She has a very difficult year or two ahead of her, and I hope she is up to the pressure. She’ll need a very strong private support network to get through this reasonably intact and healthy.
I identified her as a likely star early on, but I fear her timing is atrocious. She looks like a sacrificial lamb, and that awful speech made her sound like Larry the Lamb. Boris Johnson admired from Kiev to Carlisle? You could hear the tumbleweed. Fire that writer.
We all hope that her grasp of economics is significantly better that she displayed during the leadership hustings. If it is then she has a chance. A slim one but a chance. Expectations are so low that she doesn’t need to achieve much to exceed them.
On the Scottish question, my advice simply consists of 2 words: respect and friendship. Being the cynic I am, I confidently predict that she will comprehensively ignore my advice. No biggie.
Given Sturgeon is squealing about independence and indyref2 every 5 minutes and breaking away from the hated UK, let us not forget it takes 2 to tango. She can have respect and friendship with a Scotland in the UK but not with the SNP
Hate to point out the obvious, but Scotland is in the UK, yet you Tories still refuse to respect her and maintain friendly relations. You are making your own bed, so I hope you enjoy lying in it.
I hate to agree with Hyufd, still more Liz Truss, but it does take two to tango. Sturgeon is behaving like a spoiled toddler denied a sweet, and short of weakly agreeing with all the nonsense she comes out with the other option is to tell her, 'no, not your decision, now STFU whining and get on with your damn job.' At which Sturgeon whines and complains all the more.
This is of course largely because it's in her political interests to do so, whipping up more and more anti-UK (specifically anti-English) xenophobia because she wants ultimately to split off from England. But the toxicity of this relationship is just as much on her as on London and it's ridiculous to pretend otherwise.
Similar predictions from many other, reasonably sober pundits.
Lowest %age of the members vote, ever.
Not the MPs first pick.
Talk of her effective majority slashed to a dozen or less.
Her rigid ideology will not survive contact with reality.
Boris in the wings.
Etc etc.
I think this analysis is wrong. While I’m sure her enemies, and the media will talk up challenges, I’m pretty sure she’s safe until a GE. She has lots of cards to play (indeed, including calling a snap election to shut up her critics) and I simply don’t think there’s the appetite for another change of leader among MPs and members, so soon after Boris.
So, yeah, that’s a prediction from me:
The tories will not ditch Truss before the next election.
I agree.
And punters agree.
Liz Truss exit year:
2025 or later 2.86 2024 3 2023 5 2022 15.5
The value there is 2023. A snap GE is her only hope. If she kicks the can she’s a goner.
"Her only hope"?
There are plenty of scenarios where Ms Truss does well, and plenty where she does poorly.
Like with most politicians, it's largely out of her hands.
Aha. That old peach: fate versus agency.
I happen to believe that individual specimens of H. s. sapiens do have agency. Especially heads of government.
There are vanishingly few scenarios where the hairless ape about to enter a terraced house in central London does well, and a mountain of scenarios where she does appallingly poorly. Where she ends up will partly be due to her own decisions and deeds.
I don't deny her agency, I merely point to the fact that if the Russian invasion of Ukraine fails (and with it the Putin regime), then the economic outlook will look very different to a situation where war drags on and gas becomes ever scarcer.
I am quite interested as to why people think that the 'fall of the Putin regime' will lead to cheaper gas. Where is this compliant Russian regime going to come from? All Russian politicians seem to espouse various forms of nationalism, this includes Navalny. How can a national humiliation on the battlefield lead to more compliance with the west? If Russia gets 'beaten back' to its pre 2014 borders, it seems that they are unlikely to respond by doing a deal with the west, it seems more likely that they will look to doing a "deal" with China. I think that the only way that the gas etc starts being pumped again, is through some kind of 'deal' with the current regime. Obviously the flipside of such a 'deal' is that the current regime has time to rearm itself before round 3 of its war on Ukraine. So I am very much unconvinced that the answer is in 'beating back' Russia. The easiest way back to get the economy moving may be through some kind of poisonous unofficial stalemate much like what existed pre March of this year, Putin just declares some kind of victory and 'operation over'.
I disagree.
At some point, Russia's ability to fight in Ukraine comes to an end. Them buying ammunition from the North Koreans and raiding the asylums for soliders suggests that that might be nearer than we imagine.
What happens then?
Well, I would suggest that Putin is unlikely to survive defeat in Ukraine.
But changing the leader doesn't change the situation on the ground. They can be as nationalist as they like, but reality has to intervene.
If Putin falls, the next leader has to find some kind of peace with the West, because Russia depends on Western technology to extract the oil and gas that they sell to the World.
I don't see this. It seems like Ukraine is basically a mercenary invasion, the soldiers are poor people enticed by high wages. There is no significant conscription or general mobilisation. The fact that there are adverts in odd places is not really all that significant in the scheme of things. There are lots of 'anecdotes' and 'reports' but not too much weight should be put on them, in my opinion. If the position is really bad, to the point where it is endangering his position, Putin can quit and declare victory at any point, as the situation stands. Obviously, he was expecting a 2014 style cakewalk and this has not gone to plan. But Putin has adapted to the situation and is still really holding all the cards here as far as I can see. I think that he is calculating that he can sow greater discord and chaos in the west (and across the world) by continuing the war, and this outweighs any domestic difficulties that may occur in consequence.
As an example of this, Putin has played a blinder with the gas prices thing, Zarah Sultana leading 'enough is enough' and Boris Johnson was telling them that it is all the price we have to pay for 'beating back' Putin, Now Liz Truss comes along and says that the solution is in tax cuts for the rich.
I disagree with every part of your analysis.
Firstly, whether it is "mercenary" or not, the Russian troops in Ukraine have to be resupplied, with food and weapons and ammunition. If that ceases, their ability to fight disappears.
Secondly, the Russians are trying to just hold on right now. And it's not going so well. It's entirely possible that thousands - perhaps as many as ten thousand - Russians on the West side of the Dneiper are going to end up captured.
And on the gas price, yes the Russians have sown discord.
But they've also accelerated the move of economies away from gas (Germany stopping their planned nuclear shutdowns for example), as well as ensuring that a host of new LNG projects go forward.
That means that the share of energy provided by natural gas in the future will be lower, and Russia's market share will be smaller. And the longer the Russians take to come back to the table, the worse their situation will be, because those projects will be live.
I am a bit cautious about going on this line, because soon I fear that I will be accused of being a 'Putin troll', which I am not, I have given a lot of money to support Ukraine in the early part of the invasion.
Needless to say though, that Ukraine are relying on western weapons to keep the current situation afloat - this also imposes costs on western countries which cannot be perpetuated indefinetly; particularly in addition to the energy bills problem, which will (I assume) take 3-5 years to sort out by way of diversification away from gas.
There is a reoffensive by the Ukrainians around Kherson for sure, but this is to be expected in some kind of war situation, it seems to me to be a bit optimistic to make the automatic assumption that it will be successful. Even the potential 'loss' of Kherson is not existential for Russia, in the same way that its 'retreat' from Kiev was not existential in the early weeks of the conflict. The capture of 10000 troops would be a bit of a disappointment and an annoyance, but probably short change for Russia.
I think the problem here that you haven't responded to, is that if it really is looking bad for Russia, why don't they just quit whilst they are ahead? They must actually believe that they are winning in some way.
Ultimately, I've personally come to the point of view that we should be working to an endgame other than the 'complete defeat of Putin'.
How can they 'quit'?
They are in a war now, and quitting means removing troops from Ukraine. Otherwise they are in the same position the Russians were in Afghanistan, or the Americans were in Iraq. Except it'll be worse, because Ukraine is not fundamentally defeated.
Remember invasion is usually the easy part: it's holding what you've grabbed that is difficult.
She has a very difficult year or two ahead of her, and I hope she is up to the pressure. She’ll need a very strong private support network to get through this reasonably intact and healthy.
I identified her as a likely star early on, but I fear her timing is atrocious. She looks like a sacrificial lamb, and that awful speech made her sound like Larry the Lamb. Boris Johnson admired from Kiev to Carlisle? You could hear the tumbleweed. Fire that writer.
We all hope that her grasp of economics is significantly better that she displayed during the leadership hustings. If it is then she has a chance. A slim one but a chance. Expectations are so low that she doesn’t need to achieve much to exceed them.
On the Scottish question, my advice simply consists of 2 words: respect and friendship. Being the cynic I am, I confidently predict that she will comprehensively ignore my advice. No biggie.
Given Sturgeon is squealing about independence and indyref2 every 5 minutes and breaking away from the hated UK, let us not forget it takes 2 to tango. She can have respect and friendship with a Scotland in the UK but not with the SNP
Hate to point out the obvious, but Scotland is in the UK, yet you Tories still refuse to respect her and maintain friendly relations. You are making your own bed, so I hope you enjoy lying in it.
Yes we do, Holyrood has not been scrapped, Sturgeon has not been arrested, direct rule has not been imposed
She has a very difficult year or two ahead of her, and I hope she is up to the pressure. She’ll need a very strong private support network to get through this reasonably intact and healthy.
I identified her as a likely star early on, but I fear her timing is atrocious. She looks like a sacrificial lamb, and that awful speech made her sound like Larry the Lamb. Boris Johnson admired from Kiev to Carlisle? You could hear the tumbleweed. Fire that writer.
We all hope that her grasp of economics is significantly better that she displayed during the leadership hustings. If it is then she has a chance. A slim one but a chance. Expectations are so low that she doesn’t need to achieve much to exceed them.
On the Scottish question, my advice simply consists of 2 words: respect and friendship. Being the cynic I am, I confidently predict that she will comprehensively ignore my advice. No biggie.
Given Sturgeon is squealing about independence and indyref2 every 5 minutes and breaking away from the hated UK, let us not forget it takes 2 to tango. She can have respect and friendship with a Scotland in the UK but not with the SNP
Hate to point out the obvious, but Scotland is in the UK, yet you Tories still refuse to respect her and maintain friendly relations. You are making your own bed, so I hope you enjoy lying in it.
Can I just correct you
@HYUFD does not represent this conservative who wants friendly relationships with Scotland
From the comments of Tory supporters on the thread, you would think everything in the UK is fine and dandy and that Boris left over personal issues and technicalities. That feels a smidgen complacent.
Boris leaving Downing Street. The country is in a worse state than when he arrived.
Asleep at the wheel on key issues, actively harmful on others, and chucked out by his party because he broke his own laws. Worse PM of my lifetime. Good riddance.
"Asleep at the wheel on key issues"
That's rubbish. He has faced two massive threats in two years: Covid and Ukraine - more strife than Blair faced in nearly ten years. On Ukraine Boris has been excellent: and on Covid middling (some parts, such as vaccines, he was very good).
Boris was not brought down by his decisions in government: until a little over a year ago he was riding high in the polls. He was brought down by personal decisions that highlighted some massive character flaws that had been obvious since his MoL days.
Without those flaws, the Conservatives would probably be showing healthy polling leads. And that's a danger for Labour.
Boris let the inflation genie out of the bottle, we are in weak position compared to similar economies. The NHS is in a hell of a state. Social care reform was dropped. The Ukraine situation developed as London suckled on Russian money.
Meanwhile Blair had 9/11, the dot com crash, a hot war in Europe and enabled peace in Northern Ireland.
Every western nation has high inflation, indeed Spain and the Netherlands higher than us because of the sanctions imposed after the Ukraine war. Boris ensured nobody pays more than £86k for social care costs residential or domestic.
"Boris ensured nobody pays more than £86k for social care costs residential or domestic" is a downright lie. I have explained to you before that you are wrong but you persist with this untruth. Check the dates, and check the terms and conditions. You are peddling a falsehood, I know this because every month I transfer £5.5k to a care home in England to cover a relative's care costs. This will continue until the property is sold or the property is handed over to Herefordshire Council.
By 2023 when the change comes into law it will be true
She has a very difficult year or two ahead of her, and I hope she is up to the pressure. She’ll need a very strong private support network to get through this reasonably intact and healthy.
I identified her as a likely star early on, but I fear her timing is atrocious. She looks like a sacrificial lamb, and that awful speech made her sound like Larry the Lamb. Boris Johnson admired from Kiev to Carlisle? You could hear the tumbleweed. Fire that writer.
We all hope that her grasp of economics is significantly better that she displayed during the leadership hustings. If it is then she has a chance. A slim one but a chance. Expectations are so low that she doesn’t need to achieve much to exceed them.
On the Scottish question, my advice simply consists of 2 words: respect and friendship. Being the cynic I am, I confidently predict that she will comprehensively ignore my advice. No biggie.
Given Sturgeon is squealing about independence and indyref2 every 5 minutes and breaking away from the hated UK, let us not forget it takes 2 to tango. She can have respect and friendship with a Scotland in the UK but not with the SNP
Hate to point out the obvious, but Scotland is in the UK, yet you Tories still refuse to respect her and maintain friendly relations. You are making your own bed, so I hope you enjoy lying in it.
Yes we do, Holyrood has not been scrapped, Sturgeon has not been arrested, direct rule has not been imposed
That's your standard for friendly and cooperative relationships?
A friend of mine (Anglo-Russian, anti-war) returned from Moscow last night (via a flight from Turkey).
He reports that there was little visible war propaganda in Moscow, no signs of shortages of food. The shops were well-stocked (in fact, he said, better than before the war).
There were not many visible signs of dissent, people were enjoying themselves in central Moscow in bars, etc.
He concludes Moscow has successful managed to ignore the war.
Of course, he was only in parts of Moscow.
But, it seems clear that Russia is not about to collapse, sanctions have seemingly not had much visible effect on the lives of ordinary people at least in Moscow and there is no sign of the end of Putin's regime.
Moscow has always been insulated from the realities in the rest of the Russian empire, though. And it's rarely Muscovites who are doing the fighting and dying in Ukraine.
The Muscovites will have noticed all the Western shops and brands disappearing though, even if they’ve been replaced with markets selling the Chinese knock-offs.
- ”One of the features I find interesting is the choice of pictures of Truss that some papers have used. The ones used by the Mail, Express and the Times are far from flattering.”
There have already been strong misogynistic tendencies among critics of the Conservative Party, especially on social media. I would strongly recommend that people opposed to the Tories desist from focusing on the FM’s gender. Ditto the ethnicity of cabinet members. Just ignore it. It really, really isn’t relevant.
I don't think it is anything to do with gender. She just looks so strange and awkward. It reminds me a bit of John Redwood trying to fit in by miming the Welsh national anthem.
She doesn't look 'strange and awkward'.
This is my Law of the Internet. No matter how incontrovertibly, blindingly obvious something is, someone online will argue the opposite.
LOL. Really?
Have you considered that something might appear "incontrovertibly, blindingly obvious" to you, but that you might, just possibly, be wrong?
Perhaps if I were the only one who thought it, but as you're only one who doesn't, perhaps you should ask yourself that question.
I believe Nadine Dorries has officially announced she is resigning her seat.... I reckon it will be a quick byelection, she had 59% of the vote in 2019, with Labour a v distant 2nd... my sense is it will stay Blue though the LDs will push them, Labour really should be looking to work this seat but I cant see them
Boris leaving Downing Street. The country is in a worse state than when he arrived.
Asleep at the wheel on key issues, actively harmful on others, and chucked out by his party because he broke his own laws. Worse PM of my lifetime. Good riddance.
"Asleep at the wheel on key issues"
That's rubbish. He has faced two massive threats in two years: Covid and Ukraine - more strife than Blair faced in nearly ten years. On Ukraine Boris has been excellent: and on Covid middling (some parts, such as vaccines, he was very good).
Boris was not brought down by his decisions in government: until a little over a year ago he was riding high in the polls. He was brought down by personal decisions that highlighted some massive character flaws that had been obvious since his MoL days.
Without those flaws, the Conservatives would probably be showing healthy polling leads. And that's a danger for Labour.
Boris let the inflation genie out of the bottle, we are in weak position compared to similar economies. The NHS is in a hell of a state. Social care reform was dropped. The Ukraine situation developed as London suckled on Russian money.
Meanwhile Blair had 9/11, the dot com crash, a hot war in Europe and enabled peace in Northern Ireland.
Every western nation has high inflation, indeed Spain and the Netherlands higher than us because of the sanctions imposed after the Ukraine war. Boris ensured nobody pays more than £86k for social care costs residential or domestic.
"Boris ensured nobody pays more than £86k for social care costs residential or domestic" is a downright lie. I have explained to you before that you are wrong but you persist with this untruth. Check the dates, and check the terms and conditions. You are peddling a falsehood, I know this because every month I transfer £5.5k to a care home in England to cover a relative's care costs. This will continue until the property is sold or the property is handed over to Herefordshire Council.
By 2023 when the change comes into law it will be true
"nobody pays more than £86k" is what you said.
There is this thing called the present tense. And this quite different thing called the future tense.
Unless you are possibly a native speaker of one of those infamous New Guinea languages that has no future tense and are having trouble translating?
Angela Rayner on R4 Today: jeepers creepers. Mind-bogglingly poor. WTF has happened to the Labour Party? The dearth of talent at the top is excruciatingly painful.
She was not any better on BBC
I expect Labour are worried at the prospect of a 2 year energy freeze from Truss
If I was Labour, the least of my worries would be the Conservative Party. They are going to quite merrily destroy themselves without any assistance.
Starmer ought to be scouring the party for talent, or anything even remotely resembling talent. Because if he goes into a GE with the current front bench he is exposing himself to ridicule. Rayner is just not up to the job. Not even close.
Isn't his problem that Rayner has her own separate mandate, so there's a limit to how far she can be demoted? He can make her shadow minister for red hair, but she will still be Deputy Leader.
Rum system, really.
Yes, Rayner was elected Deputy Leader by the membership, so Starmer can’t fire her. It was the same with Tom Watson when Corbyn was leader.
She has a very difficult year or two ahead of her, and I hope she is up to the pressure. She’ll need a very strong private support network to get through this reasonably intact and healthy.
I identified her as a likely star early on, but I fear her timing is atrocious. She looks like a sacrificial lamb, and that awful speech made her sound like Larry the Lamb. Boris Johnson admired from Kiev to Carlisle? You could hear the tumbleweed. Fire that writer.
We all hope that her grasp of economics is significantly better that she displayed during the leadership hustings. If it is then she has a chance. A slim one but a chance. Expectations are so low that she doesn’t need to achieve much to exceed them.
On the Scottish question, my advice simply consists of 2 words: respect and friendship. Being the cynic I am, I confidently predict that she will comprehensively ignore my advice. No biggie.
Given Sturgeon is squealing about independence and indyref2 every 5 minutes and breaking away from the hated UK, let us not forget it takes 2 to tango. She can have respect and friendship with a Scotland in the UK but not with the SNP
Hate to point out the obvious, but Scotland is in the UK, yet you Tories still refuse to respect her and maintain friendly relations. You are making your own bed, so I hope you enjoy lying in it.
Yes we do, Holyrood has not been scrapped, Sturgeon has not been arrested, direct rule has not been imposed
That's your standard for friendly and cooperative relationships?
Angela Rayner on R4 Today: jeepers creepers. Mind-bogglingly poor. WTF has happened to the Labour Party? The dearth of talent at the top is excruciatingly painful.
She was not any better on BBC
I expect Labour are worried at the prospect of a 2 year energy freeze from Truss
If I was Labour, the least of my worries would be the Conservative Party. They are going to quite merrily destroy themselves without any assistance.
Starmer ought to be scouring the party for talent, or anything even remotely resembling talent. Because if he goes into a GE with the current front bench he is exposing himself to ridicule. Rayner is just not up to the job. Not even close.
Rayner is Deputy Labour Leader, not Shadow Chancellor, Shadow Foreign Secretary or Shadow Home Sec.
Her job is to be Starmer's John Prescott, a bone to Labour's traditional working class voters and the unions
Quite right; almost but not quite the equivalent of Mrs Thatchers Willie Whitelaw. And when one looks at her CV there's a lot to admire about. Pulled herself up by her own bootstraps.
One nice touch I thought was placement of Downing St staff in the front row for Boris/Carrie to bid farewell to with the politicians restricted to the end of the line up.
Will Johnson fly from Northolt or Stansted? For some reason the A321 G-XATW is currently in Cairns…
Oh, that’s interesting. Military plane for the PM then?
Grob Tutor from ESUAS at Leuchars.
LOL, even I’ve flown one of those!
He got an RAF Falcon 900, KRF18, departed Northolt 5 mins ago.
Made in France.
That. Is. A. Dis. Grace.
Also, it's "RAF" not RAF because they are operated by civvie crews from Centreline.
Yes, civvy crew. Who are the usual pax on these, the brass hats?
I don't think that is well defined. They were part of Johnson's VIP a/c spending spree. The one part of the armed forces that he liked spending money on.
She has a very difficult year or two ahead of her, and I hope she is up to the pressure. She’ll need a very strong private support network to get through this reasonably intact and healthy.
I identified her as a likely star early on, but I fear her timing is atrocious. She looks like a sacrificial lamb, and that awful speech made her sound like Larry the Lamb. Boris Johnson admired from Kiev to Carlisle? You could hear the tumbleweed. Fire that writer.
We all hope that her grasp of economics is significantly better that she displayed during the leadership hustings. If it is then she has a chance. A slim one but a chance. Expectations are so low that she doesn’t need to achieve much to exceed them.
On the Scottish question, my advice simply consists of 2 words: respect and friendship. Being the cynic I am, I confidently predict that she will comprehensively ignore my advice. No biggie.
Given Sturgeon is squealing about independence and indyref2 every 5 minutes and breaking away from the hated UK, let us not forget it takes 2 to tango. She can have respect and friendship with a Scotland in the UK but not with the SNP
Hate to point out the obvious, but Scotland is in the UK, yet you Tories still refuse to respect her and maintain friendly relations. You are making your own bed, so I hope you enjoy lying in it.
I hate to agree with Hyufd, still more Liz Truss, but it does take two to tango. Sturgeon is behaving like a spoiled toddler denied a sweet, and short of weakly agreeing with all the nonsense she comes out with the other option is to tell her, 'no, not your decision, now STFU whining and get on with your damn job.' At which Sturgeon whines and complains all the more.
This is of course largely because it's in her political interests to do so, whipping up more and more anti-UK (specifically anti-English) xenophobia because she wants ultimately to split off from England. But the toxicity of this relationship is just as much on her as on London and it's ridiculous to pretend otherwise.
You are fortgetting that it has been HMG policy for years now to cooperate as little as possible with the SG, ever since the referendum. A particular high point was delaying SG court action on a major issue till HMG had changed the relevant law; that was not a sign of cooperative behaviour.
From the comments of Tory supporters on the thread, you would think everything in the UK is fine and dandy and that Boris left over personal issues and technicalities. That feels a smidgen complacent.
By 2030 I predict Boris will be seen to have been the best PM of this decade
She has a very difficult year or two ahead of her, and I hope she is up to the pressure. She’ll need a very strong private support network to get through this reasonably intact and healthy.
I identified her as a likely star early on, but I fear her timing is atrocious. She looks like a sacrificial lamb, and that awful speech made her sound like Larry the Lamb. Boris Johnson admired from Kiev to Carlisle? You could hear the tumbleweed. Fire that writer.
We all hope that her grasp of economics is significantly better that she displayed during the leadership hustings. If it is then she has a chance. A slim one but a chance. Expectations are so low that she doesn’t need to achieve much to exceed them.
On the Scottish question, my advice simply consists of 2 words: respect and friendship. Being the cynic I am, I confidently predict that she will comprehensively ignore my advice. No biggie.
Given Sturgeon is squealing about independence and indyref2 every 5 minutes and breaking away from the hated UK, let us not forget it takes 2 to tango. She can have respect and friendship with a Scotland in the UK but not with the SNP
Hate to point out the obvious, but Scotland is in the UK, yet you Tories still refuse to respect her and maintain friendly relations. You are making your own bed, so I hope you enjoy lying in it.
Yes we do, Holyrood has not been scrapped, Sturgeon has not been arrested, direct rule has not been imposed
That's your standard for friendly and cooperative relationships?
With the SNP yes
Who happen to be the elected government at Holyrood, and the overwhelming majority at Westminster.
Similar predictions from many other, reasonably sober pundits.
Lowest %age of the members vote, ever.
Not the MPs first pick.
Talk of her effective majority slashed to a dozen or less.
Her rigid ideology will not survive contact with reality.
Boris in the wings.
Etc etc.
I think this analysis is wrong. While I’m sure her enemies, and the media will talk up challenges, I’m pretty sure she’s safe until a GE. She has lots of cards to play (indeed, including calling a snap election to shut up her critics) and I simply don’t think there’s the appetite for another change of leader among MPs and members, so soon after Boris.
So, yeah, that’s a prediction from me:
The tories will not ditch Truss before the next election.
I agree.
And punters agree.
Liz Truss exit year:
2025 or later 2.86 2024 3 2023 5 2022 15.5
The value there is 2023. A snap GE is her only hope. If she kicks the can she’s a goner.
"Her only hope"?
There are plenty of scenarios where Ms Truss does well, and plenty where she does poorly.
Like with most politicians, it's largely out of her hands.
Aha. That old peach: fate versus agency.
I happen to believe that individual specimens of H. s. sapiens do have agency. Especially heads of government.
There are vanishingly few scenarios where the hairless ape about to enter a terraced house in central London does well, and a mountain of scenarios where she does appallingly poorly. Where she ends up will partly be due to her own decisions and deeds.
I don't deny her agency, I merely point to the fact that if the Russian invasion of Ukraine fails (and with it the Putin regime), then the economic outlook will look very different to a situation where war drags on and gas becomes ever scarcer.
If the war drags on, gas will gradually become less scarce. More ports and LNG terminals in Europe, more LNG tankers in service. At the current prices, production is very attractive.
She has a very difficult year or two ahead of her, and I hope she is up to the pressure. She’ll need a very strong private support network to get through this reasonably intact and healthy.
I identified her as a likely star early on, but I fear her timing is atrocious. She looks like a sacrificial lamb, and that awful speech made her sound like Larry the Lamb. Boris Johnson admired from Kiev to Carlisle? You could hear the tumbleweed. Fire that writer.
We all hope that her grasp of economics is significantly better that she displayed during the leadership hustings. If it is then she has a chance. A slim one but a chance. Expectations are so low that she doesn’t need to achieve much to exceed them.
On the Scottish question, my advice simply consists of 2 words: respect and friendship. Being the cynic I am, I confidently predict that she will comprehensively ignore my advice. No biggie.
Given Sturgeon is squealing about independence and indyref2 every 5 minutes and breaking away from the hated UK, let us not forget it takes 2 to tango. She can have respect and friendship with a Scotland in the UK but not with the SNP
Hate to point out the obvious, but Scotland is in the UK, yet you Tories still refuse to respect her and maintain friendly relations. You are making your own bed, so I hope you enjoy lying in it.
Yes we do, Holyrood has not been scrapped, Sturgeon has not been arrested, direct rule has not been imposed
That's your standard for friendly and cooperative relationships?
With the SNP yes
Who happen to be the elected government at Holyrood, and the overwhelming majority at Westminster.
Angela Rayner on R4 Today: jeepers creepers. Mind-bogglingly poor. WTF has happened to the Labour Party? The dearth of talent at the top is excruciatingly painful.
She was not any better on BBC
I expect Labour are worried at the prospect of a 2 year energy freeze from Truss
If I was Labour, the least of my worries would be the Conservative Party. They are going to quite merrily destroy themselves without any assistance.
Starmer ought to be scouring the party for talent, or anything even remotely resembling talent. Because if he goes into a GE with the current front bench he is exposing himself to ridicule. Rayner is just not up to the job. Not even close.
If winding up Tories is the job, Rayner does all right. Otherwise, she does not shadow a department. Of course, if Labour does win, she will be destroyed by the media because she didn't go to Oxford, you know?
Boris leaving Downing Street. The country is in a worse state than when he arrived.
Asleep at the wheel on key issues, actively harmful on others, and chucked out by his party because he broke his own laws. Worse PM of my lifetime. Good riddance.
"Asleep at the wheel on key issues"
That's rubbish. He has faced two massive threats in two years: Covid and Ukraine - more strife than Blair faced in nearly ten years. On Ukraine Boris has been excellent: and on Covid middling (some parts, such as vaccines, he was very good).
Boris was not brought down by his decisions in government: until a little over a year ago he was riding high in the polls. He was brought down by personal decisions that highlighted some massive character flaws that had been obvious since his MoL days.
Without those flaws, the Conservatives would probably be showing healthy polling leads. And that's a danger for Labour.
Boris let the inflation genie out of the bottle, we are in weak position compared to similar economies. The NHS is in a hell of a state. Social care reform was dropped. The Ukraine situation developed as London suckled on Russian money.
Meanwhile Blair had 9/11, the dot com crash, a hot war in Europe and enabled peace in Northern Ireland.
Alternative history is a fun but fruitless project. Nonetheless, over recent months it's very hard to argue that Johnson was doing more than going through the motions, and in the last few weeks not even that.
The bottom line is that the Crimean war gave us ample warning to break our dependency on Russian hydrocarbons and finance. We didn’t. We’re running around trying to do that now. It’s a bit pathetic. The current crisis was avoidable if we weren’t distracted.
The UK itself had very little structural dependence on hydrocarbons from Russia. The problem is the dependency of others which is now meaning increased competition for a reduced supply.
From the comments of Tory supporters on the thread, you would think everything in the UK is fine and dandy and that Boris left over personal issues and technicalities. That feels a smidgen complacent.
By 2030 I predict Boris will be seen to have been the best PM of this decade
Isn't he already there? Arguably he will still be there this afternoon. Not a huge achievement.
She has a very difficult year or two ahead of her, and I hope she is up to the pressure. She’ll need a very strong private support network to get through this reasonably intact and healthy.
I identified her as a likely star early on, but I fear her timing is atrocious. She looks like a sacrificial lamb, and that awful speech made her sound like Larry the Lamb. Boris Johnson admired from Kiev to Carlisle? You could hear the tumbleweed. Fire that writer.
We all hope that her grasp of economics is significantly better that she displayed during the leadership hustings. If it is then she has a chance. A slim one but a chance. Expectations are so low that she doesn’t need to achieve much to exceed them.
On the Scottish question, my advice simply consists of 2 words: respect and friendship. Being the cynic I am, I confidently predict that she will comprehensively ignore my advice. No biggie.
Given Sturgeon is squealing about independence and indyref2 every 5 minutes and breaking away from the hated UK, let us not forget it takes 2 to tango. She can have respect and friendship with a Scotland in the UK but not with the SNP
Hate to point out the obvious, but Scotland is in the UK, yet you Tories still refuse to respect her and maintain friendly relations. You are making your own bed, so I hope you enjoy lying in it.
I hate to agree with Hyufd, still more Liz Truss, but it does take two to tango. Sturgeon is behaving like a spoiled toddler denied a sweet, and short of weakly agreeing with all the nonsense she comes out with the other option is to tell her, 'no, not your decision, now STFU whining and get on with your damn job.' At which Sturgeon whines and complains all the more.
This is of course largely because it's in her political interests to do so, whipping up more and more anti-UK (specifically anti-English) xenophobia because she wants ultimately to split off from England. But the toxicity of this relationship is just as much on her as on London and it's ridiculous to pretend otherwise.
You are fortgetting that it has been HMG policy for years now to cooperate as little as possible with the SG, ever since the referendum. A particular high point was delaying SG court action on a major issue till HMG had changed the relevant law; that was not a sign of cooperative behaviour.
Hence why I said 'it takes two to tango' and 'the toxicity of this relationship is just as much on her as on London.'
She has a very difficult year or two ahead of her, and I hope she is up to the pressure. She’ll need a very strong private support network to get through this reasonably intact and healthy.
I identified her as a likely star early on, but I fear her timing is atrocious. She looks like a sacrificial lamb, and that awful speech made her sound like Larry the Lamb. Boris Johnson admired from Kiev to Carlisle? You could hear the tumbleweed. Fire that writer.
We all hope that her grasp of economics is significantly better that she displayed during the leadership hustings. If it is then she has a chance. A slim one but a chance. Expectations are so low that she doesn’t need to achieve much to exceed them.
On the Scottish question, my advice simply consists of 2 words: respect and friendship. Being the cynic I am, I confidently predict that she will comprehensively ignore my advice. No biggie.
Given Sturgeon is squealing about independence and indyref2 every 5 minutes and breaking away from the hated UK, let us not forget it takes 2 to tango. She can have respect and friendship with a Scotland in the UK but not with the SNP
Hate to point out the obvious, but Scotland is in the UK, yet you Tories still refuse to respect her and maintain friendly relations. You are making your own bed, so I hope you enjoy lying in it.
Yes we do, Holyrood has not been scrapped, Sturgeon has not been arrested, direct rule has not been imposed
That's your standard for friendly and cooperative relationships?
With the SNP yes
Who happen to be the elected government at Holyrood, and the overwhelming majority at Westminster.
And whose main aim is to break up the UK
Well, if you won't address the reasons for the decline in Unionism, which include your own behaviour and your party's, then there's not much one can do with you.
Boris was not brought down by his decisions in government: until a little over a year ago he was riding high in the polls. He was brought down by personal decisions that highlighted some massive character flaws that had been obvious since his MoL days.
And he bitterly resents it.
He still thinks he was unfairly deposed.
Its quite striking how out of touch with reality his perception of events is. He genuinely seems to feel he has been wronged. Its astonishing.
Johnson described it as a relay race. And indeed that’s how we should see it. The important question for the country is not whether he did a good job (I think we’re all fairly agreed on his pluses and minuses, give of take), but whether after 12 years of Conservative PMs the country is richer, more equitable, better serviced, more united, cleaner, more healthy and more respected on the world stage than it was in 2010.
It’s possible for someone with the internet and a few world bank statistics to answer most of these questions reasonably objectively given time. We just need to look at our absolute and relative (to similar sized peers) performance on:
- GDP per capita - Productivity and investment figures - Median incomes - Various indices of income and wealth equality - public and private sector net debt - Life expectancy - Performance metrics for transport, education, healthcare, crime etc - Carbon emissions and air/water quality - Opinion polling on various identity issues
Prestige on the world stage is the only one it’s difficult to measure. But that’s maybe the least important.
I would expect to see us doing well on a couple of metrics (carbon emissions, debt) and worse on others.
Someone should compile an index. Would be a useful measure ahead of elections.
Boris leaving Downing Street. The country is in a worse state than when he arrived.
Asleep at the wheel on key issues, actively harmful on others, and chucked out by his party because he broke his own laws. Worse PM of my lifetime. Good riddance.
"Asleep at the wheel on key issues"
That's rubbish. He has faced two massive threats in two years: Covid and Ukraine - more strife than Blair faced in nearly ten years. On Ukraine Boris has been excellent: and on Covid middling (some parts, such as vaccines, he was very good).
Boris was not brought down by his decisions in government: until a little over a year ago he was riding high in the polls. He was brought down by personal decisions that highlighted some massive character flaws that had been obvious since his MoL days.
Without those flaws, the Conservatives would probably be showing healthy polling leads. And that's a danger for Labour.
Boris let the inflation genie out of the bottle, we are in weak position compared to similar economies. The NHS is in a hell of a state. Social care reform was dropped. The Ukraine situation developed as London suckled on Russian money.
Meanwhile Blair had 9/11, the dot com crash, a hot war in Europe and enabled peace in Northern Ireland.
Alternative history is a fun but fruitless project. Nonetheless, over recent months it's very hard to argue that Johnson was doing more than going through the motions, and in the last few weeks not even that.
The bottom line is that the Crimean war gave us ample warning to break our dependency on Russian hydrocarbons and finance. We didn’t. We’re running around trying to do that now. It’s a bit pathetic. The current crisis was avoidable if we weren’t distracted.
The UK itself had very little structural dependence on hydrocarbons from Russia. The problem is the dependency of others which is now meaning increased competition for a reduced supply.
If Europe had focused on energy security rather than Brexit for the past six years we all would have been in a better place. No-one was talking about Russia until it was too late. We were all looking inward and left the back door open.
One nice touch I thought was placement of Downing St staff in the front row for Boris/Carrie to bid farewell to with the politicians restricted to the end of the line up.
Will Johnson fly from Northolt or Stansted? For some reason the A321 G-XATW is currently in Cairns…
Oh, that’s interesting. Military plane for the PM then?
Grob Tutor from ESUAS at Leuchars.
LOL, even I’ve flown one of those!
He got an RAF Falcon 900, KRF18, departed Northolt 5 mins ago.
Made in France.
That. Is. A. Dis. Grace.
Also, it's "RAF" not RAF because they are operated by civvie crews from Centreline.
Yes, civvy crew. Who are the usual pax on these, the brass hats?
I don't think that is well defined. They were part of Johnson's VIP a/c spending spree. The one part of the armed forces that he liked spending money on.
Presumably it was cheaper to lease a couple of Falcons, than to keep the fleet of ageing 146s somewhere approaching serviceable? At least the PoW doesn’t fly them himself any more.
From the comments of Tory supporters on the thread, you would think everything in the UK is fine and dandy and that Boris left over personal issues and technicalities. That feels a smidgen complacent.
To be honest I simply cannot imagine anyone thinks everything is fine and dandy in the UK when it manifestly is not
For me the only person responsible for Johnson being out of office today is Johnson himself and his behaviour, especially over partygate, shredded any goodwill he had and resulted in the inevitable
I do not know if Truss will succeed but if she comes up with a 2 year energy price freeze the public are likely to act positively
Labour spokespersons today only seem to be able to repeat windfall tax as their answer to this crisis, but frankly a windfall rax is a sticking plaster and goes nowhere near addressing the problem
People seem to forget what massive implications Covid had, large swathes of the population stayed at home for months all funded by HMG. Posters seem to think 2020-2022 was an easy time to be PM. In Blair's fist 2-3 years nothing really happened
I doubt any future PM will have the issues that BJ has had to deal with.
I think this is the only case for Boris Johnson having much of a legacy. He had to deal with a global pandemic. For my money of course, he made enough disastrous mistakes that I think most other prime ministers would have done a better job. But we can't diminish the scale of the problems he had to face.
Angela Rayner on R4 Today: jeepers creepers. Mind-bogglingly poor. WTF has happened to the Labour Party? The dearth of talent at the top is excruciatingly painful.
She was not any better on BBC
I expect Labour are worried at the prospect of a 2 year energy freeze from Truss
If I was Labour, the least of my worries would be the Conservative Party. They are going to quite merrily destroy themselves without any assistance.
Starmer ought to be scouring the party for talent, or anything even remotely resembling talent. Because if he goes into a GE with the current front bench he is exposing himself to ridicule. Rayner is just not up to the job. Not even close.
If winding up Tories is the job, Rayner does all right. Otherwise, she does not shadow a department. Of course, if Labour does win, she will be destroyed by the media because she didn't go to Oxford, you know?
You know, if the Tories had deputies in the same manner, darling of the activists, gee up the troops, there would have been some excellent candidates over the last few years. Just that, in the Tory system, they became leader instead.
Boris leaving Downing Street. The country is in a worse state than when he arrived.
Asleep at the wheel on key issues, actively harmful on others, and chucked out by his party because he broke his own laws. Worse PM of my lifetime. Good riddance.
"Asleep at the wheel on key issues"
That's rubbish. He has faced two massive threats in two years: Covid and Ukraine - more strife than Blair faced in nearly ten years. On Ukraine Boris has been excellent: and on Covid middling (some parts, such as vaccines, he was very good).
Boris was not brought down by his decisions in government: until a little over a year ago he was riding high in the polls. He was brought down by personal decisions that highlighted some massive character flaws that had been obvious since his MoL days.
Without those flaws, the Conservatives would probably be showing healthy polling leads. And that's a danger for Labour.
Boris let the inflation genie out of the bottle, we are in weak position compared to similar economies. The NHS is in a hell of a state. Social care reform was dropped. The Ukraine situation developed as London suckled on Russian money.
Meanwhile Blair had 9/11, the dot com crash, a hot war in Europe and enabled peace in Northern Ireland.
Every western nation has high inflation, indeed Spain and the Netherlands higher than us because of the sanctions imposed after the Ukraine war. Boris ensured nobody pays more than £86k for social care costs residential or domestic.
"Boris ensured nobody pays more than £86k for social care costs residential or domestic" is a downright lie. I have explained to you before that you are wrong but you persist with this untruth. Check the dates, and check the terms and conditions. You are peddling a falsehood, I know this because every month I transfer £5.5k to a care home in England to cover a relative's care costs. This will continue until the property is sold or the property is handed over to Herefordshire Council.
By 2023 when the change comes into law it will be true
October 2023 is a long way away for @Mexicanpete and others including our family, and you simply cannot be allowed to make misleading statements as you are prone to do
From the comments of Tory supporters on the thread, you would think everything in the UK is fine and dandy and that Boris left over personal issues and technicalities. That feels a smidgen complacent.
To be honest I simply cannot imagine anyone thinks everything is fine and dandy 8n the UK when it manifestly is not
For me the only person responsible for Johnson being out of office today is Johnson himself and his behaviour, especially over partygate, shredded any goodwill he had and resulted in the inevitable
I do not know if Truss will succeed but if she comes up with a 2 year energy price freeze the public are likely to act positively
Labour spokespersons today only seem to be able to research windfall tax as their answer to this crisis but frankly a windfall rax is a sticking plaster and goes nowhere near addressing the problem
You said the Covid and Ukraine was all good, glossing over obvious issues. Others said social care policy was great, despite the hospital beds blocking. All the problems come from elsewhere and everything is being handled brilliantly. Not my fault gov! The implication is that the nation should be grateful. Like I say, a tad complacent.
She has a very difficult year or two ahead of her, and I hope she is up to the pressure. She’ll need a very strong private support network to get through this reasonably intact and healthy.
I identified her as a likely star early on, but I fear her timing is atrocious. She looks like a sacrificial lamb, and that awful speech made her sound like Larry the Lamb. Boris Johnson admired from Kiev to Carlisle? You could hear the tumbleweed. Fire that writer.
We all hope that her grasp of economics is significantly better that she displayed during the leadership hustings. If it is then she has a chance. A slim one but a chance. Expectations are so low that she doesn’t need to achieve much to exceed them.
On the Scottish question, my advice simply consists of 2 words: respect and friendship. Being the cynic I am, I confidently predict that she will comprehensively ignore my advice. No biggie.
Given Sturgeon is squealing about independence and indyref2 every 5 minutes and breaking away from the hated UK, let us not forget it takes 2 to tango. She can have respect and friendship with a Scotland in the UK but not with the SNP
Hate to point out the obvious, but Scotland is in the UK, yet you Tories still refuse to respect her and maintain friendly relations. You are making your own bed, so I hope you enjoy lying in it.
Yes we do, Holyrood has not been scrapped, Sturgeon has not been arrested, direct rule has not been imposed
That's your standard for friendly and cooperative relationships?
With the SNP yes
Who happen to be the elected government at Holyrood, and the overwhelming majority at Westminster.
And whose main aim is to break up the UK
Well, if you won't address the reasons for the decline in Unionism, which include your own behaviour and your party's, then there's not much one can do with you.
Unionism is still on about 50% at least.
If you still won't stop bleating about indyref2 and disrespecting the 2014 referendum result there is also not much that can be done with you
One nice touch I thought was placement of Downing St staff in the front row for Boris/Carrie to bid farewell to with the politicians restricted to the end of the line up.
Will Johnson fly from Northolt or Stansted? For some reason the A321 G-XATW is currently in Cairns…
Oh, that’s interesting. Military plane for the PM then?
Grob Tutor from ESUAS at Leuchars.
LOL, even I’ve flown one of those!
He got an RAF Falcon 900, KRF18, departed Northolt 5 mins ago.
Made in France.
That. Is. A. Dis. Grace.
Also, it's "RAF" not RAF because they are operated by civvie crews from Centreline.
Yes, civvy crew. Who are the usual pax on these, the brass hats?
I don't think that is well defined. They were part of Johnson's VIP a/c spending spree. The one part of the armed forces that he liked spending money on.
Presumably it was cheaper to lease a couple of Falcons, than to keep the fleet of ageing 146s somewhere approaching serviceable? At least the PoW doesn’t fly them himself any more.
Re the 146s, quite so, but are the Falcons leased? That article I cited earlier says they'll be fitted with military kit (I imagine comms and anti-SAM stuff). Yet the one en route to Aberdeen has a civilian registration. G-ZAHS
She has a very difficult year or two ahead of her, and I hope she is up to the pressure. She’ll need a very strong private support network to get through this reasonably intact and healthy.
I identified her as a likely star early on, but I fear her timing is atrocious. She looks like a sacrificial lamb, and that awful speech made her sound like Larry the Lamb. Boris Johnson admired from Kiev to Carlisle? You could hear the tumbleweed. Fire that writer.
We all hope that her grasp of economics is significantly better that she displayed during the leadership hustings. If it is then she has a chance. A slim one but a chance. Expectations are so low that she doesn’t need to achieve much to exceed them.
On the Scottish question, my advice simply consists of 2 words: respect and friendship. Being the cynic I am, I confidently predict that she will comprehensively ignore my advice. No biggie.
Given Sturgeon is squealing about independence and indyref2 every 5 minutes and breaking away from the hated UK, let us not forget it takes 2 to tango. She can have respect and friendship with a Scotland in the UK but not with the SNP
Hate to point out the obvious, but Scotland is in the UK, yet you Tories still refuse to respect her and maintain friendly relations. You are making your own bed, so I hope you enjoy lying in it.
Can I just correct you
@HYUFD does not represent this conservative who wants friendly relationships with Scotland
@StuartDickson has won this argument. He's got you all talking about "friendly relationships" like Scotland is Argentina or something.
- ”One of the features I find interesting is the choice of pictures of Truss that some papers have used. The ones used by the Mail, Express and the Times are far from flattering.”
There have already been strong misogynistic tendencies among critics of the Conservative Party, especially on social media. I would strongly recommend that people opposed to the Tories desist from focusing on the FM’s gender. Ditto the ethnicity of cabinet members. Just ignore it. It really, really isn’t relevant.
I don't think it is anything to do with gender. She just looks so strange and awkward. It reminds me a bit of John Redwood trying to fit in by miming the Welsh national anthem.
She doesn't look 'strange and awkward'.
This is my Law of the Internet. No matter how incontrovertibly, blindingly obvious something is, someone online will argue the opposite.
LOL. Really?
Have you considered that something might appear "incontrovertibly, blindingly obvious" to you, but that you might, just possibly, be wrong?
TBF she does look strange and awkward
As do 99% of people
99% of people look "strange and awkward"? Where do you live - Norfolk?
Similar predictions from many other, reasonably sober pundits.
Lowest %age of the members vote, ever.
Not the MPs first pick.
Talk of her effective majority slashed to a dozen or less.
Her rigid ideology will not survive contact with reality.
Boris in the wings.
Etc etc.
I think this analysis is wrong. While I’m sure her enemies, and the media will talk up challenges, I’m pretty sure she’s safe until a GE. She has lots of cards to play (indeed, including calling a snap election to shut up her critics) and I simply don’t think there’s the appetite for another change of leader among MPs and members, so soon after Boris.
So, yeah, that’s a prediction from me:
The tories will not ditch Truss before the next election.
I agree.
I don't see why the Prime Minister would not be replaced before the next election, unless she calls an early election herself.
If the scenario is that the government is unpopular two years from now with an election looming, then the options are replacing Truss before the election, or replacing her immediately afterwards. There is no advantage for the party in delaying the inevitable, and very little for Truss herself because there is no chance she will remain Leader of the Opposition for five years to fight the election after next.
Leaders dont go quietly. It takes months and lots of effort, and unless they start efforts now any replacement would have very little time to establish themselves. Parties go into elections with certain losers all the the time because changing is hard.
They're stuck with her.
Ah, but what is the advantage for Truss in hanging on? It is not as if she could plausibly remain Leader of the Opposition for five years for another pop at Keir Starmer. Then again, I still think Boris was planning to step down in 2014 à la Harold Wilson.
She has a very difficult year or two ahead of her, and I hope she is up to the pressure. She’ll need a very strong private support network to get through this reasonably intact and healthy.
I identified her as a likely star early on, but I fear her timing is atrocious. She looks like a sacrificial lamb, and that awful speech made her sound like Larry the Lamb. Boris Johnson admired from Kiev to Carlisle? You could hear the tumbleweed. Fire that writer.
We all hope that her grasp of economics is significantly better that she displayed during the leadership hustings. If it is then she has a chance. A slim one but a chance. Expectations are so low that she doesn’t need to achieve much to exceed them.
On the Scottish question, my advice simply consists of 2 words: respect and friendship. Being the cynic I am, I confidently predict that she will comprehensively ignore my advice. No biggie.
Given Sturgeon is squealing about independence and indyref2 every 5 minutes and breaking away from the hated UK, let us not forget it takes 2 to tango. She can have respect and friendship with a Scotland in the UK but not with the SNP
Hate to point out the obvious, but Scotland is in the UK, yet you Tories still refuse to respect her and maintain friendly relations. You are making your own bed, so I hope you enjoy lying in it.
Yes we do, Holyrood has not been scrapped, Sturgeon has not been arrested, direct rule has not been imposed
That's your standard for friendly and cooperative relationships?
With the SNP yes
Who happen to be the elected government at Holyrood, and the overwhelming majority at Westminster.
And whose main aim is to break up the UK
Well, if you won't address the reasons for the decline in Unionism, which include your own behaviour and your party's, then there's not much one can do with you.
Unionism is still on about 50% at least.
If you still won't stop bleating about indyref2 and disrespecting the 2014 referendum result there is also not much that can be done with you
Only 50%? That's an absolute disaster for Unionism, on any objective historical perspective. Your quibbling over one or teo percentage points and whether or not to include DNV doesn't change that.
Boris leaving Downing Street. The country is in a worse state than when he arrived.
Asleep at the wheel on key issues, actively harmful on others, and chucked out by his party because he broke his own laws. Worse PM of my lifetime. Good riddance.
"Asleep at the wheel on key issues"
That's rubbish. He has faced two massive threats in two years: Covid and Ukraine - more strife than Blair faced in nearly ten years. On Ukraine Boris has been excellent: and on Covid middling (some parts, such as vaccines, he was very good).
Boris was not brought down by his decisions in government: until a little over a year ago he was riding high in the polls. He was brought down by personal decisions that highlighted some massive character flaws that had been obvious since his MoL days.
Without those flaws, the Conservatives would probably be showing healthy polling leads. And that's a danger for Labour.
Boris let the inflation genie out of the bottle, we are in weak position compared to similar economies. The NHS is in a hell of a state. Social care reform was dropped. The Ukraine situation developed as London suckled on Russian money.
Meanwhile Blair had 9/11, the dot com crash, a hot war in Europe and enabled peace in Northern Ireland.
Every western nation has high inflation, indeed Spain and the Netherlands higher than us because of the sanctions imposed after the Ukraine war. Boris ensured nobody pays more than £86k for social care costs residential or domestic.
"Boris ensured nobody pays more than £86k for social care costs residential or domestic" is a downright lie. I have explained to you before that you are wrong but you persist with this untruth. Check the dates, and check the terms and conditions. You are peddling a falsehood, I know this because every month I transfer £5.5k to a care home in England to cover a relative's care costs. This will continue until the property is sold or the property is handed over to Herefordshire Council.
By 2023 when the change comes into law it will be true
October 2023 is a long way away for @Mexicanpete and others including our family, and you simply cannot be allowed to make misleading statements as you are prone to do
It was not misleading, if it was not for Boris those with dementia would see potentially all their assets still gone to pay for residential care costs through to the next election in 2024 and beyond.
She has a very difficult year or two ahead of her, and I hope she is up to the pressure. She’ll need a very strong private support network to get through this reasonably intact and healthy.
I identified her as a likely star early on, but I fear her timing is atrocious. She looks like a sacrificial lamb, and that awful speech made her sound like Larry the Lamb. Boris Johnson admired from Kiev to Carlisle? You could hear the tumbleweed. Fire that writer.
We all hope that her grasp of economics is significantly better that she displayed during the leadership hustings. If it is then she has a chance. A slim one but a chance. Expectations are so low that she doesn’t need to achieve much to exceed them.
On the Scottish question, my advice simply consists of 2 words: respect and friendship. Being the cynic I am, I confidently predict that she will comprehensively ignore my advice. No biggie.
Given Sturgeon is squealing about independence and indyref2 every 5 minutes and breaking away from the hated UK, let us not forget it takes 2 to tango. She can have respect and friendship with a Scotland in the UK but not with the SNP
Hate to point out the obvious, but Scotland is in the UK, yet you Tories still refuse to respect her and maintain friendly relations. You are making your own bed, so I hope you enjoy lying in it.
Can I just correct you
@HYUFD does not represent this conservative who wants friendly relationships with Scotland
@StuartDickson has won this argument. He's got you all talking about "friendly relationships" like Scotland is Argentina or something.
She has a very difficult year or two ahead of her, and I hope she is up to the pressure. She’ll need a very strong private support network to get through this reasonably intact and healthy.
I identified her as a likely star early on, but I fear her timing is atrocious. She looks like a sacrificial lamb, and that awful speech made her sound like Larry the Lamb. Boris Johnson admired from Kiev to Carlisle? You could hear the tumbleweed. Fire that writer.
We all hope that her grasp of economics is significantly better that she displayed during the leadership hustings. If it is then she has a chance. A slim one but a chance. Expectations are so low that she doesn’t need to achieve much to exceed them.
On the Scottish question, my advice simply consists of 2 words: respect and friendship. Being the cynic I am, I confidently predict that she will comprehensively ignore my advice. No biggie.
Given Sturgeon is squealing about independence and indyref2 every 5 minutes and breaking away from the hated UK, let us not forget it takes 2 to tango. She can have respect and friendship with a Scotland in the UK but not with the SNP
Hate to point out the obvious, but Scotland is in the UK, yet you Tories still refuse to respect her and maintain friendly relations. You are making your own bed, so I hope you enjoy lying in it.
Yes we do, Holyrood has not been scrapped, Sturgeon has not been arrested, direct rule has not been imposed
That's your standard for friendly and cooperative relationships?
With the SNP yes
Who happen to be the elected government at Holyrood, and the overwhelming majority at Westminster.
And whose main aim is to break up the UK
Well, if you won't address the reasons for the decline in Unionism, which include your own behaviour and your party's, then there's not much one can do with you.
Hmm. Unionism appears to have been pretty stable since 2014 - the main issue for Sturgeon is there has not been any significant shift despite Brexit, Boris and older voters dying off.
Boris leaving Downing Street. The country is in a worse state than when he arrived.
Asleep at the wheel on key issues, actively harmful on others, and chucked out by his party because he broke his own laws. Worse PM of my lifetime. Good riddance.
"Asleep at the wheel on key issues"
That's rubbish. He has faced two massive threats in two years: Covid and Ukraine - more strife than Blair faced in nearly ten years. On Ukraine Boris has been excellent: and on Covid middling (some parts, such as vaccines, he was very good).
Boris was not brought down by his decisions in government: until a little over a year ago he was riding high in the polls. He was brought down by personal decisions that highlighted some massive character flaws that had been obvious since his MoL days.
Without those flaws, the Conservatives would probably be showing healthy polling leads. And that's a danger for Labour.
Boris let the inflation genie out of the bottle, we are in weak position compared to similar economies. The NHS is in a hell of a state. Social care reform was dropped. The Ukraine situation developed as London suckled on Russian money.
Meanwhile Blair had 9/11, the dot com crash, a hot war in Europe and enabled peace in Northern Ireland.
Alternative history is a fun but fruitless project. Nonetheless, over recent months it's very hard to argue that Johnson was doing more than going through the motions, and in the last few weeks not even that.
The bottom line is that the Crimean war gave us ample warning to break our dependency on Russian hydrocarbons and finance. We didn’t. We’re running around trying to do that now. It’s a bit pathetic. The current crisis was avoidable if we weren’t distracted.
The UK itself had very little structural dependence on hydrocarbons from Russia. The problem is the dependency of others which is now meaning increased competition for a reduced supply.
If Europe had focused on energy security rather than Brexit for the past six years we all would have been in a better place. No-one was talking about Russia until it was too late. We were all looking inward and left the back door open.
LOL! So Germany and others making themselves reliant on Russian energy is the fault of Brexit? Really?
A friend of mine (Anglo-Russian, anti-war) returned from Moscow last night (via a flight from Turkey).
He reports that there was little visible war propaganda in Moscow, no signs of shortages of food. The shops were well-stocked (in fact, he said, better than before the war).
There were not many visible signs of dissent, people were enjoying themselves in central Moscow in bars, etc.
He concludes Moscow has successful managed to ignore the war.
Of course, he was only in parts of Moscow.
But, it seems clear that Russia is not about to collapse, sanctions have seemingly not had much visible effect on the lives of ordinary people at least in Moscow and there is no sign of the end of Putin's regime.
Putin's regime won't fall from of a lack of food in Moscow, it will come about because they lack the resources to continue to fight in Ukraine.
Where do the troops come from? Where do the shells? The tanks? The helicopters? The bullets?
Who fell from office in Russia (or later in the US or Britain) when the invaders had to call it a day in Afghanistan? Nixon didn't fall over Vietnam either.
You might be able to posit a parallel with Khrushchev over Cuba-Turkey-Italy.
Who do you think is most likely to replace Putin when he leaves office? I reckon Shoigu. It won't be a populist figure who would bring an atmosphere of rapid chops and changes at the top whether he wanted to or not. It will be a Mr Stability. The Moscow middle class doesn't get to choose.
She has a very difficult year or two ahead of her, and I hope she is up to the pressure. She’ll need a very strong private support network to get through this reasonably intact and healthy.
I identified her as a likely star early on, but I fear her timing is atrocious. She looks like a sacrificial lamb, and that awful speech made her sound like Larry the Lamb. Boris Johnson admired from Kiev to Carlisle? You could hear the tumbleweed. Fire that writer.
We all hope that her grasp of economics is significantly better that she displayed during the leadership hustings. If it is then she has a chance. A slim one but a chance. Expectations are so low that she doesn’t need to achieve much to exceed them.
On the Scottish question, my advice simply consists of 2 words: respect and friendship. Being the cynic I am, I confidently predict that she will comprehensively ignore my advice. No biggie.
Given Sturgeon is squealing about independence and indyref2 every 5 minutes and breaking away from the hated UK, let us not forget it takes 2 to tango. She can have respect and friendship with a Scotland in the UK but not with the SNP
Hate to point out the obvious, but Scotland is in the UK, yet you Tories still refuse to respect her and maintain friendly relations. You are making your own bed, so I hope you enjoy lying in it.
Yes we do, Holyrood has not been scrapped, Sturgeon has not been arrested, direct rule has not been imposed
That's your standard for friendly and cooperative relationships?
With the SNP yes
Who happen to be the elected government at Holyrood, and the overwhelming majority at Westminster.
And whose main aim is to break up the UK
Well, if you won't address the reasons for the decline in Unionism, which include your own behaviour and your party's, then there's not much one can do with you.
Unionism is still on about 50% at least.
If you still won't stop bleating about indyref2 and disrespecting the 2014 referendum result there is also not much that can be done with you
Only 50%? That's an absolute disaster for Unionism, on any objective historical perspective. Your quibbling over one or teo percentage points and whether or not to include DNV doesn't change that.
No it isn't, 55% voted for Unionism in 2014, despite Scots voted 62% to remain in the EU 50% still back the Union at least in most polls.
Hence correctly indyref2 will continue to be refused
I'm no fan of Mary Beard, but this is quite nicely done.
https://mobile.twitter.com/wmarybeard/status/1567039650027413506 If you are curious about Boris Johnson's reference to Cincinnatus in his goodbye speech - he was a 5th century BC Roman politician who saved the state from an invasion, then - job done - returned to his farm ('to his plough'). He was also an enemy of the people.
Similar predictions from many other, reasonably sober pundits.
Lowest %age of the members vote, ever.
Not the MPs first pick.
Talk of her effective majority slashed to a dozen or less.
Her rigid ideology will not survive contact with reality.
Boris in the wings.
Etc etc.
I think this analysis is wrong. While I’m sure her enemies, and the media will talk up challenges, I’m pretty sure she’s safe until a GE. She has lots of cards to play (indeed, including calling a snap election to shut up her critics) and I simply don’t think there’s the appetite for another change of leader among MPs and members, so soon after Boris.
So, yeah, that’s a prediction from me:
The tories will not ditch Truss before the next election.
I agree.
And punters agree.
Liz Truss exit year:
2025 or later 2.86 2024 3 2023 5 2022 15.5
The value there is 2023. A snap GE is her only hope. If she kicks the can she’s a goner.
"Her only hope"?
There are plenty of scenarios where Ms Truss does well, and plenty where she does poorly.
Like with most politicians, it's largely out of her hands.
Aha. That old peach: fate versus agency.
I happen to believe that individual specimens of H. s. sapiens do have agency. Especially heads of government.
There are vanishingly few scenarios where the hairless ape about to enter a terraced house in central London does well, and a mountain of scenarios where she does appallingly poorly. Where she ends up will partly be due to her own decisions and deeds.
I don't deny her agency, I merely point to the fact that if the Russian invasion of Ukraine fails (and with it the Putin regime), then the economic outlook will look very different to a situation where war drags on and gas becomes ever scarcer.
I am quite interested as to why people think that the 'fall of the Putin regime' will lead to cheaper gas. Where is this compliant Russian regime going to come from? All Russian politicians seem to espouse various forms of nationalism, this includes Navalny. How can a national humiliation on the battlefield lead to more compliance with the west? If Russia gets 'beaten back' to its pre 2014 borders, it seems that they are unlikely to respond by doing a deal with the west, it seems more likely that they will look to doing a "deal" with China. I think that the only way that the gas etc starts being pumped again, is through some kind of 'deal' with the current regime. Obviously the flipside of such a 'deal' is that the current regime has time to rearm itself before round 3 of its war on Ukraine. So I am very much unconvinced that the answer is in 'beating back' Russia. The easiest way back to get the economy moving may be through some kind of poisonous unofficial stalemate much like what existed pre March of this year, Putin just declares some kind of victory and 'operation over'.
I disagree.
At some point, Russia's ability to fight in Ukraine comes to an end. Them buying ammunition from the North Koreans and raiding the asylums for soliders suggests that that might be nearer than we imagine.
What happens then?
Well, I would suggest that Putin is unlikely to survive defeat in Ukraine.
But changing the leader doesn't change the situation on the ground. They can be as nationalist as they like, but reality has to intervene.
If Putin falls, the next leader has to find some kind of peace with the West, because Russia depends on Western technology to extract the oil and gas that they sell to the World.
I don't see this. It seems like Ukraine is basically a mercenary invasion, the soldiers are poor people enticed by high wages. There is no significant conscription or general mobilisation. The fact that there are adverts in odd places is not really all that significant in the scheme of things. There are lots of 'anecdotes' and 'reports' but not too much weight should be put on them, in my opinion. If the position is really bad, to the point where it is endangering his position, Putin can quit and declare victory at any point, as the situation stands. Obviously, he was expecting a 2014 style cakewalk and this has not gone to plan. But Putin has adapted to the situation and is still really holding all the cards here as far as I can see. I think that he is calculating that he can sow greater discord and chaos in the west (and across the world) by continuing the war, and this outweighs any domestic difficulties that may occur in consequence.
As an example of this, Putin has played a blinder with the gas prices thing, Zarah Sultana leading 'enough is enough' and Boris Johnson was telling them that it is all the price we have to pay for 'beating back' Putin, Now Liz Truss comes along and says that the solution is in tax cuts for the rich.
I disagree with every part of your analysis.
Firstly, whether it is "mercenary" or not, the Russian troops in Ukraine have to be resupplied, with food and weapons and ammunition. If that ceases, their ability to fight disappears.
Secondly, the Russians are trying to just hold on right now. And it's not going so well. It's entirely possible that thousands - perhaps as many as ten thousand - Russians on the West side of the Dneiper are going to end up captured.
And on the gas price, yes the Russians have sown discord.
But they've also accelerated the move of economies away from gas (Germany stopping their planned nuclear shutdowns for example), as well as ensuring that a host of new LNG projects go forward.
That means that the share of energy provided by natural gas in the future will be lower, and Russia's market share will be smaller. And the longer the Russians take to come back to the table, the worse their situation will be, because those projects will be live.
I am a bit cautious about going on this line, because soon I fear that I will be accused of being a 'Putin troll', which I am not, I have given a lot of money to support Ukraine in the early part of the invasion.
Needless to say though, that Ukraine are relying on western weapons to keep the current situation afloat - this also imposes costs on western countries which cannot be perpetuated indefinetly; particularly in addition to the energy bills problem, which will (I assume) take 3-5 years to sort out by way of diversification away from gas.
There is a reoffensive by the Ukrainians around Kherson for sure, but this is to be expected in some kind of war situation, it seems to me to be a bit optimistic to make the automatic assumption that it will be successful. Even the potential 'loss' of Kherson is not existential for Russia, in the same way that its 'retreat' from Kiev was not existential in the early weeks of the conflict. The capture of 10000 troops would be a bit of a disappointment and an annoyance, but probably short change for Russia.
I think the problem here that you haven't responded to, is that if it really is looking bad for Russia, why don't they just quit whilst they are ahead? They must actually believe that they are winning in some way.
Ultimately, I've personally come to the point of view that we should be working to an endgame other than the 'complete defeat of Putin'.
How can they 'quit'?
They are in a war now, and quitting means removing troops from Ukraine. Otherwise they are in the same position the Russians were in Afghanistan, or the Americans were in Iraq. Except it'll be worse, because Ukraine is not fundamentally defeated.
Remember invasion is usually the easy part: it's holding what you've grabbed that is difficult.
'quit while they are ahead'. Not 'quit Ukraine', airlift of Kabul style. They quit by just working with France/Germany to get some kind of peace, we know that Macron will jump at the chance. There are many exit options for Putin that never even remotely existed in Afghanistan or Iraq.
I agree with your analysis about the general principle of it being difficult to hold land you have invaded. However, you are applying this to Ukraine against the evidence of Crimea post 2014. Russia 'held' Crimea for 8 years and it has not gone badly because the reality is that, to some degree, it has the consent of those it governs. This is also likely to be true of the regimes it created in the east of Ukraine. The 'peace' is likely to be based on some kind of formalisation of this position, which Putin can sell as a 'win' .
Boris leaving Downing Street. The country is in a worse state than when he arrived.
Asleep at the wheel on key issues, actively harmful on others, and chucked out by his party because he broke his own laws. Worse PM of my lifetime. Good riddance.
"Asleep at the wheel on key issues"
That's rubbish. He has faced two massive threats in two years: Covid and Ukraine - more strife than Blair faced in nearly ten years. On Ukraine Boris has been excellent: and on Covid middling (some parts, such as vaccines, he was very good).
Boris was not brought down by his decisions in government: until a little over a year ago he was riding high in the polls. He was brought down by personal decisions that highlighted some massive character flaws that had been obvious since his MoL days.
Without those flaws, the Conservatives would probably be showing healthy polling leads. And that's a danger for Labour.
Boris let the inflation genie out of the bottle, we are in weak position compared to similar economies. The NHS is in a hell of a state. Social care reform was dropped. The Ukraine situation developed as London suckled on Russian money.
Meanwhile Blair had 9/11, the dot com crash, a hot war in Europe and enabled peace in Northern Ireland.
Alternative history is a fun but fruitless project. Nonetheless, over recent months it's very hard to argue that Johnson was doing more than going through the motions, and in the last few weeks not even that.
The bottom line is that the Crimean war gave us ample warning to break our dependency on Russian hydrocarbons and finance. We didn’t. We’re running around trying to do that now. It’s a bit pathetic. The current crisis was avoidable if we weren’t distracted.
The UK itself had very little structural dependence on hydrocarbons from Russia. The problem is the dependency of others which is now meaning increased competition for a reduced supply.
If Europe had focused on energy security rather than Brexit for the past six years we all would have been in a better place. No-one was talking about Russia until it was too late. We were all looking inward and left the back door open.
LOL! So Germany and others making themselves reliant on Russian energy is the fault of Brexit? Really?
Good morning PB.
Brexit didn't cause the problem, but it made it harder to solve by taking our eye off the ball.
Boris leaving Downing Street. The country is in a worse state than when he arrived.
Asleep at the wheel on key issues, actively harmful on others, and chucked out by his party because he broke his own laws. Worse PM of my lifetime. Good riddance.
"Asleep at the wheel on key issues"
That's rubbish. He has faced two massive threats in two years: Covid and Ukraine - more strife than Blair faced in nearly ten years. On Ukraine Boris has been excellent: and on Covid middling (some parts, such as vaccines, he was very good).
Boris was not brought down by his decisions in government: until a little over a year ago he was riding high in the polls. He was brought down by personal decisions that highlighted some massive character flaws that had been obvious since his MoL days.
Without those flaws, the Conservatives would probably be showing healthy polling leads. And that's a danger for Labour.
Boris let the inflation genie out of the bottle, we are in weak position compared to similar economies. The NHS is in a hell of a state. Social care reform was dropped. The Ukraine situation developed as London suckled on Russian money.
Meanwhile Blair had 9/11, the dot com crash, a hot war in Europe and enabled peace in Northern Ireland.
Every western nation has high inflation, indeed Spain and the Netherlands higher than us because of the sanctions imposed after the Ukraine war. Boris ensured nobody pays more than £86k for social care costs residential or domestic.
"Boris ensured nobody pays more than £86k for social care costs residential or domestic" is a downright lie. I have explained to you before that you are wrong but you persist with this untruth. Check the dates, and check the terms and conditions. You are peddling a falsehood, I know this because every month I transfer £5.5k to a care home in England to cover a relative's care costs. This will continue until the property is sold or the property is handed over to Herefordshire Council.
By 2023 when the change comes into law it will be true
October 2023 is a long way away for @Mexicanpete and others including our family, and you simply cannot be allowed to make misleading statements as you are prone to do
It was not misleading, if it was not for Boris those with dementia would see potentially all their assets still gone to pay for residential care costs through to the next election in 2024 and beyond.
Show some gratitude to Boris for that!!
You were grossly misleading. "Nobody pays more than £86k" is what happens now. Right now, in the current financial year which began in April.
You are being appallingly mannered in your attacks on BigG and Mexcanpete, especially as they have to cope with the reality behind your convenient misstatement.
And there's nothing to stop the legislation being cancelled before it is brought into actual effect. So a bit early to be grateful to "Boris" for spending yet more money to keep Tory Party pensioner members in the state to which they have become all too accustomed.
One nice touch I thought was placement of Downing St staff in the front row for Boris/Carrie to bid farewell to with the politicians restricted to the end of the line up.
Will Johnson fly from Northolt or Stansted? For some reason the A321 G-XATW is currently in Cairns…
Oh, that’s interesting. Military plane for the PM then?
Grob Tutor from ESUAS at Leuchars.
LOL, even I’ve flown one of those!
He got an RAF Falcon 900, KRF18, departed Northolt 5 mins ago.
Made in France.
That. Is. A. Dis. Grace.
Also, it's "RAF" not RAF because they are operated by civvie crews from Centreline.
Yes, civvy crew. Who are the usual pax on these, the brass hats?
I don't think that is well defined. They were part of Johnson's VIP a/c spending spree. The one part of the armed forces that he liked spending money on.
Presumably it was cheaper to lease a couple of Falcons, than to keep the fleet of ageing 146s somewhere approaching serviceable? At least the PoW doesn’t fly them himself any more.
Re the 146s, quite so, but are the Falcons leased? That article I cited earlier says they'll be fitted with military kit (I imagine comms and anti-SAM stuff). Yet the one en route to Aberdeen has a civilian registration. G-ZAHS
From reading that piece, it sounds like they will eventually become mil aircraft, but there’s quite the process to go through in terms of equipment and training - so they were initially delivered to, and are being operated as, civvy aircraft by a private company in the meantime, presumably under some sort of lease agreement with the government.
She has a very difficult year or two ahead of her, and I hope she is up to the pressure. She’ll need a very strong private support network to get through this reasonably intact and healthy.
I identified her as a likely star early on, but I fear her timing is atrocious. She looks like a sacrificial lamb, and that awful speech made her sound like Larry the Lamb. Boris Johnson admired from Kiev to Carlisle? You could hear the tumbleweed. Fire that writer.
We all hope that her grasp of economics is significantly better that she displayed during the leadership hustings. If it is then she has a chance. A slim one but a chance. Expectations are so low that she doesn’t need to achieve much to exceed them.
On the Scottish question, my advice simply consists of 2 words: respect and friendship. Being the cynic I am, I confidently predict that she will comprehensively ignore my advice. No biggie.
Given Sturgeon is squealing about independence and indyref2 every 5 minutes and breaking away from the hated UK, let us not forget it takes 2 to tango. She can have respect and friendship with a Scotland in the UK but not with the SNP
Hate to point out the obvious, but Scotland is in the UK, yet you Tories still refuse to respect her and maintain friendly relations. You are making your own bed, so I hope you enjoy lying in it.
Yes we do, Holyrood has not been scrapped, Sturgeon has not been arrested, direct rule has not been imposed
That's your standard for friendly and cooperative relationships?
With the SNP yes
Who happen to be the elected government at Holyrood, and the overwhelming majority at Westminster.
And whose main aim is to break up the UK
Well, if you won't address the reasons for the decline in Unionism, which include your own behaviour and your party's, then there's not much one can do with you.
Unionism is still on about 50% at least.
If you still won't stop bleating about indyref2 and disrespecting the 2014 referendum result there is also not much that can be done with you
Only 50%? That's an absolute disaster for Unionism, on any objective historical perspective. Your quibbling over one or teo percentage points and whether or not to include DNV doesn't change that.
No it isn't, 55% voted for Unionism in 2014, despite Scots voted 62% to remain in the EU 50% still back the Union at least in most polls.
Hence correctly indyref2 will continue to be refused
The UK is governed by polls? Rather than political parties establishing mandates by election to parliament? Aren't you becoming a dangerous subversive?
From the comments of Tory supporters on the thread, you would think everything in the UK is fine and dandy and that Boris left over personal issues and technicalities. That feels a smidgen complacent.
To be honest I simply cannot imagine anyone thinks everything is fine and dandy 8n the UK when it manifestly is not
For me the only person responsible for Johnson being out of office today is Johnson himself and his behaviour, especially over partygate, shredded any goodwill he had and resulted in the inevitable
I do not know if Truss will succeed but if she comes up with a 2 year energy price freeze the public are likely to act positively
Labour spokespersons today only seem to be able to research windfall tax as their answer to this crisis but frankly a windfall rax is a sticking plaster and goes nowhere near addressing the problem
You said the Covid and Ukraine was all good, glossing over obvious issues. Others said social care policy was great, despite the hospital beds blocking. All the problems come from elsewhere and everything is being handled brilliantly. Not my fault gov! The implication is that the nation should be grateful. Like I say, a tad complacent.
I did not suggest anything was handled brilliantly as that would be silly, but certainly on covid and Ukraine Johnson was far more attuned to dealing with them than Starmer who on covid would have had us in lockdown near indefinitely
A friend of mine (Anglo-Russian, anti-war) returned from Moscow last night (via a flight from Turkey).
He reports that there was little visible war propaganda in Moscow, no signs of shortages of food. The shops were well-stocked (in fact, he said, better than before the war).
There were not many visible signs of dissent, people were enjoying themselves in central Moscow in bars, etc.
He concludes Moscow has successful managed to ignore the war.
Of course, he was only in parts of Moscow.
But, it seems clear that Russia is not about to collapse, sanctions have seemingly not had much visible effect on the lives of ordinary people at least in Moscow and there is no sign of the end of Putin's regime.
Putin's regime won't fall from of a lack of food in Moscow, it will come about because they lack the resources to continue to fight in Ukraine.
Where do the troops come from? Where do the shells? The tanks? The helicopters? The bullets?
If you have money, someone will always sell you bullets & shells.
My own view is close to that of @NickPalmer . The war is heading for a stalemate.
Tell us how you think the next few months will pan out. And we can compare notes in 6 months time.
That's a fair challenge.
I think the war will end early in 2023, when the Russians become unable to supply their troops in Ukraine. Because that is the real challenge. And it's not just buying the bullets, you need to buy the bullets and shells that fit your weapons. Which is why, of course, that the Russians are buying up the stocks of the North Koreans.
But even before 2023, the signs of strain will become increasingly obvious. A large number of Russian troops will be captured west of the Dnieper. And that will be a shock: because until now, yes, people have been injured or died, but suddenly someone's son will be on the Internet as a prisoner of war. That's a lot harder to hide.
And Russia doesn't have an infinite number of young men able to go into battle. And they're not fighting to defend their homes. They're poorly equipped, and increasingly poorly supplied, fighting people who are supposed to be welcoming them with open arms.
The signs of Russia's defeat are increasingly clear: the abandoned referendum, the desire to start talks, the raiding of the asylum for soldiers, the desperate purchases from North Korea.
And all the while, the West keeps sending weapons to Ukraine, while the Ukrainian army gets better trained.
Stalemate requires Ukraine not to be capable of offensive operations, and it requires the Russians to be capable of defensive operations, and on repelling the inevitable attrition that comes from holding on in a hostile land.
A friend of mine (Anglo-Russian, anti-war) returned from Moscow last night (via a flight from Turkey).
He reports that there was little visible war propaganda in Moscow, no signs of shortages of food. The shops were well-stocked (in fact, he said, better than before the war).
There were not many visible signs of dissent, people were enjoying themselves in central Moscow in bars, etc.
He concludes Moscow has successful managed to ignore the war.
Of course, he was only in parts of Moscow.
But, it seems clear that Russia is not about to collapse, sanctions have seemingly not had much visible effect on the lives of ordinary people at least in Moscow and there is no sign of the end of Putin's regime.
Putin's regime won't fall from of a lack of food in Moscow, it will come about because they lack the resources to continue to fight in Ukraine.
Where do the troops come from? Where do the shells? The tanks? The helicopters? The bullets?
Who fell from office in Russia (or later in the US or Britain) when the invaders had to call it a day in Afghanistan? Nixon didn't fall over Vietnam either.
You might be able to posit a parallel with Khrushchev over Cuba-Turkey-Italy.
Who do you think is most likely to replace Putin when he leaves office? I reckon Shoigu. It won't be a populist figure who would bring an atmosphere of rapid chops and changes at the top whether he wanted to or not. It will be a Mr Stability. The Moscow middle class doesn't get to choose.
She has a very difficult year or two ahead of her, and I hope she is up to the pressure. She’ll need a very strong private support network to get through this reasonably intact and healthy.
I identified her as a likely star early on, but I fear her timing is atrocious. She looks like a sacrificial lamb, and that awful speech made her sound like Larry the Lamb. Boris Johnson admired from Kiev to Carlisle? You could hear the tumbleweed. Fire that writer.
We all hope that her grasp of economics is significantly better that she displayed during the leadership hustings. If it is then she has a chance. A slim one but a chance. Expectations are so low that she doesn’t need to achieve much to exceed them.
On the Scottish question, my advice simply consists of 2 words: respect and friendship. Being the cynic I am, I confidently predict that she will comprehensively ignore my advice. No biggie.
Given Sturgeon is squealing about independence and indyref2 every 5 minutes and breaking away from the hated UK, let us not forget it takes 2 to tango. She can have respect and friendship with a Scotland in the UK but not with the SNP
Hate to point out the obvious, but Scotland is in the UK, yet you Tories still refuse to respect her and maintain friendly relations. You are making your own bed, so I hope you enjoy lying in it.
Yes we do, Holyrood has not been scrapped, Sturgeon has not been arrested, direct rule has not been imposed
That's your standard for friendly and cooperative relationships?
With the SNP yes
Who happen to be the elected government at Holyrood, and the overwhelming majority at Westminster.
And whose main aim is to break up the UK
Well, if you won't address the reasons for the decline in Unionism, which include your own behaviour and your party's, then there's not much one can do with you.
Hmm. Unionism appears to have been pretty stable since 2014 - the main issue for Sturgeon is there has not been any significant shift despite Brexit, Boris and older voters dying off.
I was thinking more over my lifetime, actually! But quite so. The post-2014 era near-stasis works for both sides, though.
Similar predictions from many other, reasonably sober pundits.
Lowest %age of the members vote, ever.
Not the MPs first pick.
Talk of her effective majority slashed to a dozen or less.
Her rigid ideology will not survive contact with reality.
Boris in the wings.
Etc etc.
I think this analysis is wrong. While I’m sure her enemies, and the media will talk up challenges, I’m pretty sure she’s safe until a GE. She has lots of cards to play (indeed, including calling a snap election to shut up her critics) and I simply don’t think there’s the appetite for another change of leader among MPs and members, so soon after Boris.
So, yeah, that’s a prediction from me:
The tories will not ditch Truss before the next election.
I agree.
And punters agree.
Liz Truss exit year:
2025 or later 2.86 2024 3 2023 5 2022 15.5
The value there is 2023. A snap GE is her only hope. If she kicks the can she’s a goner.
"Her only hope"?
There are plenty of scenarios where Ms Truss does well, and plenty where she does poorly.
Like with most politicians, it's largely out of her hands.
Aha. That old peach: fate versus agency.
I happen to believe that individual specimens of H. s. sapiens do have agency. Especially heads of government.
There are vanishingly few scenarios where the hairless ape about to enter a terraced house in central London does well, and a mountain of scenarios where she does appallingly poorly. Where she ends up will partly be due to her own decisions and deeds.
I don't deny her agency, I merely point to the fact that if the Russian invasion of Ukraine fails (and with it the Putin regime), then the economic outlook will look very different to a situation where war drags on and gas becomes ever scarcer.
I am quite interested as to why people think that the 'fall of the Putin regime' will lead to cheaper gas. Where is this compliant Russian regime going to come from? All Russian politicians seem to espouse various forms of nationalism, this includes Navalny. How can a national humiliation on the battlefield lead to more compliance with the west? If Russia gets 'beaten back' to its pre 2014 borders, it seems that they are unlikely to respond by doing a deal with the west, it seems more likely that they will look to doing a "deal" with China. I think that the only way that the gas etc starts being pumped again, is through some kind of 'deal' with the current regime. Obviously the flipside of such a 'deal' is that the current regime has time to rearm itself before round 3 of its war on Ukraine. So I am very much unconvinced that the answer is in 'beating back' Russia. The easiest way back to get the economy moving may be through some kind of poisonous unofficial stalemate much like what existed pre March of this year, Putin just declares some kind of victory and 'operation over'.
I disagree.
At some point, Russia's ability to fight in Ukraine comes to an end. Them buying ammunition from the North Koreans and raiding the asylums for soliders suggests that that might be nearer than we imagine.
What happens then?
Well, I would suggest that Putin is unlikely to survive defeat in Ukraine.
But changing the leader doesn't change the situation on the ground. They can be as nationalist as they like, but reality has to intervene.
If Putin falls, the next leader has to find some kind of peace with the West, because Russia depends on Western technology to extract the oil and gas that they sell to the World.
I don't see this. It seems like Ukraine is basically a mercenary invasion, the soldiers are poor people enticed by high wages. There is no significant conscription or general mobilisation. The fact that there are adverts in odd places is not really all that significant in the scheme of things. There are lots of 'anecdotes' and 'reports' but not too much weight should be put on them, in my opinion. If the position is really bad, to the point where it is endangering his position, Putin can quit and declare victory at any point, as the situation stands. Obviously, he was expecting a 2014 style cakewalk and this has not gone to plan. But Putin has adapted to the situation and is still really holding all the cards here as far as I can see. I think that he is calculating that he can sow greater discord and chaos in the west (and across the world) by continuing the war, and this outweighs any domestic difficulties that may occur in consequence.
As an example of this, Putin has played a blinder with the gas prices thing, Zarah Sultana leading 'enough is enough' and Boris Johnson was telling them that it is all the price we have to pay for 'beating back' Putin, Now Liz Truss comes along and says that the solution is in tax cuts for the rich.
I disagree with every part of your analysis.
Firstly, whether it is "mercenary" or not, the Russian troops in Ukraine have to be resupplied, with food and weapons and ammunition. If that ceases, their ability to fight disappears.
Secondly, the Russians are trying to just hold on right now. And it's not going so well. It's entirely possible that thousands - perhaps as many as ten thousand - Russians on the West side of the Dneiper are going to end up captured.
And on the gas price, yes the Russians have sown discord.
But they've also accelerated the move of economies away from gas (Germany stopping their planned nuclear shutdowns for example), as well as ensuring that a host of new LNG projects go forward.
That means that the share of energy provided by natural gas in the future will be lower, and Russia's market share will be smaller. And the longer the Russians take to come back to the table, the worse their situation will be, because those projects will be live.
I am a bit cautious about going on this line, because soon I fear that I will be accused of being a 'Putin troll', which I am not, I have given a lot of money to support Ukraine in the early part of the invasion.
Needless to say though, that Ukraine are relying on western weapons to keep the current situation afloat - this also imposes costs on western countries which cannot be perpetuated indefinetly; particularly in addition to the energy bills problem, which will (I assume) take 3-5 years to sort out by way of diversification away from gas.
There is a reoffensive by the Ukrainians around Kherson for sure, but this is to be expected in some kind of war situation, it seems to me to be a bit optimistic to make the automatic assumption that it will be successful. Even the potential 'loss' of Kherson is not existential for Russia, in the same way that its 'retreat' from Kiev was not existential in the early weeks of the conflict. The capture of 10000 troops would be a bit of a disappointment and an annoyance, but probably short change for Russia.
I think the problem here that you haven't responded to, is that if it really is looking bad for Russia, why don't they just quit whilst they are ahead? They must actually believe that they are winning in some way.
Ultimately, I've personally come to the point of view that we should be working to an endgame other than the 'complete defeat of Putin'.
How can they 'quit'?
They are in a war now, and quitting means removing troops from Ukraine. Otherwise they are in the same position the Russians were in Afghanistan, or the Americans were in Iraq. Except it'll be worse, because Ukraine is not fundamentally defeated.
Remember invasion is usually the easy part: it's holding what you've grabbed that is difficult.
The analogy with the invasion of Afghanistans seems to me to be a poor one.
No-one (except a tiny Government elite) wanted the Russians in Afghanistan.
By contrast, there is a substantial part of the population in Donbas and Crimea that considers itself Russian. In some parts, even a majority. And the War will have exacerbated this, as many with pro-Ukrainian sympathies will have left the smouldering ruins in the East created by the Russian army.
My guess is that we will end up with a de facto boundary close to the present frontline.
Maybe Russia will take the rest of Donetsk, maybe Ukraine will retake Kherson.
I don't think Russia will have too great a difficulty holding on to most of what they have taken. After all, Ukraine has been trying to recapture some of this territory for nearly a decade.
Betfair Sportsbook has now paid out (a couple of hours prematurely) on Liz Truss as next Prime Minister. Bet365 is waiting till she's fed Larry the Cat (or I've forgotten where I backed her). All the "next leader" bets paid out yesterday, of course.
She has a very difficult year or two ahead of her, and I hope she is up to the pressure. She’ll need a very strong private support network to get through this reasonably intact and healthy.
I identified her as a likely star early on, but I fear her timing is atrocious. She looks like a sacrificial lamb, and that awful speech made her sound like Larry the Lamb. Boris Johnson admired from Kiev to Carlisle? You could hear the tumbleweed. Fire that writer.
We all hope that her grasp of economics is significantly better that she displayed during the leadership hustings. If it is then she has a chance. A slim one but a chance. Expectations are so low that she doesn’t need to achieve much to exceed them.
On the Scottish question, my advice simply consists of 2 words: respect and friendship. Being the cynic I am, I confidently predict that she will comprehensively ignore my advice. No biggie.
Given Sturgeon is squealing about independence and indyref2 every 5 minutes and breaking away from the hated UK, let us not forget it takes 2 to tango. She can have respect and friendship with a Scotland in the UK but not with the SNP
Hate to point out the obvious, but Scotland is in the UK, yet you Tories still refuse to respect her and maintain friendly relations. You are making your own bed, so I hope you enjoy lying in it.
Can I just correct you
@HYUFD does not represent this conservative who wants friendly relationships with Scotland
@StuartDickson has won this argument. He's got you all talking about "friendly relationships" like Scotland is Argentina or something.
I have never wanted anything other than a friendly relationship with Scotland not least because half of my family are Scots
Similar predictions from many other, reasonably sober pundits.
Lowest %age of the members vote, ever.
Not the MPs first pick.
Talk of her effective majority slashed to a dozen or less.
Her rigid ideology will not survive contact with reality.
Boris in the wings.
Etc etc.
I think this analysis is wrong. While I’m sure her enemies, and the media will talk up challenges, I’m pretty sure she’s safe until a GE. She has lots of cards to play (indeed, including calling a snap election to shut up her critics) and I simply don’t think there’s the appetite for another change of leader among MPs and members, so soon after Boris.
So, yeah, that’s a prediction from me:
The tories will not ditch Truss before the next election.
I agree.
And punters agree.
Liz Truss exit year:
2025 or later 2.86 2024 3 2023 5 2022 15.5
The value there is 2023. A snap GE is her only hope. If she kicks the can she’s a goner.
"Her only hope"?
There are plenty of scenarios where Ms Truss does well, and plenty where she does poorly.
Like with most politicians, it's largely out of her hands.
Aha. That old peach: fate versus agency.
I happen to believe that individual specimens of H. s. sapiens do have agency. Especially heads of government.
There are vanishingly few scenarios where the hairless ape about to enter a terraced house in central London does well, and a mountain of scenarios where she does appallingly poorly. Where she ends up will partly be due to her own decisions and deeds.
I don't deny her agency, I merely point to the fact that if the Russian invasion of Ukraine fails (and with it the Putin regime), then the economic outlook will look very different to a situation where war drags on and gas becomes ever scarcer.
I am quite interested as to why people think that the 'fall of the Putin regime' will lead to cheaper gas. Where is this compliant Russian regime going to come from? All Russian politicians seem to espouse various forms of nationalism, this includes Navalny. How can a national humiliation on the battlefield lead to more compliance with the west? If Russia gets 'beaten back' to its pre 2014 borders, it seems that they are unlikely to respond by doing a deal with the west, it seems more likely that they will look to doing a "deal" with China. I think that the only way that the gas etc starts being pumped again, is through some kind of 'deal' with the current regime. Obviously the flipside of such a 'deal' is that the current regime has time to rearm itself before round 3 of its war on Ukraine. So I am very much unconvinced that the answer is in 'beating back' Russia. The easiest way back to get the economy moving may be through some kind of poisonous unofficial stalemate much like what existed pre March of this year, Putin just declares some kind of victory and 'operation over'.
I disagree.
At some point, Russia's ability to fight in Ukraine comes to an end. Them buying ammunition from the North Koreans and raiding the asylums for soliders suggests that that might be nearer than we imagine.
What happens then?
Well, I would suggest that Putin is unlikely to survive defeat in Ukraine.
But changing the leader doesn't change the situation on the ground. They can be as nationalist as they like, but reality has to intervene.
If Putin falls, the next leader has to find some kind of peace with the West, because Russia depends on Western technology to extract the oil and gas that they sell to the World.
I don't see this. It seems like Ukraine is basically a mercenary invasion, the soldiers are poor people enticed by high wages. There is no significant conscription or general mobilisation. The fact that there are adverts in odd places is not really all that significant in the scheme of things. There are lots of 'anecdotes' and 'reports' but not too much weight should be put on them, in my opinion. If the position is really bad, to the point where it is endangering his position, Putin can quit and declare victory at any point, as the situation stands. Obviously, he was expecting a 2014 style cakewalk and this has not gone to plan. But Putin has adapted to the situation and is still really holding all the cards here as far as I can see. I think that he is calculating that he can sow greater discord and chaos in the west (and across the world) by continuing the war, and this outweighs any domestic difficulties that may occur in consequence.
As an example of this, Putin has played a blinder with the gas prices thing, Zarah Sultana leading 'enough is enough' and Boris Johnson was telling them that it is all the price we have to pay for 'beating back' Putin, Now Liz Truss comes along and says that the solution is in tax cuts for the rich.
I disagree with every part of your analysis.
Firstly, whether it is "mercenary" or not, the Russian troops in Ukraine have to be resupplied, with food and weapons and ammunition. If that ceases, their ability to fight disappears.
Secondly, the Russians are trying to just hold on right now. And it's not going so well. It's entirely possible that thousands - perhaps as many as ten thousand - Russians on the West side of the Dneiper are going to end up captured.
And on the gas price, yes the Russians have sown discord.
But they've also accelerated the move of economies away from gas (Germany stopping their planned nuclear shutdowns for example), as well as ensuring that a host of new LNG projects go forward.
That means that the share of energy provided by natural gas in the future will be lower, and Russia's market share will be smaller. And the longer the Russians take to come back to the table, the worse their situation will be, because those projects will be live.
I am a bit cautious about going on this line, because soon I fear that I will be accused of being a 'Putin troll', which I am not, I have given a lot of money to support Ukraine in the early part of the invasion.
Needless to say though, that Ukraine are relying on western weapons to keep the current situation afloat - this also imposes costs on western countries which cannot be perpetuated indefinetly; particularly in addition to the energy bills problem, which will (I assume) take 3-5 years to sort out by way of diversification away from gas.
There is a reoffensive by the Ukrainians around Kherson for sure, but this is to be expected in some kind of war situation, it seems to me to be a bit optimistic to make the automatic assumption that it will be successful. Even the potential 'loss' of Kherson is not existential for Russia, in the same way that its 'retreat' from Kiev was not existential in the early weeks of the conflict. The capture of 10000 troops would be a bit of a disappointment and an annoyance, but probably short change for Russia.
I think the problem here that you haven't responded to, is that if it really is looking bad for Russia, why don't they just quit whilst they are ahead? They must actually believe that they are winning in some way.
Ultimately, I've personally come to the point of view that we should be working to an endgame other than the 'complete defeat of Putin'.
How can they 'quit'?
They are in a war now, and quitting means removing troops from Ukraine. Otherwise they are in the same position the Russians were in Afghanistan, or the Americans were in Iraq. Except it'll be worse, because Ukraine is not fundamentally defeated.
Remember invasion is usually the easy part: it's holding what you've grabbed that is difficult.
'quit while they are ahead'. Not 'quit Ukraine', airlift of Kabul style. They quit by just working with France/Germany to get some kind of peace, we know that Macron will jump at the chance. There are many exit options for Putin that never even remotely existed in Afghanistan or Iraq.
I agree with your analysis about the general principle of it being difficult to hold land you have invaded. However, you are applying this to Ukraine against the evidence of Crimea post 2014. Russia 'held' Crimea for 8 years and it has not gone badly because the reality is that, to some degree, it has the consent of those it governs. This is also likely to be true of the regimes it created in the east of Ukraine. The 'peace' is likely to be based on some kind of formalisation of this position, which Putin can sell as a 'win' .
The French talk peace, but they've been shipping plenty of arms to Ukraine. They're third by value after the US and the UK.
They also don't need the gas. Indeed, France is probably benefitting right now from being the European country with the cheapest energy: hence why France's PMIs are comfortably showing economic expansion.
Angela Rayner on R4 Today: jeepers creepers. Mind-bogglingly poor. WTF has happened to the Labour Party? The dearth of talent at the top is excruciatingly painful.
I missed that, but yes the only thing that can make the Labour front bench look good is the government front bench.
But why is that? Why is Labour struggling to recruit talent? I suspect that the years of fluffy Blairite hype, then disillusionment, then extremism, have just put younger people off. There are far better careers for talented people out there than being an MP.
Betfair Sportsbook has now paid out (a couple of hours prematurely) on Liz Truss as next Prime Minister. Bet365 is waiting till she's fed Larry the Cat (or I've forgotten where I backed her). All the "next leader" bets paid out yesterday, of course.
I cashed in my winnings on this weeks ago, for two reasons: - slightly nervous about a black swan (which never materialised) - anxious to pile it all on Wet Leg to win the Mercury.
Similar predictions from many other, reasonably sober pundits.
Lowest %age of the members vote, ever.
Not the MPs first pick.
Talk of her effective majority slashed to a dozen or less.
Her rigid ideology will not survive contact with reality.
Boris in the wings.
Etc etc.
I think this analysis is wrong. While I’m sure her enemies, and the media will talk up challenges, I’m pretty sure she’s safe until a GE. She has lots of cards to play (indeed, including calling a snap election to shut up her critics) and I simply don’t think there’s the appetite for another change of leader among MPs and members, so soon after Boris.
So, yeah, that’s a prediction from me:
The tories will not ditch Truss before the next election.
I agree.
And punters agree.
Liz Truss exit year:
2025 or later 2.86 2024 3 2023 5 2022 15.5
The value there is 2023. A snap GE is her only hope. If she kicks the can she’s a goner.
"Her only hope"?
There are plenty of scenarios where Ms Truss does well, and plenty where she does poorly.
Like with most politicians, it's largely out of her hands.
Aha. That old peach: fate versus agency.
I happen to believe that individual specimens of H. s. sapiens do have agency. Especially heads of government.
There are vanishingly few scenarios where the hairless ape about to enter a terraced house in central London does well, and a mountain of scenarios where she does appallingly poorly. Where she ends up will partly be due to her own decisions and deeds.
I don't deny her agency, I merely point to the fact that if the Russian invasion of Ukraine fails (and with it the Putin regime), then the economic outlook will look very different to a situation where war drags on and gas becomes ever scarcer.
I am quite interested as to why people think that the 'fall of the Putin regime' will lead to cheaper gas. Where is this compliant Russian regime going to come from? All Russian politicians seem to espouse various forms of nationalism, this includes Navalny. How can a national humiliation on the battlefield lead to more compliance with the west? If Russia gets 'beaten back' to its pre 2014 borders, it seems that they are unlikely to respond by doing a deal with the west, it seems more likely that they will look to doing a "deal" with China. I think that the only way that the gas etc starts being pumped again, is through some kind of 'deal' with the current regime. Obviously the flipside of such a 'deal' is that the current regime has time to rearm itself before round 3 of its war on Ukraine. So I am very much unconvinced that the answer is in 'beating back' Russia. The easiest way back to get the economy moving may be through some kind of poisonous unofficial stalemate much like what existed pre March of this year, Putin just declares some kind of victory and 'operation over'.
I disagree.
At some point, Russia's ability to fight in Ukraine comes to an end. Them buying ammunition from the North Koreans and raiding the asylums for soliders suggests that that might be nearer than we imagine.
What happens then?
Well, I would suggest that Putin is unlikely to survive defeat in Ukraine.
But changing the leader doesn't change the situation on the ground. They can be as nationalist as they like, but reality has to intervene.
If Putin falls, the next leader has to find some kind of peace with the West, because Russia depends on Western technology to extract the oil and gas that they sell to the World.
I don't see this. It seems like Ukraine is basically a mercenary invasion, the soldiers are poor people enticed by high wages. There is no significant conscription or general mobilisation. The fact that there are adverts in odd places is not really all that significant in the scheme of things. There are lots of 'anecdotes' and 'reports' but not too much weight should be put on them, in my opinion. If the position is really bad, to the point where it is endangering his position, Putin can quit and declare victory at any point, as the situation stands. Obviously, he was expecting a 2014 style cakewalk and this has not gone to plan. But Putin has adapted to the situation and is still really holding all the cards here as far as I can see. I think that he is calculating that he can sow greater discord and chaos in the west (and across the world) by continuing the war, and this outweighs any domestic difficulties that may occur in consequence.
As an example of this, Putin has played a blinder with the gas prices thing, Zarah Sultana leading 'enough is enough' and Boris Johnson was telling them that it is all the price we have to pay for 'beating back' Putin, Now Liz Truss comes along and says that the solution is in tax cuts for the rich.
I disagree with every part of your analysis.
Firstly, whether it is "mercenary" or not, the Russian troops in Ukraine have to be resupplied, with food and weapons and ammunition. If that ceases, their ability to fight disappears.
Secondly, the Russians are trying to just hold on right now. And it's not going so well. It's entirely possible that thousands - perhaps as many as ten thousand - Russians on the West side of the Dneiper are going to end up captured.
And on the gas price, yes the Russians have sown discord.
But they've also accelerated the move of economies away from gas (Germany stopping their planned nuclear shutdowns for example), as well as ensuring that a host of new LNG projects go forward.
That means that the share of energy provided by natural gas in the future will be lower, and Russia's market share will be smaller. And the longer the Russians take to come back to the table, the worse their situation will be, because those projects will be live.
I am a bit cautious about going on this line, because soon I fear that I will be accused of being a 'Putin troll', which I am not, I have given a lot of money to support Ukraine in the early part of the invasion.
Needless to say though, that Ukraine are relying on western weapons to keep the current situation afloat - this also imposes costs on western countries which cannot be perpetuated indefinetly; particularly in addition to the energy bills problem, which will (I assume) take 3-5 years to sort out by way of diversification away from gas.
There is a reoffensive by the Ukrainians around Kherson for sure, but this is to be expected in some kind of war situation, it seems to me to be a bit optimistic to make the automatic assumption that it will be successful. Even the potential 'loss' of Kherson is not existential for Russia, in the same way that its 'retreat' from Kiev was not existential in the early weeks of the conflict. The capture of 10000 troops would be a bit of a disappointment and an annoyance, but probably short change for Russia.
I think the problem here that you haven't responded to, is that if it really is looking bad for Russia, why don't they just quit whilst they are ahead? They must actually believe that they are winning in some way.
Ultimately, I've personally come to the point of view that we should be working to an endgame other than the 'complete defeat of Putin'.
How can they 'quit'?
They are in a war now, and quitting means removing troops from Ukraine. Otherwise they are in the same position the Russians were in Afghanistan, or the Americans were in Iraq. Except it'll be worse, because Ukraine is not fundamentally defeated.
Remember invasion is usually the easy part: it's holding what you've grabbed that is difficult.
'quit while they are ahead'. Not 'quit Ukraine', airlift of Kabul style. They quit by just working with France/Germany to get some kind of peace, we know that Macron will jump at the chance. There are many exit options for Putin that never even remotely existed in Afghanistan or Iraq.
I agree with your analysis about the general principle of it being difficult to hold land you have invaded. However, you are applying this to Ukraine against the evidence of Crimea post 2014. Russia 'held' Crimea for 8 years and it has not gone badly because the reality is that, to some degree, it has the consent of those it governs. This is also likely to be true of the regimes it created in the east of Ukraine. The 'peace' is likely to be based on some kind of formalisation of this position, which Putin can sell as a 'win' .
An armistice line could run through both the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, with Crimea staying in Russia and the Ukrainian navy staying out of Sevastopol. The Azov Regiment is part of the Ukrainian army now and the understanding would be that Kiev would rein them in. But an armistice is unlikely to be agreed with the Ukrainian NATO membership question remaining wide open.
Boris leaving Downing Street. The country is in a worse state than when he arrived.
Asleep at the wheel on key issues, actively harmful on others, and chucked out by his party because he broke his own laws. Worse PM of my lifetime. Good riddance.
"Asleep at the wheel on key issues"
That's rubbish. He has faced two massive threats in two years: Covid and Ukraine - more strife than Blair faced in nearly ten years. On Ukraine Boris has been excellent: and on Covid middling (some parts, such as vaccines, he was very good).
Boris was not brought down by his decisions in government: until a little over a year ago he was riding high in the polls. He was brought down by personal decisions that highlighted some massive character flaws that had been obvious since his MoL days.
Without those flaws, the Conservatives would probably be showing healthy polling leads. And that's a danger for Labour.
Boris let the inflation genie out of the bottle, we are in weak position compared to similar economies. The NHS is in a hell of a state. Social care reform was dropped. The Ukraine situation developed as London suckled on Russian money.
Meanwhile Blair had 9/11, the dot com crash, a hot war in Europe and enabled peace in Northern Ireland.
Alternative history is a fun but fruitless project. Nonetheless, over recent months it's very hard to argue that Johnson was doing more than going through the motions, and in the last few weeks not even that.
The bottom line is that the Crimean war gave us ample warning to break our dependency on Russian hydrocarbons and finance. We didn’t. We’re running around trying to do that now. It’s a bit pathetic. The current crisis was avoidable if we weren’t distracted.
The UK itself had very little structural dependence on hydrocarbons from Russia. The problem is the dependency of others which is now meaning increased competition for a reduced supply.
If Europe had focused on energy security rather than Brexit for the past six years we all would have been in a better place. No-one was talking about Russia until it was too late. We were all looking inward and left the back door open.
If the EU was an organisation worth being a member of it would have been able to do two things at once, and it would have certainly noticed that it was becoming ever more dependent on a very unfriendly neighbour to the East. That it didn't do so, simply demonstrates yet again what a dysfunctional organisation it is. German energy and industrial policy has been prioritised over the security of a whole continent.
From the comments of Tory supporters on the thread, you would think everything in the UK is fine and dandy and that Boris left over personal issues and technicalities. That feels a smidgen complacent.
To be honest I simply cannot imagine anyone thinks everything is fine and dandy 8n the UK when it manifestly is not
For me the only person responsible for Johnson being out of office today is Johnson himself and his behaviour, especially over partygate, shredded any goodwill he had and resulted in the inevitable
I do not know if Truss will succeed but if she comes up with a 2 year energy price freeze the public are likely to act positively
Labour spokespersons today only seem to be able to research windfall tax as their answer to this crisis but frankly a windfall rax is a sticking plaster and goes nowhere near addressing the problem
You said the Covid and Ukraine was all good, glossing over obvious issues. Others said social care policy was great, despite the hospital beds blocking. All the problems come from elsewhere and everything is being handled brilliantly. Not my fault gov! The implication is that the nation should be grateful. Like I say, a tad complacent.
I did not suggest anything was handled brilliantly as that would be silly, but certainly on covid and Ukraine Johnson was far more attuned to dealing with them than Starmer who on covid would have had us in lockdown near indefinitely
Boris dithered over lockdown, he went around shaking hands saying everything is fine and ended up nearly dying in hospital. Going late every time was a major failing.
Boris leaving Downing Street. The country is in a worse state than when he arrived.
Asleep at the wheel on key issues, actively harmful on others, and chucked out by his party because he broke his own laws. Worse PM of my lifetime. Good riddance.
"Asleep at the wheel on key issues"
That's rubbish. He has faced two massive threats in two years: Covid and Ukraine - more strife than Blair faced in nearly ten years. On Ukraine Boris has been excellent: and on Covid middling (some parts, such as vaccines, he was very good).
Boris was not brought down by his decisions in government: until a little over a year ago he was riding high in the polls. He was brought down by personal decisions that highlighted some massive character flaws that had been obvious since his MoL days.
Without those flaws, the Conservatives would probably be showing healthy polling leads. And that's a danger for Labour.
Boris let the inflation genie out of the bottle, we are in weak position compared to similar economies. The NHS is in a hell of a state. Social care reform was dropped. The Ukraine situation developed as London suckled on Russian money.
Meanwhile Blair had 9/11, the dot com crash, a hot war in Europe and enabled peace in Northern Ireland.
Every western nation has high inflation, indeed Spain and the Netherlands higher than us because of the sanctions imposed after the Ukraine war. Boris ensured nobody pays more than £86k for social care costs residential or domestic.
"Boris ensured nobody pays more than £86k for social care costs residential or domestic" is a downright lie. I have explained to you before that you are wrong but you persist with this untruth. Check the dates, and check the terms and conditions. You are peddling a falsehood, I know this because every month I transfer £5.5k to a care home in England to cover a relative's care costs. This will continue until the property is sold or the property is handed over to Herefordshire Council.
By 2023 when the change comes into law it will be true
October 2023 is a long way away for @Mexicanpete and others including our family, and you simply cannot be allowed to make misleading statements as you are prone to do
It was not misleading, if it was not for Boris those with dementia would see potentially all their assets still gone to pay for residential care costs through to the next election in 2024 and beyond.
Show some gratitude to Boris for that!!
It was misleading as it does not come in for another 12 months which you omitted to mention
I have no problem with Johnson dealings on brexit, covid and Ukraine but ultimately he lost the premiership entirely by himself
Another plane at Northolt taking Truss to Balmoral
That's bonkers, why didn't they go on the same plane? We're in the middle of an energy crisis! And Johnson could have shared some of his top tips for governing/best spots in No 10 for a fumble.
Understand that reorganisation plan looked at earlier in the year - originating in Cabinet Office - has been implemented in full overnight. Policy Unit, Legislative Affairs, Delivery Unit and Data Science will be abolished in No10 and merged into EDS. Civil servants and SpAds out
She has a very difficult year or two ahead of her, and I hope she is up to the pressure. She’ll need a very strong private support network to get through this reasonably intact and healthy.
I identified her as a likely star early on, but I fear her timing is atrocious. She looks like a sacrificial lamb, and that awful speech made her sound like Larry the Lamb. Boris Johnson admired from Kiev to Carlisle? You could hear the tumbleweed. Fire that writer.
We all hope that her grasp of economics is significantly better that she displayed during the leadership hustings. If it is then she has a chance. A slim one but a chance. Expectations are so low that she doesn’t need to achieve much to exceed them.
On the Scottish question, my advice simply consists of 2 words: respect and friendship. Being the cynic I am, I confidently predict that she will comprehensively ignore my advice. No biggie.
Given Sturgeon is squealing about independence and indyref2 every 5 minutes and breaking away from the hated UK, let us not forget it takes 2 to tango. She can have respect and friendship with a Scotland in the UK but not with the SNP
Hate to point out the obvious, but Scotland is in the UK, yet you Tories still refuse to respect her and maintain friendly relations. You are making your own bed, so I hope you enjoy lying in it.
Can I just correct you
@HYUFD does not represent this conservative who wants friendly relationships with Scotland
@StuartDickson has won this argument. He's got you all talking about "friendly relationships" like Scotland is Argentina or something.
I have never wanted anything other than a friendly relationship with Scotland not least because half of my family are Scots
People like Boris and his acolytes here and Lord Cruddas types like to talk about being conservatives, and often trumpet their support of our parliamentary system, but its notable they actually dont believe in it at all, shown when they consider it inherently wrong for MPs to remove a party leader and PM.
It shows support for institutions and tradition and law is skin deep, and they are actually as radical as Corbyn.
Or indeed the apparent insistence on bringing in opinion polls as a central element, nay excuse, for ignoring parliamentary democracy.
Nah, that's just dumb, and a hostage to fortune to boot.
She has a very difficult year or two ahead of her, and I hope she is up to the pressure. She’ll need a very strong private support network to get through this reasonably intact and healthy.
I identified her as a likely star early on, but I fear her timing is atrocious. She looks like a sacrificial lamb, and that awful speech made her sound like Larry the Lamb. Boris Johnson admired from Kiev to Carlisle? You could hear the tumbleweed. Fire that writer.
We all hope that her grasp of economics is significantly better that she displayed during the leadership hustings. If it is then she has a chance. A slim one but a chance. Expectations are so low that she doesn’t need to achieve much to exceed them.
On the Scottish question, my advice simply consists of 2 words: respect and friendship. Being the cynic I am, I confidently predict that she will comprehensively ignore my advice. No biggie.
Given Sturgeon is squealing about independence and indyref2 every 5 minutes and breaking away from the hated UK, let us not forget it takes 2 to tango. She can have respect and friendship with a Scotland in the UK but not with the SNP
Hate to point out the obvious, but Scotland is in the UK, yet you Tories still refuse to respect her and maintain friendly relations. You are making your own bed, so I hope you enjoy lying in it.
Yes we do, Holyrood has not been scrapped, Sturgeon has not been arrested, direct rule has not been imposed
So, by your definition, the UK not being a fascist dictatorship (yet) = “respect”
I hope you show a tad more respect to your family members, neighbours and work colleagues. Or are you ‘Victorian Dad’ out of Viz?
Boris leaving Downing Street. The country is in a worse state than when he arrived.
Asleep at the wheel on key issues, actively harmful on others, and chucked out by his party because he broke his own laws. Worse PM of my lifetime. Good riddance.
"Asleep at the wheel on key issues"
That's rubbish. He has faced two massive threats in two years: Covid and Ukraine - more strife than Blair faced in nearly ten years. On Ukraine Boris has been excellent: and on Covid middling (some parts, such as vaccines, he was very good).
Boris was not brought down by his decisions in government: until a little over a year ago he was riding high in the polls. He was brought down by personal decisions that highlighted some massive character flaws that had been obvious since his MoL days.
Without those flaws, the Conservatives would probably be showing healthy polling leads. And that's a danger for Labour.
Boris let the inflation genie out of the bottle, we are in weak position compared to similar economies. The NHS is in a hell of a state. Social care reform was dropped. The Ukraine situation developed as London suckled on Russian money.
Meanwhile Blair had 9/11, the dot com crash, a hot war in Europe and enabled peace in Northern Ireland.
Every western nation has high inflation, indeed Spain and the Netherlands higher than us because of the sanctions imposed after the Ukraine war. Boris ensured nobody pays more than £86k for social care costs residential or domestic.
"Boris ensured nobody pays more than £86k for social care costs residential or domestic" is a downright lie. I have explained to you before that you are wrong but you persist with this untruth. Check the dates, and check the terms and conditions. You are peddling a falsehood, I know this because every month I transfer £5.5k to a care home in England to cover a relative's care costs. This will continue until the property is sold or the property is handed over to Herefordshire Council.
By 2023 when the change comes into law it will be true
October 2023 is a long way away for @Mexicanpete and others including our family, and you simply cannot be allowed to make misleading statements as you are prone to do
It was not misleading, if it was not for Boris those with dementia would see potentially all their assets still gone to pay for residential care costs through to the next election in 2024 and beyond.
Show some gratitude to Boris for that!!
You were grossly misleading. "Nobody pays more than £86k" is what happens now. Right now, in the current financial year which began in April.
You are being appallingly mannered in your attacks on BigG and Mexcanpete, especially as they have to cope with the reality behind your convenient misstatement.
And there's nothing to stop the legislation being cancelled before it is brought into actual effect. So a bit early to be grateful to "Boris" for spending yet more money to keep Tory Party pensioner members in the state to which they have become all too accustomed.
It is actually Tory Party pensioners children who would benefit from the inheritance most, selling off their homes to pay for care costs would not make much difference to them as they could not live in them anyway and would be dead when it is passed on
Boris leaving Downing Street. The country is in a worse state than when he arrived.
Asleep at the wheel on key issues, actively harmful on others, and chucked out by his party because he broke his own laws. Worse PM of my lifetime. Good riddance.
"Asleep at the wheel on key issues"
That's rubbish. He has faced two massive threats in two years: Covid and Ukraine - more strife than Blair faced in nearly ten years. On Ukraine Boris has been excellent: and on Covid middling (some parts, such as vaccines, he was very good).
Boris was not brought down by his decisions in government: until a little over a year ago he was riding high in the polls. He was brought down by personal decisions that highlighted some massive character flaws that had been obvious since his MoL days.
Without those flaws, the Conservatives would probably be showing healthy polling leads. And that's a danger for Labour.
Boris let the inflation genie out of the bottle, we are in weak position compared to similar economies. The NHS is in a hell of a state. Social care reform was dropped. The Ukraine situation developed as London suckled on Russian money.
Meanwhile Blair had 9/11, the dot com crash, a hot war in Europe and enabled peace in Northern Ireland.
Every western nation has high inflation, indeed Spain and the Netherlands higher than us because of the sanctions imposed after the Ukraine war. Boris ensured nobody pays more than £86k for social care costs residential or domestic.
"Boris ensured nobody pays more than £86k for social care costs residential or domestic" is a downright lie. I have explained to you before that you are wrong but you persist with this untruth. Check the dates, and check the terms and conditions. You are peddling a falsehood, I know this because every month I transfer £5.5k to a care home in England to cover a relative's care costs. This will continue until the property is sold or the property is handed over to Herefordshire Council.
By 2023 when the change comes into law it will be true
October 2023 is a long way away for @Mexicanpete and others including our family, and you simply cannot be allowed to make misleading statements as you are prone to do
It was not misleading, if it was not for Boris those with dementia would see potentially all their assets still gone to pay for residential care costs through to the next election in 2024 and beyond.
Show some gratitude to Boris for that!!
You were grossly misleading. "Nobody pays more than £86k" is what happens now. Right now, in the current financial year which began in April.
You are being appallingly mannered in your attacks on BigG and Mexcanpete, especially as they have to cope with the reality behind your convenient misstatement.
And there's nothing to stop the legislation being cancelled before it is brought into actual effect. So a bit early to be grateful to "Boris" for spending yet more money to keep Tory Party pensioner members in the state to which they have become all too accustomed.
It is actually Tory Party pensioners children who would benefit from the inheritance most, selling off their homes to pay for care costs would not make much difference to them as they could not live in them anyway and would be dead when it is passed on
So? Parents worry about their children and love to leave them lots of money (within reason). Plus the pensioners will feel they can spend a little more on themselves while they are still alive.
Have you never met a real pensioner thinking along those lines?
Boris leaving Downing Street. The country is in a worse state than when he arrived.
Asleep at the wheel on key issues, actively harmful on others, and chucked out by his party because he broke his own laws. Worse PM of my lifetime. Good riddance.
"Asleep at the wheel on key issues"
That's rubbish. He has faced two massive threats in two years: Covid and Ukraine - more strife than Blair faced in nearly ten years. On Ukraine Boris has been excellent: and on Covid middling (some parts, such as vaccines, he was very good).
Boris was not brought down by his decisions in government: until a little over a year ago he was riding high in the polls. He was brought down by personal decisions that highlighted some massive character flaws that had been obvious since his MoL days.
Without those flaws, the Conservatives would probably be showing healthy polling leads. And that's a danger for Labour.
Boris let the inflation genie out of the bottle, we are in weak position compared to similar economies. The NHS is in a hell of a state. Social care reform was dropped. The Ukraine situation developed as London suckled on Russian money.
Meanwhile Blair had 9/11, the dot com crash, a hot war in Europe and enabled peace in Northern Ireland.
Every western nation has high inflation, indeed Spain and the Netherlands higher than us because of the sanctions imposed after the Ukraine war. Boris ensured nobody pays more than £86k for social care costs residential or domestic.
"Boris ensured nobody pays more than £86k for social care costs residential or domestic" is a downright lie. I have explained to you before that you are wrong but you persist with this untruth. Check the dates, and check the terms and conditions. You are peddling a falsehood, I know this because every month I transfer £5.5k to a care home in England to cover a relative's care costs. This will continue until the property is sold or the property is handed over to Herefordshire Council.
By 2023 when the change comes into law it will be true
October 2023 is a long way away for @Mexicanpete and others including our family, and you simply cannot be allowed to make misleading statements as you are prone to do
It was not misleading, if it was not for Boris those with dementia would see potentially all their assets still gone to pay for residential care costs through to the next election in 2024 and beyond.
Show some gratitude to Boris for that!!
It was misleading because you do not UNDERSTAND what it means. It is simply a headline to you
Another plane at Northolt taking Truss to Balmoral
That's bonkers, why didn't they go on the same plane? We're in the middle of an energy crisis! And Johnson could have shared some of his top tips for governing/best spots in No 10 for a fumble.
BBC said it is a security requirement that they travel separately
Angela Rayner on R4 Today: jeepers creepers. Mind-bogglingly poor. WTF has happened to the Labour Party? The dearth of talent at the top is excruciatingly painful.
She was not any better on BBC
I expect Labour are worried at the prospect of a 2 year energy freeze from Truss
If I was Labour, the least of my worries would be the Conservative Party. They are going to quite merrily destroy themselves without any assistance.
Starmer ought to be scouring the party for talent, or anything even remotely resembling talent. Because if he goes into a GE with the current front bench he is exposing himself to ridicule. Rayner is just not up to the job. Not even close.
Isn't his problem that Rayner has her own separate mandate, so there's a limit to how far she can be demoted? He can make her shadow minister for red hair, but she will still be Deputy Leader.
Rum system, really.
Yes, Rayner was elected Deputy Leader by the membership, so Starmer can’t fire her. It was the same with Tom Watson when Corbyn was leader.
Hide her in a broom cupboard. She must lose Labour a few hundred votes every time she appears in the media. The Labour membership are mad to elect such a poorly suited person to such a prominent position.
Similar predictions from many other, reasonably sober pundits.
Lowest %age of the members vote, ever.
Not the MPs first pick.
Talk of her effective majority slashed to a dozen or less.
Her rigid ideology will not survive contact with reality.
Boris in the wings.
Etc etc.
I think this analysis is wrong. While I’m sure her enemies, and the media will talk up challenges, I’m pretty sure she’s safe until a GE. She has lots of cards to play (indeed, including calling a snap election to shut up her critics) and I simply don’t think there’s the appetite for another change of leader among MPs and members, so soon after Boris.
So, yeah, that’s a prediction from me:
The tories will not ditch Truss before the next election.
I agree.
And punters agree.
Liz Truss exit year:
2025 or later 2.86 2024 3 2023 5 2022 15.5
The value there is 2023. A snap GE is her only hope. If she kicks the can she’s a goner.
"Her only hope"?
There are plenty of scenarios where Ms Truss does well, and plenty where she does poorly.
Like with most politicians, it's largely out of her hands.
Aha. That old peach: fate versus agency.
I happen to believe that individual specimens of H. s. sapiens do have agency. Especially heads of government.
There are vanishingly few scenarios where the hairless ape about to enter a terraced house in central London does well, and a mountain of scenarios where she does appallingly poorly. Where she ends up will partly be due to her own decisions and deeds.
I don't deny her agency, I merely point to the fact that if the Russian invasion of Ukraine fails (and with it the Putin regime), then the economic outlook will look very different to a situation where war drags on and gas becomes ever scarcer.
I am quite interested as to why people think that the 'fall of the Putin regime' will lead to cheaper gas. Where is this compliant Russian regime going to come from? All Russian politicians seem to espouse various forms of nationalism, this includes Navalny. How can a national humiliation on the battlefield lead to more compliance with the west? If Russia gets 'beaten back' to its pre 2014 borders, it seems that they are unlikely to respond by doing a deal with the west, it seems more likely that they will look to doing a "deal" with China. I think that the only way that the gas etc starts being pumped again, is through some kind of 'deal' with the current regime. Obviously the flipside of such a 'deal' is that the current regime has time to rearm itself before round 3 of its war on Ukraine. So I am very much unconvinced that the answer is in 'beating back' Russia. The easiest way back to get the economy moving may be through some kind of poisonous unofficial stalemate much like what existed pre March of this year, Putin just declares some kind of victory and 'operation over'.
I disagree.
At some point, Russia's ability to fight in Ukraine comes to an end. Them buying ammunition from the North Koreans and raiding the asylums for soliders suggests that that might be nearer than we imagine.
What happens then?
Well, I would suggest that Putin is unlikely to survive defeat in Ukraine.
But changing the leader doesn't change the situation on the ground. They can be as nationalist as they like, but reality has to intervene.
If Putin falls, the next leader has to find some kind of peace with the West, because Russia depends on Western technology to extract the oil and gas that they sell to the World.
I don't see this. It seems like Ukraine is basically a mercenary invasion, the soldiers are poor people enticed by high wages. There is no significant conscription or general mobilisation. The fact that there are adverts in odd places is not really all that significant in the scheme of things. There are lots of 'anecdotes' and 'reports' but not too much weight should be put on them, in my opinion. If the position is really bad, to the point where it is endangering his position, Putin can quit and declare victory at any point, as the situation stands. Obviously, he was expecting a 2014 style cakewalk and this has not gone to plan. But Putin has adapted to the situation and is still really holding all the cards here as far as I can see. I think that he is calculating that he can sow greater discord and chaos in the west (and across the world) by continuing the war, and this outweighs any domestic difficulties that may occur in consequence.
As an example of this, Putin has played a blinder with the gas prices thing, Zarah Sultana leading 'enough is enough' and Boris Johnson was telling them that it is all the price we have to pay for 'beating back' Putin, Now Liz Truss comes along and says that the solution is in tax cuts for the rich.
I disagree with every part of your analysis.
Firstly, whether it is "mercenary" or not, the Russian troops in Ukraine have to be resupplied, with food and weapons and ammunition. If that ceases, their ability to fight disappears.
Secondly, the Russians are trying to just hold on right now. And it's not going so well. It's entirely possible that thousands - perhaps as many as ten thousand - Russians on the West side of the Dneiper are going to end up captured.
And on the gas price, yes the Russians have sown discord.
But they've also accelerated the move of economies away from gas (Germany stopping their planned nuclear shutdowns for example), as well as ensuring that a host of new LNG projects go forward.
That means that the share of energy provided by natural gas in the future will be lower, and Russia's market share will be smaller. And the longer the Russians take to come back to the table, the worse their situation will be, because those projects will be live.
I am a bit cautious about going on this line, because soon I fear that I will be accused of being a 'Putin troll', which I am not, I have given a lot of money to support Ukraine in the early part of the invasion.
Needless to say though, that Ukraine are relying on western weapons to keep the current situation afloat - this also imposes costs on western countries which cannot be perpetuated indefinetly; particularly in addition to the energy bills problem, which will (I assume) take 3-5 years to sort out by way of diversification away from gas.
There is a reoffensive by the Ukrainians around Kherson for sure, but this is to be expected in some kind of war situation, it seems to me to be a bit optimistic to make the automatic assumption that it will be successful. Even the potential 'loss' of Kherson is not existential for Russia, in the same way that its 'retreat' from Kiev was not existential in the early weeks of the conflict. The capture of 10000 troops would be a bit of a disappointment and an annoyance, but probably short change for Russia.
I think the problem here that you haven't responded to, is that if it really is looking bad for Russia, why don't they just quit whilst they are ahead? They must actually believe that they are winning in some way.
Ultimately, I've personally come to the point of view that we should be working to an endgame other than the 'complete defeat of Putin'.
You're assuming that Russia and Putin are rational actors and operating with full information. Neither seems accurate. It seems that Russia consistently underestimate Ukraine and its allies, and consistently overestimate their own abilities.
If they wanted to try to force a stalemate then about now would be the time to do it, but the longer it drags on the less ability they have to do so.
If Putin "declares victory" at a point when Ukraine clearly have the advantage and the ability to regain lost ground then why would or should Ukraine accept that? They can and should say that no, Russia needs to leave all of Ukraine back to pre 2014 borders if it wants peace.
Boris leaving Downing Street. The country is in a worse state than when he arrived.
Asleep at the wheel on key issues, actively harmful on others, and chucked out by his party because he broke his own laws. Worse PM of my lifetime. Good riddance.
"Asleep at the wheel on key issues"
That's rubbish. He has faced two massive threats in two years: Covid and Ukraine - more strife than Blair faced in nearly ten years. On Ukraine Boris has been excellent: and on Covid middling (some parts, such as vaccines, he was very good).
Boris was not brought down by his decisions in government: until a little over a year ago he was riding high in the polls. He was brought down by personal decisions that highlighted some massive character flaws that had been obvious since his MoL days.
Without those flaws, the Conservatives would probably be showing healthy polling leads. And that's a danger for Labour.
Boris let the inflation genie out of the bottle, we are in weak position compared to similar economies. The NHS is in a hell of a state. Social care reform was dropped. The Ukraine situation developed as London suckled on Russian money.
Meanwhile Blair had 9/11, the dot com crash, a hot war in Europe and enabled peace in Northern Ireland.
Every western nation has high inflation, indeed Spain and the Netherlands higher than us because of the sanctions imposed after the Ukraine war. Boris ensured nobody pays more than £86k for social care costs residential or domestic.
"Boris ensured nobody pays more than £86k for social care costs residential or domestic" is a downright lie. I have explained to you before that you are wrong but you persist with this untruth. Check the dates, and check the terms and conditions. You are peddling a falsehood, I know this because every month I transfer £5.5k to a care home in England to cover a relative's care costs. This will continue until the property is sold or the property is handed over to Herefordshire Council.
By 2023 when the change comes into law it will be true
October 2023 is a long way away for @Mexicanpete and others including our family, and you simply cannot be allowed to make misleading statements as you are prone to do
It was not misleading, if it was not for Boris those with dementia would see potentially all their assets still gone to pay for residential care costs through to the next election in 2024 and beyond.
Show some gratitude to Boris for that!!
You were grossly misleading. "Nobody pays more than £86k" is what happens now. Right now, in the current financial year which began in April.
You are being appallingly mannered in your attacks on BigG and Mexcanpete, especially as they have to cope with the reality behind your convenient misstatement.
And there's nothing to stop the legislation being cancelled before it is brought into actual effect. So a bit early to be grateful to "Boris" for spending yet more money to keep Tory Party pensioner members in the state to which they have become all too accustomed.
It is actually Tory Party pensioners children who would benefit from the inheritance most, selling off their homes to pay for care costs would not make much difference to them as they could not live in them anyway and would be dead when it is passed on
So? Parents worry about their children and love to leave them lots of money (within reason). Plus the pensioners will feel they can spend a little more on themselves while they are still alive.
Have you never met a real pensioner thinking along those lines?
I agree, hence we should all thank Boris for this wonderful cap on care costs he legislated for. One of his greatest legacies
She has a very difficult year or two ahead of her, and I hope she is up to the pressure. She’ll need a very strong private support network to get through this reasonably intact and healthy.
I identified her as a likely star early on, but I fear her timing is atrocious. She looks like a sacrificial lamb, and that awful speech made her sound like Larry the Lamb. Boris Johnson admired from Kiev to Carlisle? You could hear the tumbleweed. Fire that writer.
We all hope that her grasp of economics is significantly better that she displayed during the leadership hustings. If it is then she has a chance. A slim one but a chance. Expectations are so low that she doesn’t need to achieve much to exceed them.
On the Scottish question, my advice simply consists of 2 words: respect and friendship. Being the cynic I am, I confidently predict that she will comprehensively ignore my advice. No biggie.
Given Sturgeon is squealing about independence and indyref2 every 5 minutes and breaking away from the hated UK, let us not forget it takes 2 to tango. She can have respect and friendship with a Scotland in the UK but not with the SNP
Hate to point out the obvious, but Scotland is in the UK, yet you Tories still refuse to respect her and maintain friendly relations. You are making your own bed, so I hope you enjoy lying in it.
Can I just correct you
@HYUFD does not represent this conservative who wants friendly relationships with Scotland
@StuartDickson has won this argument. He's got you all talking about "friendly relationships" like Scotland is Argentina or something.
I have never wanted anything other than a friendly relationship with Scotland not least because half of my family are Scots
Within the UK
Yes of course but it is upto the Scots to decide, not you
Boris leaving Downing Street. The country is in a worse state than when he arrived.
Asleep at the wheel on key issues, actively harmful on others, and chucked out by his party because he broke his own laws. Worse PM of my lifetime. Good riddance.
What utter rubbish. Boris got Brexit done, delivered the vaccines, supported people and businesses through lockdown and sent weapons and supplied to Ukraine before most world leaders and won the biggest Conservative election victory since Thatcher. Good leaving speech from him too.
Just since WW2 Eden, Heath, Callaghan, Brown and May were all worse PMs than Boris.
Boris had huge charisma and was a great leader. Unfortunately for the Tories their stupid decision to remove him means it is likely all downhill from here for them for a generation, as it was for them when they removed Thatcher in 1990 and as it was for Labour when Blair was pushed to go in 2007
Thought it would be interesting to give my view on the specifics @hyufd commented upon. In fairness to @hyufd in this case all the comments expressed are just opinions (rather than facts) and as such mine are as valid or as worthless.
Boris got Brexit done - If you mean we left yes, but with the worst deal possible. It is a mess. So no. Getting brexit done is not this.
Delivered the vaccines - Yes a good job, as well as some other good jobs eg Nightingale Hospitals. Also some cockups eg track and trace and the inability to resist lying about stuff unnecessarily.
Supported people and businesses - Yes pretty good, but 80% was too generous and a waste of money and some groups were unnecessarily left to fall through the cracks. Understandable initially but inexcusable later eg small limited companies.
Ukraine - Yes excellent, except for slowness and jobs worth stuff with regard to refugees at the start.
Biggest Conservative election win since Thatcher - Yes but circumstances of needing to get Brexit done and Corbyn were the main factors in my opinion.
Good leaving speech - Only heard a bit but it sounded excellent, but lies in it. Why lie. A new nuclear reactor every year for instance.
Worse PMs - I don't know enough about Eden. I don't believe Heath and Callaghan were worse. Brown and May were awful I grant you but what makes a PM worse. Not comparing like with like here. Brown was indecisive, May stubborn and neither could campaign, but Boris was corrupt, lied relentless and came close to breaking the fabric of Government several times. That makes him worse.
Boris has huge charisma - Yes agree.
Now we come to the only bit which I don't think is opinion but the application of logic. Yes it probably is downhill from here but not because they removed Boris an election winner like Thatcher or Blair but because they have come to the end of their time in office. Just because you win well does not mean you will always win well if you stick with the same leader. If Blair and Thatcher had continued they would have eventually lost. It is daft to assume that because Boris won with a big majority he will always win. He clearly wouldn't have done.
Boris leaving Downing Street. The country is in a worse state than when he arrived.
Asleep at the wheel on key issues, actively harmful on others, and chucked out by his party because he broke his own laws. Worse PM of my lifetime. Good riddance.
"Asleep at the wheel on key issues"
That's rubbish. He has faced two massive threats in two years: Covid and Ukraine - more strife than Blair faced in nearly ten years. On Ukraine Boris has been excellent: and on Covid middling (some parts, such as vaccines, he was very good).
Boris was not brought down by his decisions in government: until a little over a year ago he was riding high in the polls. He was brought down by personal decisions that highlighted some massive character flaws that had been obvious since his MoL days.
Without those flaws, the Conservatives would probably be showing healthy polling leads. And that's a danger for Labour.
Boris let the inflation genie out of the bottle, we are in weak position compared to similar economies. The NHS is in a hell of a state. Social care reform was dropped. The Ukraine situation developed as London suckled on Russian money.
Meanwhile Blair had 9/11, the dot com crash, a hot war in Europe and enabled peace in Northern Ireland.
Every western nation has high inflation, indeed Spain and the Netherlands higher than us because of the sanctions imposed after the Ukraine war. Boris ensured nobody pays more than £86k for social care costs residential or domestic.
"Boris ensured nobody pays more than £86k for social care costs residential or domestic" is a downright lie. I have explained to you before that you are wrong but you persist with this untruth. Check the dates, and check the terms and conditions. You are peddling a falsehood, I know this because every month I transfer £5.5k to a care home in England to cover a relative's care costs. This will continue until the property is sold or the property is handed over to Herefordshire Council.
By 2023 when the change comes into law it will be true
October 2023 is a long way away for @Mexicanpete and others including our family, and you simply cannot be allowed to make misleading statements as you are prone to do
It was not misleading, if it was not for Boris those with dementia would see potentially all their assets still gone to pay for residential care costs through to the next election in 2024 and beyond.
Show some gratitude to Boris for that!!
You were grossly misleading. "Nobody pays more than £86k" is what happens now. Right now, in the current financial year which began in April.
You are being appallingly mannered in your attacks on BigG and Mexcanpete, especially as they have to cope with the reality behind your convenient misstatement.
And there's nothing to stop the legislation being cancelled before it is brought into actual effect. So a bit early to be grateful to "Boris" for spending yet more money to keep Tory Party pensioner members in the state to which they have become all too accustomed.
It is actually Tory Party pensioners children who would benefit from the inheritance most, selling off their homes to pay for care costs would not make much difference to them as they could not live in them anyway and would be dead when it is passed on
So? Parents worry about their children and love to leave them lots of money (within reason). Plus the pensioners will feel they can spend a little more on themselves while they are still alive.
Have you never met a real pensioner thinking along those lines?
I agree, hence we should all thank Boris for this wonderful cap on care costs he legislated for. One of his greatest legacies
You think it will survive? It hasn't happened yet. Legacies have a habit of not happening if you anticipate them too much.
Angela Rayner on R4 Today: jeepers creepers. Mind-bogglingly poor. WTF has happened to the Labour Party? The dearth of talent at the top is excruciatingly painful.
I missed that, but yes the only thing that can make the Labour front bench look good is the government front bench.
But why is that? Why is Labour struggling to recruit talent? I suspect that the years of fluffy Blairite hype, then disillusionment, then extremism, have just put younger people off. There are far better careers for talented people out there than being an MP.
Labour doesn't have that many MPs, and almost none in Scotland, a traditional source of talent - which limits the pool they can draw from. Being an MP is a lot of stress, not that well paid, and these days potentially fatal. There are plenty of other jobs in politics and policy other than being an MP that come with less baggage. And it seems to me that the recruitment process favours labour loyalists and people who might make good constituency MPs (not necessarily a bad thing) over finding stars or super-talented people to populate the front bench. I dont think this is a new trend, BTW. I would say that the quality of MPs on the Labour side probably peaked in the 1960s/70s.
Another plane at Northolt taking Truss to Balmoral
That's bonkers, why didn't they go on the same plane? We're in the middle of an energy crisis! And Johnson could have shared some of his top tips for governing/best spots in No 10 for a fumble.
BBC said it is a security requirement that they travel separately
Doesn't make sense. Ms T isn't the PM till he isn't, if you see what I mean. Until then, she's just any old MP.
Comments
This is of course largely because it's in her political interests to do so, whipping up more and more anti-UK (specifically anti-English) xenophobia because she wants ultimately to split off from England. But the toxicity of this relationship is just as much on her as on London and it's ridiculous to pretend otherwise.
They are in a war now, and quitting means removing troops from Ukraine. Otherwise they are in the same position the Russians were in Afghanistan, or the Americans were in Iraq. Except it'll be worse, because Ukraine is not fundamentally defeated.
Remember invasion is usually the easy part: it's holding what you've grabbed that is difficult.
@HYUFD does not represent this conservative who wants friendly relationships with Scotland
You're being a tad silly IMO.
There is this thing called the present tense. And this quite different thing called the future tense.
Unless you are possibly a native speaker of one of those infamous New Guinea languages that has no future tense and are having trouble translating?
It’s possible for someone with the internet and a few world bank statistics to answer most of these questions reasonably objectively given time. We just need to look at our absolute and relative (to similar sized peers) performance on:
- GDP per capita
- Productivity and investment figures
- Median incomes
- Various indices of income and wealth equality
- public and private sector net debt
- Life expectancy
- Performance metrics for transport, education, healthcare, crime etc
- Carbon emissions and air/water quality
- Opinion polling on various identity issues
Prestige on the world stage is the only one it’s difficult to measure. But that’s maybe the least important.
I would expect to see us doing well on a couple of metrics (carbon emissions, debt) and worse on others.
Someone should compile an index. Would be a useful measure ahead of elections.
For me the only person responsible for Johnson being out of office today is Johnson himself and his behaviour, especially over partygate, shredded any goodwill he had and resulted in the inevitable
I do not know if Truss will succeed but if she comes up with a 2 year energy price freeze the public are likely to act positively
Labour spokespersons today only seem to be able to repeat windfall tax as their answer to this crisis, but frankly a windfall rax is a sticking plaster and goes nowhere near addressing the problem
For my money of course, he made enough disastrous mistakes that I think most other prime ministers would have done a better job. But we can't diminish the scale of the problems he had to face.
If you still won't stop bleating about indyref2 and disrespecting the 2014 referendum result there is also not much that can be done with you
Show some gratitude to Boris for that!!
Good morning PB.
You might be able to posit a parallel with Khrushchev over Cuba-Turkey-Italy.
Who do you think is most likely to replace Putin when he leaves office? I reckon Shoigu. It won't be a populist figure who would bring an atmosphere of rapid chops and changes at the top whether he wanted to or not. It will be a Mr Stability. The Moscow middle class doesn't get to choose.
Hence correctly indyref2 will continue to be refused
Bozo out on his arse, and Wordle in two.
Gratitude to Boris Johnson on the furlough scheme ran out pretty quickly.
If Liz fixes the energy price crisis too fast, will everyone have forgotten about it by 2024?
https://mobile.twitter.com/wmarybeard/status/1567039650027413506
If you are curious about Boris Johnson's reference to Cincinnatus in his goodbye speech - he was a 5th century BC Roman politician who saved the state from an invasion, then - job done - returned to his farm ('to his plough'). He was also an enemy of the people.
Not 'quit Ukraine', airlift of Kabul style.
They quit by just working with France/Germany to get some kind of peace, we know that Macron will jump at the chance.
There are many exit options for Putin that never even remotely existed in Afghanistan or Iraq.
I agree with your analysis about the general principle of it being difficult to hold land you have invaded. However, you are applying this to Ukraine against the evidence of Crimea post 2014. Russia 'held' Crimea for 8 years and it has not gone badly because the reality is that, to some degree, it has the consent of those it governs. This is also likely to be true of the regimes it created in the east of Ukraine. The 'peace' is likely to be based on some kind of formalisation of this position, which Putin can sell as a 'win' .
You are being appallingly mannered in your attacks on BigG and Mexcanpete, especially as they have to cope with the reality behind your convenient misstatement.
And there's nothing to stop the legislation being cancelled before it is brought into actual effect. So a bit early to be grateful to "Boris" for spending yet more money to keep Tory Party pensioner members in the state to which they have become all too accustomed.
I think the war will end early in 2023, when the Russians become unable to supply their troops in Ukraine. Because that is the real challenge. And it's not just buying the bullets, you need to buy the bullets and shells that fit your weapons. Which is why, of course, that the Russians are buying up the stocks of the North Koreans.
But even before 2023, the signs of strain will become increasingly obvious. A large number of Russian troops will be captured west of the Dnieper. And that will be a shock: because until now, yes, people have been injured or died, but suddenly someone's son will be on the Internet as a prisoner of war. That's a lot harder to hide.
And Russia doesn't have an infinite number of young men able to go into battle. And they're not fighting to defend their homes. They're poorly equipped, and increasingly poorly supplied, fighting people who are supposed to be welcoming them with open arms.
The signs of Russia's defeat are increasingly clear: the abandoned referendum, the desire to start talks, the raiding of the asylum for soldiers, the desperate purchases from North Korea.
And all the while, the West keeps sending weapons to Ukraine, while the Ukrainian army gets better trained.
Stalemate requires Ukraine not to be capable of offensive operations, and it requires the Russians to be capable of defensive operations, and on repelling the inevitable attrition that comes from holding on in a hostile land.
No-one (except a tiny Government elite) wanted the Russians in Afghanistan.
By contrast, there is a substantial part of the population in Donbas and Crimea that considers itself Russian. In some parts, even a majority. And the War will have exacerbated this, as many with pro-Ukrainian sympathies will have left the smouldering ruins in the East created by the Russian army.
My guess is that we will end up with a de facto boundary close to the present frontline.
Maybe Russia will take the rest of Donetsk, maybe Ukraine will retake Kherson.
I don't think Russia will have too great a difficulty holding on to most of what they have taken. After all, Ukraine has been trying to recapture some of this territory for nearly a decade.
They also don't need the gas. Indeed, France is probably benefitting right now from being the European country with the cheapest energy: hence why France's PMIs are comfortably showing economic expansion.
- slightly nervous about a black swan (which never materialised)
- anxious to pile it all on Wet Leg to win the Mercury.
https://mobile.twitter.com/thor_benson/status/1566896521701892097
People keep tagging a random person instead of the incoming British prime minister and she's rolling with it lol
Lucky Truss?
I have no problem with Johnson dealings on brexit, covid and Ukraine but ultimately he lost the premiership entirely by himself
https://twitter.com/nmdacosta/status/1567055706016071685
I hope you show a tad more respect to your family members, neighbours and work colleagues. Or are you ‘Victorian Dad’ out of Viz?
Have you never met a real pensioner thinking along those lines?
If they wanted to try to force a stalemate then about now would be the time to do it, but the longer it drags on the less ability they have to do so.
If Putin "declares victory" at a point when Ukraine clearly have the advantage and the ability to regain lost ground then why would or should Ukraine accept that? They can and should say that no, Russia needs to leave all of Ukraine back to pre 2014 borders if it wants peace.
I'd have still made Truss use public transport on way up, Johnson on the way down.
Boris got Brexit done - If you mean we left yes, but with the worst deal possible. It is a mess. So no. Getting brexit done is not this.
Delivered the vaccines - Yes a good job, as well as some other good jobs eg Nightingale Hospitals. Also some cockups eg track and trace and the inability to resist lying about stuff unnecessarily.
Supported people and businesses - Yes pretty good, but 80% was too generous and a waste of money and some groups were unnecessarily left to fall through the cracks. Understandable initially but inexcusable later eg small limited companies.
Ukraine - Yes excellent, except for slowness and jobs worth stuff with regard to refugees at the start.
Biggest Conservative election win since Thatcher - Yes but circumstances of needing to get Brexit done and Corbyn were the main factors in my opinion.
Good leaving speech - Only heard a bit but it sounded excellent, but lies in it. Why lie. A new nuclear reactor every year for instance.
Worse PMs - I don't know enough about Eden. I don't believe Heath and Callaghan were worse. Brown and May were awful I grant you but what makes a PM worse. Not comparing like with like here. Brown was indecisive, May stubborn and neither could campaign, but Boris was corrupt, lied relentless and came close to breaking the fabric of Government several times. That makes him worse.
Boris has huge charisma - Yes agree.
Now we come to the only bit which I don't think is opinion but the application of logic. Yes it probably is downhill from here but not because they removed Boris an election winner like Thatcher or Blair but because they have come to the end of their time in office. Just because you win well does not mean you will always win well if you stick with the same leader. If Blair and Thatcher had continued they would have eventually lost. It is daft to assume that because Boris won with a big majority he will always win. He clearly wouldn't have done.
I dont think this is a new trend, BTW. I would say that the quality of MPs on the Labour side probably peaked in the 1960s/70s.