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Could Liz Truss be replaced before the election? – politicalbetting.com

There’s a very powerful piece by Matthew Parris in the Times this morning raising doubts about Liz Truss – the woman who looks set to be the next CON leader and PM. He writes:
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The Tories are issuing another shit into the bed, and they will have to keep lying in it until ‘24.
However at this point I either have a choice of moving home and working for minimum wage in a chicken factory with guaranteed no prospects, or staying in London and working for minimum wage in a Conservative association with the dim hope of some prospects. So I'm gambling on the prospects.
But I'm struggling to see the supposed car crashes that she's been engaged in previously. She's been in the Cabinet for coming on to a decade now and I can't think of a single scandal or car crash she has been the cause of - if there have been many, please feel free to say what they are?
What are the top Liz Truss 'car crashes' in her roughly a decade in the Cabinet?
1. That speech where she spoke weirdly about Pork Markets.
2. That speech where she spoke weirdly about cheese.
3. Errrrr ....
4. Oh wait, that was the same speech nearly a decade ago.
5. Drawing a blank for any more.
Matthew Parris has been driven mad by Brexit. He's got as much impartiality when it comes to the modern Tories now as any other FBPE fanatic.
Because it reads like a fragment from an entry in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulwer-Lytton_Fiction_Contest
(Probably not a winning entry, but certainly a good try. )
1.06 Liz Truss 94%
15 Rishi Sunak 7%
Next Conservative leader
1.06 Liz Truss 94%
16 Rishi Sunak 6%
Only IDS deserved such a cruel fate, and his case, richly, being so patently bad that troubling the electorate for our verdict was entirely unnecessary.
LAB: 43% (+4)
CON: 28% (-2)
LDEM: 11% (-1)
via @YouGov
Chgs. w/ 10 Aug
On the other hand, if it drags on, then energy prices are likely to remain elevated for some time. Simply, there aren't enough LNG vessels in the world to satisfy Europe's (including the UK) demand. This will result in a cascading effect, where reduced disposable income means reduced demand for goods and services, meaning fewer jobs, meaning the cost of imported energy weighs even more on UK consumers.
That will mean the UK has a recession that compares to 2008. And that will not be pretty.
And I'm not really sure how higher interest rates are meant to help.
Yes, they might reduce inflation - at the cost of a nasty recession - but it doesn't do anything to sort out the real-source of those high prices, which is energy.
Lavrov taking the piss out of her.
Anglo-Lithuanian Freedom Armada that was obviously nonsense.
Encouraging people to get their Duke of Edinburgh Award by joining the Azov Battalion.
Multiple examples of policies that were 'misunderstood' and had be jettisoned.
Truss needs to get the Tories way out ahead on the economy once more and has to establish a big lead over Starmer. Then hold both. If she does that, she’ll lead the Tories to victory - whatever the headline numbers might say.
If.
Green higher now - more votes to squeeze
Lib Dem similar to early 2013, but that vite then collapsed in 2015 - which was v favourable to the Tories
UKIP 9-10% then, easily squeezable by the Tories and doesn’t exist now.
LLG is consistently in the high 50s across polls, with Tory+populist right on sub-40% and usually around 35%.
If they successfully occupy Eastern Ukraine, and force the Central government to sue for peace, they will have an Afghanistan type insurgency situation on their hands.
Would never have guessed.
Or PB.
But those couple of years will be nasty, particularly for countries who have relied on Russian gas. Politically, I expect some friction in the EU with Germany, as the latter tries 'bullying' states that were not as stupid as they were.
I don't expect Europe to try to force Ukraine into a peace deal, however much some continental politicians may want it. They now realise that reliance on Russian energy is stoopid, and that Russia's territorial desires are not healthy for Europe. If they do a deal with Russia in exchange for 'peace', Russia will just turn off the gas again for their next demand.
And let's not forget, Chechnya has a population of 1.5m. There are more than 20 million people East of the Dnieper.
Beyond the narrow question of rate increases I think we need to acknowledge that we are at war and take other economic measures accordingly. During WW2 we avoided inflation and protected the poor through measures like rationing of food and energy. I think we should be open to doing this again as long as we are at war. Allowing the price mechanism to decide who eats and stays warm is both morally indefensible and will ultimately jeopardise our ability to win the war against Putin's aggression. We should also be coordinating measures with other countries in free Europe to ensure that Putin's efforts to divide and conquer can't win.
The kind of measures that Truss is proposing will simply stoke inflation without solving the underlying problem. And she appears set on more stupid quarrels with the EU. The gravity of our situation warrants a much more serious response.
Pakistan's gas imports have dropped 90+% because Germany and the UK can afford to outbid them on cargos.
It’s been floated on here that if she’s a shit-show in a year then the Tories will dump her before a GE but it’s clearly a possibility they don’t get a chance to.
I could potentially see a group of Tories in seats like Winchester, Cheltenham and other South west seats decide that “the party has left them” and shift to the LDs. Partly cynical self preservation but also likely that they do have fundamental probs with a Truss Tory party.
The same could happen with more Red Wall Tory MOs shifting to Labour.
The LDs would be the big beneficiaries if they received perhaps 20 of these refugees as not only is it a booster to them in terms of influence but also potentially injects extra quality into the parliamentary party IMHO.
Then if there is a 1923 wipe-out at next election as someone mentioned overnight then the LDs might shift and occupy the centre right position for some time.
The above is probably about as accurate as what I thought would happen with the Tory leadership but anyway it only requires about 40 to abandon ship and you are in VONC territory surely.
Central banks, with only one available lever to combat inflation, must realise that raising interest rates is futile against inflation that is being driven purely by global commodity prices.
Governments, having printed money like crazy in 2009, and again in 2020 in response to the pandemic, now appear addicted to it. Everyone bar the USA, with the fortune of the global reserve currency, is totally screwed as a result, and needs to embark on a decade-long plan to burn all the money they printed.
Globalisation is going to reverse, as the West slowly realises that China is not an ally, and that manufacturing needs to be closer to the consumers.
The global poor - Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc. - have learned the secret of manufacturing.
They will take a greater slice of world economic output, and they will compete with us for commodities.
This isn't bad, but it is far from easy for workers in the developed world.
Trying to be ‘down with da kids’ has backfired spectacularly on Rishi in this campaign. He’s revealed himself to be so far out of touch with the average person. I keep going back to him him not actually knowing how to put petrol in a car, because for the last 20 years he’s not had to do it. To the 99.99% of people who don’t have a family driver or a nice policeman on call to drive them around, he looks like an idiot.
The gas prices stick for the next couple of years IMO.
Russia will lose, the only question now is what form that loss takes.
Unwinding QE is already well in train in both the US and UK, alongside rate hikes.
That secret sauce that only the West (and Japan) had, the secret of a hundred years of dominating world economic output... well, it isn't a secret anymore.
Bright kid.
I certainly did. "Gottle of geer," and all that. First impressions count, and I had the same impression about Ed Milliband. A little weird too, but not dangerous. It could be her inexperience was showing, but Ed never really shook it off, and it could be she won't either.
But Brexit seemed to scramble Parris' brain, a little like Trump did to the Democrats. Making them angry rather than calculating. Seeing their opposition as Satan rather than a political opponent. "Sound and fury," isn't always a good attack line.
At worst, I'd see Liz as ineffective, but I don't see her being Satanic. Just my gut feeling.
In 1973, upset with the US's support for Israel, OPEC announced it would cease selling oil to the US, and would impose strict quotas on oil production.
It lurched the developed world into a seven year crisis.
But at the end of it, the Western world had developed new energy sources (whether oil and gas from the North Sea or Alaska, or France's nuclear power programme), and had dramatically cut energy consumption. World oil demand bottomed out almost ten years after the initial shock, 15% below 1973 levels.
We'll see exactly the same again: new sources of gas will be developed (Mozambique, for example), and the Western world will reduce its demand for natural gas, by building more renewables.
Russia, when it starts exporting again, will be exporting into a very different world.
Even now, though, the West (and Japan) still has advantages - not least freedom to access information and question authority. We can be disruptive in a way China can’t be. They still need us to do the heavy lifting in innovation.
The countries that did best were the ones who had existing high levels of hydrocarbon (energy) taxation, and were therefore already fairly efficient.
If Liz Truss does very badly, anyone contemplating replacing her won't have those benefits. They'd be PM for only months. Most likely they would take over only to have the honour of leading the Tories to an enormous defeat. It would be easy in that position to decide that it was better to try and minimize the damage at the election and then seek to take over in opposition.
*yes, I know it is just marketing and made up by profiteering elsewhere in the package!
On topic, there's nothing stopping Truss being kicked out, but it would come at a massive cost in Conservative credibility. If she is as awful as some who have worked with her say, that price may need to be paid, but it won't be easy or cheap, unless she suffers a hideous medical emergency. Not even the Conservative Whips' Office would do that, would they?
Betteridge's Law applies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
Where have we have heard that before? It rings a bell...
JRM for Levelling Up secretary.
That has to be a joke, right?
It never bothered me if politicians did not know the price of a bottle of milk but Rishi is abusing the privilege and handing ammunition straight to Team Truss. It will not alter his ability to be Prime Minister but it has killed his chances. And it is literally pathetic if he did not realise it has been more than two years since he took his daughters to McDonalds.
For anyone not yet convinced the (however brief) Truss premiership is going to be an epic bin fire from beginning to ignominious end, I bring you this
And apologies to anyone eating breakfast
‘Rose without trace’ has become a cliché but I can’t think of anyone to whom it applies more than Frosty currently. In a strong field he embodies the Unionist Brexiteer spouting reactionary threats to order, usually in the house paper of that weird ideology the Tele. I sense even HYUFD might find him a tad extreme.
https://twitter.com/RALee85/status/1560698512010276864
Oh bugger.
https://twitter.com/secrettory12/status/1560706605695606784?s=21&t=_R2jK2Ka_eaAii2ODvTbYA
https://twitter.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1560879261183102977
And John Redwood set to return to government as a Treasury minister almost 30 years after quitting Major’s cabinet
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/4162ba9a-1fee-11ed-b7c3-8b288ab55a56?shareToken=9b46802d899c0dfcca5de17eee70ef82
https://twitter.com/bmay/status/1560679892995514370?s=21&t=6uYVY_RH1LwxXt1SLPBAzA
https://www.twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1560884277935570944
I also think she should keep Patel as Home Sec - do they hate each other or something? She should still keep her even if that's the case. Staying in that job is better punishment than leaving it.