On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
Well no, it’s not about how awful as public speaking it was, it’s how the team around her wasted the set piece moment to get important points across winning hearts and minds - it was a free hit in terms of having attention laid on, winning hearts and minds now makes it easier for the battle ahead. They should have written two strong speeches for today and tomorrow, otherwise it makes no political sense. Not to me anyway.
I rather disagree with you about today being her opportunity to win over doubters
For me it is her speech to the country outside Downing Street tomorrow afternoon about 4.00pm as she speaks as Prime Minister for the first time
I completely disagree with you, it was two big platforms offering opportunity to get points across and win people over - explain the difficult details to party workers today you can’t do with the sound bites tomorrow.
But we are both in agreement, she needs to be far better tomorrow than nothing to say and saying it badly today.
You lay the groundwork today for the more important speech tomorrow.
But she didn't do that so tomorrow becomes a bigger issue...
Yes. That is what I am thinking.
But it’s not just one person, it’s a whole team and their decision making at fault here.
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
Well no, it’s not about how awful as public speaking it was, it’s how the team around her wasted the set piece moment to get important points across winning hearts and minds - it was a free hit in terms of having attention laid on, winning hearts and minds now makes it easier for the battle ahead. They should have written two strong speeches for today and tomorrow, otherwise it makes no political sense. Not to me anyway.
I rather disagree with you about today being her opportunity to win over doubters
For me it is her speech to the country outside Downing Street tomorrow afternoon about 4.00pm as she speaks as Prime Minister for the first time
That'll be important, but the key moment will be whatever we get for a mini-budget following the change of chancellor. Her future in my view is entirely about the competancy of the next chancellor. Admittedly sticking Braverman in the Home Office could quickly be seen as a suicidal move too.
I agree and made exactly that point to @HYUFD earlier
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
Well no, it’s not about how awful as public speaking it was, it’s how the team around her wasted the set piece moment to get important points across winning hearts and minds - it was a free hit in terms of having attention laid on, winning hearts and minds now makes it easier for the battle ahead. They should have written two strong speeches for today and tomorrow, otherwise it makes no political sense. Not to me anyway.
I rather disagree with you about today being her opportunity to win over doubters
For me it is her speech to the country outside Downing Street tomorrow afternoon about 4.00pm as she speaks as Prime Minister for the first time
I completely disagree with you, it was two big platforms offering opportunity to get points across and win people over - explain the difficult details to party workers today you can’t do with the sound bites tomorrow.
But we are both in agreement, she needs to be far better tomorrow than nothing to say and saying it badly today.
You lay the groundwork today for the more important speech tomorrow.
But she didn't do that so tomorrow becomes a bigger issue...
Yes. That is what I am thinking.
But it’s not just one person, it’s a whole team and their decision making at fault here.
I suspect the reason it was so light of substance today is that they don’t know what they’re going to announce until they know for sure who will accept what jobs. Either way it was a dreadful speech. It’s for sure her biggest weakness, that she might find it hard to carry the nation with her on what is likely to be a difficult policy path.
I’ve had my first email from someone who announces their pronouns from the get go
😮
We're encouraged (there's an official policy of encouragement, but it's very non-specific on the nature of that encouragement) to put pronouns in our email signatures. Some do, some don't (probably 50:50, but edging up). I haven't. If I start to feel like I stand out then I probably will.
My insurance renewals, particularly car, are normally addressed to 'Dr (male) Selebian' as I choose 'Dr (male)' in the title drop down. Not sure why the companies haven't employed anyone able to add the line or two to the database query to truncate Dr (male) and Dr (female) to plain Dr for salutations and make them look competent. Perhaps they're just being woke?
A friend says she’s getting subtle pressure to add her pronouns (same company)
Bonkers
Incidentally the pronouns came at the top of an email admitting they’d made a tremendous mistake and could I help them sort it out
Perhaps if they were less bothered about their gender status they wouldn’t make howling errors in the job
I like to confuse people by mixing them up: he/her usually does it.
(Radiohead/Coldplay)
I put mine in cos they cause me no bother and are clearly important to some of my colleagues (and friends).
I did also put in "rural state school/russell group" for a laugh - I think they determine my identity far more than my sexuality/gender.
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
Well no, it’s not about how awful as public speaking it was, it’s how the team around her wasted the set piece moment to get important points across winning hearts and minds - it was a free hit in terms of having attention laid on, winning hearts and minds now makes it easier for the battle ahead. They should have written two strong speeches for today and tomorrow, otherwise it makes no political sense. Not to me anyway.
I rather disagree with you about today being her opportunity to win over doubters
For me it is her speech to the country outside Downing Street tomorrow afternoon about 4.00pm as she speaks as Prime Minister for the first time
That'll be important, but the key moment will be whatever we get for a mini-budget following the change of chancellor. Her future in my view is entirely about the competancy of the next chancellor. Admittedly sticking Braverman in the Home Office could quickly be seen as a suicidal move too.
I agree and made exactly that point to @HYUFD earlier
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
Well no, it’s not about how awful as public speaking it was, it’s how the team around her wasted the set piece moment to get important points across winning hearts and minds - it was a free hit in terms of having attention laid on, winning hearts and minds now makes it easier for the battle ahead. They should have written two strong speeches for today and tomorrow, otherwise it makes no political sense. Not to me anyway.
I rather disagree with you about today being her opportunity to win over doubters
For me it is her speech to the country outside Downing Street tomorrow afternoon about 4.00pm as she speaks as Prime Minister for the first time
I completely disagree with you, it was two big platforms offering opportunity to get points across and win people over - explain the difficult details to party workers today you can’t do with the sound bites tomorrow.
But we are both in agreement, she needs to be far better tomorrow than nothing to say and saying it badly today.
You lay the groundwork today for the more important speech tomorrow.
But she didn't do that so tomorrow becomes a bigger issue...
And Sunday's interview really ought to have been laying the groundwork for this speech, and at least some of the last seven weeks ought to have been laying the groundwork for that...
But now, she really has to fatten the pig on market day. Not easy. And, possibly, there's a risk that she's just not up to it.
In other news. Just got an email to say my DBS certificate has finally been printed. The day before term starts. Gotta hand it to Liz Truss. Sorting out the backlog in public services.
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
Well no, it’s not about how awful as public speaking it was, it’s how the team around her wasted the set piece moment to get important points across winning hearts and minds - it was a free hit in terms of having attention laid on, winning hearts and minds now makes it easier for the battle ahead. They should have written two strong speeches for today and tomorrow, otherwise it makes no political sense. Not to me anyway.
I rather disagree with you about today being her opportunity to win over doubters
For me it is her speech to the country outside Downing Street tomorrow afternoon about 4.00pm as she speaks as Prime Minister for the first time
Yes and no. I was surprised when I turned on at lunchtime that we weren’t getting the processional handover in the hours straight after. Wouldn’t have tuned in if I’d known. I’m sure I couldn’t have been the only one.
They should have just had Graham Brady read out the results in a low-key way as he would have done if the Queen had been in London instead of creating a superfluous event.
Bloomberg claiming the aluminium industry is facing an extinction event across production
It is just so scary now Russia has closed gas to Europe until Russian sanctions are removed
Well that is interesting because only when visiting Iceland did I find out that Aluminium production is huge there (although looking it up it is only 2% of world production) even though they have no Bauxite. This is down to their huge energy resources. When arriving, the airport has a large statue of Concorde being a born from an egg, apparently because all the Aluminium for Concorde came from here. Opportunities for Iceland?
"Nigel Farage has launched his own brand of gin produced by a distillery located in Cornwall. Farage Gin, a range of three bottles made with "patriotic flavours" and "a taste of Brexit", was unveiled yesterday."
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
Well no, it’s not about how awful as public speaking it was, it’s how the team around her wasted the set piece moment to get important points across winning hearts and minds - it was a free hit in terms of having attention laid on, winning hearts and minds now makes it easier for the battle ahead. They should have written two strong speeches for today and tomorrow, otherwise it makes no political sense. Not to me anyway.
I rather disagree with you about today being her opportunity to win over doubters
For me it is her speech to the country outside Downing Street tomorrow afternoon about 4.00pm as she speaks as Prime Minister for the first time
Yes and no. I was surprised when I turned on at lunchtime that we weren’t getting the processional handover in the hours straight after. Wouldn’t have tuned in if I’d known. I’m sure I couldn’t have been the only one.
They should have just had Graham Brady read out the results in a low-key way as he would have done if the Queen had been in London instead of creating a superfluous event.
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
Well no, it’s not about how awful as public speaking it was, it’s how the team around her wasted the set piece moment to get important points across winning hearts and minds - it was a free hit in terms of having attention laid on, winning hearts and minds now makes it easier for the battle ahead. They should have written two strong speeches for today and tomorrow, otherwise it makes no political sense. Not to me anyway.
I rather disagree with you about today being her opportunity to win over doubters
For me it is her speech to the country outside Downing Street tomorrow afternoon about 4.00pm as she speaks as Prime Minister for the first time
I completely disagree with you, it was two big platforms offering opportunity to get points across and win people over - explain the difficult details to party workers today you can’t do with the sound bites tomorrow.
But we are both in agreement, she needs to be far better tomorrow than nothing to say and saying it badly today.
You lay the groundwork today for the more important speech tomorrow.
But she didn't do that so tomorrow becomes a bigger issue...
And Sunday's interview really ought to have been laying the groundwork for this speech, and at least some of the last seven weeks ought to have been laying the groundwork for that...
But now, she really has to fatten the pig on market day. Not easy. And, possibly, there's a risk that she's just not up to it.
Maybe the entire concept of speaking to the electorate has been lost? Tory leaders tend to be brought down by their own side, not the voters.
I’ve had my first email from someone who announces their pronouns from the get go
😮
We're encouraged (there's an official policy of encouragement, but it's very non-specific on the nature of that encouragement) to put pronouns in our email signatures. Some do, some don't (probably 50:50, but edging up). I haven't. If I start to feel like I stand out then I probably will.
My insurance renewals, particularly car, are normally addressed to 'Dr (male) Selebian' as I choose 'Dr (male)' in the title drop down. Not sure why the companies haven't employed anyone able to add the line or two to the database query to truncate Dr (male) and Dr (female) to plain Dr for salutations and make them look competent. Perhaps they're just being woke?
A friend says she’s getting subtle pressure to add her pronouns (same company)
Bonkers
Incidentally the pronouns came at the top of an email admitting they’d made a tremendous mistake and could I help them sort it out
Perhaps if they were less bothered about their gender status they wouldn’t make howling errors in the job
I like to confuse people by mixing them up: he/her usually does it.
(Radiohead/Coldplay)
I put mine in cos they cause me no bother and are clearly important to some of my colleagues (and friends).
I did also put in "rural state school/russell group" for a laugh - I think they determine my identity far more than my sexuality/gender.
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
Well no, it’s not about how awful as public speaking it was, it’s how the team around her wasted the set piece moment to get important points across winning hearts and minds - it was a free hit in terms of having attention laid on, winning hearts and minds now makes it easier for the battle ahead. They should have written two strong speeches for today and tomorrow, otherwise it makes no political sense. Not to me anyway.
I rather disagree with you about today being her opportunity to win over doubters
For me it is her speech to the country outside Downing Street tomorrow afternoon about 4.00pm as she speaks as Prime Minister for the first time
I completely disagree with you, it was two big platforms offering opportunity to get points across and win people over - explain the difficult details to party workers today you can’t do with the sound bites tomorrow.
But we are both in agreement, she needs to be far better tomorrow than nothing to say and saying it badly today.
You lay the groundwork today for the more important speech tomorrow.
But she didn't do that so tomorrow becomes a bigger issue...
Yes. That is what I am thinking.
But it’s not just one person, it’s a whole team and their decision making at fault here.
I suspect the reason it was so light of substance today is that they don’t know what they’re going to announce until they know for sure who will accept what jobs. Either way it was a dreadful speech. It’s for sure her biggest weakness, that she might find it hard to carry the nation with her on what is likely to be a difficult policy path.
Well no, that’s not what I am saying - as a team they must know by now what points they should be selling and making at every opportunity now, even if they know she has weaknesses in speech making, debating, TV interviews, the team around her should still be writing great speeches to get those important points across from day 1. Today has been a bizarre failure of Team Truss, not just Liz Truss.
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
Well no, it’s not about how awful as public speaking it was, it’s how the team around her wasted the set piece moment to get important points across winning hearts and minds - it was a free hit in terms of having attention laid on, winning hearts and minds now makes it easier for the battle ahead. They should have written two strong speeches for today and tomorrow, otherwise it makes no political sense. Not to me anyway.
I rather disagree with you about today being her opportunity to win over doubters
For me it is her speech to the country outside Downing Street tomorrow afternoon about 4.00pm as she speaks as Prime Minister for the first time
Is there a market on whether we'll just get more meaningless soundbites badly delivered?
"Nigel Farage has launched his own brand of gin produced by a distillery located in Cornwall. Farage Gin, a range of three bottles made with "patriotic flavours" and "a taste of Brexit", was unveiled yesterday."
I don't like the idea of roast beef gin and it will probably have a nasty bitter aftertaste!
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
When in business I had no problem with public speaking and did so for many years
Even so, many very capable people simply could not do public speaking no matter how much they wanted to
If you find public speaking tricky, I would venture that Prime Minister might not be the job for you.
The low Prime Ministerial speaking watermark was Peppa Pig. I doubt Liz can in any way match that.
"Nigel Farage has launched his own brand of gin produced by a distillery located in Cornwall. Farage Gin, a range of three bottles made with "patriotic flavours" and "a taste of Brexit", was unveiled yesterday."
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
Well no, it’s not about how awful as public speaking it was, it’s how the team around her wasted the set piece moment to get important points across winning hearts and minds - it was a free hit in terms of having attention laid on, winning hearts and minds now makes it easier for the battle ahead. They should have written two strong speeches for today and tomorrow, otherwise it makes no political sense. Not to me anyway.
I rather disagree with you about today being her opportunity to win over doubters
For me it is her speech to the country outside Downing Street tomorrow afternoon about 4.00pm as she speaks as Prime Minister for the first time
I completely disagree with you, it was two big platforms offering opportunity to get points across and win people over - explain the difficult details to party workers today you can’t do with the sound bites tomorrow.
But we are both in agreement, she needs to be far better tomorrow than nothing to say and saying it badly today.
You lay the groundwork today for the more important speech tomorrow.
But she didn't do that so tomorrow becomes a bigger issue...
And Sunday's interview really ought to have been laying the groundwork for this speech, and at least some of the last seven weeks ought to have been laying the groundwork for that...
But now, she really has to fatten the pig on market day. Not easy. And, possibly, there's a risk that she's just not up to it.
possibly? The fact she hasn't been dropping hints for weeks tells me she (and her media team) are just not up to it....
Now it's possible that's because she is using the B team and when she hits No 10 their A team will fix all the issues but I just can't see it - after all Truss has been the obvious PM in waiting for the past 6 weeks.
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
Well no, it’s not about how awful as public speaking it was, it’s how the team around her wasted the set piece moment to get important points across winning hearts and minds - it was a free hit in terms of having attention laid on, winning hearts and minds now makes it easier for the battle ahead. They should have written two strong speeches for today and tomorrow, otherwise it makes no political sense. Not to me anyway.
I rather disagree with you about today being her opportunity to win over doubters
For me it is her speech to the country outside Downing Street tomorrow afternoon about 4.00pm as she speaks as Prime Minister for the first time
I completely disagree with you, it was two big platforms offering opportunity to get points across and win people over - explain the difficult details to party workers today you can’t do with the sound bites tomorrow.
But we are both in agreement, she needs to be far better tomorrow than nothing to say and saying it badly today.
You lay the groundwork today for the more important speech tomorrow.
But she didn't do that so tomorrow becomes a bigger issue...
And Sunday's interview really ought to have been laying the groundwork for this speech, and at least some of the last seven weeks ought to have been laying the groundwork for that...
But now, she really has to fatten the pig on market day. Not easy. And, possibly, there's a risk that she's just not up to it.
Bit unkind but definitely not unfair, this pork marketing reference.
That’s…. quite a beach. Strong recommend. No sewage visible
Despite countless twunks on Twatter moaning about Tories and sewage, I spent a lovely week in North Devon last week and saw no sewage there either...
We have an issue with heavy rain and a system that can't cope, but I can't believe that we are the only european country where that happens. We must do better, but idiots on twitter can do one, quite frankly.
This coast - the Costa Vicentina - actually reminds me a little of Devon and Cornwall. Emptier and sunnier, and not as charming inland as the nicer bits of Devon/Cornwall - but definitely echoes. The wild Atlantic battering west facing cliffs
I fear we probably do have some particular issues with sewage in the UK because parts of the UK are so crowded. We have increased Englands population by 10 million in a few decades. Have we improved our infrastructure accordingly? Not really
The problem is caused by rainwater flooding the sewerage system during periods of heavy rain, not by the volume of human waste going into the system.
We have multiple problems. And some of them do relate to the overuse of our landscape, due to population pressures
The effluent flooding into the Wye, for instance
There was some talk about this on the Alistair Campell / Rory Stewart podcast recently. From memory, the problem is that the UK is unusual in having the same pipes taking rainwater and sewage. Most of the time, that's fine, and fixing it properly by separating the flows is really expensive to do now.
The curse of doing things first.
Ugh this happened to me this year. Public sewer got a fatberg which meant all the effluent backed up to my rainwater drains all around the house.
Put some bread under your bacon, and enjoy toast and dripping, a cleaner grill pan, and less sewerage issues. Win, win, win.
Or go vegan so no bacon fat at all and those people don’t have to picket supermarkets !
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
Well no, it’s not about how awful as public speaking it was, it’s how the team around her wasted the set piece moment to get important points across winning hearts and minds - it was a free hit in terms of having attention laid on, winning hearts and minds now makes it easier for the battle ahead. They should have written two strong speeches for today and tomorrow, otherwise it makes no political sense. Not to me anyway.
I rather disagree with you about today being her opportunity to win over doubters
For me it is her speech to the country outside Downing Street tomorrow afternoon about 4.00pm as she speaks as Prime Minister for the first time
I completely disagree with you, it was two big platforms offering opportunity to get points across and win people over - explain the difficult details to party workers today you can’t do with the sound bites tomorrow.
But we are both in agreement, she needs to be far better tomorrow than nothing to say and saying it badly today.
You lay the groundwork today for the more important speech tomorrow.
But she didn't do that so tomorrow becomes a bigger issue...
Yes. That is what I am thinking.
But it’s not just one person, it’s a whole team and their decision making at fault here.
I suspect the reason it was so light of substance today is that they don’t know what they’re going to announce until they know for sure who will accept what jobs. Either way it was a dreadful speech. It’s for sure her biggest weakness, that she might find it hard to carry the nation with her on what is likely to be a difficult policy path.
Well no, that’s not what I am saying - as a team they must know by now what points they should be selling and making at every opportunity now, even if they know she has weaknesses in speech making, debating, TV interviews, the team around her should still be writing great speeches to get those important points across from day 1. Today has been a bizarre failure of Team Truss, not just Liz Truss.
"Nigel Farage has launched his own brand of gin produced by a distillery located in Cornwall. Farage Gin, a range of three bottles made with "patriotic flavours" and "a taste of Brexit", was unveiled yesterday."
The low number for Truss also blows up her cunning IndyRef scheme.
Why should Scots meet a 60% threshold, if she only got 47%...
The 60% threshold is support for indyref2 to even get a vote
How remarkable, you have gleefully dumped the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy in favour of anyone who can fiddle an opinion poll. Your party is not fit to hold the title of 'Conservative'.
Not my position, Truss', however still her decision and that of Westminster and she has made clear she will not allow indyref2 without at least 60%+ wanting one for a year consistently and will put that in law
I think it is not unreasonable to suggest that referenda that change the constitutional status quo massively should have more than just a pure majority support, and should be somewhere in the realm of 2/3s - 3/4s in favour. The problem is the biggest constitutional change of our lifetimes, Brexit, was on a bare majority, and that bare majority was then used as a justification for the most radical form of that policy rather than a conciliatory version of that policy, so why shouldn't Scotland or republicans, or whoever wants any referenda now demand the same.
Huge constitutional change needs buy in from a lot of people and, typically, if you get a bare majority then those people probably don't agree on the form that huge constitutional change takes (see: all the problems with making a "real" Brexit happen). If you have a 66% mandate then you can still disappoint a large chunk of the people who wanted the change with the material implementation of that change and potentially still have a mandate for it.
So whilst I don't in principle disagree with this IndyRef threshold (to either hold the ref or for the eventual result), I do think that horse has bolted and, from now on, referenda in the UK / parts of the UK will have to be purely based on "winner takes all" 50% + 1, because that's how people did Brexit.
I totally disagree on the threshold principle. People should get whatever they vote for, as a majority. If you don't like it, a new majority can always reverse it.
Brexit wasn't simply won on a simple majority basis, it won 4 elections/referenda in a row. 2015: Majority to hold a referendum 2016: Majority to Vote Leave 2017: About 600 MPs elected promising to respect the Leave Vote 2019: 80 seat majority to Get Brexit Done
Had any of those four elections turned out differently, Brexit wouldn't have happened.
I mean, sure, but only half of those were a majority, right? I think a majority of MPs were elected on a manifesto to hold a referendum, and 52% voted leave on the day. The "respect" vote leave thing is a bit difficult, because Labour's view of "Leave" was different to Tories view of "Leave", and indeed, neither of those visions of the type of Leave got a majority. And Johnson didn't get a majority of votes. And of course, referenda are specifically a vote on one issue, voting for MPs is not.
And big constitutional change, by its very nature, can't easily just be overturned by a new majority soon. Either practically, it takes time to see the impacts of big political change, but also politically. All the people here say indyref or the EU referendum were "once in a generation votes, and people don't like their votes "not counting". I think had we set a 60% threshold on the Brexit referendum, for example, with the result we had we would still be a country planning to leave the EU, we would just have had a period of time for better planning and more explanation of what that would really look like. Either the EU would have seen the writing on the wall and negotiated us out, or a new Con government would have been elected on the mandate to withdraw from the EU with a specific vision of what that looked like. But the political heat of a 52/48 divide meant having to do it as quickly as possible, because that coalition of 52% of the population could only be held together for a very short period of time because they don't agree on much at all. So the political atmosphere turned extremely ugly extremely quickly.
I totally oppose the "once in a generation" gibberish, that's just grasping for straws to deny democracy. If Scotland's voters don't want another referendum for a generation, they shouldn't elect a government pledged to hold one. If they do, that's their choice and that's democracy.
The public voted for Brexit. That's it. How we Brexited, well that was up to who we elect in Parliament and voters gave a majority in Parliament to a specific plan in the end.
Anyone putting a threshold is just trying to overturn defeat.
I'm not just talking about Brexit, though, but big constitutional change in general.
For example, I'm a republican, I don't want the monarchy. Imagine a world (mad I know), where 52% vote for a republic. Sorted. Well, what if half of those who want a republic want an elected president, and half of those want the PM to be the new head of state and not create a new role. Maybe you can convince some of those one way or another, but at the end of the day it will be nigh impossible to actually get consensus on what the big new political settlement should be. That changes when you get to 66-75% - a wider agreement for the change to happen, and wiggle room for whatever the practical settlement might be. Sure, in an ideal world, those 52% of people are all voting for the same thing, but in reality they aren't. And it is a bit dishonest to claim they are. So waiting for more consensus over such foundational issues allows those changes to really have a mandate.
You aren't John Howard are you? He tilted the Australian Monarchy Referendum massively to "no change" by insisting that the type of Republic had to be on the table for the referendum. A bit like the Leave camp having to spell out *exactly* what type of Brexit the UK would have before the referendum date was set.
I mean, the suggested AV type where you have multiple options of Brexit and rank the options would have been fine by me too. I just think when you have something as politically impactful as huge constitutional change you should have a clear method of either showing what that change is aimed towards, or what it is about. My issue with the Brexit thing, and indeed most big issues like this going to referenda, is that it leaves sides to cakeism - you could have Leave types say that of course it would be absurd to say we'd leave the Single Market, that is separate to the EU, and then immediately do that. Remain could have done the same (not that we can know now) - saying that the status quo isn't going to change and then sign up to an EU army or whatever. I think it is only fair that if you're asking people to vote for a thing they are able to know what that thing is.
Just about the only way to have avoided the EU referendum being the way it was, was for the country to have had a history of plebiscites as each Treaty was signed, so that there was formal buy-in from the public at each stage of further European integration.
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
Well no, it’s not about how awful as public speaking it was, it’s how the team around her wasted the set piece moment to get important points across winning hearts and minds - it was a free hit in terms of having attention laid on, winning hearts and minds now makes it easier for the battle ahead. They should have written two strong speeches for today and tomorrow, otherwise it makes no political sense. Not to me anyway.
I rather disagree with you about today being her opportunity to win over doubters
For me it is her speech to the country outside Downing Street tomorrow afternoon about 4.00pm as she speaks as Prime Minister for the first time
Is there a market on whether we'll just get more meaningless soundbites badly delivered?
Bloomberg claiming the aluminium industry is facing an extinction event across production
It is just so scary now Russia has closed gas to Europe until Russian sanctions are removed
Russia has closed gas to Europe for a very long time.
Europeans must never trust Russia to provide energy again and should not contract them. Maybe it could be reviewed if Putin falls in next few years but even then it is doubtful.
They cannot be relied on whilst it is run by nationalists, imperialists and Dugin-type fascists.
The West must pivot away from Russia energy supplies and if that means a massive swing to more nuclear and renewables then so be it.
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
When in business I had no problem with public speaking and did so for many years
Even so, many very capable people simply could not do public speaking no matter how much they wanted to
What I find interesting is I have no issue giving presentations on stuff I know about and I believe I can make it entertaining. I prepare well, but then do it off the cuff and I am told I do it well. But I can't do social speaking eg weddings and that sort of thing. I mean I can't do it at all and have never done so, not even at my own wedding. My sister in law and brother in law are/were actors. This obviously is bread and butter stuff to them, but it came as a surprise to me that they struggle with real life presentations. You know presenting facts. Making stuff up is a piece of cake to them, but a business or science presentation terrifies them.
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
When in business I had no problem with public speaking and did so for many years
Even so, many very capable people simply could not do public speaking no matter how much they wanted to
If you find public speaking tricky, I would venture that Prime Minister might not be the job for you.
The low Prime Ministerial speaking watermark was Peppa Pig. I doubt Liz can in any way match that.
Nah, today isnt the day for soundbites/we feel the hand of history on our shoulder. Cheesy bellend
The low number for Truss also blows up her cunning IndyRef scheme.
Why should Scots meet a 60% threshold, if she only got 47%...
The 60% threshold is support for indyref2 to even get a vote
How remarkable, you have gleefully dumped the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy in favour of anyone who can fiddle an opinion poll. Your party is not fit to hold the title of 'Conservative'.
Not my position, Truss', however still her decision and that of Westminster and she has made clear she will not allow indyref2 without at least 60%+ wanting one for a year consistently and will put that in law
I think it is not unreasonable to suggest that referenda that change the constitutional status quo massively should have more than just a pure majority support, and should be somewhere in the realm of 2/3s - 3/4s in favour. The problem is the biggest constitutional change of our lifetimes, Brexit, was on a bare majority, and that bare majority was then used as a justification for the most radical form of that policy rather than a conciliatory version of that policy, so why shouldn't Scotland or republicans, or whoever wants any referenda now demand the same.
Huge constitutional change needs buy in from a lot of people and, typically, if you get a bare majority then those people probably don't agree on the form that huge constitutional change takes (see: all the problems with making a "real" Brexit happen). If you have a 66% mandate then you can still disappoint a large chunk of the people who wanted the change with the material implementation of that change and potentially still have a mandate for it.
So whilst I don't in principle disagree with this IndyRef threshold (to either hold the ref or for the eventual result), I do think that horse has bolted and, from now on, referenda in the UK / parts of the UK will have to be purely based on "winner takes all" 50% + 1, because that's how people did Brexit.
I totally disagree on the threshold principle. People should get whatever they vote for, as a majority. If you don't like it, a new majority can always reverse it.
Brexit wasn't simply won on a simple majority basis, it won 4 elections/referenda in a row. 2015: Majority to hold a referendum 2016: Majority to Vote Leave 2017: About 600 MPs elected promising to respect the Leave Vote 2019: 80 seat majority to Get Brexit Done
Had any of those four elections turned out differently, Brexit wouldn't have happened.
I mean, sure, but only half of those were a majority, right? I think a majority of MPs were elected on a manifesto to hold a referendum, and 52% voted leave on the day. The "respect" vote leave thing is a bit difficult, because Labour's view of "Leave" was different to Tories view of "Leave", and indeed, neither of those visions of the type of Leave got a majority. And Johnson didn't get a majority of votes. And of course, referenda are specifically a vote on one issue, voting for MPs is not.
And big constitutional change, by its very nature, can't easily just be overturned by a new majority soon. Either practically, it takes time to see the impacts of big political change, but also politically. All the people here say indyref or the EU referendum were "once in a generation votes, and people don't like their votes "not counting". I think had we set a 60% threshold on the Brexit referendum, for example, with the result we had we would still be a country planning to leave the EU, we would just have had a period of time for better planning and more explanation of what that would really look like. Either the EU would have seen the writing on the wall and negotiated us out, or a new Con government would have been elected on the mandate to withdraw from the EU with a specific vision of what that looked like. But the political heat of a 52/48 divide meant having to do it as quickly as possible, because that coalition of 52% of the population could only be held together for a very short period of time because they don't agree on much at all. So the political atmosphere turned extremely ugly extremely quickly.
I totally oppose the "once in a generation" gibberish, that's just grasping for straws to deny democracy. If Scotland's voters don't want another referendum for a generation, they shouldn't elect a government pledged to hold one. If they do, that's their choice and that's democracy.
The public voted for Brexit. That's it. How we Brexited, well that was up to who we elect in Parliament and voters gave a majority in Parliament to a specific plan in the end.
Anyone putting a threshold is just trying to overturn defeat.
I'm not just talking about Brexit, though, but big constitutional change in general.
For example, I'm a republican, I don't want the monarchy. Imagine a world (mad I know), where 52% vote for a republic. Sorted. Well, what if half of those who want a republic want an elected president, and half of those want the PM to be the new head of state and not create a new role. Maybe you can convince some of those one way or another, but at the end of the day it will be nigh impossible to actually get consensus on what the big new political settlement should be. That changes when you get to 66-75% - a wider agreement for the change to happen, and wiggle room for whatever the practical settlement might be. Sure, in an ideal world, those 52% of people are all voting for the same thing, but in reality they aren't. And it is a bit dishonest to claim they are. So waiting for more consensus over such foundational issues allows those changes to really have a mandate.
Going back to Brexit, because the nature of the vote and the subsequent political atmosphere afterwards, there was no real acceptance about the nature of the coalition that came to 52% - no acceptance that even those campaigning for Brexit offered access to the Single Market and such, that rich voters wanted a low tax small state outside of the EU, and working class voters wanted more what Johnson promised with money for the NHS and more protectionism. So when political realities hit, Brexit was (and arguably still is) unachievable. The "oven ready" deal is unacceptable to a number of Unionists due to the NI issue, and to a number of the working class who voted for it believing what they were told about more populist economic policies coming home. Brexit will never be "done" because the work of planning an acceptable political settlement was never done. And that's why the higher threshold is useful, it gives politicians more leeway in implementing that change.
I'm a fan of democracy, but a) we don't have a majoritarian system at most levels in this country; MPs aren't elected with majorities, parties can get huge majorities with a 35-40% of the vote, and this is repeated in local government and b) referenda on big issues are really complicated and we shouldn't shy away from that fact. To just say "a majority want something, sort it out asap" is not how politics shakes out.
I'm a republican too and if we have a referendum and 52% vote to abolish the monarchy I'd bloody well expect and demand that the monarchy is abolished.
Yes means yes, no means no. Whatever the majority goes with, that was the choice made.
Yes there may be issues down the line but that's for Parliament to resolve. We evolve over time. Whatever problems that come up, like the Unionists objections to the Protocol as an example, need to be dealt with democratically over time by Parliament, like the new PM-elect's proposed NI Protocol Bill.
Personally I would have no more referendums ever, they are divisive, dominate politics at the expense of more important issues and ultimately we are a parliamentary not a direct democracy. Our constitution is based on Crown in Parliament
But you have a problem right there. You have Scotland which has voted to have Indyref2 in both parliaments, conclusively in terms of a majority in both parliaments. Which is a clear win in parliamentary democracy terms. And what parliament wants parliament gets. That's the constitution, not some 16th century stuff about divine right of the monarchy.
That argument depends on not respecting the scope of devolution. If an Essex independence party won the council elections, would it be a mandate for a referendum?
Just imagine the Brexiteer prolapsing if some EUrophile compared a sovereign England..sorry..UK to a council, either before or after 2016.
In any case, Essex used to be an independent state, of course. So why not an Essindyref?
As Essex is now part of England and the UK.
On your argument most big nations would break up, after all Naples, Venice, Bavaria, Texas etc were once independent nations too as were the Princely states in India
Why not? The UK has already started breaking up, with the loss of most of Ireland, and the ongoing loss of the rest.
6 years after the Brexit vote the UK has not lost any territory compared to before the vote actually.
If we go down that line we could start breaking up Scotland too, Shetland for example did not become part of Scotland until the 15th century and much of the Scottish Borders was often under English control
You're muddling things again. We're talking about big nations. You know, like you said the words "big nations". And at any excuse, or lack of one, you are yet again threatening Partition.
Much more therapeutic than constantly trying to defend parliamentary democracy by denying it.
In a Western world threatened by an expansionist Russia and China, the idea we would be stronger against them economically and militarily broken up into tiny nations is absurd
You mean, like the Tories have safeguarded UK military power? Look at what DA was saying about the Royal Artillery yesterday.
Top Tip from IndyViz: don't bullshit about the promised advantages of being in the Union if they don't actually exist any more (e.g. EU membership).
TBF, it wasn't me saying it, it was a (presumably stone deaf) officer in the RA saying it.
Quite. Basic point, though, is that when almost all other countries have 155mm long barrel self-propelled arty as the absolute bog standard, the UK ones are out of date (medium barrel) and too many are out of condition and the Army is dysfunctional to that extent.
Presumably the UK is moving to 152mm anyway, sorry pardon me 6", calibre.
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
Well no, it’s not about how awful as public speaking it was, it’s how the team around her wasted the set piece moment to get important points across winning hearts and minds - it was a free hit in terms of having attention laid on, winning hearts and minds now makes it easier for the battle ahead. They should have written two strong speeches for today and tomorrow, otherwise it makes no political sense. Not to me anyway.
I rather disagree with you about today being her opportunity to win over doubters
For me it is her speech to the country outside Downing Street tomorrow afternoon about 4.00pm as she speaks as Prime Minister for the first time
Is there a market on whether we'll just get more meaningless soundbites badly delivered?
The next three days will determine Truss's future
Tomorrow 4.00pm speech to the Nation
Wednesday PMQS
Thursday statement at the dispatch box
Lab GE election ad already scripted:
Truss soundtracked saying "I will deliver, deliver and deliver" against video footage of cold pensioners freezing in their houses, unemployment queues, bank closed signs, street protests, foodbank queues etc etc.
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
When in business I had no problem with public speaking and did so for many years
Even so, many very capable people simply could not do public speaking no matter how much they wanted to
If you find public speaking tricky, I would venture that Prime Minister might not be the job for you.
The low Prime Ministerial speaking watermark was Peppa Pig. I doubt Liz can in any way match that.
And @Mexicanpete sets the stand that Liz will fail to hit both tomorrow and Thursday - the content will be no existent and poorly delivered...
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
When in business I had no problem with public speaking and did so for many years
Even so, many very capable people simply could not do public speaking no matter how much they wanted to
If you find public speaking tricky, I would venture that Prime Minister might not be the job for you.
The low Prime Ministerial speaking watermark was Peppa Pig. I doubt Liz can in any way match that.
Nah, today isnt the day for soundbites/we feel the hand of history on our shoulder. Cheesy bellend
Yep. I still have no idea if he gets the irony of that one. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard it.
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
Well no, it’s not about how awful as public speaking it was, it’s how the team around her wasted the set piece moment to get important points across winning hearts and minds - it was a free hit in terms of having attention laid on, winning hearts and minds now makes it easier for the battle ahead. They should have written two strong speeches for today and tomorrow, otherwise it makes no political sense. Not to me anyway.
I rather disagree with you about today being her opportunity to win over doubters
For me it is her speech to the country outside Downing Street tomorrow afternoon about 4.00pm as she speaks as Prime Minister for the first time
Is there a market on whether we'll just get more meaningless soundbites badly delivered?
The next three days will determine Truss's future
Tomorrow 4.00pm speech to the Nation
Wednesday PMQS
Thursday statement at the dispatch box
Lab GE election ad already scripted:
Truss soundtracked saying "I will deliver, deliver and deliver" against video footage of cold pensioners freezing in their houses, unemployment queues, bank closed signs, street protests, foodbank queues etc etc.
The low number for Truss also blows up her cunning IndyRef scheme.
Why should Scots meet a 60% threshold, if she only got 47%...
The 60% threshold is support for indyref2 to even get a vote
How remarkable, you have gleefully dumped the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy in favour of anyone who can fiddle an opinion poll. Your party is not fit to hold the title of 'Conservative'.
Not my position, Truss', however still her decision and that of Westminster and she has made clear she will not allow indyref2 without at least 60%+ wanting one for a year consistently and will put that in law
I think it is not unreasonable to suggest that referenda that change the constitutional status quo massively should have more than just a pure majority support, and should be somewhere in the realm of 2/3s - 3/4s in favour. The problem is the biggest constitutional change of our lifetimes, Brexit, was on a bare majority, and that bare majority was then used as a justification for the most radical form of that policy rather than a conciliatory version of that policy, so why shouldn't Scotland or republicans, or whoever wants any referenda now demand the same.
Huge constitutional change needs buy in from a lot of people and, typically, if you get a bare majority then those people probably don't agree on the form that huge constitutional change takes (see: all the problems with making a "real" Brexit happen). If you have a 66% mandate then you can still disappoint a large chunk of the people who wanted the change with the material implementation of that change and potentially still have a mandate for it.
So whilst I don't in principle disagree with this IndyRef threshold (to either hold the ref or for the eventual result), I do think that horse has bolted and, from now on, referenda in the UK / parts of the UK will have to be purely based on "winner takes all" 50% + 1, because that's how people did Brexit.
I totally disagree on the threshold principle. People should get whatever they vote for, as a majority. If you don't like it, a new majority can always reverse it.
Brexit wasn't simply won on a simple majority basis, it won 4 elections/referenda in a row. 2015: Majority to hold a referendum 2016: Majority to Vote Leave 2017: About 600 MPs elected promising to respect the Leave Vote 2019: 80 seat majority to Get Brexit Done
Had any of those four elections turned out differently, Brexit wouldn't have happened.
I mean, sure, but only half of those were a majority, right? I think a majority of MPs were elected on a manifesto to hold a referendum, and 52% voted leave on the day. The "respect" vote leave thing is a bit difficult, because Labour's view of "Leave" was different to Tories view of "Leave", and indeed, neither of those visions of the type of Leave got a majority. And Johnson didn't get a majority of votes. And of course, referenda are specifically a vote on one issue, voting for MPs is not.
And big constitutional change, by its very nature, can't easily just be overturned by a new majority soon. Either practically, it takes time to see the impacts of big political change, but also politically. All the people here say indyref or the EU referendum were "once in a generation votes, and people don't like their votes "not counting". I think had we set a 60% threshold on the Brexit referendum, for example, with the result we had we would still be a country planning to leave the EU, we would just have had a period of time for better planning and more explanation of what that would really look like. Either the EU would have seen the writing on the wall and negotiated us out, or a new Con government would have been elected on the mandate to withdraw from the EU with a specific vision of what that looked like. But the political heat of a 52/48 divide meant having to do it as quickly as possible, because that coalition of 52% of the population could only be held together for a very short period of time because they don't agree on much at all. So the political atmosphere turned extremely ugly extremely quickly.
I totally oppose the "once in a generation" gibberish, that's just grasping for straws to deny democracy. If Scotland's voters don't want another referendum for a generation, they shouldn't elect a government pledged to hold one. If they do, that's their choice and that's democracy.
The public voted for Brexit. That's it. How we Brexited, well that was up to who we elect in Parliament and voters gave a majority in Parliament to a specific plan in the end.
Anyone putting a threshold is just trying to overturn defeat.
I'm not just talking about Brexit, though, but big constitutional change in general.
For example, I'm a republican, I don't want the monarchy. Imagine a world (mad I know), where 52% vote for a republic. Sorted. Well, what if half of those who want a republic want an elected president, and half of those want the PM to be the new head of state and not create a new role. Maybe you can convince some of those one way or another, but at the end of the day it will be nigh impossible to actually get consensus on what the big new political settlement should be. That changes when you get to 66-75% - a wider agreement for the change to happen, and wiggle room for whatever the practical settlement might be. Sure, in an ideal world, those 52% of people are all voting for the same thing, but in reality they aren't. And it is a bit dishonest to claim they are. So waiting for more consensus over such foundational issues allows those changes to really have a mandate.
Going back to Brexit, because the nature of the vote and the subsequent political atmosphere afterwards, there was no real acceptance about the nature of the coalition that came to 52% - no acceptance that even those campaigning for Brexit offered access to the Single Market and such, that rich voters wanted a low tax small state outside of the EU, and working class voters wanted more what Johnson promised with money for the NHS and more protectionism. So when political realities hit, Brexit was (and arguably still is) unachievable. The "oven ready" deal is unacceptable to a number of Unionists due to the NI issue, and to a number of the working class who voted for it believing what they were told about more populist economic policies coming home. Brexit will never be "done" because the work of planning an acceptable political settlement was never done. And that's why the higher threshold is useful, it gives politicians more leeway in implementing that change.
I'm a fan of democracy, but a) we don't have a majoritarian system at most levels in this country; MPs aren't elected with majorities, parties can get huge majorities with a 35-40% of the vote, and this is repeated in local government and b) referenda on big issues are really complicated and we shouldn't shy away from that fact. To just say "a majority want something, sort it out asap" is not how politics shakes out.
I'm a republican too and if we have a referendum and 52% vote to abolish the monarchy I'd bloody well expect and demand that the monarchy is abolished.
Yes means yes, no means no. Whatever the majority goes with, that was the choice made.
Yes there may be issues down the line but that's for Parliament to resolve. We evolve over time. Whatever problems that come up, like the Unionists objections to the Protocol as an example, need to be dealt with democratically over time by Parliament, like the new PM-elect's proposed NI Protocol Bill.
Personally I would have no more referendums ever, they are divisive, dominate politics at the expense of more important issues and ultimately we are a parliamentary not a direct democracy. Our constitution is based on Crown in Parliament
But you have a problem right there. You have Scotland which has voted to have Indyref2 in both parliaments, conclusively in terms of a majority in both parliaments. Which is a clear win in parliamentary democracy terms. And what parliament wants parliament gets. That's the constitution, not some 16th century stuff about divine right of the monarchy.
That argument depends on not respecting the scope of devolution. If an Essex independence party won the council elections, would it be a mandate for a referendum?
Just imagine the Brexiteer prolapsing if some EUrophile compared a sovereign England..sorry..UK to a council, either before or after 2016.
In any case, Essex used to be an independent state, of course. So why not an Essindyref?
As Essex is now part of England and the UK.
On your argument most big nations would break up, after all Naples, Venice, Bavaria, Texas etc were once independent nations too as were the Princely states in India
Why not? The UK has already started breaking up, with the loss of most of Ireland, and the ongoing loss of the rest.
6 years after the Brexit vote the UK has not lost any territory compared to before the vote actually.
If we go down that line we could start breaking up Scotland too, Shetland for example did not become part of Scotland until the 15th century and much of the Scottish Borders was often under English control
You're muddling things again. We're talking about big nations. You know, like you said the words "big nations". And at any excuse, or lack of one, you are yet again threatening Partition.
Much more therapeutic than constantly trying to defend parliamentary democracy by denying it.
In a Western world threatened by an expansionist Russia and China, the idea we would be stronger against them economically and militarily broken up into tiny nations is absurd
You mean, like the Tories have safeguarded UK military power? Look at what DA was saying about the Royal Artillery yesterday.
Top Tip from IndyViz: don't bullshit about the promised advantages of being in the Union if they don't actually exist any more (e.g. EU membership).
The UK still has the 2nd strongest military in Western Europe after France and nuclear weapons.
Scexit now would of course also mean a hard border at Berwick. Though of course leaving the UK to rejoin the EU is not really voting for independence at all, in the long term just swapping Westminster for Brussels and Strasbourg as the ultimate source of power over Scotland
You don't listen, do you? The British Army does not have proper artillery. Think what that means. And its new wheeled vehicle family is crap (Ajax). Ditto.
The low number for Truss also blows up her cunning IndyRef scheme.
Why should Scots meet a 60% threshold, if she only got 47%...
The 60% threshold is support for indyref2 to even get a vote
How remarkable, you have gleefully dumped the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy in favour of anyone who can fiddle an opinion poll. Your party is not fit to hold the title of 'Conservative'.
Not my position, Truss', however still her decision and that of Westminster and she has made clear she will not allow indyref2 without at least 60%+ wanting one for a year consistently and will put that in law
I think it is not unreasonable to suggest that referenda that change the constitutional status quo massively should have more than just a pure majority support, and should be somewhere in the realm of 2/3s - 3/4s in favour. The problem is the biggest constitutional change of our lifetimes, Brexit, was on a bare majority, and that bare majority was then used as a justification for the most radical form of that policy rather than a conciliatory version of that policy, so why shouldn't Scotland or republicans, or whoever wants any referenda now demand the same.
Huge constitutional change needs buy in from a lot of people and, typically, if you get a bare majority then those people probably don't agree on the form that huge constitutional change takes (see: all the problems with making a "real" Brexit happen). If you have a 66% mandate then you can still disappoint a large chunk of the people who wanted the change with the material implementation of that change and potentially still have a mandate for it.
So whilst I don't in principle disagree with this IndyRef threshold (to either hold the ref or for the eventual result), I do think that horse has bolted and, from now on, referenda in the UK / parts of the UK will have to be purely based on "winner takes all" 50% + 1, because that's how people did Brexit.
I totally disagree on the threshold principle. People should get whatever they vote for, as a majority. If you don't like it, a new majority can always reverse it.
Brexit wasn't simply won on a simple majority basis, it won 4 elections/referenda in a row. 2015: Majority to hold a referendum 2016: Majority to Vote Leave 2017: About 600 MPs elected promising to respect the Leave Vote 2019: 80 seat majority to Get Brexit Done
Had any of those four elections turned out differently, Brexit wouldn't have happened.
I mean, sure, but only half of those were a majority, right? I think a majority of MPs were elected on a manifesto to hold a referendum, and 52% voted leave on the day. The "respect" vote leave thing is a bit difficult, because Labour's view of "Leave" was different to Tories view of "Leave", and indeed, neither of those visions of the type of Leave got a majority. And Johnson didn't get a majority of votes. And of course, referenda are specifically a vote on one issue, voting for MPs is not.
And big constitutional change, by its very nature, can't easily just be overturned by a new majority soon. Either practically, it takes time to see the impacts of big political change, but also politically. All the people here say indyref or the EU referendum were "once in a generation votes, and people don't like their votes "not counting". I think had we set a 60% threshold on the Brexit referendum, for example, with the result we had we would still be a country planning to leave the EU, we would just have had a period of time for better planning and more explanation of what that would really look like. Either the EU would have seen the writing on the wall and negotiated us out, or a new Con government would have been elected on the mandate to withdraw from the EU with a specific vision of what that looked like. But the political heat of a 52/48 divide meant having to do it as quickly as possible, because that coalition of 52% of the population could only be held together for a very short period of time because they don't agree on much at all. So the political atmosphere turned extremely ugly extremely quickly.
I totally oppose the "once in a generation" gibberish, that's just grasping for straws to deny democracy. If Scotland's voters don't want another referendum for a generation, they shouldn't elect a government pledged to hold one. If they do, that's their choice and that's democracy.
The public voted for Brexit. That's it. How we Brexited, well that was up to who we elect in Parliament and voters gave a majority in Parliament to a specific plan in the end.
Anyone putting a threshold is just trying to overturn defeat.
I'm not just talking about Brexit, though, but big constitutional change in general.
For example, I'm a republican, I don't want the monarchy. Imagine a world (mad I know), where 52% vote for a republic. Sorted. Well, what if half of those who want a republic want an elected president, and half of those want the PM to be the new head of state and not create a new role. Maybe you can convince some of those one way or another, but at the end of the day it will be nigh impossible to actually get consensus on what the big new political settlement should be. That changes when you get to 66-75% - a wider agreement for the change to happen, and wiggle room for whatever the practical settlement might be. Sure, in an ideal world, those 52% of people are all voting for the same thing, but in reality they aren't. And it is a bit dishonest to claim they are. So waiting for more consensus over such foundational issues allows those changes to really have a mandate.
Going back to Brexit, because the nature of the vote and the subsequent political atmosphere afterwards, there was no real acceptance about the nature of the coalition that came to 52% - no acceptance that even those campaigning for Brexit offered access to the Single Market and such, that rich voters wanted a low tax small state outside of the EU, and working class voters wanted more what Johnson promised with money for the NHS and more protectionism. So when political realities hit, Brexit was (and arguably still is) unachievable. The "oven ready" deal is unacceptable to a number of Unionists due to the NI issue, and to a number of the working class who voted for it believing what they were told about more populist economic policies coming home. Brexit will never be "done" because the work of planning an acceptable political settlement was never done. And that's why the higher threshold is useful, it gives politicians more leeway in implementing that change.
I'm a fan of democracy, but a) we don't have a majoritarian system at most levels in this country; MPs aren't elected with majorities, parties can get huge majorities with a 35-40% of the vote, and this is repeated in local government and b) referenda on big issues are really complicated and we shouldn't shy away from that fact. To just say "a majority want something, sort it out asap" is not how politics shakes out.
I'm a republican too and if we have a referendum and 52% vote to abolish the monarchy I'd bloody well expect and demand that the monarchy is abolished.
Yes means yes, no means no. Whatever the majority goes with, that was the choice made.
Yes there may be issues down the line but that's for Parliament to resolve. We evolve over time. Whatever problems that come up, like the Unionists objections to the Protocol as an example, need to be dealt with democratically over time by Parliament, like the new PM-elect's proposed NI Protocol Bill.
Personally I would have no more referendums ever, they are divisive, dominate politics at the expense of more important issues and ultimately we are a parliamentary not a direct democracy. Our constitution is based on Crown in Parliament
But you have a problem right there. You have Scotland which has voted to have Indyref2 in both parliaments, conclusively in terms of a majority in both parliaments. Which is a clear win in parliamentary democracy terms. And what parliament wants parliament gets. That's the constitution, not some 16th century stuff about divine right of the monarchy.
That argument depends on not respecting the scope of devolution. If an Essex independence party won the council elections, would it be a mandate for a referendum?
Just imagine the Brexiteer prolapsing if some EUrophile compared a sovereign England..sorry..UK to a council, either before or after 2016.
In any case, Essex used to be an independent state, of course. So why not an Essindyref?
As Essex is now part of England and the UK.
On your argument most big nations would break up, after all Naples, Venice, Bavaria, Texas etc were once independent nations too as were the Princely states in India
Why not? The UK has already started breaking up, with the loss of most of Ireland, and the ongoing loss of the rest.
6 years after the Brexit vote the UK has not lost any territory compared to before the vote actually.
If we go down that line we could start breaking up Scotland too, Shetland for example did not become part of Scotland until the 15th century and much of the Scottish Borders was often under English control
You're muddling things again. We're talking about big nations. You know, like you said the words "big nations". And at any excuse, or lack of one, you are yet again threatening Partition.
Much more therapeutic than constantly trying to defend parliamentary democracy by denying it.
In a Western world threatened by an expansionist Russia and China, the idea we would be stronger against them economically and militarily broken up into tiny nations is absurd
You mean, like the Tories have safeguarded UK military power? Look at what DA was saying about the Royal Artillery yesterday.
Top Tip from IndyViz: don't bullshit about the promised advantages of being in the Union if they don't actually exist any more (e.g. EU membership).
TBF, it wasn't me saying it, it was a (presumably stone deaf) officer in the RA saying it.
Quite. Basic point, though, is that when almost all other countries have 155mm long barrel self-propelled arty as the absolute bog standard, the UK ones are out of date (medium barrel) and too many are out of condition and the Army is dysfunctional to that extent.
Presumably the UK is moving to 152mm anyway, sorry pardon me 6", calibre.
Its more about the Army not having made a decision about what to replace/upgrade AS90 with for a long, long time. Combined with arguing about unique requirements, is artillery even needed etc etc…. And “No point in spending money when we are just about to get a new shiny, any minute now”.
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
When in business I had no problem with public speaking and did so for many years
Even so, many very capable people simply could not do public speaking no matter how much they wanted to
If you find public speaking tricky, I would venture that Prime Minister might not be the job for you.
The low Prime Ministerial speaking watermark was Peppa Pig. I doubt Liz can in any way match that.
Nah, today isnt the day for soundbites/we feel the hand of history on our shoulder. Cheesy bellend
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
When in business I had no problem with public speaking and did so for many years
Even so, many very capable people simply could not do public speaking no matter how much they wanted to
If you find public speaking tricky, I would venture that Prime Minister might not be the job for you.
The low Prime Ministerial speaking watermark was Peppa Pig. I doubt Liz can in any way match that.
And @Mexicanpete sets the stand that Liz will fail to hit both tomorrow and Thursday - the content will be no existent and poorly delivered...
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
Well no, it’s not about how awful as public speaking it was, it’s how the team around her wasted the set piece moment to get important points across winning hearts and minds - it was a free hit in terms of having attention laid on, winning hearts and minds now makes it easier for the battle ahead. They should have written two strong speeches for today and tomorrow, otherwise it makes no political sense. Not to me anyway.
I rather disagree with you about today being her opportunity to win over doubters
For me it is her speech to the country outside Downing Street tomorrow afternoon about 4.00pm as she speaks as Prime Minister for the first time
Yes and no. I was surprised when I turned on at lunchtime that we weren’t getting the processional handover in the hours straight after. Wouldn’t have tuned in if I’d known. I’m sure I couldn’t have been the only one.
They should have just had Graham Brady read out the results in a low-key way as he would have done if the Queen had been in London instead of creating a superfluous event.
Absolutely
And miss the platform for leaders speech and all the good ground work on policy the country is crying out for in that speech? Seriously?
Indeed, They built a great platform for this, literally and figuratively, great set, venue, everyone in there - and then gave us nowt but a missed handshake and some gurning.
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
When in business I had no problem with public speaking and did so for many years
Even so, many very capable people simply could not do public speaking no matter how much they wanted to
What I find interesting is I have no issue giving presentations on stuff I know about and I believe I can make it entertaining. I prepare well, but then do it off the cuff and I am told I do it well. But I can't do social speaking eg weddings and that sort of thing. I mean I can't do it at all and have never done so, not even at my own wedding. My sister in law and brother in law are/were actors. This obviously is bread and butter stuff to them, but it came as a surprise to me that they struggle with real life presentations. You know presenting facts. Making stuff up is a piece of cake to them, but a business or science presentation terrifies them.
It has a similarity to RNLI crew who go to sea, but many just do not like the sea but volunteer for the essential wok of shore crew
The low number for Truss also blows up her cunning IndyRef scheme.
Why should Scots meet a 60% threshold, if she only got 47%...
The 60% threshold is support for indyref2 to even get a vote
How remarkable, you have gleefully dumped the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy in favour of anyone who can fiddle an opinion poll. Your party is not fit to hold the title of 'Conservative'.
Not my position, Truss', however still her decision and that of Westminster and she has made clear she will not allow indyref2 without at least 60%+ wanting one for a year consistently and will put that in law
I think it is not unreasonable to suggest that referenda that change the constitutional status quo massively should have more than just a pure majority support, and should be somewhere in the realm of 2/3s - 3/4s in favour. The problem is the biggest constitutional change of our lifetimes, Brexit, was on a bare majority, and that bare majority was then used as a justification for the most radical form of that policy rather than a conciliatory version of that policy, so why shouldn't Scotland or republicans, or whoever wants any referenda now demand the same.
Huge constitutional change needs buy in from a lot of people and, typically, if you get a bare majority then those people probably don't agree on the form that huge constitutional change takes (see: all the problems with making a "real" Brexit happen). If you have a 66% mandate then you can still disappoint a large chunk of the people who wanted the change with the material implementation of that change and potentially still have a mandate for it.
So whilst I don't in principle disagree with this IndyRef threshold (to either hold the ref or for the eventual result), I do think that horse has bolted and, from now on, referenda in the UK / parts of the UK will have to be purely based on "winner takes all" 50% + 1, because that's how people did Brexit.
I totally disagree on the threshold principle. People should get whatever they vote for, as a majority. If you don't like it, a new majority can always reverse it.
Brexit wasn't simply won on a simple majority basis, it won 4 elections/referenda in a row. 2015: Majority to hold a referendum 2016: Majority to Vote Leave 2017: About 600 MPs elected promising to respect the Leave Vote 2019: 80 seat majority to Get Brexit Done
Had any of those four elections turned out differently, Brexit wouldn't have happened.
I mean, sure, but only half of those were a majority, right? I think a majority of MPs were elected on a manifesto to hold a referendum, and 52% voted leave on the day. The "respect" vote leave thing is a bit difficult, because Labour's view of "Leave" was different to Tories view of "Leave", and indeed, neither of those visions of the type of Leave got a majority. And Johnson didn't get a majority of votes. And of course, referenda are specifically a vote on one issue, voting for MPs is not.
And big constitutional change, by its very nature, can't easily just be overturned by a new majority soon. Either practically, it takes time to see the impacts of big political change, but also politically. All the people here say indyref or the EU referendum were "once in a generation votes, and people don't like their votes "not counting". I think had we set a 60% threshold on the Brexit referendum, for example, with the result we had we would still be a country planning to leave the EU, we would just have had a period of time for better planning and more explanation of what that would really look like. Either the EU would have seen the writing on the wall and negotiated us out, or a new Con government would have been elected on the mandate to withdraw from the EU with a specific vision of what that looked like. But the political heat of a 52/48 divide meant having to do it as quickly as possible, because that coalition of 52% of the population could only be held together for a very short period of time because they don't agree on much at all. So the political atmosphere turned extremely ugly extremely quickly.
I totally oppose the "once in a generation" gibberish, that's just grasping for straws to deny democracy. If Scotland's voters don't want another referendum for a generation, they shouldn't elect a government pledged to hold one. If they do, that's their choice and that's democracy.
The public voted for Brexit. That's it. How we Brexited, well that was up to who we elect in Parliament and voters gave a majority in Parliament to a specific plan in the end.
Anyone putting a threshold is just trying to overturn defeat.
I'm not just talking about Brexit, though, but big constitutional change in general.
For example, I'm a republican, I don't want the monarchy. Imagine a world (mad I know), where 52% vote for a republic. Sorted. Well, what if half of those who want a republic want an elected president, and half of those want the PM to be the new head of state and not create a new role. Maybe you can convince some of those one way or another, but at the end of the day it will be nigh impossible to actually get consensus on what the big new political settlement should be. That changes when you get to 66-75% - a wider agreement for the change to happen, and wiggle room for whatever the practical settlement might be. Sure, in an ideal world, those 52% of people are all voting for the same thing, but in reality they aren't. And it is a bit dishonest to claim they are. So waiting for more consensus over such foundational issues allows those changes to really have a mandate.
Going back to Brexit, because the nature of the vote and the subsequent political atmosphere afterwards, there was no real acceptance about the nature of the coalition that came to 52% - no acceptance that even those campaigning for Brexit offered access to the Single Market and such, that rich voters wanted a low tax small state outside of the EU, and working class voters wanted more what Johnson promised with money for the NHS and more protectionism. So when political realities hit, Brexit was (and arguably still is) unachievable. The "oven ready" deal is unacceptable to a number of Unionists due to the NI issue, and to a number of the working class who voted for it believing what they were told about more populist economic policies coming home. Brexit will never be "done" because the work of planning an acceptable political settlement was never done. And that's why the higher threshold is useful, it gives politicians more leeway in implementing that change.
I'm a fan of democracy, but a) we don't have a majoritarian system at most levels in this country; MPs aren't elected with majorities, parties can get huge majorities with a 35-40% of the vote, and this is repeated in local government and b) referenda on big issues are really complicated and we shouldn't shy away from that fact. To just say "a majority want something, sort it out asap" is not how politics shakes out.
I'm a republican too and if we have a referendum and 52% vote to abolish the monarchy I'd bloody well expect and demand that the monarchy is abolished.
Yes means yes, no means no. Whatever the majority goes with, that was the choice made.
Yes there may be issues down the line but that's for Parliament to resolve. We evolve over time. Whatever problems that come up, like the Unionists objections to the Protocol as an example, need to be dealt with democratically over time by Parliament, like the new PM-elect's proposed NI Protocol Bill.
Personally I would have no more referendums ever, they are divisive, dominate politics at the expense of more important issues and ultimately we are a parliamentary not a direct democracy. Our constitution is based on Crown in Parliament
But you have a problem right there. You have Scotland which has voted to have Indyref2 in both parliaments, conclusively in terms of a majority in both parliaments. Which is a clear win in parliamentary democracy terms. And what parliament wants parliament gets. That's the constitution, not some 16th century stuff about divine right of the monarchy.
That argument depends on not respecting the scope of devolution. If an Essex independence party won the council elections, would it be a mandate for a referendum?
Just imagine the Brexiteer prolapsing if some EUrophile compared a sovereign England..sorry..UK to a council, either before or after 2016.
In any case, Essex used to be an independent state, of course. So why not an Essindyref?
As Essex is now part of England and the UK.
On your argument most big nations would break up, after all Naples, Venice, Bavaria, Texas etc were once independent nations too as were the Princely states in India
Why not? The UK has already started breaking up, with the loss of most of Ireland, and the ongoing loss of the rest.
6 years after the Brexit vote the UK has not lost any territory compared to before the vote actually.
If we go down that line we could start breaking up Scotland too, Shetland for example did not become part of Scotland until the 15th century and much of the Scottish Borders was often under English control
You're muddling things again. We're talking about big nations. You know, like you said the words "big nations". And at any excuse, or lack of one, you are yet again threatening Partition.
Much more therapeutic than constantly trying to defend parliamentary democracy by denying it.
In a Western world threatened by an expansionist Russia and China, the idea we would be stronger against them economically and militarily broken up into tiny nations is absurd
You mean, like the Tories have safeguarded UK military power? Look at what DA was saying about the Royal Artillery yesterday.
Top Tip from IndyViz: don't bullshit about the promised advantages of being in the Union if they don't actually exist any more (e.g. EU membership).
TBF, it wasn't me saying it, it was a (presumably stone deaf) officer in the RA saying it.
Quite. Basic point, though, is that when almost all other countries have 155mm long barrel self-propelled arty as the absolute bog standard, the UK ones are out of date (medium barrel) and too many are out of condition and the Army is dysfunctional to that extent.
Presumably the UK is moving to 152mm anyway, sorry pardon me 6", calibre.
Its more about the Army not having made a decision about what to replace/upgrade AS90 with for a long, long time. Combined with arguing about unique requirements, is artillery even needed etc etc…. And “No point in spending money when we are just about to get a new shiny, any minute now”.
Fair enough, but that is what MoD is for - to stop that nonsense, and to insist on buying off the shelf from e.g. Korea or US if they don't extradigitate at once.
The single most important thing Liz Truss needs to do is win market confidence. We're currently seeing what happens when a nation has lost credibility, interest rates rising, currency through the floor. She needs to have a "whatever it takes" moment tomorrow about combating inflation, ensuring energy prices stay down over the next two years and stepping up investment. All of this will mean hundreds of billions in borrowing over the next 3-4 years without monetary backing. Right now the biggest government fear has got to be bond investors going on strike and yields surging.
Having a very clear 5 year plan to permanently fix energy prices is the only way forwards. Any temporary measures will just make things worse.
Hopefully Liz is headstrong enough to tell the civil service to get fucked and pushes ahead with planning reform, investment reform and decoupling electricity and gas prices.
The low number for Truss also blows up her cunning IndyRef scheme.
Why should Scots meet a 60% threshold, if she only got 47%...
The 60% threshold is support for indyref2 to even get a vote
How remarkable, you have gleefully dumped the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy in favour of anyone who can fiddle an opinion poll. Your party is not fit to hold the title of 'Conservative'.
Not my position, Truss', however still her decision and that of Westminster and she has made clear she will not allow indyref2 without at least 60%+ wanting one for a year consistently and will put that in law
I think it is not unreasonable to suggest that referenda that change the constitutional status quo massively should have more than just a pure majority support, and should be somewhere in the realm of 2/3s - 3/4s in favour. The problem is the biggest constitutional change of our lifetimes, Brexit, was on a bare majority, and that bare majority was then used as a justification for the most radical form of that policy rather than a conciliatory version of that policy, so why shouldn't Scotland or republicans, or whoever wants any referenda now demand the same.
Huge constitutional change needs buy in from a lot of people and, typically, if you get a bare majority then those people probably don't agree on the form that huge constitutional change takes (see: all the problems with making a "real" Brexit happen). If you have a 66% mandate then you can still disappoint a large chunk of the people who wanted the change with the material implementation of that change and potentially still have a mandate for it.
So whilst I don't in principle disagree with this IndyRef threshold (to either hold the ref or for the eventual result), I do think that horse has bolted and, from now on, referenda in the UK / parts of the UK will have to be purely based on "winner takes all" 50% + 1, because that's how people did Brexit.
I totally disagree on the threshold principle. People should get whatever they vote for, as a majority. If you don't like it, a new majority can always reverse it.
Brexit wasn't simply won on a simple majority basis, it won 4 elections/referenda in a row. 2015: Majority to hold a referendum 2016: Majority to Vote Leave 2017: About 600 MPs elected promising to respect the Leave Vote 2019: 80 seat majority to Get Brexit Done
Had any of those four elections turned out differently, Brexit wouldn't have happened.
I mean, sure, but only half of those were a majority, right? I think a majority of MPs were elected on a manifesto to hold a referendum, and 52% voted leave on the day. The "respect" vote leave thing is a bit difficult, because Labour's view of "Leave" was different to Tories view of "Leave", and indeed, neither of those visions of the type of Leave got a majority. And Johnson didn't get a majority of votes. And of course, referenda are specifically a vote on one issue, voting for MPs is not.
And big constitutional change, by its very nature, can't easily just be overturned by a new majority soon. Either practically, it takes time to see the impacts of big political change, but also politically. All the people here say indyref or the EU referendum were "once in a generation votes, and people don't like their votes "not counting". I think had we set a 60% threshold on the Brexit referendum, for example, with the result we had we would still be a country planning to leave the EU, we would just have had a period of time for better planning and more explanation of what that would really look like. Either the EU would have seen the writing on the wall and negotiated us out, or a new Con government would have been elected on the mandate to withdraw from the EU with a specific vision of what that looked like. But the political heat of a 52/48 divide meant having to do it as quickly as possible, because that coalition of 52% of the population could only be held together for a very short period of time because they don't agree on much at all. So the political atmosphere turned extremely ugly extremely quickly.
I totally oppose the "once in a generation" gibberish, that's just grasping for straws to deny democracy. If Scotland's voters don't want another referendum for a generation, they shouldn't elect a government pledged to hold one. If they do, that's their choice and that's democracy.
The public voted for Brexit. That's it. How we Brexited, well that was up to who we elect in Parliament and voters gave a majority in Parliament to a specific plan in the end.
Anyone putting a threshold is just trying to overturn defeat.
I'm not just talking about Brexit, though, but big constitutional change in general.
For example, I'm a republican, I don't want the monarchy. Imagine a world (mad I know), where 52% vote for a republic. Sorted. Well, what if half of those who want a republic want an elected president, and half of those want the PM to be the new head of state and not create a new role. Maybe you can convince some of those one way or another, but at the end of the day it will be nigh impossible to actually get consensus on what the big new political settlement should be. That changes when you get to 66-75% - a wider agreement for the change to happen, and wiggle room for whatever the practical settlement might be. Sure, in an ideal world, those 52% of people are all voting for the same thing, but in reality they aren't. And it is a bit dishonest to claim they are. So waiting for more consensus over such foundational issues allows those changes to really have a mandate.
Going back to Brexit, because the nature of the vote and the subsequent political atmosphere afterwards, there was no real acceptance about the nature of the coalition that came to 52% - no acceptance that even those campaigning for Brexit offered access to the Single Market and such, that rich voters wanted a low tax small state outside of the EU, and working class voters wanted more what Johnson promised with money for the NHS and more protectionism. So when political realities hit, Brexit was (and arguably still is) unachievable. The "oven ready" deal is unacceptable to a number of Unionists due to the NI issue, and to a number of the working class who voted for it believing what they were told about more populist economic policies coming home. Brexit will never be "done" because the work of planning an acceptable political settlement was never done. And that's why the higher threshold is useful, it gives politicians more leeway in implementing that change.
I'm a fan of democracy, but a) we don't have a majoritarian system at most levels in this country; MPs aren't elected with majorities, parties can get huge majorities with a 35-40% of the vote, and this is repeated in local government and b) referenda on big issues are really complicated and we shouldn't shy away from that fact. To just say "a majority want something, sort it out asap" is not how politics shakes out.
I'm a republican too and if we have a referendum and 52% vote to abolish the monarchy I'd bloody well expect and demand that the monarchy is abolished.
Yes means yes, no means no. Whatever the majority goes with, that was the choice made.
Yes there may be issues down the line but that's for Parliament to resolve. We evolve over time. Whatever problems that come up, like the Unionists objections to the Protocol as an example, need to be dealt with democratically over time by Parliament, like the new PM-elect's proposed NI Protocol Bill.
Personally I would have no more referendums ever, they are divisive, dominate politics at the expense of more important issues and ultimately we are a parliamentary not a direct democracy. Our constitution is based on Crown in Parliament
But you have a problem right there. You have Scotland which has voted to have Indyref2 in both parliaments, conclusively in terms of a majority in both parliaments. Which is a clear win in parliamentary democracy terms. And what parliament wants parliament gets. That's the constitution, not some 16th century stuff about divine right of the monarchy.
That argument depends on not respecting the scope of devolution. If an Essex independence party won the council elections, would it be a mandate for a referendum?
Just imagine the Brexiteer prolapsing if some EUrophile compared a sovereign England..sorry..UK to a council, either before or after 2016.
In any case, Essex used to be an independent state, of course. So why not an Essindyref?
As Essex is now part of England and the UK.
On your argument most big nations would break up, after all Naples, Venice, Bavaria, Texas etc were once independent nations too as were the Princely states in India
Why not? The UK has already started breaking up, with the loss of most of Ireland, and the ongoing loss of the rest.
6 years after the Brexit vote the UK has not lost any territory compared to before the vote actually.
If we go down that line we could start breaking up Scotland too, Shetland for example did not become part of Scotland until the 15th century and much of the Scottish Borders was often under English control
You're muddling things again. We're talking about big nations. You know, like you said the words "big nations". And at any excuse, or lack of one, you are yet again threatening Partition.
Much more therapeutic than constantly trying to defend parliamentary democracy by denying it.
In a Western world threatened by an expansionist Russia and China, the idea we would be stronger against them economically and militarily broken up into tiny nations is absurd
You mean, like the Tories have safeguarded UK military power? Look at what DA was saying about the Royal Artillery yesterday.
Top Tip from IndyViz: don't bullshit about the promised advantages of being in the Union if they don't actually exist any more (e.g. EU membership).
The UK still has the 2nd strongest military in Western Europe after France and nuclear weapons.
Scexit now would of course also mean a hard border at Berwick. Though of course leaving the UK to rejoin the EU is not really voting for independence at all, in the long term just swapping Westminster for Brussels and Strasbourg as the ultimate source of power over Scotland
You don't listen, do you? The British Army does not have proper artillery. Think what that means. And its new wheeled vehicle family is crap (Ajax). Ditto.
Ajax is tracked. Boxer is wheeled.
Ajax must be ripe for the chop to enable a French/Italian style switch to 100% wheels for light and medium armour.
Bloomberg claiming the aluminium industry is facing an extinction event across production
It is just so scary now Russia has closed gas to Europe until Russian sanctions are removed
What’s also true, is that Russia cutting off the gas for sh1t s and giggles, has now moved from the “known unknown” category, into the “known known” category.
With the uncertainty removed, the aluminium plant can either start working out how to spend the winter bringing forward maintainence tasks, or can confirm their provisional order for a dozen containerised diesel generators.
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
When in business I had no problem with public speaking and did so for many years
Even so, many very capable people simply could not do public speaking no matter how much they wanted to
If you find public speaking tricky, I would venture that Prime Minister might not be the job for you.
The low Prime Ministerial speaking watermark was Peppa Pig. I doubt Liz can in any way match that.
And @Mexicanpete sets the stand that Liz will fail to hit both tomorrow and Thursday - the content will be no existent and poorly delivered...
At least Bozo could deliver a speech...
he just hasn't learnt to put the words in the right order.
The low number for Truss also blows up her cunning IndyRef scheme.
Why should Scots meet a 60% threshold, if she only got 47%...
The 60% threshold is support for indyref2 to even get a vote
How remarkable, you have gleefully dumped the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy in favour of anyone who can fiddle an opinion poll. Your party is not fit to hold the title of 'Conservative'.
Not my position, Truss', however still her decision and that of Westminster and she has made clear she will not allow indyref2 without at least 60%+ wanting one for a year consistently and will put that in law
I think it is not unreasonable to suggest that referenda that change the constitutional status quo massively should have more than just a pure majority support, and should be somewhere in the realm of 2/3s - 3/4s in favour. The problem is the biggest constitutional change of our lifetimes, Brexit, was on a bare majority, and that bare majority was then used as a justification for the most radical form of that policy rather than a conciliatory version of that policy, so why shouldn't Scotland or republicans, or whoever wants any referenda now demand the same.
Huge constitutional change needs buy in from a lot of people and, typically, if you get a bare majority then those people probably don't agree on the form that huge constitutional change takes (see: all the problems with making a "real" Brexit happen). If you have a 66% mandate then you can still disappoint a large chunk of the people who wanted the change with the material implementation of that change and potentially still have a mandate for it.
So whilst I don't in principle disagree with this IndyRef threshold (to either hold the ref or for the eventual result), I do think that horse has bolted and, from now on, referenda in the UK / parts of the UK will have to be purely based on "winner takes all" 50% + 1, because that's how people did Brexit.
I totally disagree on the threshold principle. People should get whatever they vote for, as a majority. If you don't like it, a new majority can always reverse it.
Brexit wasn't simply won on a simple majority basis, it won 4 elections/referenda in a row. 2015: Majority to hold a referendum 2016: Majority to Vote Leave 2017: About 600 MPs elected promising to respect the Leave Vote 2019: 80 seat majority to Get Brexit Done
Had any of those four elections turned out differently, Brexit wouldn't have happened.
I mean, sure, but only half of those were a majority, right? I think a majority of MPs were elected on a manifesto to hold a referendum, and 52% voted leave on the day. The "respect" vote leave thing is a bit difficult, because Labour's view of "Leave" was different to Tories view of "Leave", and indeed, neither of those visions of the type of Leave got a majority. And Johnson didn't get a majority of votes. And of course, referenda are specifically a vote on one issue, voting for MPs is not.
And big constitutional change, by its very nature, can't easily just be overturned by a new majority soon. Either practically, it takes time to see the impacts of big political change, but also politically. All the people here say indyref or the EU referendum were "once in a generation votes, and people don't like their votes "not counting". I think had we set a 60% threshold on the Brexit referendum, for example, with the result we had we would still be a country planning to leave the EU, we would just have had a period of time for better planning and more explanation of what that would really look like. Either the EU would have seen the writing on the wall and negotiated us out, or a new Con government would have been elected on the mandate to withdraw from the EU with a specific vision of what that looked like. But the political heat of a 52/48 divide meant having to do it as quickly as possible, because that coalition of 52% of the population could only be held together for a very short period of time because they don't agree on much at all. So the political atmosphere turned extremely ugly extremely quickly.
I totally oppose the "once in a generation" gibberish, that's just grasping for straws to deny democracy. If Scotland's voters don't want another referendum for a generation, they shouldn't elect a government pledged to hold one. If they do, that's their choice and that's democracy.
The public voted for Brexit. That's it. How we Brexited, well that was up to who we elect in Parliament and voters gave a majority in Parliament to a specific plan in the end.
Anyone putting a threshold is just trying to overturn defeat.
I'm not just talking about Brexit, though, but big constitutional change in general.
For example, I'm a republican, I don't want the monarchy. Imagine a world (mad I know), where 52% vote for a republic. Sorted. Well, what if half of those who want a republic want an elected president, and half of those want the PM to be the new head of state and not create a new role. Maybe you can convince some of those one way or another, but at the end of the day it will be nigh impossible to actually get consensus on what the big new political settlement should be. That changes when you get to 66-75% - a wider agreement for the change to happen, and wiggle room for whatever the practical settlement might be. Sure, in an ideal world, those 52% of people are all voting for the same thing, but in reality they aren't. And it is a bit dishonest to claim they are. So waiting for more consensus over such foundational issues allows those changes to really have a mandate.
Going back to Brexit, because the nature of the vote and the subsequent political atmosphere afterwards, there was no real acceptance about the nature of the coalition that came to 52% - no acceptance that even those campaigning for Brexit offered access to the Single Market and such, that rich voters wanted a low tax small state outside of the EU, and working class voters wanted more what Johnson promised with money for the NHS and more protectionism. So when political realities hit, Brexit was (and arguably still is) unachievable. The "oven ready" deal is unacceptable to a number of Unionists due to the NI issue, and to a number of the working class who voted for it believing what they were told about more populist economic policies coming home. Brexit will never be "done" because the work of planning an acceptable political settlement was never done. And that's why the higher threshold is useful, it gives politicians more leeway in implementing that change.
I'm a fan of democracy, but a) we don't have a majoritarian system at most levels in this country; MPs aren't elected with majorities, parties can get huge majorities with a 35-40% of the vote, and this is repeated in local government and b) referenda on big issues are really complicated and we shouldn't shy away from that fact. To just say "a majority want something, sort it out asap" is not how politics shakes out.
I'm a republican too and if we have a referendum and 52% vote to abolish the monarchy I'd bloody well expect and demand that the monarchy is abolished.
Yes means yes, no means no. Whatever the majority goes with, that was the choice made.
Yes there may be issues down the line but that's for Parliament to resolve. We evolve over time. Whatever problems that come up, like the Unionists objections to the Protocol as an example, need to be dealt with democratically over time by Parliament, like the new PM-elect's proposed NI Protocol Bill.
Personally I would have no more referendums ever, they are divisive, dominate politics at the expense of more important issues and ultimately we are a parliamentary not a direct democracy. Our constitution is based on Crown in Parliament
But you have a problem right there. You have Scotland which has voted to have Indyref2 in both parliaments, conclusively in terms of a majority in both parliaments. Which is a clear win in parliamentary democracy terms. And what parliament wants parliament gets. That's the constitution, not some 16th century stuff about divine right of the monarchy.
That argument depends on not respecting the scope of devolution. If an Essex independence party won the council elections, would it be a mandate for a referendum?
Just imagine the Brexiteer prolapsing if some EUrophile compared a sovereign England..sorry..UK to a council, either before or after 2016.
In any case, Essex used to be an independent state, of course. So why not an Essindyref?
As Essex is now part of England and the UK.
On your argument most big nations would break up, after all Naples, Venice, Bavaria, Texas etc were once independent nations too as were the Princely states in India
Why not? The UK has already started breaking up, with the loss of most of Ireland, and the ongoing loss of the rest.
6 years after the Brexit vote the UK has not lost any territory compared to before the vote actually.
If we go down that line we could start breaking up Scotland too, Shetland for example did not become part of Scotland until the 15th century and much of the Scottish Borders was often under English control
You're muddling things again. We're talking about big nations. You know, like you said the words "big nations". And at any excuse, or lack of one, you are yet again threatening Partition.
Much more therapeutic than constantly trying to defend parliamentary democracy by denying it.
In a Western world threatened by an expansionist Russia and China, the idea we would be stronger against them economically and militarily broken up into tiny nations is absurd
You mean, like the Tories have safeguarded UK military power? Look at what DA was saying about the Royal Artillery yesterday.
Top Tip from IndyViz: don't bullshit about the promised advantages of being in the Union if they don't actually exist any more (e.g. EU membership).
The UK still has the 2nd strongest military in Western Europe after France and nuclear weapons.
Scexit now would of course also mean a hard border at Berwick. Though of course leaving the UK to rejoin the EU is not really voting for independence at all, in the long term just swapping Westminster for Brussels and Strasbourg as the ultimate source of power over Scotland
You don't listen, do you? The British Army does not have proper artillery. Think what that means. And its new wheeled vehicle family is crap (Ajax). Ditto.
Ajax is tracked. Boxer is wheeled.
Ajax must be ripe for the chop to enable a French/Italian style switch to 100% wheels for light and medium armour.
Yes, thanks, apols for brainfart. But yes, that wouldn't surprise me.
"Nigel Farage has launched his own brand of gin produced by a distillery located in Cornwall. Farage Gin, a range of three bottles made with "patriotic flavours" and "a taste of Brexit", was unveiled yesterday."
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
When in business I had no problem with public speaking and did so for many years
Even so, many very capable people simply could not do public speaking no matter how much they wanted to
If you find public speaking tricky, I would venture that Prime Minister might not be the job for you.
The low Prime Ministerial speaking watermark was Peppa Pig. I doubt Liz can in any way match that.
And @Mexicanpete sets the stand that Liz will fail to hit both tomorrow and Thursday - the content will be no existent and poorly delivered...
At least Bozo could deliver a speech...
he just hasn't learnt to put the words in the right order.
Energy and confidence saw him through it. Granted it made understanding harder, but it wasn't boring, just samey.
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
When in business I had no problem with public speaking and did so for many years
Even so, many very capable people simply could not do public speaking no matter how much they wanted to
If you find public speaking tricky, I would venture that Prime Minister might not be the job for you.
The low Prime Ministerial speaking watermark was Peppa Pig. I doubt Liz can in any way match that.
Nah, today isnt the day for soundbites/we feel the hand of history on our shoulder. Cheesy bellend
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
When in business I had no problem with public speaking and did so for many years
Even so, many very capable people simply could not do public speaking no matter how much they wanted to
If you find public speaking tricky, I would venture that Prime Minister might not be the job for you.
The low Prime Ministerial speaking watermark was Peppa Pig. I doubt Liz can in any way match that.
And @Mexicanpete sets the stand that Liz will fail to hit both tomorrow and Thursday - the content will be no existent and poorly delivered...
At least Bozo could deliver a speech...
At least you didn't call me a "cheesy bellend"!
Id never do such a wicked thing! Unless you are outing yourself as Anthony Blair in which case........
The low number for Truss also blows up her cunning IndyRef scheme.
Why should Scots meet a 60% threshold, if she only got 47%...
The 60% threshold is support for indyref2 to even get a vote
How remarkable, you have gleefully dumped the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy in favour of anyone who can fiddle an opinion poll. Your party is not fit to hold the title of 'Conservative'.
Not my position, Truss', however still her decision and that of Westminster and she has made clear she will not allow indyref2 without at least 60%+ wanting one for a year consistently and will put that in law
I think it is not unreasonable to suggest that referenda that change the constitutional status quo massively should have more than just a pure majority support, and should be somewhere in the realm of 2/3s - 3/4s in favour. The problem is the biggest constitutional change of our lifetimes, Brexit, was on a bare majority, and that bare majority was then used as a justification for the most radical form of that policy rather than a conciliatory version of that policy, so why shouldn't Scotland or republicans, or whoever wants any referenda now demand the same.
Huge constitutional change needs buy in from a lot of people and, typically, if you get a bare majority then those people probably don't agree on the form that huge constitutional change takes (see: all the problems with making a "real" Brexit happen). If you have a 66% mandate then you can still disappoint a large chunk of the people who wanted the change with the material implementation of that change and potentially still have a mandate for it.
So whilst I don't in principle disagree with this IndyRef threshold (to either hold the ref or for the eventual result), I do think that horse has bolted and, from now on, referenda in the UK / parts of the UK will have to be purely based on "winner takes all" 50% + 1, because that's how people did Brexit.
I totally disagree on the threshold principle. People should get whatever they vote for, as a majority. If you don't like it, a new majority can always reverse it.
Brexit wasn't simply won on a simple majority basis, it won 4 elections/referenda in a row. 2015: Majority to hold a referendum 2016: Majority to Vote Leave 2017: About 600 MPs elected promising to respect the Leave Vote 2019: 80 seat majority to Get Brexit Done
Had any of those four elections turned out differently, Brexit wouldn't have happened.
I mean, sure, but only half of those were a majority, right? I think a majority of MPs were elected on a manifesto to hold a referendum, and 52% voted leave on the day. The "respect" vote leave thing is a bit difficult, because Labour's view of "Leave" was different to Tories view of "Leave", and indeed, neither of those visions of the type of Leave got a majority. And Johnson didn't get a majority of votes. And of course, referenda are specifically a vote on one issue, voting for MPs is not.
And big constitutional change, by its very nature, can't easily just be overturned by a new majority soon. Either practically, it takes time to see the impacts of big political change, but also politically. All the people here say indyref or the EU referendum were "once in a generation votes, and people don't like their votes "not counting". I think had we set a 60% threshold on the Brexit referendum, for example, with the result we had we would still be a country planning to leave the EU, we would just have had a period of time for better planning and more explanation of what that would really look like. Either the EU would have seen the writing on the wall and negotiated us out, or a new Con government would have been elected on the mandate to withdraw from the EU with a specific vision of what that looked like. But the political heat of a 52/48 divide meant having to do it as quickly as possible, because that coalition of 52% of the population could only be held together for a very short period of time because they don't agree on much at all. So the political atmosphere turned extremely ugly extremely quickly.
I totally oppose the "once in a generation" gibberish, that's just grasping for straws to deny democracy. If Scotland's voters don't want another referendum for a generation, they shouldn't elect a government pledged to hold one. If they do, that's their choice and that's democracy.
The public voted for Brexit. That's it. How we Brexited, well that was up to who we elect in Parliament and voters gave a majority in Parliament to a specific plan in the end.
Anyone putting a threshold is just trying to overturn defeat.
I'm not just talking about Brexit, though, but big constitutional change in general.
For example, I'm a republican, I don't want the monarchy. Imagine a world (mad I know), where 52% vote for a republic. Sorted. Well, what if half of those who want a republic want an elected president, and half of those want the PM to be the new head of state and not create a new role. Maybe you can convince some of those one way or another, but at the end of the day it will be nigh impossible to actually get consensus on what the big new political settlement should be. That changes when you get to 66-75% - a wider agreement for the change to happen, and wiggle room for whatever the practical settlement might be. Sure, in an ideal world, those 52% of people are all voting for the same thing, but in reality they aren't. And it is a bit dishonest to claim they are. So waiting for more consensus over such foundational issues allows those changes to really have a mandate.
Going back to Brexit, because the nature of the vote and the subsequent political atmosphere afterwards, there was no real acceptance about the nature of the coalition that came to 52% - no acceptance that even those campaigning for Brexit offered access to the Single Market and such, that rich voters wanted a low tax small state outside of the EU, and working class voters wanted more what Johnson promised with money for the NHS and more protectionism. So when political realities hit, Brexit was (and arguably still is) unachievable. The "oven ready" deal is unacceptable to a number of Unionists due to the NI issue, and to a number of the working class who voted for it believing what they were told about more populist economic policies coming home. Brexit will never be "done" because the work of planning an acceptable political settlement was never done. And that's why the higher threshold is useful, it gives politicians more leeway in implementing that change.
I'm a fan of democracy, but a) we don't have a majoritarian system at most levels in this country; MPs aren't elected with majorities, parties can get huge majorities with a 35-40% of the vote, and this is repeated in local government and b) referenda on big issues are really complicated and we shouldn't shy away from that fact. To just say "a majority want something, sort it out asap" is not how politics shakes out.
I'm a republican too and if we have a referendum and 52% vote to abolish the monarchy I'd bloody well expect and demand that the monarchy is abolished.
Yes means yes, no means no. Whatever the majority goes with, that was the choice made.
Yes there may be issues down the line but that's for Parliament to resolve. We evolve over time. Whatever problems that come up, like the Unionists objections to the Protocol as an example, need to be dealt with democratically over time by Parliament, like the new PM-elect's proposed NI Protocol Bill.
Personally I would have no more referendums ever, they are divisive, dominate politics at the expense of more important issues and ultimately we are a parliamentary not a direct democracy. Our constitution is based on Crown in Parliament
But you have a problem right there. You have Scotland which has voted to have Indyref2 in both parliaments, conclusively in terms of a majority in both parliaments. Which is a clear win in parliamentary democracy terms. And what parliament wants parliament gets. That's the constitution, not some 16th century stuff about divine right of the monarchy.
That argument depends on not respecting the scope of devolution. If an Essex independence party won the council elections, would it be a mandate for a referendum?
Just imagine the Brexiteer prolapsing if some EUrophile compared a sovereign England..sorry..UK to a council, either before or after 2016.
In any case, Essex used to be an independent state, of course. So why not an Essindyref?
As Essex is now part of England and the UK.
On your argument most big nations would break up, after all Naples, Venice, Bavaria, Texas etc were once independent nations too as were the Princely states in India
Why not? The UK has already started breaking up, with the loss of most of Ireland, and the ongoing loss of the rest.
6 years after the Brexit vote the UK has not lost any territory compared to before the vote actually.
If we go down that line we could start breaking up Scotland too, Shetland for example did not become part of Scotland until the 15th century and much of the Scottish Borders was often under English control
You're muddling things again. We're talking about big nations. You know, like you said the words "big nations". And at any excuse, or lack of one, you are yet again threatening Partition.
Much more therapeutic than constantly trying to defend parliamentary democracy by denying it.
In a Western world threatened by an expansionist Russia and China, the idea we would be stronger against them economically and militarily broken up into tiny nations is absurd
You mean, like the Tories have safeguarded UK military power? Look at what DA was saying about the Royal Artillery yesterday.
Top Tip from IndyViz: don't bullshit about the promised advantages of being in the Union if they don't actually exist any more (e.g. EU membership).
TBF, it wasn't me saying it, it was a (presumably stone deaf) officer in the RA saying it.
Quite. Basic point, though, is that when almost all other countries have 155mm long barrel self-propelled arty as the absolute bog standard, the UK ones are out of date (medium barrel) and too many are out of condition and the Army is dysfunctional to that extent.
Presumably the UK is moving to 152mm anyway, sorry pardon me 6", calibre.
Its more about the Army not having made a decision about what to replace/upgrade AS90 with for a long, long time. Combined with arguing about unique requirements, is artillery even needed etc etc…. And “No point in spending money when we are just about to get a new shiny, any minute now”.
Fair enough, but that is what MoD is for - to stop that nonsense, and to insist on buying off the shelf from e.g. Korea or US if they don't extradigitate at once.
(Not that it is doing that, either.)
Wut?
The MOD is there to
1) support industry (aka jobs in constituencies) 2) add 6 million contradictory requirements. 3) underpants
:
1,345,212) equip the military
Buying, say, Archer, wouldn’t support the first 1,345,211 priorities on that list.
God damn it I really thought the Frost talk was a joke, even in such a role.
I don't get it, I really don't - I despise JRM but at least he's an MP, there's just no need to give a lord a prominent role, even as a fixer, rather than be backup. You want to be high profile in government don't accept a peerage.
At this early point I would make Badenoch or Patel or Braverman favourite to be next Tory leader, assuming Truss still leads the party into the next election and fails to win it. One of them likely facing Tugendhat in the final 2
The Party Membership clearly want Badenoch. The only winning bet today is Badenoch as LOTO.
She needs to get something substantial and she needs to run it well with some new thinking. At the moment she is a series of interesting soundbites.
Edit, education would be good for her and the government.
Education seems a natural fit. Actually a very difficult job, hard to appear like you are winning in it?
Even worse, the incoming Prime Minister has her own very strong views on schools, GCSEs, maths and Oxbridge, which got an airing during the leadership campaign, so EdSec is a poisoned chalice for an independent thinker.
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
Well no, it’s not about how awful as public speaking it was, it’s how the team around her wasted the set piece moment to get important points across winning hearts and minds - it was a free hit in terms of having attention laid on, winning hearts and minds now makes it easier for the battle ahead. They should have written two strong speeches for today and tomorrow, otherwise it makes no political sense. Not to me anyway.
I rather disagree with you about today being her opportunity to win over doubters
For me it is her speech to the country outside Downing Street tomorrow afternoon about 4.00pm as she speaks as Prime Minister for the first time
Is there a market on whether we'll just get more meaningless soundbites badly delivered?
The single most important thing Liz Truss needs to do is win market confidence. We're currently seeing what happens when a nation has lost credibility, interest rates rising, currency through the floor. She needs to have a "whatever it takes" moment tomorrow about combating inflation, ensuring energy prices stay down over the next two years and stepping up investment. All of this will mean hundreds of billions in borrowing over the next 3-4 years without monetary backing. Right now the biggest government fear has got to be bond investors going on strike and yields surging.
Having a very clear 5 year plan to permanently fix energy prices is the only way forwards. Any temporary measures will just make things worse.
Hopefully Liz is headstrong enough to tell the civil service to get fucked and pushes ahead with planning reform, investment reform and decoupling electricity and gas prices.
'Planning reform'? When has she promised that, other than to make it worse?
In any case, it's obvious what PMs will do in this situation, as it is what they all do whatever their situation, and it what is the quickest and easiest way to appear to get a win.
Truss has Boris fanboys hoping she fails so he comes back and a need to quickly turn things around in the polls to restore party confidence, she doesn't have time for anything substantial or considered.
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
Well no, it’s not about how awful as public speaking it was, it’s how the team around her wasted the set piece moment to get important points across winning hearts and minds - it was a free hit in terms of having attention laid on, winning hearts and minds now makes it easier for the battle ahead. They should have written two strong speeches for today and tomorrow, otherwise it makes no political sense. Not to me anyway.
I rather disagree with you about today being her opportunity to win over doubters
For me it is her speech to the country outside Downing Street tomorrow afternoon about 4.00pm as she speaks as Prime Minister for the first time
I completely disagree with you, it was two big platforms offering opportunity to get points across and win people over - explain the difficult details to party workers today you can’t do with the sound bites tomorrow.
But we are both in agreement, she needs to be far better tomorrow than nothing to say and saying it badly today.
You lay the groundwork today for the more important speech tomorrow.
But she didn't do that so tomorrow becomes a bigger issue...
Yes. That is what I am thinking.
But it’s not just one person, it’s a whole team and their decision making at fault here.
I suspect the reason it was so light of substance today is that they don’t know what they’re going to announce until they know for sure who will accept what jobs. Either way it was a dreadful speech. It’s for sure her biggest weakness, that she might find it hard to carry the nation with her on what is likely to be a difficult policy path.
Well no, that’s not what I am saying - as a team they must know by now what points they should be selling and making at every opportunity now, even if they know she has weaknesses in speech making, debating, TV interviews, the team around her should still be writing great speeches to get those important points across from day 1. Today has been a bizarre failure of Team Truss, not just Liz Truss.
Just watched it.
Dire.
Good luck tory members. You've picked a belter.
Rewatching the speech now; it's not actually that bad. I think at the time I was just suffering a chest-grabbing cringe at the Kiev-to-Carlisle line, and the late applause. It's not close to the weirdness of the cheese/pork stuff, though in common with that she does maybe need to work on her ability to cue an audience into response.
When it's chopped up into soundbites for the news bulletins it'll probably come across fine, if bland.
The low number for Truss also blows up her cunning IndyRef scheme.
Why should Scots meet a 60% threshold, if she only got 47%...
The 60% threshold is support for indyref2 to even get a vote
How remarkable, you have gleefully dumped the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy in favour of anyone who can fiddle an opinion poll. Your party is not fit to hold the title of 'Conservative'.
Not my position, Truss', however still her decision and that of Westminster and she has made clear she will not allow indyref2 without at least 60%+ wanting one for a year consistently and will put that in law
I think it is not unreasonable to suggest that referenda that change the constitutional status quo massively should have more than just a pure majority support, and should be somewhere in the realm of 2/3s - 3/4s in favour. The problem is the biggest constitutional change of our lifetimes, Brexit, was on a bare majority, and that bare majority was then used as a justification for the most radical form of that policy rather than a conciliatory version of that policy, so why shouldn't Scotland or republicans, or whoever wants any referenda now demand the same.
Huge constitutional change needs buy in from a lot of people and, typically, if you get a bare majority then those people probably don't agree on the form that huge constitutional change takes (see: all the problems with making a "real" Brexit happen). If you have a 66% mandate then you can still disappoint a large chunk of the people who wanted the change with the material implementation of that change and potentially still have a mandate for it.
So whilst I don't in principle disagree with this IndyRef threshold (to either hold the ref or for the eventual result), I do think that horse has bolted and, from now on, referenda in the UK / parts of the UK will have to be purely based on "winner takes all" 50% + 1, because that's how people did Brexit.
I totally disagree on the threshold principle. People should get whatever they vote for, as a majority. If you don't like it, a new majority can always reverse it.
Brexit wasn't simply won on a simple majority basis, it won 4 elections/referenda in a row. 2015: Majority to hold a referendum 2016: Majority to Vote Leave 2017: About 600 MPs elected promising to respect the Leave Vote 2019: 80 seat majority to Get Brexit Done
Had any of those four elections turned out differently, Brexit wouldn't have happened.
I mean, sure, but only half of those were a majority, right? I think a majority of MPs were elected on a manifesto to hold a referendum, and 52% voted leave on the day. The "respect" vote leave thing is a bit difficult, because Labour's view of "Leave" was different to Tories view of "Leave", and indeed, neither of those visions of the type of Leave got a majority. And Johnson didn't get a majority of votes. And of course, referenda are specifically a vote on one issue, voting for MPs is not.
And big constitutional change, by its very nature, can't easily just be overturned by a new majority soon. Either practically, it takes time to see the impacts of big political change, but also politically. All the people here say indyref or the EU referendum were "once in a generation votes, and people don't like their votes "not counting". I think had we set a 60% threshold on the Brexit referendum, for example, with the result we had we would still be a country planning to leave the EU, we would just have had a period of time for better planning and more explanation of what that would really look like. Either the EU would have seen the writing on the wall and negotiated us out, or a new Con government would have been elected on the mandate to withdraw from the EU with a specific vision of what that looked like. But the political heat of a 52/48 divide meant having to do it as quickly as possible, because that coalition of 52% of the population could only be held together for a very short period of time because they don't agree on much at all. So the political atmosphere turned extremely ugly extremely quickly.
I totally oppose the "once in a generation" gibberish, that's just grasping for straws to deny democracy. If Scotland's voters don't want another referendum for a generation, they shouldn't elect a government pledged to hold one. If they do, that's their choice and that's democracy.
The public voted for Brexit. That's it. How we Brexited, well that was up to who we elect in Parliament and voters gave a majority in Parliament to a specific plan in the end.
Anyone putting a threshold is just trying to overturn defeat.
I'm not just talking about Brexit, though, but big constitutional change in general.
For example, I'm a republican, I don't want the monarchy. Imagine a world (mad I know), where 52% vote for a republic. Sorted. Well, what if half of those who want a republic want an elected president, and half of those want the PM to be the new head of state and not create a new role. Maybe you can convince some of those one way or another, but at the end of the day it will be nigh impossible to actually get consensus on what the big new political settlement should be. That changes when you get to 66-75% - a wider agreement for the change to happen, and wiggle room for whatever the practical settlement might be. Sure, in an ideal world, those 52% of people are all voting for the same thing, but in reality they aren't. And it is a bit dishonest to claim they are. So waiting for more consensus over such foundational issues allows those changes to really have a mandate.
Going back to Brexit, because the nature of the vote and the subsequent political atmosphere afterwards, there was no real acceptance about the nature of the coalition that came to 52% - no acceptance that even those campaigning for Brexit offered access to the Single Market and such, that rich voters wanted a low tax small state outside of the EU, and working class voters wanted more what Johnson promised with money for the NHS and more protectionism. So when political realities hit, Brexit was (and arguably still is) unachievable. The "oven ready" deal is unacceptable to a number of Unionists due to the NI issue, and to a number of the working class who voted for it believing what they were told about more populist economic policies coming home. Brexit will never be "done" because the work of planning an acceptable political settlement was never done. And that's why the higher threshold is useful, it gives politicians more leeway in implementing that change.
I'm a fan of democracy, but a) we don't have a majoritarian system at most levels in this country; MPs aren't elected with majorities, parties can get huge majorities with a 35-40% of the vote, and this is repeated in local government and b) referenda on big issues are really complicated and we shouldn't shy away from that fact. To just say "a majority want something, sort it out asap" is not how politics shakes out.
I'm a republican too and if we have a referendum and 52% vote to abolish the monarchy I'd bloody well expect and demand that the monarchy is abolished.
Yes means yes, no means no. Whatever the majority goes with, that was the choice made.
Yes there may be issues down the line but that's for Parliament to resolve. We evolve over time. Whatever problems that come up, like the Unionists objections to the Protocol as an example, need to be dealt with democratically over time by Parliament, like the new PM-elect's proposed NI Protocol Bill.
Personally I would have no more referendums ever, they are divisive, dominate politics at the expense of more important issues and ultimately we are a parliamentary not a direct democracy. Our constitution is based on Crown in Parliament
But you have a problem right there. You have Scotland which has voted to have Indyref2 in both parliaments, conclusively in terms of a majority in both parliaments. Which is a clear win in parliamentary democracy terms. And what parliament wants parliament gets. That's the constitution, not some 16th century stuff about divine right of the monarchy.
That argument depends on not respecting the scope of devolution. If an Essex independence party won the council elections, would it be a mandate for a referendum?
Just imagine the Brexiteer prolapsing if some EUrophile compared a sovereign England..sorry..UK to a council, either before or after 2016.
In any case, Essex used to be an independent state, of course. So why not an Essindyref?
As Essex is now part of England and the UK.
On your argument most big nations would break up, after all Naples, Venice, Bavaria, Texas etc were once independent nations too as were the Princely states in India
Why not? The UK has already started breaking up, with the loss of most of Ireland, and the ongoing loss of the rest.
6 years after the Brexit vote the UK has not lost any territory compared to before the vote actually.
If we go down that line we could start breaking up Scotland too, Shetland for example did not become part of Scotland until the 15th century and much of the Scottish Borders was often under English control
You're muddling things again. We're talking about big nations. You know, like you said the words "big nations". And at any excuse, or lack of one, you are yet again threatening Partition.
Much more therapeutic than constantly trying to defend parliamentary democracy by denying it.
In a Western world threatened by an expansionist Russia and China, the idea we would be stronger against them economically and militarily broken up into tiny nations is absurd
You mean, like the Tories have safeguarded UK military power? Look at what DA was saying about the Royal Artillery yesterday.
Top Tip from IndyViz: don't bullshit about the promised advantages of being in the Union if they don't actually exist any more (e.g. EU membership).
The UK still has the 2nd strongest military in Western Europe after France and nuclear weapons.
Scexit now would of course also mean a hard border at Berwick. Though of course leaving the UK to rejoin the EU is not really voting for independence at all, in the long term just swapping Westminster for Brussels and Strasbourg as the ultimate source of power over Scotland
You don't listen, do you? The British Army does not have proper artillery. Think what that means. And its new wheeled vehicle family is crap (Ajax). Ditto.
We obviously have some artillery but realistically we are not going to be doing any fighting unless alongside our NATO allies or on a UN peacekeeping mission unless to defend the few remaining British overseas territories like the Falklands.
In that case aircraft carriers, submarines, special forces and Marines and Paras will be most important
The single most important thing Liz Truss needs to do is win market confidence. We're currently seeing what happens when a nation has lost credibility, interest rates rising, currency through the floor. She needs to have a "whatever it takes" moment tomorrow about combating inflation, ensuring energy prices stay down over the next two years and stepping up investment. All of this will mean hundreds of billions in borrowing over the next 3-4 years without monetary backing. Right now the biggest government fear has got to be bond investors going on strike and yields surging.
Having a very clear 5 year plan to permanently fix energy prices is the only way forwards. Any temporary measures will just make things worse.
Hopefully Liz is headstrong enough to tell the civil service to get fucked and pushes ahead with planning reform, investment reform and decoupling electricity and gas prices.
'Planning reform'? When has she promised that, other than to make it worse?
In any case, it's obvious what PMs will do in this situation, as it is what they all do whatever their situation, and it what is the quickest and easiest way to appear to get a win.
Truss has Boris fanboys hoping she fails so he comes back and a need to quickly turn things around in the polls to restore party confidence, she doesn't have time for anything substantial or considered.
She needs to find a way of removing any chance Bozo has of returning to number 10. That means either finding suitable evidence to remove the whip from Bozo or hoping that the Standards Committee find enough evidence to throw the book at him and suspend him for 10+ days...
God damn it I really thought the Frost talk was a joke, even in such a role.
I don't get it, I really don't - I despise JRM but at least he's an MP, there's just no need to give a lord a prominent role, even as a fixer, rather than be backup. You want to be high profile in government don't accept a peerage.
I don't get it either.
I'm hoping Nad gets bumped up to the Lords too so she is out of the way of the frontline stuff.
Well to be frank this could not have been a better leadership election result for Boris. Sunak clearly beaten but Truss not given the overwhelming mandate she would have wanted either.
The odds are Truss survives until the next election in which case Badenoch or Braverman are the likely successors in opposition if she loses but if she doesn't then Boris remains in pole position
The low number for Truss also blows up her cunning IndyRef scheme.
Why should Scots meet a 60% threshold, if she only got 47%...
The 60% threshold is support for indyref2 to even get a vote
How remarkable, you have gleefully dumped the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy in favour of anyone who can fiddle an opinion poll. Your party is not fit to hold the title of 'Conservative'.
Not my position, Truss', however still her decision and that of Westminster and she has made clear she will not allow indyref2 without at least 60%+ wanting one for a year consistently and will put that in law
I think it is not unreasonable to suggest that referenda that change the constitutional status quo massively should have more than just a pure majority support, and should be somewhere in the realm of 2/3s - 3/4s in favour. The problem is the biggest constitutional change of our lifetimes, Brexit, was on a bare majority, and that bare majority was then used as a justification for the most radical form of that policy rather than a conciliatory version of that policy, so why shouldn't Scotland or republicans, or whoever wants any referenda now demand the same.
Huge constitutional change needs buy in from a lot of people and, typically, if you get a bare majority then those people probably don't agree on the form that huge constitutional change takes (see: all the problems with making a "real" Brexit happen). If you have a 66% mandate then you can still disappoint a large chunk of the people who wanted the change with the material implementation of that change and potentially still have a mandate for it.
So whilst I don't in principle disagree with this IndyRef threshold (to either hold the ref or for the eventual result), I do think that horse has bolted and, from now on, referenda in the UK / parts of the UK will have to be purely based on "winner takes all" 50% + 1, because that's how people did Brexit.
I totally disagree on the threshold principle. People should get whatever they vote for, as a majority. If you don't like it, a new majority can always reverse it.
Brexit wasn't simply won on a simple majority basis, it won 4 elections/referenda in a row. 2015: Majority to hold a referendum 2016: Majority to Vote Leave 2017: About 600 MPs elected promising to respect the Leave Vote 2019: 80 seat majority to Get Brexit Done
Had any of those four elections turned out differently, Brexit wouldn't have happened.
I mean, sure, but only half of those were a majority, right? I think a majority of MPs were elected on a manifesto to hold a referendum, and 52% voted leave on the day. The "respect" vote leave thing is a bit difficult, because Labour's view of "Leave" was different to Tories view of "Leave", and indeed, neither of those visions of the type of Leave got a majority. And Johnson didn't get a majority of votes. And of course, referenda are specifically a vote on one issue, voting for MPs is not.
And big constitutional change, by its very nature, can't easily just be overturned by a new majority soon. Either practically, it takes time to see the impacts of big political change, but also politically. All the people here say indyref or the EU referendum were "once in a generation votes, and people don't like their votes "not counting". I think had we set a 60% threshold on the Brexit referendum, for example, with the result we had we would still be a country planning to leave the EU, we would just have had a period of time for better planning and more explanation of what that would really look like. Either the EU would have seen the writing on the wall and negotiated us out, or a new Con government would have been elected on the mandate to withdraw from the EU with a specific vision of what that looked like. But the political heat of a 52/48 divide meant having to do it as quickly as possible, because that coalition of 52% of the population could only be held together for a very short period of time because they don't agree on much at all. So the political atmosphere turned extremely ugly extremely quickly.
I totally oppose the "once in a generation" gibberish, that's just grasping for straws to deny democracy. If Scotland's voters don't want another referendum for a generation, they shouldn't elect a government pledged to hold one. If they do, that's their choice and that's democracy.
The public voted for Brexit. That's it. How we Brexited, well that was up to who we elect in Parliament and voters gave a majority in Parliament to a specific plan in the end.
Anyone putting a threshold is just trying to overturn defeat.
I'm not just talking about Brexit, though, but big constitutional change in general.
For example, I'm a republican, I don't want the monarchy. Imagine a world (mad I know), where 52% vote for a republic. Sorted. Well, what if half of those who want a republic want an elected president, and half of those want the PM to be the new head of state and not create a new role. Maybe you can convince some of those one way or another, but at the end of the day it will be nigh impossible to actually get consensus on what the big new political settlement should be. That changes when you get to 66-75% - a wider agreement for the change to happen, and wiggle room for whatever the practical settlement might be. Sure, in an ideal world, those 52% of people are all voting for the same thing, but in reality they aren't. And it is a bit dishonest to claim they are. So waiting for more consensus over such foundational issues allows those changes to really have a mandate.
Going back to Brexit, because the nature of the vote and the subsequent political atmosphere afterwards, there was no real acceptance about the nature of the coalition that came to 52% - no acceptance that even those campaigning for Brexit offered access to the Single Market and such, that rich voters wanted a low tax small state outside of the EU, and working class voters wanted more what Johnson promised with money for the NHS and more protectionism. So when political realities hit, Brexit was (and arguably still is) unachievable. The "oven ready" deal is unacceptable to a number of Unionists due to the NI issue, and to a number of the working class who voted for it believing what they were told about more populist economic policies coming home. Brexit will never be "done" because the work of planning an acceptable political settlement was never done. And that's why the higher threshold is useful, it gives politicians more leeway in implementing that change.
I'm a fan of democracy, but a) we don't have a majoritarian system at most levels in this country; MPs aren't elected with majorities, parties can get huge majorities with a 35-40% of the vote, and this is repeated in local government and b) referenda on big issues are really complicated and we shouldn't shy away from that fact. To just say "a majority want something, sort it out asap" is not how politics shakes out.
I'm a republican too and if we have a referendum and 52% vote to abolish the monarchy I'd bloody well expect and demand that the monarchy is abolished.
Yes means yes, no means no. Whatever the majority goes with, that was the choice made.
Yes there may be issues down the line but that's for Parliament to resolve. We evolve over time. Whatever problems that come up, like the Unionists objections to the Protocol as an example, need to be dealt with democratically over time by Parliament, like the new PM-elect's proposed NI Protocol Bill.
Personally I would have no more referendums ever, they are divisive, dominate politics at the expense of more important issues and ultimately we are a parliamentary not a direct democracy. Our constitution is based on Crown in Parliament
But you have a problem right there. You have Scotland which has voted to have Indyref2 in both parliaments, conclusively in terms of a majority in both parliaments. Which is a clear win in parliamentary democracy terms. And what parliament wants parliament gets. That's the constitution, not some 16th century stuff about divine right of the monarchy.
That argument depends on not respecting the scope of devolution. If an Essex independence party won the council elections, would it be a mandate for a referendum?
Just imagine the Brexiteer prolapsing if some EUrophile compared a sovereign England..sorry..UK to a council, either before or after 2016.
In any case, Essex used to be an independent state, of course. So why not an Essindyref?
As Essex is now part of England and the UK.
On your argument most big nations would break up, after all Naples, Venice, Bavaria, Texas etc were once independent nations too as were the Princely states in India
Why not? The UK has already started breaking up, with the loss of most of Ireland, and the ongoing loss of the rest.
6 years after the Brexit vote the UK has not lost any territory compared to before the vote actually.
If we go down that line we could start breaking up Scotland too, Shetland for example did not become part of Scotland until the 15th century and much of the Scottish Borders was often under English control
You're muddling things again. We're talking about big nations. You know, like you said the words "big nations". And at any excuse, or lack of one, you are yet again threatening Partition.
Much more therapeutic than constantly trying to defend parliamentary democracy by denying it.
In a Western world threatened by an expansionist Russia and China, the idea we would be stronger against them economically and militarily broken up into tiny nations is absurd
You mean, like the Tories have safeguarded UK military power? Look at what DA was saying about the Royal Artillery yesterday.
Top Tip from IndyViz: don't bullshit about the promised advantages of being in the Union if they don't actually exist any more (e.g. EU membership).
The UK still has the 2nd strongest military in Western Europe after France and nuclear weapons.
Scexit now would of course also mean a hard border at Berwick. Though of course leaving the UK to rejoin the EU is not really voting for independence at all, in the long term just swapping Westminster for Brussels and Strasbourg as the ultimate source of power over Scotland
You don't listen, do you? The British Army does not have proper artillery. Think what that means. And its new wheeled vehicle family is crap (Ajax). Ditto.
We obviously have some artillery but realistically we are not going to be doing any fighting unless alongside our NATO allies or on a UN peacekeeping mission unless to defend the few remaining British overseas territories like the Falklands.
In that case aircraft carriers, submarines, special forces and Marines and Paras will be most important
NEW : expected timings for tomorrow’s audiences with the Queen at Balmoral, 11.20am Boris Johnson will arrive at the Castle. His departure will, as is the custom, be private, not filmed. 12.10pm Liz Truss will arrive. Around 12.40pm she will be filmed as she leaves as the new PM
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
Well no, it’s not about how awful as public speaking it was, it’s how the team around her wasted the set piece moment to get important points across winning hearts and minds - it was a free hit in terms of having attention laid on, winning hearts and minds now makes it easier for the battle ahead. They should have written two strong speeches for today and tomorrow, otherwise it makes no political sense. Not to me anyway.
I rather disagree with you about today being her opportunity to win over doubters
For me it is her speech to the country outside Downing Street tomorrow afternoon about 4.00pm as she speaks as Prime Minister for the first time
Is there a market on whether we'll just get more meaningless soundbites badly delivered?
The next three days will determine Truss's future
Tomorrow 4.00pm speech to the Nation
Wednesday PMQS
Thursday statement at the dispatch box
Lab GE election ad already scripted:
Truss soundtracked saying "I will deliver, deliver and deliver" against video footage of cold pensioners freezing in their houses, unemployment queues, bank closed signs, street protests, foodbank queues etc etc.
What’s being sold here as speech to nation tomorrow is nothing more than one of those Downing Street sound bite moments, deliver deliver deliver st Francis of Assisi and all that, not the difficult selling of difficult policy the Tory’s really need to be doing right now.
PMQs should favour Truss this week, she has 80 seat majority over all other parties that should be vocally behind her in this one if even they don’t like her, as well as control of half the questions - plenty of questions asked of Truss actually for Starmer to answer, on strikes etc I expect!
The business after that is where groundwork should already have been laid in newspapers, interviews and todays speech, but hasn’t. I’m thinking now the team around Truss have gotten off to a slowish start.
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
Well no, it’s not about how awful as public speaking it was, it’s how the team around her wasted the set piece moment to get important points across winning hearts and minds - it was a free hit in terms of having attention laid on, winning hearts and minds now makes it easier for the battle ahead. They should have written two strong speeches for today and tomorrow, otherwise it makes no political sense. Not to me anyway.
I rather disagree with you about today being her opportunity to win over doubters
For me it is her speech to the country outside Downing Street tomorrow afternoon about 4.00pm as she speaks as Prime Minister for the first time
I completely disagree with you, it was two big platforms offering opportunity to get points across and win people over - explain the difficult details to party workers today you can’t do with the sound bites tomorrow.
But we are both in agreement, she needs to be far better tomorrow than nothing to say and saying it badly today.
You lay the groundwork today for the more important speech tomorrow.
But she didn't do that so tomorrow becomes a bigger issue...
Yes. That is what I am thinking.
But it’s not just one person, it’s a whole team and their decision making at fault here.
I suspect the reason it was so light of substance today is that they don’t know what they’re going to announce until they know for sure who will accept what jobs. Either way it was a dreadful speech. It’s for sure her biggest weakness, that she might find it hard to carry the nation with her on what is likely to be a difficult policy path.
Well no, that’s not what I am saying - as a team they must know by now what points they should be selling and making at every opportunity now, even if they know she has weaknesses in speech making, debating, TV interviews, the team around her should still be writing great speeches to get those important points across from day 1. Today has been a bizarre failure of Team Truss, not just Liz Truss.
Just watched it.
Dire.
Good luck tory members. You've picked a belter.
Rewatching the speech now; it's not actually that bad. I think at the time I was just suffering a chest-grabbing cringe at the Kiev-to-Carlisle line, and the late applause. It's not close to the weirdness of the cheese/pork stuff, though in common with that she does maybe need to work on her ability to cue an audience into response.
When it's chopped up into soundbites for the news bulletins it'll probably come across fine, if bland.
Rather surprised by the Carlisle reference, unless she's admitting NI and Scotland were lost to Johnsonist boosterism.
NEW : expected timings for tomorrow’s audiences with the Queen at Balmoral, 11.20am Boris Johnson will arrive at the Castle. His departure will, as is the custom, be private, not filmed. 12.10pm Liz Truss will arrive. Around 12.40pm she will be filmed as she leaves as the new PM
12:45 - Her Maj pours herself a massive gin and laughs out loud.
"Speaking off the record, Jeremiah Buzzocks, the leader of the "One Nation" group of Tory MP's , said that the 50-letter threshold for a leadership challenge against Liz Truss could be reached as early as this Thursday, with the new leader to be in place before the end of 2022."
At times, as I might have mentioned before, Truss sounds as if she is French, speaking in short phrases with emphasis at the end. Is she perhaps a smoker and running short of breath? What jewellery do Francophile smokers wear?
On reflection, and having had a soothing pastel de nata, and a glass of cold white, staring at the mighty Atlantic, I am going to cut Liz T some slack and presume she was overwhelmed by the magnitude of everything when she won. Hence her awful speech
And to be fair it must be quite seismic for her. Prime minister of the United Kingdom. THE job she probably dreamed of as a young Lib Dem. Even as she laughed at her own silly fantasies
She needs to shape up tho. No more speeches like that
She has only had 12 weeks to write that speech and prepare for this moment...
Everyone was there to hear her, she had the nations and worlds attention not just her party, why spurn that moment like that?
As a politician you need to get yourself across, build faith in your seriousness and professionalism. As leader of a nation you have to lead it. I know people say the delivery was stilted and naff, but more importantly her team didn’t write her a speech?
It just seems a wasted moment. 🤷♀️
Worse than that... maybe she did prepare for this moment, and this is Truss on a good day...
Go on. Name a good speech she has given.
(Like a lot of politicians, she's arrived at the top badly undercooked. I'm remarkably OK as a public speaker. But that's after many years of doing it five times a day, five days a week.)
Well no, it’s not about how awful as public speaking it was, it’s how the team around her wasted the set piece moment to get important points across winning hearts and minds - it was a free hit in terms of having attention laid on, winning hearts and minds now makes it easier for the battle ahead. They should have written two strong speeches for today and tomorrow, otherwise it makes no political sense. Not to me anyway.
I rather disagree with you about today being her opportunity to win over doubters
For me it is her speech to the country outside Downing Street tomorrow afternoon about 4.00pm as she speaks as Prime Minister for the first time
Is there a market on whether we'll just get more meaningless soundbites badly delivered?
The next three days will determine Truss's future
Tomorrow 4.00pm speech to the Nation
Wednesday PMQS
Thursday statement at the dispatch box
Lab GE election ad already scripted:
Truss soundtracked saying "I will deliver, deliver and deliver" against video footage of cold pensioners freezing in their houses, unemployment queues, bank closed signs, street protests, foodbank queues etc etc.
Look rather strange if she does deliver this week
Unless she has a total price cap on electricity and gas she wont please everyone. If she helps pubs, restaurants and small businesses, big, intensive energy using, businesses will stop production of CO2, Chlorine, etc etc.
Liz Truss's comprehensive school was so rough they didn't even teach her to shake hands politely with the losing candidate.
The posh boys are no longer in charge of the Tories after the defeat of the Wykehamist Rishi who I am sure would have shaken hands with Truss. Truss the first state educated Tory leader since May and the first comprehensive educated Tory leader since Hague.
The posh boys are back in charge of Labour though, Starmer the first secondary school privately educated Labour leader since Blair
Starmer went to a grammar school that converted to a private school while he was there, and his family didn't pay any fees. I don't really see how that makes him posh, compared to someone who attended a £40k/year school for instance.
HYUFD persists with that canard about Starmer; I really don't see why. It's been demonstrated beyond doubt to him that he is wrong to suggest that Starmer was privately educated but he still keeps on about it. I suppose the only reason is that at the forthcoming general election the comprehensively educated Truss will be contrasted with the "privately educated " Starmer.
Starmer still went to a private school ultimately converted grammar or not.
However being a comprehensive educated leader does not necessarily help win elections. We have had 2 fully comprehensive educated party leaders at general elections so far before Truss, Hague in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2015, both lost to the privately educated Blair and Cameron respectively. May went to a combination of private, comprehensive and grammar schools and narrowly beat the grammar school educated Corbyn in 2017.
The last state educated leader to win a general election outright against a private school educated leader was Thatcher when she beat Foot in 1983 and before that Wilson against Home in 1964. Though both Thatcher and Wilson went to grammars
God damn it I really thought the Frost talk was a joke, even in such a role.
I don't get it, I really don't - I despise JRM but at least he's an MP, there's just no need to give a lord a prominent role, even as a fixer, rather than be backup. You want to be high profile in government don't accept a peerage.
I don't get it either.
I'm hoping Nad gets bumped up to the Lords too so she is out of the way of the frontline stuff.
Nad to the Lords and the Tories lose the by-election. What's not to like!
God damn it I really thought the Frost talk was a joke, even in such a role.
I don't get it, I really don't - I despise JRM but at least he's an MP, there's just no need to give a lord a prominent role, even as a fixer, rather than be backup. You want to be high profile in government don't accept a peerage.
I don't get it either.
I'm hoping Nad gets bumped up to the Lords too so she is out of the way of the frontline stuff.
Nad to the Lords and the Tories lose the by-election. What's not to like!
Her candidate just won, why would she take a peerage now?
I'd assume with a new leader boost even under current conditions the Tories wouldn't lose a seat like hers.
Liz Truss's comprehensive school was so rough they didn't even teach her to shake hands politely with the losing candidate.
The posh boys are no longer in charge of the Tories after the defeat of the Wykehamist Rishi who I am sure would have shaken hands with Truss. Truss the first state educated Tory leader since May and the first comprehensive educated Tory leader since Hague.
The posh boys are back in charge of Labour though, Starmer the first secondary school privately educated Labour leader since Blair
Starmer went to a grammar school that converted to a private school while he was there, and his family didn't pay any fees. I don't really see how that makes him posh, compared to someone who attended a £40k/year school for instance.
HYUFD persists with that canard about Starmer; I really don't see why. It's been demonstrated beyond doubt to him that he is wrong to suggest that Starmer was privately educated but he still keeps on about it. I suppose the only reason is that at the forthcoming general election the comprehensively educated Truss will be contrasted with the "privately educated " Starmer.
Starmer still went to a private school ultimately converted grammar or not.
However being a comprehensive educated leader does not necessarily help win elections. We have had 2 fully comprehensive educated party leaders at general elections so far before Truss, Hague in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2015, both lost to the privately educated Blair and Cameron respectively. May went to a combination of private, comprehensive and grammar schools and narrowly beat the grammar school educated Corbyn in 2017.
The last state educated leader to win a general election outright against a private school educated leader was Thatcher when she beat Foot in 1983 and before that Wilson against Home in 1964. Though both Thatcher and Wilson went to grammars
When Starmer entered secondary education he did so as a result of passing a competitive examination: the 11+.
Comments
But it’s not just one person, it’s a whole team and their decision making at fault here.
I did also put in "rural state school/russell group" for a laugh - I think they determine my identity far more than my sexuality/gender.
But now, she really has to fatten the pig on market day. Not easy. And, possibly, there's a risk that she's just not up to it.
Just got an email to say my DBS certificate has finally been printed. The day before term starts.
Gotta hand it to Liz Truss. Sorting out the backlog in public services.
"Nigel Farage has launched his own brand of gin produced by a distillery located in Cornwall. Farage Gin, a range of three bottles made with "patriotic flavours" and "a taste of Brexit", was unveiled yesterday."
Oil jumps after OPEC+ approves token supply cut and gas leaps
No idea what a token supply cut is but markets seem rattled
Tory leaders tend to be brought down by their own side, not the voters.
I might make a habit of it when posting here
More Malcolm Buggeridge
Now it's possible that's because she is using the B team and when she hits No 10 their A team will fix all the issues but I just can't see it - after all Truss has been the obvious PM in waiting for the past 6 weeks.
Dire.
Good luck tory members. You've picked a belter.
Tomorrow 4.00pm speech to the Nation
Wednesday PMQS
Thursday statement at the dispatch box
Europeans must never trust Russia to provide energy again and should not contract them. Maybe it could be reviewed if Putin falls in next few years but even then it is doubtful.
They cannot be relied on whilst it is run by nationalists, imperialists and Dugin-type fascists.
The West must pivot away from Russia energy supplies and if that means a massive swing to more nuclear and renewables then so be it.
Presumably the UK is moving to 152mm anyway, sorry pardon me 6", calibre.
Truss soundtracked saying "I will deliver, deliver and deliver" against video footage of cold pensioners freezing in their houses, unemployment queues, bank closed signs, street protests, foodbank queues etc etc.
At least Bozo could deliver a speech...
47% of the total electorate - worth noting that if the principles of her mooted new referendum law applied here, her election would be invalid
https://twitter.com/NicolaSturgeon/status/1566762513307471874
https://twitter.com/stvcolin/status/1566756080130080768
Oh, wait...
At least you didn't call me a "cheesy bellend"!
Indeed, They built a great platform for this, literally and figuratively, great set, venue, everyone in there - and then gave us nowt but a missed handshake and some gurning.
(Not that it is doing that, either.)
Having a very clear 5 year plan to permanently fix energy prices is the only way forwards. Any temporary measures will just make things worse.
Hopefully Liz is headstrong enough to tell the civil service to get fucked and pushes ahead with planning reform, investment reform and decoupling electricity and gas prices.
Ajax must be ripe for the chop to enable a French/Italian style switch to 100% wheels for light and medium armour.
With the uncertainty removed, the aluminium plant can either start working out how to spend the winter bringing forward maintainence tasks, or can confirm their provisional order for a dozen containerised diesel generators.
Enjoy
Or that you'd paste a tweet from someone else making it after the equally embarrassingly dumb union strike ballots one earlier.
Understand the talks over him being CDL hit a dead end over the nature of the role being limited to a Whitehall 'fixer' rather than a broader job.
https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1566814494134763522
How many more letters might this prompt?
The MOD is there to
1) support industry (aka jobs in constituencies)
2) add 6 million contradictory requirements.
3) underpants
:
1,345,212) equip the military
Buying, say, Archer, wouldn’t support the first 1,345,211 priorities on that list.
I don't get it, I really don't - I despise JRM but at least he's an MP, there's just no need to give a lord a prominent role, even as a fixer, rather than be backup. You want to be high profile in government don't accept a peerage.
Smarkets News & Politics
@SmarketsPol
Remarkably, Boris Johnson is now the favourite to succeed Liz Truss as next Conservative leader.
https://smarkets.com/event/42875435/politics/uk/uk-party-leaders/2025/01/01/00-00/next-conservative-leader-after-liz-truss
https://twitter.com/SmarketsPol/status/1566810059338031105
In any case, it's obvious what PMs will do in this situation, as it is what they all do whatever their situation, and it what is the quickest and easiest way to appear to get a win.
Truss has Boris fanboys hoping she fails so he comes back and a need to quickly turn things around in the polls to restore party confidence, she doesn't have time for anything substantial or considered.
When it's chopped up into soundbites for the news bulletins it'll probably come across fine, if bland.
https://smarkets.com/event/42875435/politics/uk/uk-party-leaders/2025/01/01/00-00/next-conservative-leader-after-liz-truss
In that case aircraft carriers, submarines, special forces and Marines and Paras will be most important
I'm hoping Nad gets bumped up to the Lords too so she is out of the way of the frontline stuff.
Westminster Voting Intention (4 Sept.):
Labour 43% (+1)
Conservative 31% (–)
Liberal Democrat 12% (–)
Green 6% (-1)
SNP 5% (+1)
Reform UK 3% (–)
Other 1% (-1)
Redfield goes mad for Liz
The odds are Truss survives until the next election in which case Badenoch or Braverman are the likely successors in opposition if she loses but if she doesn't then Boris remains in pole position
Plus: they won't actually be dismantled; they'll just be mothballed.
PMQs should favour Truss this week, she has 80 seat majority over all other parties that should be vocally behind her in this one if even they don’t like her, as well as control of half the questions - plenty of questions asked of Truss actually for Starmer to answer, on strikes etc I expect!
The business after that is where groundwork should already have been laid in newspapers, interviews and todays speech, but hasn’t. I’m thinking now the team around Truss have gotten off to a slowish start.
22% pleased
50% disappointed
Confidence in her cost of living policies?
19% confident
67% not confident
YouGov all adults https://twitter.com/SamCoatesSky/status/1566819013375758336/photo/1
Told no plans to offer one either. https://twitter.com/ChrisMasonBBC/status/1566818830416068611
However being a comprehensive educated leader does not necessarily help win elections. We have had 2 fully comprehensive educated party leaders at general elections so far before Truss, Hague in 2001 and Ed Miliband in 2015, both lost to the privately educated Blair and Cameron respectively. May went to a combination of private, comprehensive and grammar schools and narrowly beat the grammar school educated Corbyn in 2017.
The last state educated leader to win a general election outright against a private school educated leader was Thatcher when she beat Foot in 1983 and before that Wilson against Home in 1964. Though both Thatcher and Wilson went to grammars
I'd assume with a new leader boost even under current conditions the Tories wouldn't lose a seat like hers.
No Truss bounce