.
it won't be 2024, Labour and Tory don't want to bring it up at the moment. it's too early to predict but It'll be a couple away. there's no way Tories are bringing it up at a GE to reverse it. Labour will probably do a 'we need to renegotiate' and nudge us closer to the EU but won't need to at the moment.
If I was going to make more certain predictions I'd say we're talking well into the 2030's before brexit becomes an issue again.
Longer term economic forecasts are mystic Meg territory but models are now being revised to reflect the reality that Brexit has had no meaningful economic effect, as some of us predicted. If the new forecasts are correct then the UK will outgrow most of the EZ over the next 10 years.
The other issue is immigration which is not going away but selling freedom of movement in that decade is going to be hard. I think Brexit is done and buried even if some people are finding it hard to get over.
I suspect that there will be another UK/EU treaty bringing us closer to an EFTA style membership, ironically caused by low paid immigration. there are lots of jobs in our economy which are struggling to get workers because they have been generally done by immigrants. Social Care, Factory Work, Flower/Veg Picking to name a few. a government of one kind or another are going to be forced into letting more immigrants in to get these jobs done.
'EFTA Style' is binary. EFTA/EEA allows being in the SM with its freedom of movement. I don't know what current polling says but on the whole the population of the UK want to be in the SM except for FOM. Any British politician who can get us in the SM without FOM is going to go down in history.
A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.
The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country.
Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.
Ominously for prime minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.
The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.
Sooner or later there will be an electoral reckoning for the fiasco of Brexit. 2024 may well be it.
it won't be 2024, Labour and Tory don't want to bring it up at the moment. it's too early to predict but It'll be a couple away. there's no way Tories are bringing it up at a GE to reverse it. Labour will probably do a 'we need to renegotiate' and nudge us closer to the EU but won't need to at the moment.
If I was going to make more certain predictions I'd say we're talking well into the 2030's before brexit becomes an issue again.
Longer term economic forecasts are mystic Meg territory but models are now being revised to reflect the reality that Brexit has had no meaningful economic effect, as some of us predicted. If the new forecasts are correct then the UK will outgrow most of the EZ over the next 10 years.
The other issue is immigration which is not going away but selling freedom of movement in that decade is going to be hard. I think Brexit is done and buried even if some people are finding it hard to get over.
Minds change. This was OGH's error for years prior to the Brexit vote. His claims that people 'didn't give a Monkey's' about EU membership as an issue.
As I have said before, the further we get from Brexit the less people will care about rejoining. All the more so once we are rid of this current succession of incompetent administrations. And with long term economic results showing Brexit was not the disaster the Remoaners cling to, their arguments will start to look very hollow indeed.
In 2015, Remain had a pretty solid lead in the polls. As much as 66/22 according to Ipsos.
A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union.
The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country.
Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.
Ominously for prime minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.
The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.
Sooner or later there will be an electoral reckoning for the fiasco of Brexit. 2024 may well be it.
it won't be 2024, Labour and Tory don't want to bring it up at the moment. it's too early to predict but It'll be a couple away. there's no way Tories are bringing it up at a GE to reverse it. Labour will probably do a 'we need to renegotiate' and nudge us closer to the EU but won't need to at the moment.
If I was going to make more certain predictions I'd say we're talking well into the 2030's before brexit becomes an issue again.
Longer term economic forecasts are mystic Meg territory but models are now being revised to reflect the reality that Brexit has had no meaningful economic effect, as some of us predicted. If the new forecasts are correct then the UK will outgrow most of the EZ over the next 10 years.
The other issue is immigration which is not going away but selling freedom of movement in that decade is going to be hard. I think Brexit is done and buried even if some people are finding it hard to get over.
I suspect that there will be another UK/EU treaty bringing us closer to an EFTA style membership, ironically caused by low paid immigration. there are lots of jobs in our economy which are struggling to get workers because they have been generally done by immigrants. Social Care, Factory Work, Flower/Veg Picking to name a few. a government of one kind or another are going to be forced into letting more immigrants in to get these jobs done.
'EFTA Style' is binary. EFTA/EEA allows being in the SM with its freedom of movement. I don't know what current polling says but on the whole the population of the UK want to be in the SM except for FOM. Any British politician who can get us in the SM without FOM is going to go down in history.
People in the UK do want FOM. For themselves. They don't necessarily want it for other Europeans.
What if the markets take fright at these tax cuts? What then?
Different scenario. The Lizaster had just been appointed PM with a couple of years left to run. Rishi would have weeks left to run. The markets would express their alarm, effectively back Labour, and wait.
No, I think unfunded tax cuts would do to the markets exactly what they did in September 2022.
The Bank of England's bond flog-off dwarved any 'unfunded' tax cuts in fiscal terms. Under the Treasury's commitment to indemnify the Bank against it's losses, what had been announced the day before the minibudget was set to cost the Treasury over £80bn (it has cost more in the event). Any marketeers paying attention would have noted that fact.
So on the day of the Treasury's announcement, day before the mini-budget, GBP gained slightly against the USD; on the day of the budget it lost 3% against the USD.
Those markets were a bit slow to react to the Treasury announcement, what kept them?
There are various reasons for a delayed (very slightly delayed) market response to the BOE announcement, but that's not something I even need to explain to defend my argument. You state that 'unfunded tax cuts' spooked the markets. From memory, there were about £40bn of tax cuts in the mini budget. Within the BOE announcement, there was £80bn of 'unfunded' cost to the exchequer. That's just comparing apples and apples - a completely separate issue from any impact on the market price of UK bonds based on the fact that their biggest holder and purchaser had decided to divest.
One off vs. potentially ongoing?
More importantly, the bumps down and up in market sentiment tracked the announcements by Kwateng and Hunt. They may have been mistaken in doing that- tough.
Financial markets are right, even when they are wrong. As a better Thatcherite than me, I'm sure you remember the Good Lady's views on the buckability of the market.
1. The Bank's QT programme is ongoing, and is a far firmer commitment than some tax cuts. Much as it's trendy to poohoo the Laffer curve, there's also no growth benefit in giving money to the bank to put on their bonfire - with tax cuts one would expect at least some additional taxable activity to take place to offset the cost.
2. Sure, but if you acknowledge that the sums in the 'unfunded tax cuts' argument don't add up, but insist that the market believed they did and that's the point, you're effectively admitting that the problems with the mini-budget were presentational, not fundamental. That's very much my argument, but it's one I've seen very little support for amongst Truss's detractors on this board to date.
Minds change. This was OGH's error for years prior to the Brexit vote. His claims that people 'didn't give a Monkey's' about EU membership as an issue.
They didn't.
The vote was about immigration, which people cared about a lot.
I have little doubt that migration was the 'swing' issue that made the difference between winning and losing. But it is not true that it was the only issue. However incoherently lots of people felt that in going beyond a free trade association and moving towards economic and political union (Euro, flag, ambassadors, policies, Potemkin parliament, anthem) they had not really been asked about what amounted to a constitutional set of developments.
Brexit would never win now. Two things have changed. Migration did not and will not decrease. The USA is no longer a trustworthy ally because of its emergent fascism, and the EU now looks the safest of a set of unsafe ports for western values.
What if the markets take fright at these tax cuts? What then?
Different scenario. The Lizaster had just been appointed PM with a couple of years left to run. Rishi would have weeks left to run. The markets would express their alarm, effectively back Labour, and wait.
No, I think unfunded tax cuts would do to the markets exactly what they did in September 2022.
The Bank of England's bond flog-off dwarved any 'unfunded' tax cuts in fiscal terms. Under the Treasury's commitment to indemnify the Bank against it's losses, what had been announced the day before the minibudget was set to cost the Treasury over £80bn (it has cost more in the event). Any marketeers paying attention would have noted that fact.
So on the day of the Treasury's announcement, day before the mini-budget, GBP gained slightly against the USD; on the day of the budget it lost 3% against the USD.
Those markets were a bit slow to react to the Treasury announcement, what kept them?
There are various reasons for a delayed (very slightly delayed) market response to the BOE announcement, but that's not something I even need to explain to defend my argument. You state that 'unfunded tax cuts' spooked the markets. From memory, there were about £40bn of tax cuts in the mini budget. Within the BOE announcement, there was £80bn of 'unfunded' cost to the exchequer. That's just comparing apples and apples - a completely separate issue from any impact on the market price of UK bonds based on the fact that their biggest holder and purchaser had decided to divest.
One off vs. potentially ongoing?
More importantly, the bumps down and up in market sentiment tracked the announcements by Kwateng and Hunt. They may have been mistaken in doing that- tough.
Financial markets are right, even when they are wrong. As a better Thatcherite than me, I'm sure you remember the Good Lady's views on the buckability of the market.
1. The Bank's QT programme is ongoing, and is a far firmer commitment than some tax cuts. Much as it's trendy to poohoo the Laffer curve, there's also no growth benefit in giving money to the bank to put on their bonfire - with tax cuts one would expect at least some additional taxable activity to take place to offset the cost.
2. Sure, but if you acknowledge that the sums in the 'unfunded tax cuts' argument don't add up, but insist that the market believed they did and that's the point, you're effectively admitting that the problems with the mini-budget were presentational, not fundamental. That's very much my argument, but it's one I've seen very little support for amongst Truss's detractors on this board to date.
I'm not acknowledging anything. I don't think the Truss plans added up, but I'm a suburban science master, and my opinion doesn't really matter.
But if the markets didn't think they added up, that does matter. Their opinion matters, whether it's right or wrong.
Comments
And why?
(Knowing very little about the subject, I would advise waiting until after the New Year to even decide. If I knew more, I might suggest waiting until after a particular event, but I have no idea which event makes the most sense.)
raising the threshold over £1M per person would make sense but it's also an easy target for labour (a tax cut for the top 5%)
I’d quite like some boring competence and a boring period in politics, but to be fair, the years since 2019 have been exciting through external factors.
A brilliant actor.
Honestly, they're such loathsome hypocrites. And cowards to boot.
If they want Ukraine to stop air attacks on them, then withdraw from Ukraine and end the war.
It's so easy I would have thought even that drunken overweight paederast Vladimir Putin would get it.
And if (when!) they lose you get the whole summer to elect your replacement in time for the September conference, plus you get the summer off…
If they go later the narrative will be one of inevitable loss after the locals, with Labour doing "loser hangs on".
I think May will be as good as it gets for the Tories. It would be sensible to go then. Hopeless optimism will win, though, and they'll hold on just in case something turns up. October or December is what I think.
What then?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slavery_and_serfdom
If so, he would have been following most "founding fathers", including Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. (In his brilliant Cooper Union speech, Lincoln showed that a majority of "founding fathers" agreed that the federal government could ban slavery in the territories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper_Union_speech
And had banned it when the US government passed the Northwest Ordinance which, among other things, banned slavery in the vast area that covered what is now called the Midwest:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Ordinance )
IMHO, slavery would have got a massive boost worldwide, with a Confederate victory. It would cease to be viewed as an anachronism.The CSA, Brazil, and the Congo Free State would have been three big slave powers, allied to African and Middle Eastern nations who thought likewise. Paradoxically, the racist CSA would have been on the same side as African rulers.
Next you'll be havering about long term capital investment. Madness.
They sowed the wind, and now they shall reap the whirlwind.”
If it's to get the best likely result, May.
If it's to maximise the probability of the horse learning to sing, the small chance of actually winning, as late as you dare. But keep an ear out for singing in the stable.
If you want to have as long as possible as PM, December 19. Nobody will forgive you for an election with a Christmas break.
If you just want to make it stop, and who can blame you, I think February 15 is technically possible. Promise all those tax cuts without actually having to deliver them.
(Probably the only hairdresser since Mary Magdalen with a decent shot at sainthood)
The survey of more than 2,000 UK voters also finds strikingly low numbers of people who believe that Brexit has benefited them or the country.
Just one in 10 believe leaving the EU has helped their personal financial situation, against 35% who say it has been bad for their finances, while just 9% say it has been good for the NHS, against 47% who say it has had a negative effect.
Ominously for prime minister Rishi Sunak, who backed Brexit and claimed it would be economically beneficial, only 7% of people think it has helped keep down prices in UK shops, against 63% who think Brexit has been a factor in fuelling inflation and the cost of living crisis.
The poll suggests that seven and a half years on from the referendum the British public now regards Brexit as a failure. Just 22% of voters believe it has been good for the UK in general.
What then?
If it was not was specified why on earth hasnt the govt already got the money back.
However she has competition from St Martin de Porres, who allegedly provided haircase services to the brothers in his monastery.
St. Martin de Porres was born at Lima, Peru, in 1579. His father was a Spanish gentleman and his mother a black freed-woman from Panama. At fifteen, he became a lay brother at the Dominican Friary at Lima and spent his whole life there-as a barber, farm laborer, and infirmarian among other things.
http://www.intothedeepblog.net/2020/11/patron-saint-of-hairdressers.html
A) exclude the principal private residence (“family home”)
It would be dreadful economics but the politics could work
Late September / early October maybe - 3rd October at the latest.
I have been away a bit watching masked singer.
There’s a lot of feelings and idea’s happening at once in the American civil war. In politically attacking Haley as though there was a slam dunk answer, opponents need to be a bit careful. There were anti federalists at the formation of the United States, certainly at the time of the civil war, and even today. There was a master race vein of thinking running through the secessionists of the civil war, true, to only focus on this to exclusion of all else is saying the conflict was just about slavery. Do you mean by “just about slavery” it means a war to end slavery, like it was the struggle for the soul of a country? I think that’s a mistake. A mistake proven to us by the definition of victory, the history of what happened next after the war.
One thing we can agree on even on PB, the true history is in defeat in war the breakaway was thwarted. But did the soul of the whole country change, was their large cultural change following the war, did the “superior race” ideology disappear from America after its defeat in the war, did the class and status of black citizens dramatically change? Did they all leave the plantations of the confederacy racists? Did they have anywhere to go? Indeed was this racism gone a hundred years later in 1960s? Is “the house” still not divided over race and rights even today?
What I suspect is happening here, through the 20th century and the 21st, history is being rewritten. History has always been rewritten, often by victors, or by authorities using the point of a sword. But also by Hollywood and others streams of culture. Where do people get their history from? Politicians? Historians? Hollywood and other culture? Do politicians and historians and T/v shows ever agree with one another about history? Down centuries history is always viewed through different eyes by people with different knowledge, if it means the “ending slavery” element of the civil war is so much more meaningful to people today than at the time, i think this is borne out as fact by looking to what actually changed following a war for the soul of America, where slavery and master race thinking was, you are struggling to convince me, defeated.
Certainly the breakaway was prevented from happening, what else changed?
Those markets were a bit slow to react to the Treasury announcement, what kept them?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63009173
If I was going to make more certain predictions I'd say we're talking well into the 2030's before brexit becomes an issue again.
But just like the problem of the king being abroad, necessity is the mother of invention. People make it to royal funerals whatever they had on. Same with election duty.
Support for Brexit runs a long way above support for the Conservative party. It even runs above combined support for the Conservatives and Reform. One can see why Starmer does not wish to go there, for he'd reunite the right, and have a real battle on his hands to win the next election.
The other issue is immigration which is not going away but selling freedom of movement in that decade is going to be hard.
I think Brexit is done and buried even if some people are finding it hard to get over.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/30/britons-brexit-bad-uk-poll-eu-finances-nhs?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
It will be the dead albatross about the Tory's neck for a long time yet.
As I have said before, the further we get from Brexit the less people will care about rejoining. All the more so once we are rid of this current succession of incompetent administrations. And with long term economic results showing Brexit was not the disaster the Remoaners cling to, their arguments will start to look very hollow indeed.
From slavery to the Senate and Congress.
It was only after 1876 that the South pushed back the first cvil rights era.
More importantly, the bumps down and up in market sentiment tracked the announcements by Kwateng and Hunt. They may have been mistaken in doing that- tough.
Financial markets are right, even when they are wrong. As a better Thatcherite than me, I'm sure you remember the Good Lady's views on the buckability of the market.
The idea that there is spare cash for a giveaway budget is delusional.
The vote was about immigration, which people cared about a lot.
The Brits still pay some of the lowest taxes even at the current levels compared to many other developed countries .
NEW: Tory election chief Isaac Levido has pencilled in November 14 as the general election date
2. Sure, but if you acknowledge that the sums in the 'unfunded tax cuts' argument don't add up, but insist that the market believed they did and that's the point, you're effectively admitting that the problems with the mini-budget were presentational, not fundamental. That's very much my argument, but it's one I've seen very little support for amongst Truss's detractors on this board to date.
Brexit would never win now. Two things have changed. Migration did not and will not decrease. The USA is no longer a trustworthy ally because of its emergent fascism, and the EU now looks the safest of a set of unsafe ports for western values.
But if the markets didn't think they added up, that does matter. Their opinion matters, whether it's right or wrong.