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Starmer’s speech gets a good reception – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited September 2022 in General
Starmer’s speech gets a good reception – politicalbetting.com

?The big policy announcement in @Keir_Starmer’s speech:A Labour govt will create Great British Energy. A new publicly-owned clean generation company ‘to cut energy bills and deliver energy independence for our country’.A bit like EDF in France / Vattenfall in Sweden. #Lab22 pic.twitter.com/7ylQyXbp3k

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Rly?

    My betting decision of the day is not to top up on lab majority. Sks is not looking like Ed mil, but he could be a Cameron looking like an easy winner but having to settle for a lib dem fudge
  • I don’t think it was a sensational speech. But SKS doesn’t have to be sensational right now. He just needs to come across as competent and in tune with the public mood.

    He did that, so mission accomplished for now. Now let the media start to build him up as the PM in waiting and don’t make any unforced errors in the next 12 months.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,574
    I asked a Tory Mp to let me know what was happening on the Kwasi Kwarteng call and they replied: “I’m barely listening. Contemplating my next career while trying to fix my mortgage…”
    https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1574785700133847040
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,585
    Not according to PB. The general consensus is it was a shocker.
  • I don’t think it was a sensational speech. But SKS doesn’t have to be sensational right now. He just needs to come across as competent and in tune with the public mood.

    He did that, so mission accomplished for now. Now let the media start to build him up as the PM in waiting and don’t make any unforced errors in the next 12 months.

    While his Party contains a lot of casual racists at least he's started suspending them unlike his predecessor. Why Huq would try to overshadow her leaders speech with her flagrant racism is beyond me. Not very intelligent, Starmer must be quite pissed off at her.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    NEW
    Money markets now pricing in a 1.5 per cent rise in interest rates at or before the next @Bankofengland meeting in Nov.
    Expectations back up well above 6% next year.
    All follows that speech from BoE’s Huw Pill hinting of big action to come…
    https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1574784254361337869/photo/1

    An announcement during Kwasi's speech next week would be great...
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    Barclays Mortgage helpline "It's currently taking more than 90 minutes to answer your calls..."
    https://twitter.com/steve_hawkes/status/1574782415125487617
  • Not according to PB. The general consensus is it was a shocker.

    That was general consensus among Tory-only fans.

    Fact they are try so hard - TOO hard - to denegrate Starmer and all his works, is yet another sign they are FREAKING OUT.

    Same as with pooh-poohing the Pound Plunge, and/or claiming it's the fault of Gordon Brown, Harold Wilson, Clement Attlee, etc., etc.
  • I see Starmer has repeated the neo-fascistic language about Labour being the "political wing of the British people".

    Has he? Starmer may be useless, and his speech a disaster, but your assertion is a stretch.
    Sir Keir Starmer finishes his speech by echoing Tony Blair, saying "we are the party of the centre ground - once again the political wing of the British people"

    https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1574764614470062086
    So THIS is how YOU define"fascist"? THAT's the stretch!
    If Ron DeSantis said, "We are the political wing of the American people," how would it make you feel?
    Like he's talking his usual bullshit. Can see why you might feel the same re: Starmer.

    Still zero reason to label EITHER remark as "fascist".
    The word fascist gets overused far too much, but equating the people/state with the party is absolutely a principle of fascism, as well as similar one party state authoritarians.
  • SeaShantyIrish2SeaShantyIrish2 Posts: 15,239
    edited September 2022

    I don’t think it was a sensational speech. But SKS doesn’t have to be sensational right now. He just needs to come across as competent and in tune with the public mood.

    He did that, so mission accomplished for now. Now let the media start to build him up as the PM in waiting and don’t make any unforced errors in the next 12 months.

    While his Party contains a lot of casual racists at least he's started suspending them unlike his predecessor. Why Huq would try to overshadow her leaders speech with her flagrant racism is beyond me. Not very intelligent, Starmer must be quite pissed off at her.
    On the contrary, Huq gave Starmer a way to contrast HIS leadership with that of the Toxic Yard Gnome.

    AND also Madame Whiplash?
  • Scott_xP said:

    NEW
    Money markets now pricing in a 1.5 per cent rise in interest rates at or before the next @Bankofengland meeting in Nov.
    Expectations back up well above 6% next year.
    All follows that speech from BoE’s Huw Pill hinting of big action to come…
    https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1574784254361337869/photo/1

    An announcement during Kwasi's speech next week would be great...

    BOE base climbing above 6% is going to be as bad as the oft-quoted 15% by of yore. Sure more people are on fixed rate deals now but peoples decisions have been based on low rates for so long that it is going to come with a lot of pain. Anything above 6% will be higher than any time since the late 1990s.
  • I don’t think it was a sensational speech. But SKS doesn’t have to be sensational right now. He just needs to come across as competent and in tune with the public mood.

    He did that, so mission accomplished for now. Now let the media start to build him up as the PM in waiting and don’t make any unforced errors in the next 12 months.

    While his Party contains a lot of casual racists at least he's started suspending them unlike his predecessor. Why Huq would try to overshadow her leaders speech with her flagrant racism is beyond me. Not very intelligent, Starmer must be quite pissed off at her.
    Huq didn't intend to overshadow SKS's speech. Her comment is just everyday smalltalk for people like her. Even now she must be wondering why she's been singled out so unfairly when everyone she knows thinks and speaks the same way. No doubt an apology along the lines of "sorry if anyone was offended" will suffice as usual.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,160
    I saw some of it and thought content fine, delivery a bit mediocre. But frankly the bar is currently quite low for charismatic public speaking. He's certainly not going to lose that battle with Truss, nor is Davey likely to keep him up at night on public speaking front.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,574

    Not according to PB. The general consensus is it was a shocker.

    Can I contribute by saying I was busy and didn't listen to it ?
    (The authentic voice of 95%+ of the electorate, I suspect.)
  • I don’t think it was a sensational speech. But SKS doesn’t have to be sensational right now. He just needs to come across as competent and in tune with the public mood.

    He did that, so mission accomplished for now. Now let the media start to build him up as the PM in waiting and don’t make any unforced errors in the next 12 months.

    While his Party contains a lot of casual racists at least he's started suspending them unlike his predecessor. Why Huq would try to overshadow her leaders speech with her flagrant racism is beyond me. Not very intelligent, Starmer must be quite pissed off at her.
    On a bad note: it reminds people of the fact that there are quite a few Labour MPs who say stupid things.

    On a good note: she’s no longer a Labour MP, so it shows he’s got the strength to deal with these things quickly and decisively.

    Probably evens itself out.

  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    It was an OK speech, pitching Labour as on the side of middle and lower earners and the Tories on the side of the rich. It also offered a few carrots to the left like a new state energy service.

    Dull delivery though, he is no Blair or Cameron as a speaker and lacks Johnson's charisma. However Truss is little better on that score
  • AlistairMAlistairM Posts: 2,004
    Scott_xP said:

    Barclays Mortgage helpline "It's currently taking more than 90 minutes to answer your calls..."
    https://twitter.com/steve_hawkes/status/1574782415125487617

    I have sympathy with people on long term fixes (5yrs+) that are about to end. Not so much those on variable and 2 year fixed. Interest rates have been historically low. It could never last forever.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841

    I don’t think it was a sensational speech. But SKS doesn’t have to be sensational right now. He just needs to come across as competent and in tune with the public mood.

    He did that, so mission accomplished for now. Now let the media start to build him up as the PM in waiting and don’t make any unforced errors in the next 12 months.

    While his Party contains a lot of casual racists at least he's started suspending them unlike his predecessor. Why Huq would try to overshadow her leaders speech with her flagrant racism is beyond me. Not very intelligent, Starmer must be quite pissed off at her.
    On the contrary, Huq gave Starmer a way to contrast HIS leadership with that of the Toxic Yard Gnome.

    AND also Madame Whiplash?
    Institutional racists do a racism. Same old same old
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,585

    I see Starmer has repeated the neo-fascistic language about Labour being the "political wing of the British people".

    Has he? Starmer may be useless, and his speech a disaster, but your assertion is a stretch.
    Sir Keir Starmer finishes his speech by echoing Tony Blair, saying "we are the party of the centre ground - once again the political wing of the British people"

    https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1574764614470062086
    So THIS is how YOU define"fascist"? THAT's the stretch!
    If Ron DeSantis said, "We are the political wing of the American people," how would it make you feel?
    Like he's talking his usual bullshit. Can see why you might feel the same re: Starmer.

    Still zero reason to label EITHER remark as "fascist".
    The word fascist gets overused far too much, but equating the people/state with the party is absolutely a principle of fascism, as well as similar one party state authoritarians.
    So you are suggesting the Labour Party are no better than the EDL? If you are correct Suella should ban them today.

    You and @williamglenn are protesting too much and about nothing much!
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Rupa Huq = Moron.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,343

    I see Starmer has repeated the neo-fascistic language about Labour being the "political wing of the British people".

    Has he? Starmer may be useless, and his speech a disaster, but your assertion is a stretch.
    Sir Keir Starmer finishes his speech by echoing Tony Blair, saying "we are the party of the centre ground - once again the political wing of the British people"

    https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1574764614470062086
    So THIS is how YOU define"fascist"? THAT's the stretch!
    If Ron DeSantis said, "We are the political wing of the American people," how would it make you feel?
    Like he's talking his usual bullshit. Can see why you might feel the same re: Starmer.

    Still zero reason to label EITHER remark as "fascist".
    The word fascist gets overused far too much, but equating the people/state with the party is absolutely a principle of fascism, as well as similar one party state authoritarians.
    The danger is not (of course) fascism or anything even remotely ridiculous like authoritarianism. The danger is hubris. The reality is that Labour in the last 10-12 months (ever since Patersongate) has been handed an opportunity by a series of acts of unpredictable and incredible folly by a Tory government that had a very high chance of winning the next election until a year ago.

    Labour has done enough, but no more than that, to make it not impossible that they can win, and likely they will at least lead next time. This owes about 90% to Tory folly and 10% to Labour getting back to routine social democratic normality.

    Overreach or hubris would be equal folly. And it's hard (not impossible) to believe that the Tories will carry on as badly as this...isn't it?

    Labour can lose this. The deal is not close to sealed. I think SKS promised slightly more than he should have done today.



  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    I see Starmer has repeated the neo-fascistic language about Labour being the "political wing of the British people".

    Has he? Starmer may be useless, and his speech a disaster, but your assertion is a stretch.
    Sir Keir Starmer finishes his speech by echoing Tony Blair, saying "we are the party of the centre ground - once again the political wing of the British people"

    https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1574764614470062086
    So THIS is how YOU define"fascist"? THAT's the stretch!
    If Ron DeSantis said, "We are the political wing of the American people," how would it make you feel?
    Like he's talking his usual bullshit. Can see why you might feel the same re: Starmer.

    Still zero reason to label EITHER remark as "fascist".
    The word fascist gets overused far too much, but equating the people/state with the party is absolutely a principle of fascism, as well as similar one party state authoritarians.
    That, and "the political wing of" is an expression I have only otherwise heard of Sinn Fein/ira during the troubles. How tin eared can you get?
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited September 2022

    I see Starmer has repeated the neo-fascistic language about Labour being the "political wing of the British people".

    Has he? Starmer may be useless, and his speech a disaster, but your assertion is a stretch.
    Sir Keir Starmer finishes his speech by echoing Tony Blair, saying "we are the party of the centre ground - once again the political wing of the British people"

    https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1574764614470062086
    So THIS is how YOU define"fascist"? THAT's the stretch!
    If Ron DeSantis said, "We are the political wing of the American people," how would it make you feel?
    Like he's talking his usual bullshit. Can see why you might feel the same re: Starmer.

    Still zero reason to label EITHER remark as "fascist".
    The word fascist gets overused far too much, but equating the people/state with the party is absolutely a principle of fascism, as well as similar one party state authoritarians.
    A bit like one side of a politically organised referendum campaign being the Will of The People, you mean , and any enemies of this politically funded campaign and later also, state policy, thus being the Enemies of the People, perhaps , and n 'est-ce-pas ?
  • I watched Starmer's speech, every second of it - unlike many commentators.

    He's never going to be a great orator. He struggles to inspire. He's not charismatic. And his jokes are both not very good and not well delivered. But he's perfectly articulate and coherent. He's improved - less wooden than previously. And he will now be compared with Truss, not Johnson.

    On substance, it was absolutely fine. It contained a very good critique of the current (and previous) governments' shortcomings. It set out a clear agenda for change, and had enough policy ideas to build on in the run up to the GE. And, most of all, it provided evidence of a united Labour Party that is determined to seize power. The dissidents are at best enthused, and at worst silenced.

    Finally, I think 'Great British Energy', in public ownership, is a big winner.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,585
    Nigelb said:

    Not according to PB. The general consensus is it was a shocker.

    Can I contribute by saying I was busy and didn't listen to it ?
    (The authentic voice of 95%+ of the electorate, I suspect.)
    No, I heard it. It was an unfortunate drear-fest, but not the Nuremberg Rally Barty claims it to be.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841

    I don’t think it was a sensational speech. But SKS doesn’t have to be sensational right now. He just needs to come across as competent and in tune with the public mood.

    He did that, so mission accomplished for now. Now let the media start to build him up as the PM in waiting and don’t make any unforced errors in the next 12 months.

    While his Party contains a lot of casual racists at least he's started suspending them unlike his predecessor. Why Huq would try to overshadow her leaders speech with her flagrant racism is beyond me. Not very intelligent, Starmer must be quite pissed off at her.
    On a bad note: it reminds people of the fact that there are quite a few Labour MPs who say stupid things.

    On a good note: she’s no longer a Labour MP, so it shows he’s got the strength to deal with these things quickly and decisively.

    Probably evens itself out.

    He got rapturous applause for rooting out the racists then within an hour had to 'suspend' someone for racism.
    Its not a good look
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841



    Finally, I think 'Great British Energy', in public ownership, is a big winner.

    Yes it will be

  • IshmaelZ said:

    I see Starmer has repeated the neo-fascistic language about Labour being the "political wing of the British people".

    Has hMopte? Starmer may be useless, and his speech a disaster, but your assertion is a stretch.
    Sir Keir Starmer finishes his speech by echoing Tony Blair, saying "we are the party of the centre ground - once again the political wing of the British people"

    https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1574764614470062086
    So THIS is how YOU define"fascist"? THAT's the stretch!
    If Ron DeSantis said, "We are the political wing of the American people," how would it make you feel?
    Like he's talking his usual bullshit. Can see why you might feel the same re: Starmer.

    Still zero reason to label EITHER remark as "fascist".
    The word fascist gets overused far too much, but equating the people/state with the party is absolutely a principle of fascism, as well as similar one party state authoritarians.
    That, and "the political wing of" is an expression I have only otherwise heard of Sinn Fein/ira during the troubles. How tin eared can you get?
    Not sure that "Kier Starmer is a neo-fascist" is what you'd call a convincing argument?

    Even to distract from the shambles that is currently passes for "Conservative" government!
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    Just listened to it. He's not a naturally good speaker but what he said was impressive and more importantly he sounded believable and like he meant it. I also found him likable. A solid 8/10
  • "Some in government are understood to see the market assault on the pound and government debt as a plot by the left, something which has surprised city traders."

    https://news.sky.com/story/liz-truss-had-to-be-convinced-to-issue-govt-statement-to-calm-markets-after-meeting-with-chancellor-12706352

    This government is entirely unhinged from any kind of reality.
  • I don’t think it was a sensational speech. But SKS doesn’t have to be sensational right now. He just needs to come across as competent and in tune with the public mood.

    He did that, so mission accomplished for now. Now let the media start to build him up as the PM in waiting and don’t make any unforced errors in the next 12 months.

    While his Party contains a lot of casual racists at least he's started suspending them unlike his predecessor. Why Huq would try to overshadow her leaders speech with her flagrant racism is beyond me. Not very intelligent, Starmer must be quite pissed off at her.
    On a bad note: it reminds people of the fact that there are quite a few Labour MPs who say stupid things.

    On a good note: she’s no longer a Labour MP, so it shows he’s got the strength to deal with these things quickly and decisively.

    Probably evens itself out.

    He got rapturous applause for rooting out the racists then within an hour had to 'suspend' someone for racism.
    Its not a good look
    I disagree. You can only suspend someone when you believe they've done something wrong. He's rooted out many of the racists within the party who have said dodgy things - we can still hear their howling - and when someone else is stupid to this level, he acts fast.

    I think she should be let back in after a suitable apology and a period of time - say a month. But I would love to hear her in a debate with someone about *exactly* what she meant - as I think it's a common view in some circles.
  • I don’t think it was a sensational speech. But SKS doesn’t have to be sensational right now. He just needs to come across as competent and in tune with the public mood.

    He did that, so mission accomplished for now. Now let the media start to build him up as the PM in waiting and don’t make any unforced errors in the next 12 months.

    While his Party contains a lot of casual racists at least he's started suspending them unlike his predecessor. Why Huq would try to overshadow her leaders speech with her flagrant racism is beyond me. Not very intelligent, Starmer must be quite pissed off at her.
    On a bad note: it reminds people of the fact that there are quite a few Labour MPs who say stupid things.

    On a good note: she’s no longer a Labour MP, so it shows he’s got the strength to deal with these things quickly and decisively.

    Probably evens itself out.

    He got rapturous applause for rooting out the racists then within an hour had to 'suspend' someone for racism.
    Its not a good look
    Starmer showing that he means what he says - that IS a good look.
  • JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,901
    It is great to see Labour looking strong and politically nimble. Just in time.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    Professor @D_Blanchflower:

    "If you're the Chancellor, what you've done is crashed the bond markets, the foreign exchange markets, the stock market has dropped, the housing market is in trouble and you create a giant recession... I've never seen such raging incompetence, ever."

    https://twitter.com/AdamJSchwarz/status/1574785962483355648/video/1
  • It was a good speech and reasonably well delivered. I've only once in almost 60 years voted Labour at a General Election but it may just be time to give them a second go. The last time was 1997. Then I disliked Blair but knew a Labour Government was badly needed. Now - I prefer Starmer to Blair by some margin and the Cons seem hopeless and totally divorced from economic and practical reality. It begins to be hard to conceive of voting for them again. Truss, to me, is the Con Corbyn. Enough said.
  • WillGWillG Posts: 1,995

    I see Starmer has repeated the neo-fascistic language about Labour being the "political wing of the British people".

    Has he? Starmer may be useless, and his speech a disaster, but your assertion is a stretch.
    Sir Keir Starmer finishes his speech by echoing Tony Blair, saying "we are the party of the centre ground - once again the political wing of the British people"

    https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1574764614470062086
    So THIS is how YOU define"fascist"? THAT's the stretch!
    If Ron DeSantis said, "We are the political wing of the American people," how would it make you feel?
    Like he's talking his usual bullshit. Can see why you might feel the same re: Starmer.

    Still zero reason to label EITHER remark as "fascist".
    The word fascist gets overused far too much, but equating the people/state with the party is absolutely a principle of fascism, as well as similar one party state authoritarians.
    So you are suggesting the Labour Party are no better than the EDL? If you are correct Suella should ban them today.

    You and @williamglenn are protesting too much and about nothing much!
    It is also just Starmer re-using a Blair line. The point was that Labour weren't just the wing of the working class but also the middle class.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281

    I don’t think it was a sensational speech. But SKS doesn’t have to be sensational right now. He just needs to come across as competent and in tune with the public mood.

    He did that, so mission accomplished for now. Now let the media start to build him up as the PM in waiting and don’t make any unforced errors in the next 12 months.

    While his Party contains a lot of casual racists at least he's started suspending them unlike his predecessor. Why Huq would try to overshadow her leaders speech with her flagrant racism is beyond me. Not very intelligent, Starmer must be quite pissed off at her.
    On the contrary, Huq gave Starmer a way to contrast HIS leadership with that of the Toxic Yard Gnome.

    AND also Madame Whiplash?
    Institutional racists do a racism. Same old same old
    You've read what she said right?
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,092
    It is said Russia has to keep pumping gas to prevent water getting into the NS1/2 pipes. Why can't they pump air in instead?
    Anyone know - @rcs1000, @Malmesbury, @Richard_Tyndall, other techies?
  • You can tell the right are worried when they try to pin neo-fascism on the rather benign Starmer. Scraping the barrel, or what?
    FFS.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,574
    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Quite a good blog on Truss/Kwarteng:

    https://keirbradwell.substack.com/p/2-kwartengs-plan

    Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.

    Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.

    That, at least, is a load of waffle just because there were no supply side reforms, just a bunch of tax cuts which will push up demand.

    I'm all in favour of supply side reforms and pushing up business investment, there's was very little in the Friday statement that actually achieves any supply side fix.
    He does address that if you read the whole piece:

    This is a long list, and even then it is only really a start on the work that the economy needs. It is also vague: it equivocates about the most important supply-side reform of all — housing reform — promising merely that more detail will be announced soon.

    But it is a start. And if it is implemented properly (and followed up with more), it would allow Kwarteng’s plan to succeed, and with it, bring to end the awful bind that British policymaking has been stuck in since 2008.

    The plan is therefore a do-or-die moment.

    To commit to the Growth Plan’s tax-and-spend decisions without the structural reforms to go along with them would be a disaster. It would represent the worst of the status quo, but with a new layer of ‘bad’ added on top.

    And there are lots of reasons for pessimism. Getting a supply-side reform through Parliament is much more difficult than doing new spending, especially with special interest groups doing their absolute utmost to block progress. Truss is already light on political capital, given how few MPs originally voted for her, and the response to our currency trouble will only have made that worse. Worst of all, there is very little time: it is less than two years until a general election.
    Which is why it's waffle. The writer is just projecting onto Kwasi what he wants to happen. There's been no detail or moves to boost supply just vague ideas and ambitions. What we actually have is a series of tax cuts which are intended to boost demand. Rather than defending them based on something he hopes they will do in the future, they need to be chastised for not doing what is necessary to reform the economy by boosting supply (and investment).

    The Friday event, when you take it for the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, is aimed at producing a short term gain in demand by borrowing loads of money. In a high inflation environment it's going to cause interest rates to shoot up and the currency to tank, unsurprisingly that's what has happened.
    When you take in the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, almost all of what happened was pre-announced and the 45p changes "cost" £2 billion supposedly, but the real cost to the Exchequer will of course be far less than that and may even by negative.

    So the hysteria that has followed is just ridiculous. Yes you are completely right that the vague ideas and ambitions need meat on the bones to follow through with, I totally agree with you on that, but at least they're targeting the right issues and saying the right things even if its not yet in action. They need to follow through with credible actions on reforms, but those are things that aren't simply announced in a statement.
    No, they aren't targeting the right issues because they haven't done anything. What they have done is borrow £45bn to increase demand which is targeting the wrong issues.

    They might be saying the right things but then they're doing the exact opposite and you're falling for it.
    But that £45bn is predominantly to reverse the NI Tax Rise and the Corporation Tax rise, both of which you and I both vehemently disagreed with at the time they were announced. Only £2bn, if that, relates to the 45p tax change but you're acting as if the entire £45bn has gone on that.
    I had a look at the evidence of the corporation tax rise and I changed my position. We've had chronically low business investment for over a decade and our model if low CT has resulted in low investment by businesses who prefer to pay dividends rather than chase capital growth which is taxed at a higher rate. Worse still major UK companies are no longer majority domestically owned so the payouts are draining overseas and tax isn't payable.

    CT of 30% and a series of big investment allowances on capital and R&D to bring that number down makes much more sense to me.

    On NI they went further by keeping the higher threshold, it was the right thing to do but it isn't cost free.

    The reason I'm so annoyed by cutting the additional rate is it shows the government has got the wrong priorities. That is a purely demand generation play, it puts tens of thousands in the hands of already pretty well of people hoping they will spend it and the lower tax rate will attract a few thousand extra workers who will also come and spend their money here.

    Nowhere in the statement did they show that they were interested in boosting supply or putting in place real reform of education, training, skills and investment in capital to boost supply.
    It's bizarre.
    So called "supply side" economics originating in the US with Reagan was basically borrowing money and cutting taxes, too.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,958

    I don’t think it was a sensational speech. But SKS doesn’t have to be sensational right now. He just needs to come across as competent and in tune with the public mood.

    He did that, so mission accomplished for now. Now let the media start to build him up as the PM in waiting and don’t make any unforced errors in the next 12 months.

    While his Party contains a lot of casual racists at least he's started suspending them unlike his predecessor. Why Huq would try to overshadow her leaders speech with her flagrant racism is beyond me. Not very intelligent, Starmer must be quite pissed off at her.
    On a bad note: it reminds people of the fact that there are quite a few Labour MPs who say stupid things.

    On a good note: she’s no longer a Labour MP, so it shows he’s got the strength to deal with these things quickly and decisively.

    Probably evens itself out.

    He got rapturous applause for rooting out the racists then within an hour had to 'suspend' someone for racism.
    Its not a good look
    Starmer showing that he means what he says - that IS a good look.
    That he needs to, not so much.....
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281
    geoffw said:

    It is said Russia has to keep pumping gas to prevent water getting into the NS1/2 pipes. Why can't they pump air in instead?
    Anyone know - @rcs1000, @Malmesbury, @Richard_Tyndall, other techies?

    Good question.

    Tbf how do we know that are not pumping in air?
  • I watched Starmer's speech, every second of it - unlike many commentators.

    He's never going to be a great orator. He struggles to inspire. He's not charismatic. And his jokes are both not very good and not well delivered. But he's perfectly articulate and coherent. He's improved - less wooden than previously. And he will now be compared with Truss, not Johnson.

    On substance, it was absolutely fine. It contained a very good critique of the current (and previous) governments' shortcomings. It set out a clear agenda for change, and had enough policy ideas to build on in the run up to the GE. And, most of all, it provided evidence of a united Labour Party that is determined to seize power. The dissidents are at best enthused, and at worst silenced.

    Finally, I think 'Great British Energy', in public ownership, is a big winner.

    Starmer looks like a PM. And, unlike the current incumbent, he is not a reckless ideologue. The key thing about his speech is that it was crafted to appeal to all wings of the Labour party after two years of a lot of internal nastiness. It seems to have worked. Even Owen Jones likes the measures announced - if not the man who announced them. For the first time in a long time, Labour is deadly serious about winning power and has a leader who looks more credible than his opponent. It's not bad given where the party was when Starmer took over.

  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    Blanchflower reckons they may not make it through the month. I suspect that, if it gets to that, Truss will throw Kwarteng into the volcano, to calm markets, and someone seen as “safe” will be brought on board. https://twitter.com/bestforbritain/status/1574787435132817409
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,718
    geoffw said:

    It is said Russia has to keep pumping gas to prevent water getting into the NS1/2 pipes. Why can't they pump air in instead?
    Anyone know - @rcs1000, @Malmesbury, @Richard_Tyndall, other techies?

    Risk of explosion? I don't know but that's the first thought that comes to mind.
  • MISTYMISTY Posts: 1,594

    You can tell the right are worried when they try to pin neo-fascism on the rather benign Starmer. Scraping the barrel, or what?
    FFS.

    If you are correct then tory voters have nothing to fear from Starmer. A period of labour government will be just dandy.
  • WhisperingOracleWhisperingOracle Posts: 8,480
    edited September 2022
    It's funny, but part of the name and spirit of "Great British Energy" is lifted from McDonnell's "British Broadband". He's also signalling with this that he's not just Blair reincarnated, who was at the same point as this pledging to remove Clause 4, and going in the opposite direction.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841

    I don’t think it was a sensational speech. But SKS doesn’t have to be sensational right now. He just needs to come across as competent and in tune with the public mood.

    He did that, so mission accomplished for now. Now let the media start to build him up as the PM in waiting and don’t make any unforced errors in the next 12 months.

    While his Party contains a lot of casual racists at least he's started suspending them unlike his predecessor. Why Huq would try to overshadow her leaders speech with her flagrant racism is beyond me. Not very intelligent, Starmer must be quite pissed off at her.
    On the contrary, Huq gave Starmer a way to contrast HIS leadership with that of the Toxic Yard Gnome.

    AND also Madame Whiplash?
    Institutional racists do a racism. Same old same old
    You've read what she said right?
    Yes i have
  • geoffw said:

    It is said Russia has to keep pumping gas to prevent water getting into the NS1/2 pipes. Why can't they pump air in instead?
    Anyone know - @rcs1000, @Malmesbury, @Richard_Tyndall, other techies?

    My understanding is that they were using the pipelines for gas *storage*. Though they might have been keeping it pressurised for more than one reason.

    My guess would be that the specialised pumps and other infrastructure are optimised for pumping the gas, not air. And they would need to ensure that people at the other end of the pipeline were not taking it, assuming it was gas. Probably wrong, though.
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,092

    geoffw said:

    It is said Russia has to keep pumping gas to prevent water getting into the NS1/2 pipes. Why can't they pump air in instead?
    Anyone know - @rcs1000, @Malmesbury, @Richard_Tyndall, other techies?

    Good question.

    Tbf how do we know that are not pumping in air?
    Good question. Try a match? Tho a spectrometer could be safer.

  • Dynamo said:

    moonshine said:

    PeterM said:

    DavidL said:

    PeterM said:

    oh look at this 89% of Kherson region residents voted to join the Russian Federation....what a surprise

    https://twitter.com/WarfareReports/status/1574745587525816325?s=20&t=TePntffXPCynzq9AE9KHUQ

    I'd be surprised if the final count reported wasn't over 90%.
    Kherson has proven to be something of a disappointment for Ukraine. The Russians there, which includes many of Russia's best units, are fighting hard and casualties on both sides seem heavy. The expectation was that the Russians on the west bank of the Dneiper would rapidly run out of supplies and amunition and then surrender but this hasn't happened in 2 or more weeks of heavy fighting. It is still possible that there will be a collapse as supplies run out but its not looking imminent.
    in telegraph today also said Russians massing and looking to attack Kharkiv again
    With troops some of whom were drafted less than 24 hrs ago.

    Unlikely to be true, except maybe of some reservists who served as professional soldiers in the first place. The idea that they're sending draftees who have had only one day's military training in their entire lives - I do not believe this, unless they really want to find out what "workers' and soldiers' revolution" means. (And it doesn't mean Andrei f***ing Navalny.) Bear in mind that Russia has about a quarter of a million conscripts in the normal course of things. Some of these men have been in uniform since late last year; the rest, since spring and early summer of this year. Mostly they have not been sent to the war. They're not going to pull lads off the street who've had no prior army experience and send them to the war before these guys. The brass wouldn't allow it. That quarter of a million have been trained. An army is a war-fighting machine. The national security and civvy leaderships wouldn't allow it either. It would be f***ing mental.
    That's something is f***ing mental hasn't stopped Putin so far.

    Invading Ukraine was f***ing mental.

    Thinking sham referenda would change anything was f***ing mental.

    Denying a retreat from Kherson his own commanders felt was required was f***ing mental.

    What's a few thousand more dead Russian conscripts, on top of all the other f***ing mental things he has done?

    But maybe there's hope for even you yet, if you can start to see that yes Putin is f***ing mental and he is the bad guy in this, not Ukraine, not NATO, not Zelensky and not Azov or anyone else.
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,087
    IshmaelZ said:

    Rly?

    My betting decision of the day is not to top up on lab majority. Sks is not looking like Ed mil, but he could be a Cameron looking like an easy winner but having to settle for a lib dem fudge

    Well, he does need a Blair '97-scale swing to achieve a majority of one, so a Hung Parliament still seems the most likely outcome. Besides which, despite the Tories' awful polling performances, we have to remember that (accounting for the relative probability of different age groups actually bothering to cast a vote,) the over 55s constitute over half of the entire electorate, and they're likely to keep breaking heavily for the Conservatives. That should be enough to keep the Tories in the game even if they're so badly mauled amongst younger cohorts that their Parliamentary majority is erased.

    Indeed, it's arguable that the ideal scenario for the next GE would be one in which the Conservatives end up as the largest single party, Labour has to rely on both the SNP and the Liberal Democrats for support, and Starmer ends up being dragged kicking and screaming into legislating for electoral reform. A broadly proportional voting system would probably prevent the Conservative Party from ever winning a majority again, and would make it hard for it to return to power full stop for so long as it represents the interests of multi-millionaires, elderly homeowners and no-one else.
  • Nigelb said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Quite a good blog on Truss/Kwarteng:

    https://keirbradwell.substack.com/p/2-kwartengs-plan

    Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.

    Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.

    That, at least, is a load of waffle just because there were no supply side reforms, just a bunch of tax cuts which will push up demand.

    I'm all in favour of supply side reforms and pushing up business investment, there's was very little in the Friday statement that actually achieves any supply side fix.
    He does address that if you read the whole piece:

    This is a long list, and even then it is only really a start on the work that the economy needs. It is also vague: it equivocates about the most important supply-side reform of all — housing reform — promising merely that more detail will be announced soon.

    But it is a start. And if it is implemented properly (and followed up with more), it would allow Kwarteng’s plan to succeed, and with it, bring to end the awful bind that British policymaking has been stuck in since 2008.

    The plan is therefore a do-or-die moment.

    To commit to the Growth Plan’s tax-and-spend decisions without the structural reforms to go along with them would be a disaster. It would represent the worst of the status quo, but with a new layer of ‘bad’ added on top.

    And there are lots of reasons for pessimism. Getting a supply-side reform through Parliament is much more difficult than doing new spending, especially with special interest groups doing their absolute utmost to block progress. Truss is already light on political capital, given how few MPs originally voted for her, and the response to our currency trouble will only have made that worse. Worst of all, there is very little time: it is less than two years until a general election.
    Which is why it's waffle. The writer is just projecting onto Kwasi what he wants to happen. There's been no detail or moves to boost supply just vague ideas and ambitions. What we actually have is a series of tax cuts which are intended to boost demand. Rather than defending them based on something he hopes they will do in the future, they need to be chastised for not doing what is necessary to reform the economy by boosting supply (and investment).

    The Friday event, when you take it for the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, is aimed at producing a short term gain in demand by borrowing loads of money. In a high inflation environment it's going to cause interest rates to shoot up and the currency to tank, unsurprisingly that's what has happened.
    When you take in the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, almost all of what happened was pre-announced and the 45p changes "cost" £2 billion supposedly, but the real cost to the Exchequer will of course be far less than that and may even by negative.

    So the hysteria that has followed is just ridiculous. Yes you are completely right that the vague ideas and ambitions need meat on the bones to follow through with, I totally agree with you on that, but at least they're targeting the right issues and saying the right things even if its not yet in action. They need to follow through with credible actions on reforms, but those are things that aren't simply announced in a statement.
    No, they aren't targeting the right issues because they haven't done anything. What they have done is borrow £45bn to increase demand which is targeting the wrong issues.

    They might be saying the right things but then they're doing the exact opposite and you're falling for it.
    But that £45bn is predominantly to reverse the NI Tax Rise and the Corporation Tax rise, both of which you and I both vehemently disagreed with at the time they were announced. Only £2bn, if that, relates to the 45p tax change but you're acting as if the entire £45bn has gone on that.
    I had a look at the evidence of the corporation tax rise and I changed my position. We've had chronically low business investment for over a decade and our model if low CT has resulted in low investment by businesses who prefer to pay dividends rather than chase capital growth which is taxed at a higher rate. Worse still major UK companies are no longer majority domestically owned so the payouts are draining overseas and tax isn't payable.

    CT of 30% and a series of big investment allowances on capital and R&D to bring that number down makes much more sense to me.

    On NI they went further by keeping the higher threshold, it was the right thing to do but it isn't cost free.

    The reason I'm so annoyed by cutting the additional rate is it shows the government has got the wrong priorities. That is a purely demand generation play, it puts tens of thousands in the hands of already pretty well of people hoping they will spend it and the lower tax rate will attract a few thousand extra workers who will also come and spend their money here.

    Nowhere in the statement did they show that they were interested in boosting supply or putting in place real reform of education, training, skills and investment in capital to boost supply.
    It's bizarre.
    So called "supply side" economics originating in the US with Reagan was basically borrowing money and cutting taxes, too.
    Reason why Dick Cheney famously said, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter".

    When right does it, it's far-sighted and positive; when left does it, it's fiscally irresponsible.

    Same as with equating your party with "the people"; when left does it, it's fascism; when right does it, it's patriotism.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    BREAKING: Major bank pulls mortgage deals as others raise rates after BoE economist admits 'significant' intervention will be required | Live updates
    https://news.sky.com/story/pound-slumps-live-news-lenders-withdraw-mortgage-products-as-sir-keir-starmer-prepares-to-tell-voters-labour-stands-for-sound-money-in-conference-speech-12615118
  • pigeonpigeon Posts: 4,087
    Update: Rupa Huq issues anticipated grovel.
  • MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Quite a good blog on Truss/Kwarteng:

    https://keirbradwell.substack.com/p/2-kwartengs-plan

    Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.

    Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.

    That, at least, is a load of waffle just because there were no supply side reforms, just a bunch of tax cuts which will push up demand.

    I'm all in favour of supply side reforms and pushing up business investment, there's was very little in the Friday statement that actually achieves any supply side fix.
    He does address that if you read the whole piece:

    This is a long list, and even then it is only really a start on the work that the economy needs. It is also vague: it equivocates about the most important supply-side reform of all — housing reform — promising merely that more detail will be announced soon.

    But it is a start. And if it is implemented properly (and followed up with more), it would allow Kwarteng’s plan to succeed, and with it, bring to end the awful bind that British policymaking has been stuck in since 2008.

    The plan is therefore a do-or-die moment.

    To commit to the Growth Plan’s tax-and-spend decisions without the structural reforms to go along with them would be a disaster. It would represent the worst of the status quo, but with a new layer of ‘bad’ added on top.

    And there are lots of reasons for pessimism. Getting a supply-side reform through Parliament is much more difficult than doing new spending, especially with special interest groups doing their absolute utmost to block progress. Truss is already light on political capital, given how few MPs originally voted for her, and the response to our currency trouble will only have made that worse. Worst of all, there is very little time: it is less than two years until a general election.
    Which is why it's waffle. The writer is just projecting onto Kwasi what he wants to happen. There's been no detail or moves to boost supply just vague ideas and ambitions. What we actually have is a series of tax cuts which are intended to boost demand. Rather than defending them based on something he hopes they will do in the future, they need to be chastised for not doing what is necessary to reform the economy by boosting supply (and investment).

    The Friday event, when you take it for the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, is aimed at producing a short term gain in demand by borrowing loads of money. In a high inflation environment it's going to cause interest rates to shoot up and the currency to tank, unsurprisingly that's what has happened.
    When you take in the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, almost all of what happened was pre-announced and the 45p changes "cost" £2 billion supposedly, but the real cost to the Exchequer will of course be far less than that and may even by negative.

    So the hysteria that has followed is just ridiculous. Yes you are completely right that the vague ideas and ambitions need meat on the bones to follow through with, I totally agree with you on that, but at least they're targeting the right issues and saying the right things even if its not yet in action. They need to follow through with credible actions on reforms, but those are things that aren't simply announced in a statement.
    No, they aren't targeting the right issues because they haven't done anything. What they have done is borrow £45bn to increase demand which is targeting the wrong issues.

    They might be saying the right things but then they're doing the exact opposite and you're falling for it.
    But that £45bn is predominantly to reverse the NI Tax Rise and the Corporation Tax rise, both of which you and I both vehemently disagreed with at the time they were announced. Only £2bn, if that, relates to the 45p tax change but you're acting as if the entire £45bn has gone on that.
    I had a look at the evidence of the corporation tax rise and I changed my position. We've had chronically low business investment for over a decade and our model if low CT has resulted in low investment by businesses who prefer to pay dividends rather than chase capital growth which is taxed at a higher rate. Worse still major UK companies are no longer majority domestically owned so the payouts are draining overseas and tax isn't payable.

    CT of 30% and a series of big investment allowances on capital and R&D to bring that number down makes much more sense to me.

    On NI they went further by keeping the higher threshold, it was the right thing to do but it isn't cost free.

    The reason I'm so annoyed by cutting the additional rate is it shows the government has got the wrong priorities. That is a purely demand generation play, it puts tens of thousands in the hands of already pretty well of people hoping they will spend it and the lower tax rate will attract a few thousand extra workers who will also come and spend their money here.

    Nowhere in the statement did they show that they were interested in boosting supply or putting in place real reform of education, training, skills and investment in capital to boost supply.

    You are very right about Corporation Tax. What needs to change are boardroom and investor attitudes, which are far too short-term.

  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    Scott_xP said:

    Blanchflower reckons they may not make it through the month. I suspect that, if it gets to that, Truss will throw Kwarteng into the volcano, to calm markets, and someone seen as “safe” will be brought on board. https://twitter.com/bestforbritain/status/1574787435132817409

    Again who would willingly become Truss's chancellor - and how does throwing Kwarteng change anything when Truss's fingers are all over the tax schemes..
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281
    Scott_xP said:
    I'm not surprised - the comments were ill-judged but not racist imo.

    Compare and contrast with some of Boris Johnson's utterances.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    Three airline industry bosses have criticised the government today.
    ✈️ Virgin’s Shai Weiss: govt should ‘reverse course’
    ✈️ Willie Walsh: ‘I am not sure all these policies were thought through’
    ✈️ Michael O’Leary: Budget has ‘poured petrol on a bonfire’
    https://www.ft.com/content/9bd2e7e6-5bae-425d-be24-7a7b95b263fb
  • MISTYMISTY Posts: 1,594
    Scott_xP said:

    Professor @D_Blanchflower:

    "If you're the Chancellor, what you've done is crashed the bond markets, the foreign exchange markets, the stock market has dropped, the housing market is in trouble and you create a giant recession... I've never seen such raging incompetence, ever."

    https://twitter.com/AdamJSchwarz/status/1574785962483355648/video/1

    That would be a fair criticism if it didn't apply to most western nations....which you know it does.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    Analysis: Labour are banking on voters viewing Starmer's steady-Eddie approach as a welcome antidote to the ongoing chaos in Liz Truss's government.

    https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/analysis-no-drama-starmer-leaves-labour-activists-dreaming-of-power_uk_63331375e4b03e8038b75f8b
  • Scott_xP said:

    Professor @D_Blanchflower:

    "If you're the Chancellor, what you've done is crashed the bond markets, the foreign exchange markets, the stock market has dropped, the housing market is in trouble and you create a giant recession... I've never seen such raging incompetence, ever."

    https://twitter.com/AdamJSchwarz/status/1574785962483355648/video/1

    Great, Blanchflower is opposed. Good to know, reassures that we're on the right path.

    If you can get confirmation that AEP and Prof Peston are opposed too, then we can move forward with confidence.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,160
    Rupa Huq: what an idiot. Labour's backbench problem with, for want of a better expression, no-true-Scotsman style ownership of ethnic minorities is another cultural tic they really need to root out. Something the US Dems have been guilty of too. There's plenty of open goals being offered by the chancellor without going down the race traitor route.
  • Scott_xP said:

    Blanchflower reckons they may not make it through the month. I suspect that, if it gets to that, Truss will throw Kwarteng into the volcano, to calm markets, and someone seen as “safe” will be brought on board. https://twitter.com/bestforbritain/status/1574787435132817409

    This is the same bloke who insisted that the Coalitions policies in 2010 would cause 5 million+ unemployed
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603

    Scott_xP said:
    I'm not surprised - the comments were ill-judged but not racist imo.

    Compare and contrast with some of Boris Johnson's utterances.
    In what world is it not racist to say black men shouldn't go to private school or work in banking?! It's literally stereotyping them. She's a racist moron, glad to see Starmer take it seriously.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841
    edited September 2022

    I don’t think it was a sensational speech. But SKS doesn’t have to be sensational right now. He just needs to come across as competent and in tune with the public mood.

    He did that, so mission accomplished for now. Now let the media start to build him up as the PM in waiting and don’t make any unforced errors in the next 12 months.

    While his Party contains a lot of casual racists at least he's started suspending them unlike his predecessor. Why Huq would try to overshadow her leaders speech with her flagrant racism is beyond me. Not very intelligent, Starmer must be quite pissed off at her.
    On a bad note: it reminds people of the fact that there are quite a few Labour MPs who say stupid things.

    On a good note: she’s no longer a Labour MP, so it shows he’s got the strength to deal with these things quickly and decisively.

    Probably evens itself out.

    He got rapturous applause for rooting out the racists then within an hour had to 'suspend' someone for racism.
    Its not a good look
    Starmer showing that he means what he says - that IS a good look.
    'Work in progress' just after receiving adulation for a job well done.
    It won't hurt him but it reminds voters the Labour Party are still as much of a clown show as other parties of equivalent value
  • WillGWillG Posts: 1,995

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Quite a good blog on Truss/Kwarteng:

    https://keirbradwell.substack.com/p/2-kwartengs-plan

    Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.

    Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.

    That, at least, is a load of waffle just because there were no supply side reforms, just a bunch of tax cuts which will push up demand.

    I'm all in favour of supply side reforms and pushing up business investment, there's was very little in the Friday statement that actually achieves any supply side fix.
    He does address that if you read the whole piece:

    This is a long list, and even then it is only really a start on the work that the economy needs. It is also vague: it equivocates about the most important supply-side reform of all — housing reform — promising merely that more detail will be announced soon.

    But it is a start. And if it is implemented properly (and followed up with more), it would allow Kwarteng’s plan to succeed, and with it, bring to end the awful bind that British policymaking has been stuck in since 2008.

    The plan is therefore a do-or-die moment.

    To commit to the Growth Plan’s tax-and-spend decisions without the structural reforms to go along with them would be a disaster. It would represent the worst of the status quo, but with a new layer of ‘bad’ added on top.

    And there are lots of reasons for pessimism. Getting a supply-side reform through Parliament is much more difficult than doing new spending, especially with special interest groups doing their absolute utmost to block progress. Truss is already light on political capital, given how few MPs originally voted for her, and the response to our currency trouble will only have made that worse. Worst of all, there is very little time: it is less than two years until a general election.
    Which is why it's waffle. The writer is just projecting onto Kwasi what he wants to happen. There's been no detail or moves to boost supply just vague ideas and ambitions. What we actually have is a series of tax cuts which are intended to boost demand. Rather than defending them based on something he hopes they will do in the future, they need to be chastised for not doing what is necessary to reform the economy by boosting supply (and investment).

    The Friday event, when you take it for the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, is aimed at producing a short term gain in demand by borrowing loads of money. In a high inflation environment it's going to cause interest rates to shoot up and the currency to tank, unsurprisingly that's what has happened.
    When you take in the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, almost all of what happened was pre-announced and the 45p changes "cost" £2 billion supposedly, but the real cost to the Exchequer will of course be far less than that and may even by negative.

    So the hysteria that has followed is just ridiculous. Yes you are completely right that the vague ideas and ambitions need meat on the bones to follow through with, I totally agree with you on that, but at least they're targeting the right issues and saying the right things even if its not yet in action. They need to follow through with credible actions on reforms, but those are things that aren't simply announced in a statement.
    No, they aren't targeting the right issues because they haven't done anything. What they have done is borrow £45bn to increase demand which is targeting the wrong issues.

    They might be saying the right things but then they're doing the exact opposite and you're falling for it.
    But that £45bn is predominantly to reverse the NI Tax Rise and the Corporation Tax rise, both of which you and I both vehemently disagreed with at the time they were announced. Only £2bn, if that, relates to the 45p tax change but you're acting as if the entire £45bn has gone on that.
    I had a look at the evidence of the corporation tax rise and I changed my position. We've had chronically low business investment for over a decade and our model if low CT has resulted in low investment by businesses who prefer to pay dividends rather than chase capital growth which is taxed at a higher rate. Worse still major UK companies are no longer majority domestically owned so the payouts are draining overseas and tax isn't payable.

    CT of 30% and a series of big investment allowances on capital and R&D to bring that number down makes much more sense to me.

    On NI they went further by keeping the higher threshold, it was the right thing to do but it isn't cost free.

    The reason I'm so annoyed by cutting the additional rate is it shows the government has got the wrong priorities. That is a purely demand generation play, it puts tens of thousands in the hands of already pretty well of people hoping they will spend it and the lower tax rate will attract a few thousand extra workers who will also come and spend their money here.

    Nowhere in the statement did they show that they were interested in boosting supply or putting in place real reform of education, training, skills and investment in capital to boost supply.

    You are very right about Corporation Tax. What needs to change are boardroom and investor attitudes, which are far too short-term.

    The term horizons of executives aren't plucked out of thin air. They are responding to incentives of what is good for executives.

    It is also far better to have a higher corporation tax to pay for better relief on investment.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,718
    pigeon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Rly?

    My betting decision of the day is not to top up on lab majority. Sks is not looking like Ed mil, but he could be a Cameron looking like an easy winner but having to settle for a lib dem fudge

    Well, he does need a Blair '97-scale swing to achieve a majority of one, so a Hung Parliament still seems the most likely outcome. Besides which, despite the Tories' awful polling performances, we have to remember that (accounting for the relative probability of different age groups actually bothering to cast a vote,) the over 55s constitute over half of the entire electorate, and they're likely to keep breaking heavily for the Conservatives. That should be enough to keep the Tories in the game even if they're so badly mauled amongst younger cohorts that their Parliamentary majority is erased.

    Indeed, it's arguable that the ideal scenario for the next GE would be one in which the Conservatives end up as the largest single party, Labour has to rely on both the SNP and the Liberal Democrats for support, and Starmer ends up being dragged kicking and screaming into legislating for electoral reform. A broadly proportional voting system would probably prevent the Conservative Party from ever winning a majority again, and would make it hard for it to return to power full stop for so long as it represents the interests of multi-millionaires, elderly homeowners and no-one else.
    PR would also reduce the SNP presence in parliament.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281
    edited September 2022
    Scott_xP said:

    Blanchflower reckons they may not make it through the month. I suspect that, if it gets to that, Truss will throw Kwarteng into the volcano, to calm markets, and someone seen as “safe” will be brought on board. https://twitter.com/bestforbritain/status/1574787435132817409

    She's mad enough to do it. A bit of choppy-choppy anyone?

    https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxrNtWujLhGn4em5W8Qkp3kvMfXgl97Ie7
  • JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,901

    I don’t think it was a sensational speech. But SKS doesn’t have to be sensational right now. He just needs to come across as competent and in tune with the public mood.

    He did that, so mission accomplished for now. Now let the media start to build him up as the PM in waiting and don’t make any unforced errors in the next 12 months.

    While his Party contains a lot of casual racists at least he's started suspending them unlike his predecessor. Why Huq would try to overshadow her leaders speech with her flagrant racism is beyond me. Not very intelligent, Starmer must be quite pissed off at her.
    On a bad note: it reminds people of the fact that there are quite a few Labour MPs who say stupid things.

    On a good note: she’s no longer a Labour MP, so it shows he’s got the strength to deal with these things quickly and decisively.

    Probably evens itself out.

    He got rapturous applause for rooting out the racists then within an hour had to 'suspend' someone for racism.
    Its not a good look
    Starmer showing that he means what he says - that IS a good look.
    'Work in progress' just after receiving adulation for a job well done.
    It won't hurt him but it reminds voters the Labour Party are still as much of a clown show as other parties of equivalent value
    BigG did it. Now you’re doing it. When things are really bad, just say everyone is as bad is each other. The last roll of the dice.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,739
    @joncstone
    Imagine you're Kwasi Kwarteng: you've got strident views about economic policy and you even wrote a book about it. you finally get the job as chancellor, the peak of your game, and get to test out your ideas! turns out they are garbage and the economy explodes


    @andrew_lilico
    The economy hasn't done anything yet.

    Reminder...

    @andrew_lilico
    In John McDonnell's run-on-the-pound wargames, how much did UK mortgage rates go up & how many households were forced into mortgage default?
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,958
    Really looking forward to the next ConHome poll on the various Cabinet competencies....
  • eek said:

    Scott_xP said:

    Blanchflower reckons they may not make it through the month. I suspect that, if it gets to that, Truss will throw Kwarteng into the volcano, to calm markets, and someone seen as “safe” will be brought on board. https://twitter.com/bestforbritain/status/1574787435132817409

    Again who would willingly become Truss's chancellor - and how does throwing Kwarteng change anything when Truss's fingers are all over the tax schemes..
    It's not the person, it's the policy which is stupid.

    If say they bring Rishi back... it wouldn't work as the number 1 priority is tax cuts not having a solid economy.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    pigeon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Rly?

    My betting decision of the day is not to top up on lab majority. Sks is not looking like Ed mil, but he could be a Cameron looking like an easy winner but having to settle for a lib dem fudge

    Well, he does need a Blair '97-scale swing to achieve a majority of one, so a Hung Parliament still seems the most likely outcome. Besides which, despite the Tories' awful polling performances, we have to remember that (accounting for the relative probability of different age groups actually bothering to cast a vote,) the over 55s constitute over half of the entire electorate, and they're likely to keep breaking heavily for the Conservatives. That should be enough to keep the Tories in the game even if they're so badly mauled amongst younger cohorts that their Parliamentary majority is erased.

    Indeed, it's arguable that the ideal scenario for the next GE would be one in which the Conservatives end up as the largest single party, Labour has to rely on both the SNP and the Liberal Democrats for support, and Starmer ends up being dragged kicking and screaming into legislating for electoral reform. A broadly proportional voting system would probably prevent the Conservative Party from ever winning a majority again, and would make it hard for it to return to power full stop for so long as it represents the interests of multi-millionaires, elderly homeowners and no-one else.
    It would also make it near impossible for Labour to ever win a majority again or for a government implementing socialism to get a majority again, even Attlee in 1945, Wilson in 1966 or Blair in 1997 would have failed to get a majority with PR.

    The LDs would normally be kingmakers, as 2010 showed they can go with the Tories as much as Labour. A Corbyn Left Party would emerge with seats which Labour would need to do deals with along with the Greens to have any hope of government and a Farage Nationalist party too would also win seats with which the Tories would also eventually have to probably do deals
  • JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,901
    You’re better off with Labour.
  • WillG said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Quite a good blog on Truss/Kwarteng:

    https://keirbradwell.substack.com/p/2-kwartengs-plan

    Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.

    Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.

    That, at least, is a load of waffle just because there were no supply side reforms, just a bunch of tax cuts which will push up demand.

    I'm all in favour of supply side reforms and pushing up business investment, there's was very little in the Friday statement that actually achieves any supply side fix.
    He does address that if you read the whole piece:

    This is a long list, and even then it is only really a start on the work that the economy needs. It is also vague: it equivocates about the most important supply-side reform of all — housing reform — promising merely that more detail will be announced soon.

    But it is a start. And if it is implemented properly (and followed up with more), it would allow Kwarteng’s plan to succeed, and with it, bring to end the awful bind that British policymaking has been stuck in since 2008.

    The plan is therefore a do-or-die moment.

    To commit to the Growth Plan’s tax-and-spend decisions without the structural reforms to go along with them would be a disaster. It would represent the worst of the status quo, but with a new layer of ‘bad’ added on top.

    And there are lots of reasons for pessimism. Getting a supply-side reform through Parliament is much more difficult than doing new spending, especially with special interest groups doing their absolute utmost to block progress. Truss is already light on political capital, given how few MPs originally voted for her, and the response to our currency trouble will only have made that worse. Worst of all, there is very little time: it is less than two years until a general election.
    Which is why it's waffle. The writer is just projecting onto Kwasi what he wants to happen. There's been no detail or moves to boost supply just vague ideas and ambitions. What we actually have is a series of tax cuts which are intended to boost demand. Rather than defending them based on something he hopes they will do in the future, they need to be chastised for not doing what is necessary to reform the economy by boosting supply (and investment).

    The Friday event, when you take it for the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, is aimed at producing a short term gain in demand by borrowing loads of money. In a high inflation environment it's going to cause interest rates to shoot up and the currency to tank, unsurprisingly that's what has happened.
    When you take in the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, almost all of what happened was pre-announced and the 45p changes "cost" £2 billion supposedly, but the real cost to the Exchequer will of course be far less than that and may even by negative.

    So the hysteria that has followed is just ridiculous. Yes you are completely right that the vague ideas and ambitions need meat on the bones to follow through with, I totally agree with you on that, but at least they're targeting the right issues and saying the right things even if its not yet in action. They need to follow through with credible actions on reforms, but those are things that aren't simply announced in a statement.
    No, they aren't targeting the right issues because they haven't done anything. What they have done is borrow £45bn to increase demand which is targeting the wrong issues.

    They might be saying the right things but then they're doing the exact opposite and you're falling for it.
    But that £45bn is predominantly to reverse the NI Tax Rise and the Corporation Tax rise, both of which you and I both vehemently disagreed with at the time they were announced. Only £2bn, if that, relates to the 45p tax change but you're acting as if the entire £45bn has gone on that.
    I had a look at the evidence of the corporation tax rise and I changed my position. We've had chronically low business investment for over a decade and our model if low CT has resulted in low investment by businesses who prefer to pay dividends rather than chase capital growth which is taxed at a higher rate. Worse still major UK companies are no longer majority domestically owned so the payouts are draining overseas and tax isn't payable.

    CT of 30% and a series of big investment allowances on capital and R&D to bring that number down makes much more sense to me.

    On NI they went further by keeping the higher threshold, it was the right thing to do but it isn't cost free.

    The reason I'm so annoyed by cutting the additional rate is it shows the government has got the wrong priorities. That is a purely demand generation play, it puts tens of thousands in the hands of already pretty well of people hoping they will spend it and the lower tax rate will attract a few thousand extra workers who will also come and spend their money here.

    Nowhere in the statement did they show that they were interested in boosting supply or putting in place real reform of education, training, skills and investment in capital to boost supply.

    You are very right about Corporation Tax. What needs to change are boardroom and investor attitudes, which are far too short-term.

    The term horizons of executives aren't plucked out of thin air. They are responding to incentives of what is good for executives.

    It is also far better to have a higher corporation tax to pay for better relief on investment.
    Incorrect, they respond to incentives that are good for shareholders (many of which are institutional ie pension funds of the masses), that in turn may benefit them personally. That is capitalism folks.

    If you wish to try and play with this from a policy perspective you could look at giving accelerated tax breaks for longer term investment. Or you could try and tax them until the pips squeak and kill off innovation and investment and ensure it goes to places such as Ireland where they may find more healthy environment for wealth creators. The latter approach is most in favour with members and supporters of the Labour Party.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841
    MaxPB said:

    Scott_xP said:
    I'm not surprised - the comments were ill-judged but not racist imo.

    Compare and contrast with some of Boris Johnson's utterances.
    In what world is it not racist to say black men shouldn't go to private school or work in banking?! It's literally stereotyping them. She's a racist moron, glad to see Starmer take it seriously.
    Its from the same mindset as Bidens 'if you dont vote Democrat you ain't black'. The idea of minorities as a possession of a political ideaology or a class
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,160
    There is a great opening for Labour to offer a more interventionist alternative to the faux-supply side growth policies of the Tories, so long as they don't go mad.

    The GB energy proposal will be universally popular and is just one of those things that feels right for the times we live in. Supporting a massive push on insulation and energy efficiency is also timely. Nationalising what's left of privatised rail is less exciting to be honest.

    The other supply side reform someone needs to promise - either Labour or the Lib Dems - is something on pre-school childcare. Probably the single biggest blocker to more people in prime working age entering or re-entering the labour market. The Tory proposal (is it still out there) to lift the ratio of kids to staff is one small drop in the ocean but they need only look at state support for childcare in Scandinavia or France to see how his contributes directly to labour market participation and productivity.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771

    Scott_xP said:

    "We have higher yields or a high cost of borrowing for government than is the case in Italy and Greece.”

    Mel Stride, Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, tells @Sarah_Montague the Conservative party's reputation on the economy is ‘in jeopardy’.

    https://bbc.in/3foohA2 https://twitter.com/BBCWorldatOne/status/1574775191900721153/video/1

    Don’t forget that the ECB is continuing to print money which reduces the cost of borrowing so these aren’t entirely comparable

    The ECB is rolling over existing debt positions, but I don't think is initiating new ones.

    I think Greek/Italian bonds are currently where they are because the market expects that the ECB will treat the Russian invasion / energy crisis, like they did the Eurozone crisis and the pandemic crisis. Basically: their view is that the ECB will always find a crisis to justify intervention.
  • wooliedyedwooliedyed Posts: 6,841

    Scott_xP said:

    Blanchflower reckons they may not make it through the month. I suspect that, if it gets to that, Truss will throw Kwarteng into the volcano, to calm markets, and someone seen as “safe” will be brought on board. https://twitter.com/bestforbritain/status/1574787435132817409

    This is the same bloke who insisted that the Coalitions policies in 2010 would cause 5 million+ unemployed
    He still raves about Brown. He's to Brown what Andrew Adonis is to Blair.
  • The grovelling apology from Huq puts Kwarteng in the position of having to accept it with grace. For me, that makes Huq's original words even more unforgivable. Kwarteng should be able to tell her to just piss off and do one (or stronger words to that effect) but the politics means he now can't.
  • PeterMPeterM Posts: 302
    MaxPB said:

    One thing that has been worrying me today and yesterday is that a loss of confidence in the UK will eventually lead to the City turning into a shadow of what it is today. One of the major reasons so many investors and banks are happy to do their business here is because the UK has, historically, had a very stable government and economic outlook. This band of idiots has put all of that hard won credibility at risk and if it continues investors will start moving their money elsewhere and that means banks and jobs will follow.

    doesnt make sense for the city to be so big except for historical reasons....it is as big as Wall Street but attached to a much smaller and poorer economy...i could see the major financial centres in the future being wall street and shanghai, perhaps tokyo with london a much smaller player
  • MaxPB said:

    One thing that has been worrying me today and yesterday is that a loss of confidence in the UK will eventually lead to the City turning into a shadow of what it is today. One of the major reasons so many investors and banks are happy to do their business here is because the UK has, historically, had a very stable government and economic outlook. This band of idiots has put all of that hard won credibility at risk and if it continues investors will start moving their money elsewhere and that means banks and jobs will follow.

    It will take more than this. We’ve had economic crises before and the City has survived. But give this shower time, you never know.

  • MaxPB said:

    One thing that has been worrying me today and yesterday is that a loss of confidence in the UK will eventually lead to the City turning into a shadow of what it is today. One of the major reasons so many investors and banks are happy to do their business here is because the UK has, historically, had a very stable government and economic outlook. This band of idiots has put all of that hard won credibility at risk and if it continues investors will start moving their money elsewhere and that means banks and jobs will follow.

    I think you're just going through a bout of general pessimism and it's skewing your judgment.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,958
    Scott_xP said:

    Three airline industry bosses have criticised the government today.
    ✈️ Virgin’s Shai Weiss: govt should ‘reverse course’
    ✈️ Willie Walsh: ‘I am not sure all these policies were thought through’
    ✈️ Michael O’Leary: Budget has ‘poured petrol on a bonfire’
    https://www.ft.com/content/9bd2e7e6-5bae-425d-be24-7a7b95b263fb

    Nobody going on foreign holidays is it?

    More years of staycations it is then.
  • This is what racism in left wing circles is (when not involving Jews). Apparently black people are not real black people if they come from wealthy backgrounds, go to private schools or speak accentless RP:

    https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/labour-mp-rupa-huq-suspended-from-party-for-calling-chancellor-kwasi-kwarteng-superficially-black/ar-AA12iU7U?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=69e6ef36532f4b7fafb5364bb2ac0984
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771

    I see Starmer has repeated the neo-fascistic language about Labour being the "political wing of the British people".

    Has he? Starmer may be useless, and his speech a disaster, but your assertion is a stretch.
    Sir Keir Starmer finishes his speech by echoing Tony Blair, saying "we are the party of the centre ground - once again the political wing of the British people"

    https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1574764614470062086
    So THIS is how YOU define"fascist"? THAT's the stretch!
    If Ron DeSantis said, "We are the political wing of the American people," how would it make you feel?
    Like he's talking his usual bullshit. Can see why you might feel the same re: Starmer.

    Still zero reason to label EITHER remark as "fascist".
    The word fascist gets overused far too much, but equating the people/state with the party is absolutely a principle of fascism, as well as similar one party state authoritarians.
    Shall we ask @Dynamo?

    He seems to have some fairly strong views about what defines fascist/Nazi.
  • RazedabodeRazedabode Posts: 2,973
    Scott_xP said:

    Blanchflower reckons they may not make it through the month. I suspect that, if it gets to that, Truss will throw Kwarteng into the volcano, to calm markets, and someone seen as “safe” will be brought on board. https://twitter.com/bestforbritain/status/1574787435132817409

    That can’t work. Both are so linked it still leaves someone with 0 market credibility at the top
  • MoonRabbitMoonRabbit Posts: 12,415



    Finally, I think 'Great British Energy', in public ownership, is a big winner.

    Yes it will be

    I’m not keen. State competing with private simply won’t work well.
  • WillG said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    Quite a good blog on Truss/Kwarteng:

    https://keirbradwell.substack.com/p/2-kwartengs-plan

    Government after government has failed to do nearly enough about the supply side of the British economy. Reams have been written, far more eloquently than I can manage, about how this inaction has trapped us, time and time again, into choices we don’t want to have to make, on public services and elsewhere. It has trapped us into falling ever further behind America in our living standards. And it has nudged us into accepting relative decline as the norm and the future of Britain.

    Until now, nobody has truly dared tackle this head-on. But we have finally found a PM and chancellor willing to do so. And yet for whatever reason — perhaps simply because we cannot get our heads around the reorganisation they have in mind — we are risking making it politically impossible before they have even begun to try.

    That, at least, is a load of waffle just because there were no supply side reforms, just a bunch of tax cuts which will push up demand.

    I'm all in favour of supply side reforms and pushing up business investment, there's was very little in the Friday statement that actually achieves any supply side fix.
    He does address that if you read the whole piece:

    This is a long list, and even then it is only really a start on the work that the economy needs. It is also vague: it equivocates about the most important supply-side reform of all — housing reform — promising merely that more detail will be announced soon.

    But it is a start. And if it is implemented properly (and followed up with more), it would allow Kwarteng’s plan to succeed, and with it, bring to end the awful bind that British policymaking has been stuck in since 2008.

    The plan is therefore a do-or-die moment.

    To commit to the Growth Plan’s tax-and-spend decisions without the structural reforms to go along with them would be a disaster. It would represent the worst of the status quo, but with a new layer of ‘bad’ added on top.

    And there are lots of reasons for pessimism. Getting a supply-side reform through Parliament is much more difficult than doing new spending, especially with special interest groups doing their absolute utmost to block progress. Truss is already light on political capital, given how few MPs originally voted for her, and the response to our currency trouble will only have made that worse. Worst of all, there is very little time: it is less than two years until a general election.
    Which is why it's waffle. The writer is just projecting onto Kwasi what he wants to happen. There's been no detail or moves to boost supply just vague ideas and ambitions. What we actually have is a series of tax cuts which are intended to boost demand. Rather than defending them based on something he hopes they will do in the future, they need to be chastised for not doing what is necessary to reform the economy by boosting supply (and investment).

    The Friday event, when you take it for the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, is aimed at producing a short term gain in demand by borrowing loads of money. In a high inflation environment it's going to cause interest rates to shoot up and the currency to tank, unsurprisingly that's what has happened.
    When you take in the actual measures and exclude all of the guff, almost all of what happened was pre-announced and the 45p changes "cost" £2 billion supposedly, but the real cost to the Exchequer will of course be far less than that and may even by negative.

    So the hysteria that has followed is just ridiculous. Yes you are completely right that the vague ideas and ambitions need meat on the bones to follow through with, I totally agree with you on that, but at least they're targeting the right issues and saying the right things even if its not yet in action. They need to follow through with credible actions on reforms, but those are things that aren't simply announced in a statement.
    No, they aren't targeting the right issues because they haven't done anything. What they have done is borrow £45bn to increase demand which is targeting the wrong issues.

    They might be saying the right things but then they're doing the exact opposite and you're falling for it.
    But that £45bn is predominantly to reverse the NI Tax Rise and the Corporation Tax rise, both of which you and I both vehemently disagreed with at the time they were announced. Only £2bn, if that, relates to the 45p tax change but you're acting as if the entire £45bn has gone on that.
    I had a look at the evidence of the corporation tax rise and I changed my position. We've had chronically low business investment for over a decade and our model if low CT has resulted in low investment by businesses who prefer to pay dividends rather than chase capital growth which is taxed at a higher rate. Worse still major UK companies are no longer majority domestically owned so the payouts are draining overseas and tax isn't payable.

    CT of 30% and a series of big investment allowances on capital and R&D to bring that number down makes much more sense to me.

    On NI they went further by keeping the higher threshold, it was the right thing to do but it isn't cost free.

    The reason I'm so annoyed by cutting the additional rate is it shows the government has got the wrong priorities. That is a purely demand generation play, it puts tens of thousands in the hands of already pretty well of people hoping they will spend it and the lower tax rate will attract a few thousand extra workers who will also come and spend their money here.

    Nowhere in the statement did they show that they were interested in boosting supply or putting in place real reform of education, training, skills and investment in capital to boost supply.

    You are very right about Corporation Tax. What needs to change are boardroom and investor attitudes, which are far too short-term.

    The term horizons of executives aren't plucked out of thin air. They are responding to incentives of what is good for executives.

    It is also far better to have a higher corporation tax to pay for better relief on investment.

    Totally agree. And its executives that can deliver the quarterly results who get favoured over those who might look longer term. It takes an exceptionally strong CEO to buck that.

  • PeterM said:

    MaxPB said:

    One thing that has been worrying me today and yesterday is that a loss of confidence in the UK will eventually lead to the City turning into a shadow of what it is today. One of the major reasons so many investors and banks are happy to do their business here is because the UK has, historically, had a very stable government and economic outlook. This band of idiots has put all of that hard won credibility at risk and if it continues investors will start moving their money elsewhere and that means banks and jobs will follow.

    doesnt make sense for the city to be so big except for historical reasons....it is as big as Wall Street but attached to a much smaller and poorer economy...i could see the major financial centres in the future being wall street and shanghai, perhaps tokyo with london a much smaller player
    There are more reasons than simply historical. For starters the fact that the UK has a strongly established, well-respected and robust legal system which is not (compared to other jurisdictions) subject to significant executive control is particularly important.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281
    edited September 2022
    MaxPB said:

    Scott_xP said:
    I'm not surprised - the comments were ill-judged but not racist imo.

    Compare and contrast with some of Boris Johnson's utterances.
    In what world is it not racist to say black men shouldn't go to private school or work in banking?! It's literally stereotyping them. She's a racist moron, glad to see Starmer take it seriously.
    She doesn't actually say that but do I take your point. She is falling back on lazy stereotypes, racist and classist.

    I agree with Starmer's action and it's good if, as reported, she's apologised.
  • JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,901
    MaxPB said:

    One thing that has been worrying me today and yesterday is that a loss of confidence in the UK will eventually lead to the City turning into a shadow of what it is today. One of the major reasons so many investors and banks are happy to do their business here is because the UK has, historically, had a very stable government and economic outlook. This band of idiots has put all of that hard won credibility at risk and if it continues investors will start moving their money elsewhere and that means banks and jobs will follow.

    Brexit made us vulnerable, because it undermined our reputation as a safe pair of hands . This bunch of wallies are exposing that vulnerability.
  • Jonathan said:

    You’re better off with Labour.

    Never been my experience.

    A better and more believable slogan would be "We will try not to be as shit as the other lot"
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    TimS said:

    There is a great opening for Labour to offer a more interventionist alternative to the faux-supply side growth policies of the Tories, so long as they don't go mad.

    The GB energy proposal will be universally popular and is just one of those things that feels right for the times we live in. Supporting a massive push on insulation and energy efficiency is also timely. Nationalising what's left of privatised rail is less exciting to be honest.

    The other supply side reform someone needs to promise - either Labour or the Lib Dems - is something on pre-school childcare. Probably the single biggest blocker to more people in prime working age entering or re-entering the labour market. The Tory proposal (is it still out there) to lift the ratio of kids to staff is one small drop in the ocean but they need only look at state support for childcare in Scandinavia or France to see how his contributes directly to labour market participation and productivity.

    Yes, extend childcare down to ages 1-4 and make it 35h per week all year round rather than this idiotic term time only funding. It doesn't matter how expensive it is, we need to support families in having kids.

    If Labour propose that and fund it with some tax on old people they'll get my vote (and my wife's!).
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    You can tell the right are worried when they try to pin neo-fascism on the rather benign Starmer. Scraping the barrel, or what?
    FFS.

    Shit, what's it like being stupid? Sucks I imagine. Sympathies.

    The expression he used is neo fascist, and also has repulsive overtones of the Irish troubles. This is not to say he is neo fascist himself. He is just behaving in a dim, manipulative and opportunist way in trying to attract a bit of the Blair magic to himself without really thinking about it. This is a disappointment for the non right who were contemplating voting for him.

    See the difference? Probably not.
  • RazedabodeRazedabode Posts: 2,973
    The news is so so grim for the conservatives.

    Utter rage. Homeowners so so angry, never thought I’d see a Tory government do that
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