Apart from here on PB, are there any old wise men left in the country beyond David Attenborough (Who is amazingly wise)?
Several people I have heard speak in the last few years:
- Richard Dannett - gave a talk just after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, predicted a long drawn-out stalemate, pretty accurate. - Robert Winston - general common sense on fertility and gender etc. - Derek Jacobi - he put his success down in large part to luck - I'm sure there's more to it than that judging by the way he can still deliver some of Shakespeare's great speeches at 88.
(I don't know any of these people, have just heard them give public talks.)
Good examples. I have slight reservations about all three, but only slight. And of course in times past the average man may well have had reservations about all sorts of historical greats, and that has been mostly forgotten.
I have reservations about David Attenborough - mainly that I don't like his voice - but I keep them to myself for fear of being lynched.
Edit: Oh bugger!
Actually he's got a lovely voice. It's his delivery, pausing randomly every three or four words, that I find a bit off putting.
We don't seem to have public intellectuals like we used to. Jonathan Miller for example - long gone sadly.
Is this because the modern BBC is rubbish?
I beg to differ. The BBC can bring us public intellectuals like this pair...
Updates from Neo North Korea on Trump's "deal" starting to come in:
Aaron Rupar @atrupar · 17m Burgum: "President Trump won the war militarily. Then he won the war economically ... diplomatically, militarily, economically -- three ways to win a war. Trump won all three of them."
I guess, if someone asked me what I found most incomprehensible and alien about the Trump administration, it is the requirement to constantly shower the great leader in -sometimes absurdly over the top- praise.
Maybe I just love a bit of nuance.
I mean, I met Doug Bergum when he ran Great Plains, and he was looking to buy a European enterprise software company. And he was an incredibly driven and smart guy. If I'd read his comments today to the Doug of 1996, he would have buried his head in his hands in embarassment.
That was weird to me too. The guy was a popular governor, is worth a very large amount of money, and is spending his golden years as a performing court sycophant for Trump.
Apart from here on PB, are there any old wise men left in the country beyond David Attenborough (Who is amazingly wise)?
Martin Lewis is the next one we produced but he is only 54. On that basis there should be an 8 year old coming through the ranks somewhere we should watch out for.
He's a decent shout.
When I was young there were a whole host of not exactly national heroes, but along those lines. Now there is one. DA.
What's happened? Maybe Dyson?
I guess the scale of things has diminished the prominence of the individual, but there still seems to be an inexplicable gap.
(Obviously it would have been me, but somehow...)
National Treasures
Dr Alice Roberts
Robert Plant
John Craven
Jules Holland
Twiggy
David Blunkett
Whispering Bob Harris
Gary Lineker
Lenny Henry
Tom Jones
Mo Farrah
Martin Brundle
John Craven is a good spot- though consistent with the "it was easier to accumulate sufficient trust in the old days" theory. Lineker probably ought to qualify, but clearly doesn't. Maybe Gareth Southgate? I also wonder if Jeremy Clarkson is wiser than his public persona suggests.
Jeremy Clarkson is cleverer than his public persona, but he's willfully done immense damage with his public persona for the sake of enriching himself. That marks him out as deeply immoral and not one to be trusted on any subject, unless you could be assured of his complete disinterest. I wouldn't describe that as wisdom.
I have a couple of mutual acquaintances with the gentleman in question.
They both assure me he's very different in private. Much nastier, for a start.
Yep. He deliberately "accidentlly" put a lit cigarette through the suit of an acquitance at a party.
"HuffPost UK has learned that Burnham supporters at Westminster are already gathering nominations for his leadership bid should he win next Thursday.
They hope to collect far more than the 81 required to trigger a contest, thereby creating a sense of unstoppable momentum which they believe would be enough to quickly see him sweep to power."
Updates from Neo North Korea on Trump's "deal" starting to come in:
Aaron Rupar @atrupar · 17m Burgum: "President Trump won the war militarily. Then he won the war economically ... diplomatically, militarily, economically -- three ways to win a war. Trump won all three of them."
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 16m One thing a lot of people are missing from the current Makerfield analysis. The polls are interesting. But by this stage a large amount of people have already voted.
Edit: of course that is incorrect as it is "large number of people" not "amount"
I'm not really sure what point Dan Hodges is trying to make, unless it is that postal voters will not be influenced by Wednesday night's football result. What he should be saying but does not seem to be is that people who have already voted will respond more reliably to opinion pollsters (since they cannot change their minds).
Apart from here on PB, are there any old wise men left in the country beyond David Attenborough (Who is amazingly wise)?
Martin Lewis is the next one we produced but he is only 54. On that basis there should be an 8 year old coming through the ranks somewhere we should watch out for.
He's a decent shout.
When I was young there were a whole host of not exactly national heroes, but along those lines. Now there is one. DA.
What's happened? Maybe Dyson?
I guess the scale of things has diminished the prominence of the individual, but there still seems to be an inexplicable gap.
(Obviously it would have been me, but somehow...)
National Treasures
Dr Alice Roberts
Robert Plant
John Craven
Jules Holland
Twiggy
David Blunkett
Whispering Bob Harris
Gary Lineker
Lenny Henry
Tom Jones
Mo Farrah
Martin Brundle
Really?
I mean, really?
Why not
All have made significant impact
In the case of Plant, Farrah, Harris as good as there has even been in their field of expertise
Apart from here on PB, are there any old wise men left in the country beyond David Attenborough (Who is amazingly wise)?
Several people I have heard speak in the last few years:
- Richard Dannett - gave a talk just after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, predicted a long drawn-out stalemate, pretty accurate. - Robert Winston - general common sense on fertility and gender etc. - Derek Jacobi - he put his success down in large part to luck - I'm sure there's more to it than that judging by the way he can still deliver some of Shakespeare's great speeches at 88.
(I don't know any of these people, have just heard them give public talks.)
Good examples. I have slight reservations about all three, but only slight. And of course in times past the average man may well have had reservations about all sorts of historical greats, and that has been mostly forgotten.
I have reservations about David Attenborough - mainly that I don't like his voice - but I keep them to myself for fear of being lynched.
Edit: Oh bugger!
My grandson served in the Royal Box at Wimbledon in 2024.
He found David Attenborough to be a bit off hand and rude - perhaps due to his age. The nicest and most grateful was David Beckham.
OT rant. Amazon has locked me out. They've decided the only way to do 2FA is to send the verification code to WhatsApp on my phone. But the phone Amazon knows about does not have WhatsApp and cannot have WhatsApp so I can't log in to change it.
Oh yes, there's an SMS button but that says I've requested too many OTPs, which I haven't, and the online help does not have an option that covers this. FFS Bezos; no wonder Elon's beaten you into space.
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
That's not how it works. There's never a plan to stop borrowing or repay all the debt. Any specific debt will repaid when it falls due by rolling it over and borrowing more. That is how businesses finance themselves. The UK public debt is about equal to the UK's annual income (GDP). Households often have mortgages much in excess of 100% of their annual income.
It is what all the various fiscal rules have been about, and why British budget plans continue to include fictional increases in fuel duty in future years, so that the budget deficit can be shown to be reduced at the end of the budget plan.
I think your are missing deficit and debt. I did not claim that there's a plan for Britain to repay the debt, but there is a plan to close the deficit - and that's what creates the confidence to allow Britain to continue borrowing.
You said "But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid."
I'm not confusing deficit and debt. It looks as if you are.
The current fiscal rules are that day-to-day government spending must be covered by tax revenues rather than by borrowing, but the government can borrow to fund long-term capital investments. Some defence expenditure will be capital investment.
I was using "repaid" in an informal sense - i.e. that the country is good for the money. But if the government lose the confidence of the bond market then they won't be able to roll over debt, and so existing debt won't be able to be repaid when it falls due. So it's relevant without it being a scenario where the total amount of debt is reduced.
The point being that we can only borrow if there is credibility over the country's solvency, and that means demonstrating that there are limits on our borrowing.
Truss showed how brittle that credibility was. Simply adding increases in defence spending to already high levels of borrowing isn't credible in my view.
I don't know why we're still using the Truss episode as the nadir of bond market instability when things now (afaik) are far worse. It is Reeves and Starmer who get the gold medal.
I lost a quarter of the value of one of my pensions, on supposedly low risk investments, thanks to Liz Truss.
I don't feel warm and fuzzy towards her.
Nobody is asking you to feel warm and fuzzy. , just to stay vaguely in touch with the facts.
The facts are that Liz Truss willfully did a stupid thing, which had bad consequences. Why should anyone afford her the benefit of the tiniest doubt? She deserves every bit of blame in her direction, and to the extent she involved the Conservative Party in her shenanigans, so do they.
Dear Lord in heaven above, sorry to shout, but BOND YIELDS ARE HIGHER NOW THAN THEY WERE DURING THE WORST OF THE LDI/MINIBUDGET CRISIS.
I am really struggling to see what part of this you don't understand. There is a higher premium for lending to Starmer and Reeves than there was for lending to Truss and Kwarteng. And that's without an energy price shock, or the Bank of England deciding to flog off £80bn bonds.
I don't particularly wish to relitigate the minibudget - by all means think as you wish, I am merely saying that the borrowing position is worse now.
Isn't is more intellectually honest than to compare the premium (or discount!) that investors demand for holding UK assets relative to peers?
And on that score again the UK is in a worse position than any of the other G7 countries.
Japan, Canada and Germany have Bond Yields below 4% (Germany is a whole 2% points lower than the UK) France, Italy and the USA are below 5%.
So there is a clear Premium being demanded for UK assets. And it is getting worse, not better.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 16m One thing a lot of people are missing from the current Makerfield analysis. The polls are interesting. But by this stage a large amount of people have already voted.
Edit: of course that is incorrect as it is "large number of people" not "amount"
I'm not really sure what point Dan Hodges is trying to make, unless it is that postal voters will not be influenced by Wednesday night's football result. What he should be saying but does not seem to be is that people who have already voted will respond more reliably to opinion pollsters (since they cannot change their minds).
It would be interesting to know just how many of the electorate in Makerfield use a postal vote
Apart from here on PB, are there any old wise men left in the country beyond David Attenborough (Who is amazingly wise)?
Martin Lewis is the next one we produced but he is only 54. On that basis there should be an 8 year old coming through the ranks somewhere we should watch out for.
He's a decent shout.
When I was young there were a whole host of not exactly national heroes, but along those lines. Now there is one. DA.
What's happened? Maybe Dyson?
I guess the scale of things has diminished the prominence of the individual, but there still seems to be an inexplicable gap.
(Obviously it would have been me, but somehow...)
National Treasures
Dr Alice Roberts
Robert Plant
John Craven
Jules Holland
Twiggy
David Blunkett
Whispering Bob Harris
Gary Lineker
Lenny Henry
Tom Jones
Mo Farrah
Martin Brundle
Really?
I mean, really?
Public intellectuals rather than national treasures would currently include Brian Cox and Lucy Worsley and on radio, Mary Beard. David Starkey used to be one before he went political. People who would look at a camera and say clever stuff. Older PBers will remember AJP Taylor, Kenneth Clark, James Burke, Magnus Pyke, Peter Jay among others. Television turned away – too boring; too elitist – but podcasts show the demand is still there.
I'd add Brian Walden to that list and Melvyn Bragg
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
That's not how it works. There's never a plan to stop borrowing or repay all the debt. Any specific debt will repaid when it falls due by rolling it over and borrowing more. That is how businesses finance themselves. The UK public debt is about equal to the UK's annual income (GDP). Households often have mortgages much in excess of 100% of their annual income.
It is what all the various fiscal rules have been about, and why British budget plans continue to include fictional increases in fuel duty in future years, so that the budget deficit can be shown to be reduced at the end of the budget plan.
I think your are missing deficit and debt. I did not claim that there's a plan for Britain to repay the debt, but there is a plan to close the deficit - and that's what creates the confidence to allow Britain to continue borrowing.
You said "But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid."
I'm not confusing deficit and debt. It looks as if you are.
The current fiscal rules are that day-to-day government spending must be covered by tax revenues rather than by borrowing, but the government can borrow to fund long-term capital investments. Some defence expenditure will be capital investment.
I was using "repaid" in an informal sense - i.e. that the country is good for the money. But if the government lose the confidence of the bond market then they won't be able to roll over debt, and so existing debt won't be able to be repaid when it falls due. So it's relevant without it being a scenario where the total amount of debt is reduced.
The point being that we can only borrow if there is credibility over the country's solvency, and that means demonstrating that there are limits on our borrowing.
Truss showed how brittle that credibility was. Simply adding increases in defence spending to already high levels of borrowing isn't credible in my view.
I don't know why we're still using the Truss episode as the nadir of bond market instability when things now (afaik) are far worse. It is Reeves and Starmer who get the gold medal.
I lost a quarter of the value of one of my pensions, on supposedly low risk investments, thanks to Liz Truss.
I don't feel warm and fuzzy towards her.
Nobody is asking you to feel warm and fuzzy. , just to stay vaguely in touch with the facts.
The facts are that Liz Truss willfully did a stupid thing, which had bad consequences. Why should anyone afford her the benefit of the tiniest doubt? She deserves every bit of blame in her direction, and to the extent she involved the Conservative Party in her shenanigans, so do they.
Dear Lord in heaven above, sorry to shout, but BOND YIELDS ARE HIGHER NOW THAN THEY WERE DURING THE WORST OF THE LDI/MINIBUDGET CRISIS.
I am really struggling to see what part of this you don't understand. There is a higher premium for lending to Starmer and Reeves than there was for lending to Truss and Kwarteng. And that's without an energy price shock, or the Bank of England deciding to flog off £80bn bonds.
I don't particularly wish to relitigate the minibudget - by all means think as you wish, I am merely saying that the borrowing position is worse now.
Isn't is more intellectually honest than to compare the premium (or discount!) that investors demand for holding UK assets relative to peers?
And on that score again the UK is in a worse position than any of the other G7 countries.
Japan, Canada and Germany have Bond Yields below 4% (Germany is a whole 2% points lower than the UK) France, Italy and the USA are below 5%.
So there is a clear Premium being demanded for UK assets. And it is getting worse, not better.
Which is why anyone claiming Reeves has been anything short of a disaster really doesn't know what they are talking about. She is costing us serious money.
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
That's not how it works. There's never a plan to stop borrowing or repay all the debt. Any specific debt will repaid when it falls due by rolling it over and borrowing more. That is how businesses finance themselves. The UK public debt is about equal to the UK's annual income (GDP). Households often have mortgages much in excess of 100% of their annual income.
It is what all the various fiscal rules have been about, and why British budget plans continue to include fictional increases in fuel duty in future years, so that the budget deficit can be shown to be reduced at the end of the budget plan.
I think your are missing deficit and debt. I did not claim that there's a plan for Britain to repay the debt, but there is a plan to close the deficit - and that's what creates the confidence to allow Britain to continue borrowing.
You said "But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid."
I'm not confusing deficit and debt. It looks as if you are.
The current fiscal rules are that day-to-day government spending must be covered by tax revenues rather than by borrowing, but the government can borrow to fund long-term capital investments. Some defence expenditure will be capital investment.
I was using "repaid" in an informal sense - i.e. that the country is good for the money. But if the government lose the confidence of the bond market then they won't be able to roll over debt, and so existing debt won't be able to be repaid when it falls due. So it's relevant without it being a scenario where the total amount of debt is reduced.
The point being that we can only borrow if there is credibility over the country's solvency, and that means demonstrating that there are limits on our borrowing.
Truss showed how brittle that credibility was. Simply adding increases in defence spending to already high levels of borrowing isn't credible in my view.
I don't know why we're still using the Truss episode as the nadir of bond market instability when things now (afaik) are far worse. It is Reeves and Starmer who get the gold medal.
I lost a quarter of the value of one of my pensions, on supposedly low risk investments, thanks to Liz Truss.
I don't feel warm and fuzzy towards her.
Nobody is asking you to feel warm and fuzzy. , just to stay vaguely in touch with the facts.
The facts are that Liz Truss willfully did a stupid thing, which had bad consequences. Why should anyone afford her the benefit of the tiniest doubt? She deserves every bit of blame in her direction, and to the extent she involved the Conservative Party in her shenanigans, so do they.
Dear Lord in heaven above, sorry to shout, but BOND YIELDS ARE HIGHER NOW THAN THEY WERE DURING THE WORST OF THE LDI/MINIBUDGET CRISIS.
I am really struggling to see what part of this you don't understand. There is a higher premium for lending to Starmer and Reeves than there was for lending to Truss and Kwarteng. And that's without an energy price shock, or the Bank of England deciding to flog off £80bn bonds.
I don't particularly wish to relitigate the minibudget - by all means think as you wish, I am merely saying that the borrowing position is worse now.
Isn't is more intellectually honest than to compare the premium (or discount!) that investors demand for holding UK assets relative to peers?
And on that score again the UK is in a worse position than any of the other G7 countries.
Japan, Canada and Germany have Bond Yields below 4% (Germany is a whole 2% points lower than the UK) France, Italy and the USA are below 5%.
So there is a clear Premium being demanded for UK assets. And it is getting worse, not better.
It's the point we were comparable, in the middle of comparable econmies pre-mini budget, but since that point we have been an outlier, since the markets now charge us a moron premium due to Truss and what she did.
Apart from here on PB, are there any old wise men left in the country beyond David Attenborough (Who is amazingly wise)?
Martin Lewis is the next one we produced but he is only 54. On that basis there should be an 8 year old coming through the ranks somewhere we should watch out for.
He's a decent shout.
When I was young there were a whole host of not exactly national heroes, but along those lines. Now there is one. DA.
What's happened? Maybe Dyson?
I guess the scale of things has diminished the prominence of the individual, but there still seems to be an inexplicable gap.
(Obviously it would have been me, but somehow...)
National Treasures
Dr Alice Roberts
Robert Plant
John Craven
Jules Holland
Twiggy
David Blunkett
Whispering Bob Harris
Gary Lineker
Lenny Henry
Tom Jones
Mo Farrah
Martin Brundle
Really?
I mean, really?
Public intellectuals rather than national treasures would currently include Brian Cox and Lucy Worsley and on radio, Mary Beard. David Starkey used to be one before he went political. People who would look at a camera and say clever stuff. Older PBers will remember AJP Taylor, Kenneth Clark, James Burke, Magnus Pyke, Peter Jay among others. Television turned away – too boring; too elitist – but podcasts show the demand is still there.
I'd add Brian Walden to that list and Melvyn Bragg
And Bryan Magee. One of the public intellectuals who was also an MP. (It is hard to imagine an MP today who could, like Magee, make Kant's Critique of Pure Reason accessible and comprehensible to a wide audience. Lee Anderson perhaps?)
Another post that has me longing for an 'Eh?' button.
It's a meme. The first character discovers the truth of something that has been kept secret for a long time. The second character, who knew the secret all along, pulls out a gun to shoot him and preserve the secret.
Example:
Character 1: "You mean the cops are committing the murders?"
Character 2: "Always have been" (shoots character 1, frames him for the murder)
The origin of the meme, and why they are depicted as astronauts, is outside scope.
OT rant. Amazon has locked me out. They've decided the only way to do 2FA is to send the verification code to WhatsApp on my phone. But the phone Amazon knows about does not have WhatsApp and cannot have WhatsApp so I can't log in to change it.
Oh yes, there's an SMS button but that says I've requested too many OTPs, which I haven't, and the online help does not have an option that covers this. FFS Bezos; no wonder Elon's beaten you into space.
These days it feels like to login to Amazon, I get sent a code to gmail, which wants a code from my mobile, which wants a code from yahoo, which wants a code from hotmail.
So I waste my time here until TSE thinks we are a bit short on TLA so brings in 2FA.
Updates from Neo North Korea on Trump's "deal" starting to come in:
Aaron Rupar @atrupar · 17m Burgum: "President Trump won the war militarily. Then he won the war economically ... diplomatically, militarily, economically -- three ways to win a war. Trump won all three of them."
Apart from here on PB, are there any old wise men left in the country beyond David Attenborough (Who is amazingly wise)?
Martin Lewis is the next one we produced but he is only 54. On that basis there should be an 8 year old coming through the ranks somewhere we should watch out for.
He's a decent shout.
When I was young there were a whole host of not exactly national heroes, but along those lines. Now there is one. DA.
What's happened? Maybe Dyson?
I guess the scale of things has diminished the prominence of the individual, but there still seems to be an inexplicable gap.
(Obviously it would have been me, but somehow...)
National Treasures
Dr Alice Roberts
Robert Plant
John Craven
Jules Holland
Twiggy
David Blunkett
Whispering Bob Harris
Gary Lineker
Lenny Henry
Tom Jones
Mo Farrah
Martin Brundle
Really?
I mean, really?
Public intellectuals rather than national treasures would currently include Brian Cox and Lucy Worsley and on radio, Mary Beard. David Starkey used to be one before he went political. People who would look at a camera and say clever stuff. Older PBers will remember AJP Taylor, Kenneth Clark, James Burke, Magnus Pyke, Peter Jay among others. Television turned away – too boring; too elitist – but podcasts show the demand is still there.
I'd add Brian Walden to that list and Melvyn Bragg
And Bryan Magee. One of the public intellectuals who was also an MP. (It is hard to imagine an MP today who could, like Magee, make Kant's Critique of Pure Reason accessible and comprehensible to a wide audience. Lee Anderson perhaps?)
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
That's not how it works. There's never a plan to stop borrowing or repay all the debt. Any specific debt will repaid when it falls due by rolling it over and borrowing more. That is how businesses finance themselves. The UK public debt is about equal to the UK's annual income (GDP). Households often have mortgages much in excess of 100% of their annual income.
It is what all the various fiscal rules have been about, and why British budget plans continue to include fictional increases in fuel duty in future years, so that the budget deficit can be shown to be reduced at the end of the budget plan.
I think your are missing deficit and debt. I did not claim that there's a plan for Britain to repay the debt, but there is a plan to close the deficit - and that's what creates the confidence to allow Britain to continue borrowing.
You said "But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid."
I'm not confusing deficit and debt. It looks as if you are.
The current fiscal rules are that day-to-day government spending must be covered by tax revenues rather than by borrowing, but the government can borrow to fund long-term capital investments. Some defence expenditure will be capital investment.
I was using "repaid" in an informal sense - i.e. that the country is good for the money. But if the government lose the confidence of the bond market then they won't be able to roll over debt, and so existing debt won't be able to be repaid when it falls due. So it's relevant without it being a scenario where the total amount of debt is reduced.
The point being that we can only borrow if there is credibility over the country's solvency, and that means demonstrating that there are limits on our borrowing.
Truss showed how brittle that credibility was. Simply adding increases in defence spending to already high levels of borrowing isn't credible in my view.
I don't know why we're still using the Truss episode as the nadir of bond market instability when things now (afaik) are far worse. It is Reeves and Starmer who get the gold medal.
I lost a quarter of the value of one of my pensions, on supposedly low risk investments, thanks to Liz Truss.
I don't feel warm and fuzzy towards her.
Nobody is asking you to feel warm and fuzzy. , just to stay vaguely in touch with the facts.
The facts are that Liz Truss willfully did a stupid thing, which had bad consequences. Why should anyone afford her the benefit of the tiniest doubt? She deserves every bit of blame in her direction, and to the extent she involved the Conservative Party in her shenanigans, so do they.
Dear Lord in heaven above, sorry to shout, but BOND YIELDS ARE HIGHER NOW THAN THEY WERE DURING THE WORST OF THE LDI/MINIBUDGET CRISIS.
I am really struggling to see what part of this you don't understand. There is a higher premium for lending to Starmer and Reeves than there was for lending to Truss and Kwarteng. And that's without an energy price shock, or the Bank of England deciding to flog off £80bn bonds.
I don't particularly wish to relitigate the minibudget - by all means think as you wish, I am merely saying that the borrowing position is worse now.
Isn't is more intellectually honest than to compare the premium (or discount!) that investors demand for holding UK assets relative to peers?
And on that score again the UK is in a worse position than any of the other G7 countries.
Japan, Canada and Germany have Bond Yields below 4% (Germany is a whole 2% points lower than the UK) France, Italy and the USA are below 5%.
So there is a clear Premium being demanded for UK assets. And it is getting worse, not better.
You need to look at real interest rates - we have somewhat higher inflation than the other G7 countries. Partly down to that but also against the dollar being the world's reserve currency and Germany, France and Italy can't independently affect their currencies, there will always be a higher currency risk to sterling bonds than those countries.
Another post that has me longing for an 'Eh?' button.
It's a meme. The first character discovers the truth of something that has been kept secret for a long time. The second character, who knew the secret all along, pulls out a gun to shoot him and preserve the secret.
Example:
Character 1: "You mean the cops are committing the murders?"
Character 2: "Always have been" (shoots character 1, frames him for the murder)
The origin of the meme, and why they are depicted as astronauts, is outside scope.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 16m One thing a lot of people are missing from the current Makerfield analysis. The polls are interesting. But by this stage a large amount of people have already voted.
Edit: of course that is incorrect as it is "large number of people" not "amount"
I'm not really sure what point Dan Hodges is trying to make, unless it is that postal voters will not be influenced by Wednesday night's football result. What he should be saying but does not seem to be is that people who have already voted will respond more reliably to opinion pollsters (since they cannot change their minds).
It would be interesting to know just how many of the electorate in Makerfield use a postal vote
Well, on Thursday we find out how many are ready to go postal.
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
That's not how it works. There's never a plan to stop borrowing or repay all the debt. Any specific debt will repaid when it falls due by rolling it over and borrowing more. That is how businesses finance themselves. The UK public debt is about equal to the UK's annual income (GDP). Households often have mortgages much in excess of 100% of their annual income.
It is what all the various fiscal rules have been about, and why British budget plans continue to include fictional increases in fuel duty in future years, so that the budget deficit can be shown to be reduced at the end of the budget plan.
I think your are missing deficit and debt. I did not claim that there's a plan for Britain to repay the debt, but there is a plan to close the deficit - and that's what creates the confidence to allow Britain to continue borrowing.
You said "But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid."
I'm not confusing deficit and debt. It looks as if you are.
The current fiscal rules are that day-to-day government spending must be covered by tax revenues rather than by borrowing, but the government can borrow to fund long-term capital investments. Some defence expenditure will be capital investment.
I was using "repaid" in an informal sense - i.e. that the country is good for the money. But if the government lose the confidence of the bond market then they won't be able to roll over debt, and so existing debt won't be able to be repaid when it falls due. So it's relevant without it being a scenario where the total amount of debt is reduced.
The point being that we can only borrow if there is credibility over the country's solvency, and that means demonstrating that there are limits on our borrowing.
Truss showed how brittle that credibility was. Simply adding increases in defence spending to already high levels of borrowing isn't credible in my view.
I don't know why we're still using the Truss episode as the nadir of bond market instability when things now (afaik) are far worse. It is Reeves and Starmer who get the gold medal.
I lost a quarter of the value of one of my pensions, on supposedly low risk investments, thanks to Liz Truss.
I don't feel warm and fuzzy towards her.
Nobody is asking you to feel warm and fuzzy. , just to stay vaguely in touch with the facts.
The facts are that Liz Truss willfully did a stupid thing, which had bad consequences. Why should anyone afford her the benefit of the tiniest doubt? She deserves every bit of blame in her direction, and to the extent she involved the Conservative Party in her shenanigans, so do they.
Dear Lord in heaven above, sorry to shout, but BOND YIELDS ARE HIGHER NOW THAN THEY WERE DURING THE WORST OF THE LDI/MINIBUDGET CRISIS.
I am really struggling to see what part of this you don't understand. There is a higher premium for lending to Starmer and Reeves than there was for lending to Truss and Kwarteng. And that's without an energy price shock, or the Bank of England deciding to flog off £80bn bonds.
I don't particularly wish to relitigate the minibudget - by all means think as you wish, I am merely saying that the borrowing position is worse now.
Isn't is more intellectually honest than to compare the premium (or discount!) that investors demand for holding UK assets relative to peers?
And on that score again the UK is in a worse position than any of the other G7 countries.
Japan, Canada and Germany have Bond Yields below 4% (Germany is a whole 2% points lower than the UK) France, Italy and the USA are below 5%.
So there is a clear Premium being demanded for UK assets. And it is getting worse, not better.
Which is why anyone claiming Reeves has been anything short of a disaster really doesn't know what they are talking about. She is costing us serious money.
How much will the Burnham premium be ? One hopes he will realize that whether he likes it or not you can’t take too many liberties with the bond market .
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
That's not how it works. There's never a plan to stop borrowing or repay all the debt. Any specific debt will repaid when it falls due by rolling it over and borrowing more. That is how businesses finance themselves. The UK public debt is about equal to the UK's annual income (GDP). Households often have mortgages much in excess of 100% of their annual income.
It is what all the various fiscal rules have been about, and why British budget plans continue to include fictional increases in fuel duty in future years, so that the budget deficit can be shown to be reduced at the end of the budget plan.
I think your are missing deficit and debt. I did not claim that there's a plan for Britain to repay the debt, but there is a plan to close the deficit - and that's what creates the confidence to allow Britain to continue borrowing.
You said "But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid."
I'm not confusing deficit and debt. It looks as if you are.
The current fiscal rules are that day-to-day government spending must be covered by tax revenues rather than by borrowing, but the government can borrow to fund long-term capital investments. Some defence expenditure will be capital investment.
I was using "repaid" in an informal sense - i.e. that the country is good for the money. But if the government lose the confidence of the bond market then they won't be able to roll over debt, and so existing debt won't be able to be repaid when it falls due. So it's relevant without it being a scenario where the total amount of debt is reduced.
The point being that we can only borrow if there is credibility over the country's solvency, and that means demonstrating that there are limits on our borrowing.
Truss showed how brittle that credibility was. Simply adding increases in defence spending to already high levels of borrowing isn't credible in my view.
I don't know why we're still using the Truss episode as the nadir of bond market instability when things now (afaik) are far worse. It is Reeves and Starmer who get the gold medal.
I lost a quarter of the value of one of my pensions, on supposedly low risk investments, thanks to Liz Truss.
I don't feel warm and fuzzy towards her.
Nobody is asking you to feel warm and fuzzy. , just to stay vaguely in touch with the facts.
The facts are that Liz Truss willfully did a stupid thing, which had bad consequences. Why should anyone afford her the benefit of the tiniest doubt? She deserves every bit of blame in her direction, and to the extent she involved the Conservative Party in her shenanigans, so do they.
Dear Lord in heaven above, sorry to shout, but BOND YIELDS ARE HIGHER NOW THAN THEY WERE DURING THE WORST OF THE LDI/MINIBUDGET CRISIS.
I am really struggling to see what part of this you don't understand. There is a higher premium for lending to Starmer and Reeves than there was for lending to Truss and Kwarteng. And that's without an energy price shock, or the Bank of England deciding to flog off £80bn bonds.
I don't particularly wish to relitigate the minibudget - by all means think as you wish, I am merely saying that the borrowing position is worse now.
Isn't is more intellectually honest than to compare the premium (or discount!) that investors demand for holding UK assets relative to peers?
And on that score again the UK is in a worse position than any of the other G7 countries.
Japan, Canada and Germany have Bond Yields below 4% (Germany is a whole 2% points lower than the UK) France, Italy and the USA are below 5%.
So there is a clear Premium being demanded for UK assets. And it is getting worse, not better.
It's the point we were comparable, in the middle of comparable econmies pre-mini budget, but since that point we have been an outlier, since the markets now charge us a moron premium due to Truss and what she did.
Costing the economy £10bn's year after year.
There is also the suspicion in some circles that the Bank of England is playing silly buggers with its quantitative tightening programme.
Updates from Neo North Korea on Trump's "deal" starting to come in:
Aaron Rupar @atrupar · 17m Burgum: "President Trump won the war militarily. Then he won the war economically ... diplomatically, militarily, economically -- three ways to win a war. Trump won all three of them."
If you have to explain how you won, you probably haven't won.
And there is the small matter of not actually having a deal. Again.
No deal is better than a bad deal.
Not in Trump's...I was going to say brain but you know what I mean. He is absolutely desperate for any deal, any deal at all that he can lie about. No deal just makes him look even more stupid than usual.
Updates from Neo North Korea on Trump's "deal" starting to come in:
Aaron Rupar @atrupar · 17m Burgum: "President Trump won the war militarily. Then he won the war economically ... diplomatically, militarily, economically -- three ways to win a war. Trump won all three of them."
If you have to explain how you won, you probably haven't won.
And there is the small matter of not actually having a deal. Again.
No deal is better than a bad deal.
Not in Trump's...I was going to say brain but you know what I mean. He is absolutely desperate for any deal, any deal at all that he can lie about. No deal just makes him look even more stupid than usual.
We're all grown ups here, learned friend, you can say 'arse.'
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
That's not how it works. There's never a plan to stop borrowing or repay all the debt. Any specific debt will repaid when it falls due by rolling it over and borrowing more. That is how businesses finance themselves. The UK public debt is about equal to the UK's annual income (GDP). Households often have mortgages much in excess of 100% of their annual income.
It is what all the various fiscal rules have been about, and why British budget plans continue to include fictional increases in fuel duty in future years, so that the budget deficit can be shown to be reduced at the end of the budget plan.
I think your are missing deficit and debt. I did not claim that there's a plan for Britain to repay the debt, but there is a plan to close the deficit - and that's what creates the confidence to allow Britain to continue borrowing.
You said "But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid."
I'm not confusing deficit and debt. It looks as if you are.
The current fiscal rules are that day-to-day government spending must be covered by tax revenues rather than by borrowing, but the government can borrow to fund long-term capital investments. Some defence expenditure will be capital investment.
I was using "repaid" in an informal sense - i.e. that the country is good for the money. But if the government lose the confidence of the bond market then they won't be able to roll over debt, and so existing debt won't be able to be repaid when it falls due. So it's relevant without it being a scenario where the total amount of debt is reduced.
The point being that we can only borrow if there is credibility over the country's solvency, and that means demonstrating that there are limits on our borrowing.
Truss showed how brittle that credibility was. Simply adding increases in defence spending to already high levels of borrowing isn't credible in my view.
I don't know why we're still using the Truss episode as the nadir of bond market instability when things now (afaik) are far worse. It is Reeves and Starmer who get the gold medal.
I lost a quarter of the value of one of my pensions, on supposedly low risk investments, thanks to Liz Truss.
I don't feel warm and fuzzy towards her.
Nobody is asking you to feel warm and fuzzy. , just to stay vaguely in touch with the facts.
The facts are that Liz Truss willfully did a stupid thing, which had bad consequences. Why should anyone afford her the benefit of the tiniest doubt? She deserves every bit of blame in her direction, and to the extent she involved the Conservative Party in her shenanigans, so do they.
Dear Lord in heaven above, sorry to shout, but BOND YIELDS ARE HIGHER NOW THAN THEY WERE DURING THE WORST OF THE LDI/MINIBUDGET CRISIS.
I am really struggling to see what part of this you don't understand. There is a higher premium for lending to Starmer and Reeves than there was for lending to Truss and Kwarteng. And that's without an energy price shock, or the Bank of England deciding to flog off £80bn bonds.
I don't particularly wish to relitigate the minibudget - by all means think as you wish, I am merely saying that the borrowing position is worse now.
Isn't is more intellectually honest than to compare the premium (or discount!) that investors demand for holding UK assets relative to peers?
And on that score again the UK is in a worse position than any of the other G7 countries.
Japan, Canada and Germany have Bond Yields below 4% (Germany is a whole 2% points lower than the UK) France, Italy and the USA are below 5%.
So there is a clear Premium being demanded for UK assets. And it is getting worse, not better.
Which is why anyone claiming Reeves has been anything short of a disaster really doesn't know what they are talking about. She is costing us serious money.
How much will the Burnham premium be ? One hopes he will realize that whether he likes it or not you can’t take too many liberties with the bond market .
Liz Truss was immensely stupid, actually reckless, but she did teach anyone paying any attention that the envelope available to British politicians is much smaller than we like to think. I very much hope that even Burnham has got that.
Do we know if Restore and Reform voters are fully fungible?
I'd say no. Perhaps they are partly fungible.
Ref UK have many tribes.
I do not see all the grumpy Labour and Conservative voters currently supporting going for Rupert's concentration camps, for example, or all of Reform's ethnic minority supporters.
I'd agree.
There used to be the 'joke', that "not all Reform voters were racist, but all racists voted Reform".
Clearly Farage has been very, very good at making people feel like they're not racist, despite spending his political life stoking fear of "others". However, all that hard word has helped create an environment where a lot more people don't care if they're seen as racists - and Restore have capitalised.
I rethink the more significant point for Farage is that he is a pure flim-flam man, with zero content.
His xenophobia is directed wherever he thinks it will serve his current politics.
In 2015 he was telling the world how much he preferred Indians to Eastern Europeans ('Indians' obey the law"). Now he is doing it precisely the other way round, exploiting a once in a generation attack on a Pole by a British Indian, because he thinks he can exploit THAT.
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
That's not how it works. There's never a plan to stop borrowing or repay all the debt. Any specific debt will repaid when it falls due by rolling it over and borrowing more. That is how businesses finance themselves. The UK public debt is about equal to the UK's annual income (GDP). Households often have mortgages much in excess of 100% of their annual income.
It is what all the various fiscal rules have been about, and why British budget plans continue to include fictional increases in fuel duty in future years, so that the budget deficit can be shown to be reduced at the end of the budget plan.
I think your are missing deficit and debt. I did not claim that there's a plan for Britain to repay the debt, but there is a plan to close the deficit - and that's what creates the confidence to allow Britain to continue borrowing.
You said "But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid."
I'm not confusing deficit and debt. It looks as if you are.
The current fiscal rules are that day-to-day government spending must be covered by tax revenues rather than by borrowing, but the government can borrow to fund long-term capital investments. Some defence expenditure will be capital investment.
I was using "repaid" in an informal sense - i.e. that the country is good for the money. But if the government lose the confidence of the bond market then they won't be able to roll over debt, and so existing debt won't be able to be repaid when it falls due. So it's relevant without it being a scenario where the total amount of debt is reduced.
The point being that we can only borrow if there is credibility over the country's solvency, and that means demonstrating that there are limits on our borrowing.
Truss showed how brittle that credibility was. Simply adding increases in defence spending to already high levels of borrowing isn't credible in my view.
I don't know why we're still using the Truss episode as the nadir of bond market instability when things now (afaik) are far worse. It is Reeves and Starmer who get the gold medal.
I lost a quarter of the value of one of my pensions, on supposedly low risk investments, thanks to Liz Truss.
I don't feel warm and fuzzy towards her.
Nobody is asking you to feel warm and fuzzy. , just to stay vaguely in touch with the facts.
The facts are that Liz Truss willfully did a stupid thing, which had bad consequences. Why should anyone afford her the benefit of the tiniest doubt? She deserves every bit of blame in her direction, and to the extent she involved the Conservative Party in her shenanigans, so do they.
Dear Lord in heaven above, sorry to shout, but BOND YIELDS ARE HIGHER NOW THAN THEY WERE DURING THE WORST OF THE LDI/MINIBUDGET CRISIS.
I am really struggling to see what part of this you don't understand. There is a higher premium for lending to Starmer and Reeves than there was for lending to Truss and Kwarteng. And that's without an energy price shock, or the Bank of England deciding to flog off £80bn bonds.
I don't particularly wish to relitigate the minibudget - by all means think as you wish, I am merely saying that the borrowing position is worse now.
Isn't is more intellectually honest than to compare the premium (or discount!) that investors demand for holding UK assets relative to peers?
And on that score again the UK is in a worse position than any of the other G7 countries.
Japan, Canada and Germany have Bond Yields below 4% (Germany is a whole 2% points lower than the UK) France, Italy and the USA are below 5%.
So there is a clear Premium being demanded for UK assets. And it is getting worse, not better.
Which is why anyone claiming Reeves has been anything short of a disaster really doesn't know what they are talking about. She is costing us serious money.
How much will the Burnham premium be ? One hopes he will realize that whether he likes it or not you can’t take too many liberties with the bond market .
Liz Truss was immensely stupid, actually reckless, but she did teach anyone paying any attention that the envelope available to British politicians is much smaller than we like to think. I very much hope that even Burnham has got that.
I disagree. The tolerance of stupidity from the bond markets is low. That doesn't rule out all alternatives.
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
That's not how it works. There's never a plan to stop borrowing or repay all the debt. Any specific debt will repaid when it falls due by rolling it over and borrowing more. That is how businesses finance themselves. The UK public debt is about equal to the UK's annual income (GDP). Households often have mortgages much in excess of 100% of their annual income.
It is what all the various fiscal rules have been about, and why British budget plans continue to include fictional increases in fuel duty in future years, so that the budget deficit can be shown to be reduced at the end of the budget plan.
I think your are missing deficit and debt. I did not claim that there's a plan for Britain to repay the debt, but there is a plan to close the deficit - and that's what creates the confidence to allow Britain to continue borrowing.
You said "But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid."
I'm not confusing deficit and debt. It looks as if you are.
The current fiscal rules are that day-to-day government spending must be covered by tax revenues rather than by borrowing, but the government can borrow to fund long-term capital investments. Some defence expenditure will be capital investment.
I was using "repaid" in an informal sense - i.e. that the country is good for the money. But if the government lose the confidence of the bond market then they won't be able to roll over debt, and so existing debt won't be able to be repaid when it falls due. So it's relevant without it being a scenario where the total amount of debt is reduced.
The point being that we can only borrow if there is credibility over the country's solvency, and that means demonstrating that there are limits on our borrowing.
Truss showed how brittle that credibility was. Simply adding increases in defence spending to already high levels of borrowing isn't credible in my view.
I don't know why we're still using the Truss episode as the nadir of bond market instability when things now (afaik) are far worse. It is Reeves and Starmer who get the gold medal.
I lost a quarter of the value of one of my pensions, on supposedly low risk investments, thanks to Liz Truss.
I don't feel warm and fuzzy towards her.
Nobody is asking you to feel warm and fuzzy. , just to stay vaguely in touch with the facts.
The facts are that Liz Truss willfully did a stupid thing, which had bad consequences. Why should anyone afford her the benefit of the tiniest doubt? She deserves every bit of blame in her direction, and to the extent she involved the Conservative Party in her shenanigans, so do they.
Dear Lord in heaven above, sorry to shout, but BOND YIELDS ARE HIGHER NOW THAN THEY WERE DURING THE WORST OF THE LDI/MINIBUDGET CRISIS.
I am really struggling to see what part of this you don't understand. There is a higher premium for lending to Starmer and Reeves than there was for lending to Truss and Kwarteng. And that's without an energy price shock, or the Bank of England deciding to flog off £80bn bonds.
I don't particularly wish to relitigate the minibudget - by all means think as you wish, I am merely saying that the borrowing position is worse now.
Isn't is more intellectually honest than to compare the premium (or discount!) that investors demand for holding UK assets relative to peers?
And on that score again the UK is in a worse position than any of the other G7 countries.
Japan, Canada and Germany have Bond Yields below 4% (Germany is a whole 2% points lower than the UK) France, Italy and the USA are below 5%.
So there is a clear Premium being demanded for UK assets. And it is getting worse, not better.
Which is why anyone claiming Reeves has been anything short of a disaster really doesn't know what they are talking about. She is costing us serious money.
How much will the Burnham premium be ? One hopes he will realize that whether he likes it or not you can’t take too many liberties with the bond market .
Liz Truss was immensely stupid, actually reckless, but she did teach anyone paying any attention that the envelope available to British politicians is much smaller than we like to think. I very much hope that even Burnham has got that.
Liz Truss and Kwarteng moved the Bond markets alone
Trump has massively moved the Bond markets alone
Reeves actually has their confidence.
To suggest Burnham is Truss is bordering on insanity.
Do we know if Restore and Reform voters are fully fungible?
I'd say no. Perhaps they are partly fungible.
Ref UK have many tribes.
I do not see all the grumpy Labour and Conservative voters currently supporting going for Rupert's concentration camps, for example, or all of Reform's ethnic minority supporters.
I'd agree.
There used to be the 'joke', that "not all Reform voters were racist, but all racists voted Reform".
Clearly Farage has been very, very good at making people feel like they're not racist, despite spending his political life stoking fear of "others". However, all that hard word has helped create an environment where a lot more people don't care if they're seen as racists - and Restore have capitalised.
Exhibit A:
Rupert Lowe has posted leaflet showing how Restore define Reform to voters - Scale of deportations: "millions must go" inc legal migrants - Death Penalty - Disagrees with Farage warning on "alienating the whole of Islam" [to tackle extremism] saying "Islamification" must end - Jenrick + Zahawi
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
That's not how it works. There's never a plan to stop borrowing or repay all the debt. Any specific debt will repaid when it falls due by rolling it over and borrowing more. That is how businesses finance themselves. The UK public debt is about equal to the UK's annual income (GDP). Households often have mortgages much in excess of 100% of their annual income.
It is what all the various fiscal rules have been about, and why British budget plans continue to include fictional increases in fuel duty in future years, so that the budget deficit can be shown to be reduced at the end of the budget plan.
I think your are missing deficit and debt. I did not claim that there's a plan for Britain to repay the debt, but there is a plan to close the deficit - and that's what creates the confidence to allow Britain to continue borrowing.
You said "But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid."
I'm not confusing deficit and debt. It looks as if you are.
The current fiscal rules are that day-to-day government spending must be covered by tax revenues rather than by borrowing, but the government can borrow to fund long-term capital investments. Some defence expenditure will be capital investment.
I was using "repaid" in an informal sense - i.e. that the country is good for the money. But if the government lose the confidence of the bond market then they won't be able to roll over debt, and so existing debt won't be able to be repaid when it falls due. So it's relevant without it being a scenario where the total amount of debt is reduced.
The point being that we can only borrow if there is credibility over the country's solvency, and that means demonstrating that there are limits on our borrowing.
Truss showed how brittle that credibility was. Simply adding increases in defence spending to already high levels of borrowing isn't credible in my view.
I don't know why we're still using the Truss episode as the nadir of bond market instability when things now (afaik) are far worse. It is Reeves and Starmer who get the gold medal.
I lost a quarter of the value of one of my pensions, on supposedly low risk investments, thanks to Liz Truss.
I don't feel warm and fuzzy towards her.
Nobody is asking you to feel warm and fuzzy. , just to stay vaguely in touch with the facts.
The facts are that Liz Truss willfully did a stupid thing, which had bad consequences. Why should anyone afford her the benefit of the tiniest doubt? She deserves every bit of blame in her direction, and to the extent she involved the Conservative Party in her shenanigans, so do they.
Dear Lord in heaven above, sorry to shout, but BOND YIELDS ARE HIGHER NOW THAN THEY WERE DURING THE WORST OF THE LDI/MINIBUDGET CRISIS.
I am really struggling to see what part of this you don't understand. There is a higher premium for lending to Starmer and Reeves than there was for lending to Truss and Kwarteng. And that's without an energy price shock, or the Bank of England deciding to flog off £80bn bonds.
I don't particularly wish to relitigate the minibudget - by all means think as you wish, I am merely saying that the borrowing position is worse now.
Isn't is more intellectually honest than to compare the premium (or discount!) that investors demand for holding UK assets relative to peers?
And on that score again the UK is in a worse position than any of the other G7 countries.
Japan, Canada and Germany have Bond Yields below 4% (Germany is a whole 2% points lower than the UK) France, Italy and the USA are below 5%.
So there is a clear Premium being demanded for UK assets. And it is getting worse, not better.
Which is why anyone claiming Reeves has been anything short of a disaster really doesn't know what they are talking about. She is costing us serious money.
How much will the Burnham premium be ? One hopes he will realize that whether he likes it or not you can’t take too many liberties with the bond market .
Liz Truss was immensely stupid, actually reckless, but she did teach anyone paying any attention that the envelope available to British politicians is much smaller than we like to think. I very much hope that even Burnham has got that.
Liz Truss and Kwarteng moved the Bond markets alone
Trump has massively moved the Bond markets alone
Reeves actually has their confidence.
To suggest Burnham is Truss is bordering on insanity.
Sorry, that is just delusional. Our bond premium, as @rcs1000 has already pointed out, is increasing. She is making the situation worse. Consistently. And it is not cost free. Far from it.
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
What’s the current cost to the UK of the Ukraine war, both in terms of military support (in actual money, not made-up military accounting), and in benefits to Ukranian refugees and host families in the UK?
Because that is money that no longer needs to be spent once we’ve put Putin back in his box, and should be able to be taken into account by the bond markets.
The total figure given by the government is £21.8bn since February 2022.
But I don't think that includes the spending on Ukrainian refugees in the UK, and it probably overstates the military support (if equipment provided from stocks was valued at its replacement cost).
It's a pretty small sum of money compared to the increase in defence spending that Britain has signed up to, so it doesn't affect them necessity of having to choose between some mix of spending cuts and tax increases if Britain intends to fulfil that commitment.
That's about £5.5 billion a year which is the equivalent of around 9 % of the current defence budget. Not really a small sum of money.
The public commitment is £3bn per annum, which is separate from the defence budget. It is met from something called the "Treasury Reserve". I think there has been more effectiveness in how that is spent in general, than the defence budget, despite John Healey's good, and careful, work on a number of foundational aspects.
Clearly there will be some bleed at the edges, though.
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
That's not how it works. There's never a plan to stop borrowing or repay all the debt. Any specific debt will repaid when it falls due by rolling it over and borrowing more. That is how businesses finance themselves. The UK public debt is about equal to the UK's annual income (GDP). Households often have mortgages much in excess of 100% of their annual income.
It is what all the various fiscal rules have been about, and why British budget plans continue to include fictional increases in fuel duty in future years, so that the budget deficit can be shown to be reduced at the end of the budget plan.
I think your are missing deficit and debt. I did not claim that there's a plan for Britain to repay the debt, but there is a plan to close the deficit - and that's what creates the confidence to allow Britain to continue borrowing.
You said "But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid."
I'm not confusing deficit and debt. It looks as if you are.
The current fiscal rules are that day-to-day government spending must be covered by tax revenues rather than by borrowing, but the government can borrow to fund long-term capital investments. Some defence expenditure will be capital investment.
I was using "repaid" in an informal sense - i.e. that the country is good for the money. But if the government lose the confidence of the bond market then they won't be able to roll over debt, and so existing debt won't be able to be repaid when it falls due. So it's relevant without it being a scenario where the total amount of debt is reduced.
The point being that we can only borrow if there is credibility over the country's solvency, and that means demonstrating that there are limits on our borrowing.
Truss showed how brittle that credibility was. Simply adding increases in defence spending to already high levels of borrowing isn't credible in my view.
I don't know why we're still using the Truss episode as the nadir of bond market instability when things now (afaik) are far worse. It is Reeves and Starmer who get the gold medal.
I lost a quarter of the value of one of my pensions, on supposedly low risk investments, thanks to Liz Truss.
I don't feel warm and fuzzy towards her.
Nobody is asking you to feel warm and fuzzy. , just to stay vaguely in touch with the facts.
The facts are that Liz Truss willfully did a stupid thing, which had bad consequences. Why should anyone afford her the benefit of the tiniest doubt? She deserves every bit of blame in her direction, and to the extent she involved the Conservative Party in her shenanigans, so do they.
Dear Lord in heaven above, sorry to shout, but BOND YIELDS ARE HIGHER NOW THAN THEY WERE DURING THE WORST OF THE LDI/MINIBUDGET CRISIS.
I am really struggling to see what part of this you don't understand. There is a higher premium for lending to Starmer and Reeves than there was for lending to Truss and Kwarteng. And that's without an energy price shock, or the Bank of England deciding to flog off £80bn bonds.
I don't particularly wish to relitigate the minibudget - by all means think as you wish, I am merely saying that the borrowing position is worse now.
Isn't is more intellectually honest than to compare the premium (or discount!) that investors demand for holding UK assets relative to peers?
And on that score again the UK is in a worse position than any of the other G7 countries.
Japan, Canada and Germany have Bond Yields below 4% (Germany is a whole 2% points lower than the UK) France, Italy and the USA are below 5%.
So there is a clear Premium being demanded for UK assets. And it is getting worse, not better.
Which is why anyone claiming Reeves has been anything short of a disaster really doesn't know what they are talking about. She is costing us serious money.
How much will the Burnham premium be ? One hopes he will realize that whether he likes it or not you can’t take too many liberties with the bond market .
Liz Truss was immensely stupid, actually reckless, but she did teach anyone paying any attention that the envelope available to British politicians is much smaller than we like to think. I very much hope that even Burnham has got that.
Liz Truss and Kwarteng moved the Bond markets alone
Trump has massively moved the Bond markets alone
Reeves actually has their confidence.
To suggest Burnham is Truss is bordering on insanity.
The idea that Reeves has their confidence is a complete joke. They have so little confidence in her they are demanding vastly higher rates of return than they do for any other G7 country and far higher than even under Truss. And it has been getting steadily worse.
Why are all politicians seemingly obsessed with cutting welfare to fund more defence spending?
Welfare spending is about 10.6% of GDP, as a proportion thats lower than most other European countries, & the majority of it goes on pensioners.
Zack Polanski is not infected with this inexplicable obsession.
Whether i vote Green or Labour would be in the balance if the KoN agreed with Zack on this subject
I suspect Burnham is more pragmatic. Zack is reminiscent of Jezza. What could be better than infinite opposition? So like Jezza, he can say what he likes
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
That's not how it works. There's never a plan to stop borrowing or repay all the debt. Any specific debt will repaid when it falls due by rolling it over and borrowing more. That is how businesses finance themselves. The UK public debt is about equal to the UK's annual income (GDP). Households often have mortgages much in excess of 100% of their annual income.
It is what all the various fiscal rules have been about, and why British budget plans continue to include fictional increases in fuel duty in future years, so that the budget deficit can be shown to be reduced at the end of the budget plan.
I think your are missing deficit and debt. I did not claim that there's a plan for Britain to repay the debt, but there is a plan to close the deficit - and that's what creates the confidence to allow Britain to continue borrowing.
You said "But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid."
I'm not confusing deficit and debt. It looks as if you are.
The current fiscal rules are that day-to-day government spending must be covered by tax revenues rather than by borrowing, but the government can borrow to fund long-term capital investments. Some defence expenditure will be capital investment.
I was using "repaid" in an informal sense - i.e. that the country is good for the money. But if the government lose the confidence of the bond market then they won't be able to roll over debt, and so existing debt won't be able to be repaid when it falls due. So it's relevant without it being a scenario where the total amount of debt is reduced.
The point being that we can only borrow if there is credibility over the country's solvency, and that means demonstrating that there are limits on our borrowing.
Truss showed how brittle that credibility was. Simply adding increases in defence spending to already high levels of borrowing isn't credible in my view.
I don't know why we're still using the Truss episode as the nadir of bond market instability when things now (afaik) are far worse. It is Reeves and Starmer who get the gold medal.
I lost a quarter of the value of one of my pensions, on supposedly low risk investments, thanks to Liz Truss.
I don't feel warm and fuzzy towards her.
Nobody is asking you to feel warm and fuzzy. , just to stay vaguely in touch with the facts.
The facts are that Liz Truss willfully did a stupid thing, which had bad consequences. Why should anyone afford her the benefit of the tiniest doubt? She deserves every bit of blame in her direction, and to the extent she involved the Conservative Party in her shenanigans, so do they.
Dear Lord in heaven above, sorry to shout, but BOND YIELDS ARE HIGHER NOW THAN THEY WERE DURING THE WORST OF THE LDI/MINIBUDGET CRISIS.
I am really struggling to see what part of this you don't understand. There is a higher premium for lending to Starmer and Reeves than there was for lending to Truss and Kwarteng. And that's without an energy price shock, or the Bank of England deciding to flog off £80bn bonds.
I don't particularly wish to relitigate the minibudget - by all means think as you wish, I am merely saying that the borrowing position is worse now.
Isn't is more intellectually honest than to compare the premium (or discount!) that investors demand for holding UK assets relative to peers?
And on that score again the UK is in a worse position than any of the other G7 countries.
Japan, Canada and Germany have Bond Yields below 4% (Germany is a whole 2% points lower than the UK) France, Italy and the USA are below 5%.
So there is a clear Premium being demanded for UK assets. And it is getting worse, not better.
Which is why anyone claiming Reeves has been anything short of disaster really doesn't know what they are talking about. She is costing us serious money.
How much will the Burnham premium be ? One hopes he will realize that whether he likes it or not you can’t take too many liberties with the bond market .
Liz Truss was immensely stupid, actually reckless, but she did teach anyone paying any attention that the envelope available to British politicians is much smaller than we like to think. I very much hope that even Burnham has got that.
Truss' problem was she cut tax but not spending. Burnham has therefore said he will increase tax with a new land tax, increased income tax on high earners and a social care levy to find his extra spending and nationalisation of water and electricity plans. The City won't like that and it may hit growth but it would be funded
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
That's not how it works. There's never a plan to stop borrowing or repay all the debt. Any specific debt will repaid when it falls due by rolling it over and borrowing more. That is how businesses finance themselves. The UK public debt is about equal to the UK's annual income (GDP). Households often have mortgages much in excess of 100% of their annual income.
It is what all the various fiscal rules have been about, and why British budget plans continue to include fictional increases in fuel duty in future years, so that the budget deficit can be shown to be reduced at the end of the budget plan.
I think your are missing deficit and debt. I did not claim that there's a plan for Britain to repay the debt, but there is a plan to close the deficit - and that's what creates the confidence to allow Britain to continue borrowing.
You said "But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid."
I'm not confusing deficit and debt. It looks as if you are.
The current fiscal rules are that day-to-day government spending must be covered by tax revenues rather than by borrowing, but the government can borrow to fund long-term capital investments. Some defence expenditure will be capital investment.
I was using "repaid" in an informal sense - i.e. that the country is good for the money. But if the government lose the confidence of the bond market then they won't be able to roll over debt, and so existing debt won't be able to be repaid when it falls due. So it's relevant without it being a scenario where the total amount of debt is reduced.
The point being that we can only borrow if there is credibility over the country's solvency, and that means demonstrating that there are limits on our borrowing.
Truss showed how brittle that credibility was. Simply adding increases in defence spending to already high levels of borrowing isn't credible in my view.
I don't know why we're still using the Truss episode as the nadir of bond market instability when things now (afaik) are far worse. It is Reeves and Starmer who get the gold medal.
I lost a quarter of the value of one of my pensions, on supposedly low risk investments, thanks to Liz Truss.
I don't feel warm and fuzzy towards her.
Nobody is asking you to feel warm and fuzzy. , just to stay vaguely in touch with the facts.
The facts are that Liz Truss willfully did a stupid thing, which had bad consequences. Why should anyone afford her the benefit of the tiniest doubt? She deserves every bit of blame in her direction, and to the extent she involved the Conservative Party in her shenanigans, so do they.
Dear Lord in heaven above, sorry to shout, but BOND YIELDS ARE HIGHER NOW THAN THEY WERE DURING THE WORST OF THE LDI/MINIBUDGET CRISIS.
I am really struggling to see what part of this you don't understand. There is a higher premium for lending to Starmer and Reeves than there was for lending to Truss and Kwarteng. And that's without an energy price shock, or the Bank of England deciding to flog off £80bn bonds.
I don't particularly wish to relitigate the minibudget - by all means think as you wish, I am merely saying that the borrowing position is worse now.
Isn't is more intellectually honest than to compare the premium (or discount!) that investors demand for holding UK assets relative to peers?
And on that score again the UK is in a worse position than any of the other G7 countries.
Japan, Canada and Germany have Bond Yields below 4% (Germany is a whole 2% points lower than the UK) France, Italy and the USA are below 5%.
So there is a clear Premium being demanded for UK assets. And it is getting worse, not better.
Which is why anyone claiming Reeves has been anything short of a disaster really doesn't know what they are talking about. She is costing us serious money.
How much will the Burnham premium be ? One hopes he will realize that whether he likes it or not you can’t take too many liberties with the bond market .
Liz Truss was immensely stupid, actually reckless, but she did teach anyone paying any attention that the envelope available to British politicians is much smaller than we like to think. I very much hope that even Burnham has got that.
Burnham very much wants to be PM for longer than seven weeks, and I think he is willing to listen to other people when they say something like, "that's the sort of thing that got Liz Truss into trouble," but I don't think he has learned the lesson himself. He's said too many things to the contrary to conclude that.
So he's my top pick for a Labour figure who would rerun the Truss experience, but I wouldn't panic about it, unless KCIII dies shortly after appointing him.
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
That's not how it works. There's never a plan to stop borrowing or repay all the debt. Any specific debt will repaid when it falls due by rolling it over and borrowing more. That is how businesses finance themselves. The UK public debt is about equal to the UK's annual income (GDP). Households often have mortgages much in excess of 100% of their annual income.
It is what all the various fiscal rules have been about, and why British budget plans continue to include fictional increases in fuel duty in future years, so that the budget deficit can be shown to be reduced at the end of the budget plan.
I think your are missing deficit and debt. I did not claim that there's a plan for Britain to repay the debt, but there is a plan to close the deficit - and that's what creates the confidence to allow Britain to continue borrowing.
You said "But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid."
I'm not confusing deficit and debt. It looks as if you are.
The current fiscal rules are that day-to-day government spending must be covered by tax revenues rather than by borrowing, but the government can borrow to fund long-term capital investments. Some defence expenditure will be capital investment.
I was using "repaid" in an informal sense - i.e. that the country is good for the money. But if the government lose the confidence of the bond market then they won't be able to roll over debt, and so existing debt won't be able to be repaid when it falls due. So it's relevant without it being a scenario where the total amount of debt is reduced.
The point being that we can only borrow if there is credibility over the country's solvency, and that means demonstrating that there are limits on our borrowing.
Truss showed how brittle that credibility was. Simply adding increases in defence spending to already high levels of borrowing isn't credible in my view.
I don't know why we're still using the Truss episode as the nadir of bond market instability when things now (afaik) are far worse. It is Reeves and Starmer who get the gold medal.
I lost a quarter of the value of one of my pensions, on supposedly low risk investments, thanks to Liz Truss.
I don't feel warm and fuzzy towards her.
Nobody is asking you to feel warm and fuzzy. , just to stay vaguely in touch with the facts.
The facts are that Liz Truss willfully did a stupid thing, which had bad consequences. Why should anyone afford her the benefit of the tiniest doubt? She deserves every bit of blame in her direction, and to the extent she involved the Conservative Party in her shenanigans, so do they.
Dear Lord in heaven above, sorry to shout, but BOND YIELDS ARE HIGHER NOW THAN THEY WERE DURING THE WORST OF THE LDI/MINIBUDGET CRISIS.
I am really struggling to see what part of this you don't understand. There is a higher premium for lending to Starmer and Reeves than there was for lending to Truss and Kwarteng. And that's without an energy price shock, or the Bank of England deciding to flog off £80bn bonds.
I don't particularly wish to relitigate the minibudget - by all means think as you wish, I am merely saying that the borrowing position is worse now.
Isn't is more intellectually honest than to compare the premium (or discount!) that investors demand for holding UK assets relative to peers?
And on that score again the UK is in a worse position than any of the other G7 countries.
Japan, Canada and Germany have Bond Yields below 4% (Germany is a whole 2% points lower than the UK) France, Italy and the USA are below 5%.
So there is a clear Premium being demanded for UK assets. And it is getting worse, not better.
It's the point we were comparable, in the middle of comparable econmies pre-mini budget, but since that point we have been an outlier, since the markets now charge us a moron premium due to Truss and what she did.
Costing the economy £10bn's year after year.
And yet that moron premium has increased significantly since Reeves got into No 11. It dropped back substantially under Sunak but is now rising steadily again. It is Reeves and Starmer that are costing us tens of billions a year.
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
That's not how it works. There's never a plan to stop borrowing or repay all the debt. Any specific debt will repaid when it falls due by rolling it over and borrowing more. That is how businesses finance themselves. The UK public debt is about equal to the UK's annual income (GDP). Households often have mortgages much in excess of 100% of their annual income.
It is what all the various fiscal rules have been about, and why British budget plans continue to include fictional increases in fuel duty in future years, so that the budget deficit can be shown to be reduced at the end of the budget plan.
I think your are missing deficit and debt. I did not claim that there's a plan for Britain to repay the debt, but there is a plan to close the deficit - and that's what creates the confidence to allow Britain to continue borrowing.
You said "But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid."
I'm not confusing deficit and debt. It looks as if you are.
The current fiscal rules are that day-to-day government spending must be covered by tax revenues rather than by borrowing, but the government can borrow to fund long-term capital investments. Some defence expenditure will be capital investment.
I was using "repaid" in an informal sense - i.e. that the country is good for the money. But if the government lose the confidence of the bond market then they won't be able to roll over debt, and so existing debt won't be able to be repaid when it falls due. So it's relevant without it being a scenario where the total amount of debt is reduced.
The point being that we can only borrow if there is credibility over the country's solvency, and that means demonstrating that there are limits on our borrowing.
Truss showed how brittle that credibility was. Simply adding increases in defence spending to already high levels of borrowing isn't credible in my view.
I don't know why we're still using the Truss episode as the nadir of bond market instability when things now (afaik) are far worse. It is Reeves and Starmer who get the gold medal.
I lost a quarter of the value of one of my pensions, on supposedly low risk investments, thanks to Liz Truss.
I don't feel warm and fuzzy towards her.
Nobody is asking you to feel warm and fuzzy. , just to stay vaguely in touch with the facts.
The facts are that Liz Truss willfully did a stupid thing, which had bad consequences. Why should anyone afford her the benefit of the tiniest doubt? She deserves every bit of blame in her direction, and to the extent she involved the Conservative Party in her shenanigans, so do they.
Dear Lord in heaven above, sorry to shout, but BOND YIELDS ARE HIGHER NOW THAN THEY WERE DURING THE WORST OF THE LDI/MINIBUDGET CRISIS.
I am really struggling to see what part of this you don't understand. There is a higher premium for lending to Starmer and Reeves than there was for lending to Truss and Kwarteng. And that's without an energy price shock, or the Bank of England deciding to flog off £80bn bonds.
I don't particularly wish to relitigate the minibudget - by all means think as you wish, I am merely saying that the borrowing position is worse now.
Isn't is more intellectually honest than to compare the premium (or discount!) that investors demand for holding UK assets relative to peers?
And on that score again the UK is in a worse position than any of the other G7 countries.
Japan, Canada and Germany have Bond Yields below 4% (Germany is a whole 2% points lower than the UK) France, Italy and the USA are below 5%.
So there is a clear Premium being demanded for UK assets. And it is getting worse, not better.
You need to look at real interest rates - we have somewhat higher inflation than the other G7 countries. Partly down to that but also against the dollar being the world's reserve currency and Germany, France and Italy can't independently affect their currencies, there will always be a higher currency risk to sterling bonds than those countries.
Updates from Neo North Korea on Trump's "deal" starting to come in:
Aaron Rupar @atrupar · 17m Burgum: "President Trump won the war militarily. Then he won the war economically ... diplomatically, militarily, economically -- three ways to win a war. Trump won all three of them."
If you have to explain how you won, you probably haven't won.
And there is the small matter of not actually having a deal. Again.
No deal is better than a bad deal.
Not in Trump's...I was going to say brain but you know what I mean. He is absolutely desperate for any deal, any deal at all that he can lie about. No deal just makes him look even more stupid than usual.
Thrump will get a great deal...he always does.
Watch the Apprentice (film).
The Three Rules of Winning.
Attack, Attack, Attack: Go on the offensive and counter-attack relentlessly when threatened. Admit Nothing and Deny Everything: Never concede fault, regardless of the evidence or circumstances. Always Claim Victory: No matter what happens or how badly a situation unfolds, declare that you won and never admit defeat.
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
That's not how it works. There's never a plan to stop borrowing or repay all the debt. Any specific debt will repaid when it falls due by rolling it over and borrowing more. That is how businesses finance themselves. The UK public debt is about equal to the UK's annual income (GDP). Households often have mortgages much in excess of 100% of their annual income.
It is what all the various fiscal rules have been about, and why British budget plans continue to include fictional increases in fuel duty in future years, so that the budget deficit can be shown to be reduced at the end of the budget plan.
I think your are missing deficit and debt. I did not claim that there's a plan for Britain to repay the debt, but there is a plan to close the deficit - and that's what creates the confidence to allow Britain to continue borrowing.
You said "But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid."
I'm not confusing deficit and debt. It looks as if you are.
The current fiscal rules are that day-to-day government spending must be covered by tax revenues rather than by borrowing, but the government can borrow to fund long-term capital investments. Some defence expenditure will be capital investment.
I was using "repaid" in an informal sense - i.e. that the country is good for the money. But if the government lose the confidence of the bond market then they won't be able to roll over debt, and so existing debt won't be able to be repaid when it falls due. So it's relevant without it being a scenario where the total amount of debt is reduced.
The point being that we can only borrow if there is credibility over the country's solvency, and that means demonstrating that there are limits on our borrowing.
Truss showed how brittle that credibility was. Simply adding increases in defence spending to already high levels of borrowing isn't credible in my view.
I don't know why we're still using the Truss episode as the nadir of bond market instability when things now (afaik) are far worse. It is Reeves and Starmer who get the gold medal.
I lost a quarter of the value of one of my pensions, on supposedly low risk investments, thanks to Liz Truss.
I don't feel warm and fuzzy towards her.
Nobody is asking you to feel warm and fuzzy. , just to stay vaguely in touch with the facts.
The facts are that Liz Truss willfully did a stupid thing, which had bad consequences. Why should anyone afford her the benefit of the tiniest doubt? She deserves every bit of blame in her direction, and to the extent she involved the Conservative Party in her shenanigans, so do they.
Dear Lord in heaven above, sorry to shout, but BOND YIELDS ARE HIGHER NOW THAN THEY WERE DURING THE WORST OF THE LDI/MINIBUDGET CRISIS.
I am really struggling to see what part of this you don't understand. There is a higher premium for lending to Starmer and Reeves than there was for lending to Truss and Kwarteng. And that's without an energy price shock, or the Bank of England deciding to flog off £80bn bonds.
I don't particularly wish to relitigate the minibudget - by all means think as you wish, I am merely saying that the borrowing position is worse now.
Isn't is more intellectually honest than to compare the premium (or discount!) that investors demand for holding UK assets relative to peers?
And on that score again the UK is in a worse position than any of the other G7 countries.
Japan, Canada and Germany have Bond Yields below 4% (Germany is a whole 2% points lower than the UK) France, Italy and the USA are below 5%.
So there is a clear Premium being demanded for UK assets. And it is getting worse, not better.
Which is why anyone claiming Reeves has been anything short of disaster really doesn't know what they are talking about. She is costing us serious money.
How much will the Burnham premium be ? One hopes he will realize that whether he likes it or not you can’t take too many liberties with the bond market .
Liz Truss was immensely stupid, actually reckless, but she did teach anyone paying any attention that the envelope available to British politicians is much smaller than we like to think. I very much hope that even Burnham has got that.
Truss' problem was she cut tax but not spending. Burnham has therefore said he will increase tax with a new land tax, increased income tax on high earners and a social care levy to find his extra spending and nationalisation of water and electricity plans. The City won't like that and it may hit growth but it would be funded
That's a very good point. Its not that spending cannot be increased, it is that it has to be paid for, not dumped on the credit card. We need borrowing reduced, urgently, but a government that isn't tied in the knots that Starmer made for himself still has some options.
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
What’s the current cost to the UK of the Ukraine war, both in terms of military support (in actual money, not made-up military accounting), and in benefits to Ukranian refugees and host families in the UK?
Because that is money that no longer needs to be spent once we’ve put Putin back in his box, and should be able to be taken into account by the bond markets.
The total figure given by the government is £21.8bn since February 2022.
But I don't think that includes the spending on Ukrainian refugees in the UK, and it probably overstates the military support (if equipment provided from stocks was valued at its replacement cost).
It's a pretty small sum of money compared to the increase in defence spending that Britain has signed up to, so it doesn't affect them necessity of having to choose between some mix of spending cuts and tax increases if Britain intends to fulfil that commitment.
That's about £5.5 billion a year which is the equivalent of around 9 % of the current defence budget. Not really a small sum of money.
The public commitment is £3bn per annum, which is separate from the defence budget. It is met from something called the "Treasury Reserve". I think there has been more effectiveness in how that is spent in general, than the defence budget, despite John Healey's good, and careful, work on a number of foundational aspects.
Clearly there will be some bleed at the edges, though.
If you follow the link you would see that the £3bn a year is the military support. Britain has provided a bunch of other support.
Do we know if Restore and Reform voters are fully fungible?
I'd say no. Perhaps they are partly fungible.
Ref UK have many tribes.
I do not see all the grumpy Labour and Conservative voters currently supporting going for Rupert's concentration camps, for example, or all of Reform's ethnic minority supporters.
I'd agree.
There used to be the 'joke', that "not all Reform voters were racist, but all racists voted Reform".
Clearly Farage has been very, very good at making people feel like they're not racist, despite spending his political life stoking fear of "others". However, all that hard word has helped create an environment where a lot more people don't care if they're seen as racists - and Restore have capitalised.
Exhibit A:
Rupert Lowe has posted leaflet showing how Restore define Reform to voters - Scale of deportations: "millions must go" inc legal migrants - Death Penalty - Disagrees with Farage warning on "alienating the whole of Islam" [to tackle extremism] saying "Islamification" must end - Jenrick + Zahawi
'millions must go' is a clear sign of how far politics has come along in the last 10 years, or even 5 years - even if is a position only held by Restore voters, that it is on the table signals what a different environment we are in.
David Cameron promised to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands and people repeatedly voted for restrictions on immigration, but instead the government invited millions more into the country. It seems hard to argue that wanting to reverse that shouldn't be a democratically legitimate opinion.
Should the trend of the last 2 years continue much longer, Cameron's target of reducing net immigration to the tens of thousands will be met by the end of 2026.
A lot of that is just boriswavers going home. When 1000000 people come in one year, you can expect maybe 400000(?) of them to leave some time in the following five years.
Net migration might be the headline figure, but it's not the whole story.
Net UK migration by year ending: Dec 22 891k Dec 23 848k Dec 24 331k Dec 25 171k
Drops of 61% and 48% in the last two years respectively. A consistent trend - in every one of the last 11 quarters, the 12 month rolling total has been lower than for the quarter before. So with that consistent trend there seems a decent chance of the figure dropping to the tens of thousands by Dec 26.
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
What’s the current cost to the UK of the Ukraine war, both in terms of military support (in actual money, not made-up military accounting), and in benefits to Ukranian refugees and host families in the UK?
Because that is money that no longer needs to be spent once we’ve put Putin back in his box, and should be able to be taken into account by the bond markets.
The total figure given by the government is £21.8bn since February 2022.
But I don't think that includes the spending on Ukrainian refugees in the UK, and it probably overstates the military support (if equipment provided from stocks was valued at its replacement cost).
It's a pretty small sum of money compared to the increase in defence spending that Britain has signed up to, so it doesn't affect them necessity of having to choose between some mix of spending cuts and tax increases if Britain intends to fulfil that commitment.
That's about £5.5 billion a year which is the equivalent of around 9 % of the current defence budget. Not really a small sum of money.
The public commitment is £3bn per annum, which is separate from the defence budget. It is met from something called the "Treasury Reserve". I think there has been more effectiveness in how that is spent in general, than the defence budget, despite John Healey's good, and careful, work on a number of foundational aspects.
Clearly there will be some bleed at the edges, though.
Don't misunderstand me, I think the money spent on Ukraine is not only morally right but also very sensible froma prctical point of view. I would be happy to see far more spent. I was only disputing the original claim from Lostpassword that it is a pretty small sum compared to what we are commiting to within NATO.
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
That's not how it works. There's never a plan to stop borrowing or repay all the debt. Any specific debt will repaid when it falls due by rolling it over and borrowing more. That is how businesses finance themselves. The UK public debt is about equal to the UK's annual income (GDP). Households often have mortgages much in excess of 100% of their annual income.
It is what all the various fiscal rules have been about, and why British budget plans continue to include fictional increases in fuel duty in future years, so that the budget deficit can be shown to be reduced at the end of the budget plan.
I think your are missing deficit and debt. I did not claim that there's a plan for Britain to repay the debt, but there is a plan to close the deficit - and that's what creates the confidence to allow Britain to continue borrowing.
You said "But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid."
I'm not confusing deficit and debt. It looks as if you are.
The current fiscal rules are that day-to-day government spending must be covered by tax revenues rather than by borrowing, but the government can borrow to fund long-term capital investments. Some defence expenditure will be capital investment.
I was using "repaid" in an informal sense - i.e. that the country is good for the money. But if the government lose the confidence of the bond market then they won't be able to roll over debt, and so existing debt won't be able to be repaid when it falls due. So it's relevant without it being a scenario where the total amount of debt is reduced.
The point being that we can only borrow if there is credibility over the country's solvency, and that means demonstrating that there are limits on our borrowing.
Truss showed how brittle that credibility was. Simply adding increases in defence spending to already high levels of borrowing isn't credible in my view.
I don't know why we're still using the Truss episode as the nadir of bond market instability when things now (afaik) are far worse. It is Reeves and Starmer who get the gold medal.
I lost a quarter of the value of one of my pensions, on supposedly low risk investments, thanks to Liz Truss.
I don't feel warm and fuzzy towards her.
Nobody is asking you to feel warm and fuzzy. , just to stay vaguely in touch with the facts.
The facts are that Liz Truss willfully did a stupid thing, which had bad consequences. Why should anyone afford her the benefit of the tiniest doubt? She deserves every bit of blame in her direction, and to the extent she involved the Conservative Party in her shenanigans, so do they.
Dear Lord in heaven above, sorry to shout, but BOND YIELDS ARE HIGHER NOW THAN THEY WERE DURING THE WORST OF THE LDI/MINIBUDGET CRISIS.
I am really struggling to see what part of this you don't understand. There is a higher premium for lending to Starmer and Reeves than there was for lending to Truss and Kwarteng. And that's without an energy price shock, or the Bank of England deciding to flog off £80bn bonds.
I don't particularly wish to relitigate the minibudget - by all means think as you wish, I am merely saying that the borrowing position is worse now.
Isn't is more intellectually honest than to compare the premium (or discount!) that investors demand for holding UK assets relative to peers?
And on that score again the UK is in a worse position than any of the other G7 countries.
Japan, Canada and Germany have Bond Yields below 4% (Germany is a whole 2% points lower than the UK) France, Italy and the USA are below 5%.
So there is a clear Premium being demanded for UK assets. And it is getting worse, not better.
Which is why anyone claiming Reeves has been anything short of a disaster really doesn't know what they are talking about. She is costing us serious money.
How much will the Burnham premium be ? One hopes he will realize that whether he likes it or not you can’t take too many liberties with the bond market .
Liz Truss was immensely stupid, actually reckless, but she did teach anyone paying any attention that the envelope available to British politicians is much smaller than we like to think. I very much hope that even Burnham has got that.
Liz Truss and Kwarteng moved the Bond markets alone
Trump has massively moved the Bond markets alone
Reeves actually has their confidence.
To suggest Burnham is Truss is bordering on insanity.
The idea that Reeves has their confidence is a complete joke. They have so little confidence in her they are demanding vastly higher rates of return than they do for any other G7 country and far higher than even under Truss. And it has been getting steadily worse.
The only case that you can make for her is that it is her boss who is regarded as totally flaky and unreliable and she simply doesn't have the standing to do anything about it. Which is not much of a case, when you think about it.
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
What’s the current cost to the UK of the Ukraine war, both in terms of military support (in actual money, not made-up military accounting), and in benefits to Ukranian refugees and host families in the UK?
Because that is money that no longer needs to be spent once we’ve put Putin back in his box, and should be able to be taken into account by the bond markets.
The total figure given by the government is £21.8bn since February 2022.
But I don't think that includes the spending on Ukrainian refugees in the UK, and it probably overstates the military support (if equipment provided from stocks was valued at its replacement cost).
It's a pretty small sum of money compared to the increase in defence spending that Britain has signed up to, so it doesn't affect them necessity of having to choose between some mix of spending cuts and tax increases if Britain intends to fulfil that commitment.
That's about £5.5 billion a year which is the equivalent of around 9 % of the current defence budget. Not really a small sum of money.
Incredible value for money though given it's actually being used to destroy our primary adversary's army and economy. £60 billion on defence doesn't even get us an operating attack sub; you'd be mad to send more money that way instead of Ukraine.
Oh agreed. I would like to see us do far more targeted support for Ukraine but we should also be spending far more on our own defence.
Although Ukraine is our own defence in that it's the frontline war on the eastern border of our continent against the greatest (probably only) serious military threat to it.
You are naïve if you think that Russia is the only serious military threat. Its probably not even the greatest, its just currently the most active.
The greater threat is China. Thank goodness they're not currently invading anywhere on Europe or Taiwan, but were they to choose to do so the consequences would make Russia's invasion of Ukraine look like but a minor skirmish.
Yes, but apart from cyberwarfare how do we fight China? We have no assets in the region, no bases and couldn't field more than a token force.
This is not the 19th Century.
All the more reason they are a bigger threat. The consequences if they go are severe and we would be fairly impotent to act.
And what would we do if they choose to look outside their region and invade Europe? Its not impossible.
Do we know if Restore and Reform voters are fully fungible?
I'd say no. Perhaps they are partly fungible.
Ref UK have many tribes.
I do not see all the grumpy Labour and Conservative voters currently supporting going for Rupert's concentration camps, for example, or all of Reform's ethnic minority supporters.
I'd agree.
There used to be the 'joke', that "not all Reform voters were racist, but all racists voted Reform".
Clearly Farage has been very, very good at making people feel like they're not racist, despite spending his political life stoking fear of "others". However, all that hard word has helped create an environment where a lot more people don't care if they're seen as racists - and Restore have capitalised.
Exhibit A:
Rupert Lowe has posted leaflet showing how Restore define Reform to voters - Scale of deportations: "millions must go" inc legal migrants - Death Penalty - Disagrees with Farage warning on "alienating the whole of Islam" [to tackle extremism] saying "Islamification" must end - Jenrick + Zahawi
'millions must go' is a clear sign of how far politics has come along in the last 10 years, or even 5 years - even if is a position only held by Restore voters, that it is on the table signals what a different environment we are in.
David Cameron promised to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands and people repeatedly voted for restrictions on immigration, but instead the government invited millions more into the country. It seems hard to argue that wanting to reverse that shouldn't be a democratically legitimate opinion.
Should the trend of the last 2 years continue much longer, Cameron's target of reducing net immigration to the tens of thousands will be met by the end of 2026.
A lot of that is just boriswavers going home. When 1000000 people come in one year, you can expect maybe 400000(?) of them to leave some time in the following five years.
Net migration might be the headline figure, but it's not the whole story.
Net UK migration by year ending: Dec 22 891k Dec 23 848k Dec 24 331k Dec 25 171k
Drops of 61% and 48% in the last two years respectively. A consistent trend - in every one of the last 11 quarters, the 12 month rolling total has been lower than for the quarter before. So with that consistent trend there seems a decent chance of the figure dropping to the tens of thousands by Dec 26.
Thanks to Sunak and Starmer not amending his measures
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
That's not how it works. There's never a plan to stop borrowing or repay all the debt. Any specific debt will repaid when it falls due by rolling it over and borrowing more. That is how businesses finance themselves. The UK public debt is about equal to the UK's annual income (GDP). Households often have mortgages much in excess of 100% of their annual income.
It is what all the various fiscal rules have been about, and why British budget plans continue to include fictional increases in fuel duty in future years, so that the budget deficit can be shown to be reduced at the end of the budget plan.
I think your are missing deficit and debt. I did not claim that there's a plan for Britain to repay the debt, but there is a plan to close the deficit - and that's what creates the confidence to allow Britain to continue borrowing.
You said "But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid."
I'm not confusing deficit and debt. It looks as if you are.
The current fiscal rules are that day-to-day government spending must be covered by tax revenues rather than by borrowing, but the government can borrow to fund long-term capital investments. Some defence expenditure will be capital investment.
I was using "repaid" in an informal sense - i.e. that the country is good for the money. But if the government lose the confidence of the bond market then they won't be able to roll over debt, and so existing debt won't be able to be repaid when it falls due. So it's relevant without it being a scenario where the total amount of debt is reduced.
The point being that we can only borrow if there is credibility over the country's solvency, and that means demonstrating that there are limits on our borrowing.
Truss showed how brittle that credibility was. Simply adding increases in defence spending to already high levels of borrowing isn't credible in my view.
I don't know why we're still using the Truss episode as the nadir of bond market instability when things now (afaik) are far worse. It is Reeves and Starmer who get the gold medal.
I lost a quarter of the value of one of my pensions, on supposedly low risk investments, thanks to Liz Truss.
I don't feel warm and fuzzy towards her.
Nobody is asking you to feel warm and fuzzy. , just to stay vaguely in touch with the facts.
The facts are that Liz Truss willfully did a stupid thing, which had bad consequences. Why should anyone afford her the benefit of the tiniest doubt? She deserves every bit of blame in her direction, and to the extent she involved the Conservative Party in her shenanigans, so do they.
Dear Lord in heaven above, sorry to shout, but BOND YIELDS ARE HIGHER NOW THAN THEY WERE DURING THE WORST OF THE LDI/MINIBUDGET CRISIS.
I am really struggling to see what part of this you don't understand. There is a higher premium for lending to Starmer and Reeves than there was for lending to Truss and Kwarteng. And that's without an energy price shock, or the Bank of England deciding to flog off £80bn bonds.
I don't particularly wish to relitigate the minibudget - by all means think as you wish, I am merely saying that the borrowing position is worse now.
Isn't is more intellectually honest than to compare the premium (or discount!) that investors demand for holding UK assets relative to peers?
And on that score again the UK is in a worse position than any of the other G7 countries.
Japan, Canada and Germany have Bond Yields below 4% (Germany is a whole 2% points lower than the UK) France, Italy and the USA are below 5%.
So there is a clear Premium being demanded for UK assets. And it is getting worse, not better.
It's the point we were comparable, in the middle of comparable econmies pre-mini budget, but since that point we have been an outlier, since the markets now charge us a moron premium due to Truss and what she did.
Costing the economy £10bn's year after year.
And yet that moron premium has increased significantly since Reeves got into No 11. It dropped back substantially under Sunak but is now rising steadily again. It is Reeves and Starmer that are costing us tens of billions a year.
Do you have a link to analysis showing the differential between UK bond rates and the G7 average?
I'd be interested in seeing at what point[s] Reeves and Starmer lost market confidence, and what the scale of the movement was compared to that under Truss.
Updates from Neo North Korea on Trump's "deal" starting to come in:
Aaron Rupar @atrupar · 17m Burgum: "President Trump won the war militarily. Then he won the war economically ... diplomatically, militarily, economically -- three ways to win a war. Trump won all three of them."
If you have to explain how you won, you probably haven't won.
And there is the small matter of not actually having a deal. Again.
No deal is better than a bad deal.
Not in Trump's...I was going to say brain but you know what I mean. He is absolutely desperate for any deal, any deal at all that he can lie about. No deal just makes him look even more stupid than usual.
Thrump will get a great deal...he always does.
Watch the Apprentice (film).
The Three Rules of Winning.
Attack, Attack, Attack: Go on the offensive and counter-attack relentlessly when threatened. Admit Nothing and Deny Everything: Never concede fault, regardless of the evidence or circumstances. Always Claim Victory: No matter what happens or how badly a situation unfolds, declare that you won and never admit defeat.
Peter.
But even Trump is finding it hard to do that when he simply does not have a deal to lie about.
Updates from Neo North Korea on Trump's "deal" starting to come in:
Aaron Rupar @atrupar · 17m Burgum: "President Trump won the war militarily. Then he won the war economically ... diplomatically, militarily, economically -- three ways to win a war. Trump won all three of them."
If you have to explain how you won, you probably haven't won.
And there is the small matter of not actually having a deal. Again.
No deal is better than a bad deal.
Not in Trump's...I was going to say brain but you know what I mean. He is absolutely desperate for any deal, any deal at all that he can lie about. No deal just makes him look even more stupid than usual.
Thrump will get a great deal...he always does.
Watch the Apprentice (film).
The Three Rules of Winning.
Attack, Attack, Attack: Go on the offensive and counter-attack relentlessly when threatened. Admit Nothing and Deny Everything: Never concede fault, regardless of the evidence or circumstances. Always Claim Victory: No matter what happens or how badly a situation unfolds, declare that you won and never admit defeat.
Peter.
Trumps No 1 concern is that he can claim it is better deal than Obama's.
Even obvs when it clearly isn't.
The guy is obsessed and yet another example of how unwell he is.
But hey ho. Nothing to see here. GOP will continue to back him until the end.
Completely OT but a public information announcement for anyone interested in Indian Colonial History.
Back in 2014 the Qatari National Library entered into a project with the British Library to digitise the entire corpus of the British Indian Office Archive - basically every single document we hold concerning India from the start of the British East India Company in the 1600s to Indian independence in 1947.
The whole lot, every diary, message, briefing and memo is now online and free to access. I have been using it as part of my research for a book on the British interventions in Southern Russia at the end of WW1 and have so far downloaded about 40GB of data.
It also has a load of manuscripts relating to Arabia from the British Library.
Do we know if Restore and Reform voters are fully fungible?
I'd say no. Perhaps they are partly fungible.
Ref UK have many tribes.
I do not see all the grumpy Labour and Conservative voters currently supporting going for Rupert's concentration camps, for example, or all of Reform's ethnic minority supporters.
I'd agree.
There used to be the 'joke', that "not all Reform voters were racist, but all racists voted Reform".
Clearly Farage has been very, very good at making people feel like they're not racist, despite spending his political life stoking fear of "others". However, all that hard word has helped create an environment where a lot more people don't care if they're seen as racists - and Restore have capitalised.
Exhibit A:
Rupert Lowe has posted leaflet showing how Restore define Reform to voters - Scale of deportations: "millions must go" inc legal migrants - Death Penalty - Disagrees with Farage warning on "alienating the whole of Islam" [to tackle extremism] saying "Islamification" must end - Jenrick + Zahawi
'millions must go' is a clear sign of how far politics has come along in the last 10 years, or even 5 years - even if is a position only held by Restore voters, that it is on the table signals what a different environment we are in.
David Cameron promised to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands and people repeatedly voted for restrictions on immigration, but instead the government invited millions more into the country. It seems hard to argue that wanting to reverse that shouldn't be a democratically legitimate opinion.
Should the trend of the last 2 years continue much longer, Cameron's target of reducing net immigration to the tens of thousands will be met by the end of 2026.
A lot of that is just boriswavers going home. When 1000000 people come in one year, you can expect maybe 400000(?) of them to leave some time in the following five years.
Net migration might be the headline figure, but it's not the whole story.
Net UK migration by year ending: Dec 22 891k Dec 23 848k Dec 24 331k Dec 25 171k
Drops of 61% and 48% in the last two years respectively. A consistent trend - in every one of the last 11 quarters, the 12 month rolling total has been lower than for the quarter before. So with that consistent trend there seems a decent chance of the figure dropping to the tens of thousands by Dec 26.
I didn't dispute that, I provided a possible explanation for part of it.
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
That's not how it works. There's never a plan to stop borrowing or repay all the debt. Any specific debt will repaid when it falls due by rolling it over and borrowing more. That is how businesses finance themselves. The UK public debt is about equal to the UK's annual income (GDP). Households often have mortgages much in excess of 100% of their annual income.
It is what all the various fiscal rules have been about, and why British budget plans continue to include fictional increases in fuel duty in future years, so that the budget deficit can be shown to be reduced at the end of the budget plan.
I think your are missing deficit and debt. I did not claim that there's a plan for Britain to repay the debt, but there is a plan to close the deficit - and that's what creates the confidence to allow Britain to continue borrowing.
You said "But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid."
I'm not confusing deficit and debt. It looks as if you are.
The current fiscal rules are that day-to-day government spending must be covered by tax revenues rather than by borrowing, but the government can borrow to fund long-term capital investments. Some defence expenditure will be capital investment.
I was using "repaid" in an informal sense - i.e. that the country is good for the money. But if the government lose the confidence of the bond market then they won't be able to roll over debt, and so existing debt won't be able to be repaid when it falls due. So it's relevant without it being a scenario where the total amount of debt is reduced.
The point being that we can only borrow if there is credibility over the country's solvency, and that means demonstrating that there are limits on our borrowing.
Truss showed how brittle that credibility was. Simply adding increases in defence spending to already high levels of borrowing isn't credible in my view.
I don't know why we're still using the Truss episode as the nadir of bond market instability when things now (afaik) are far worse. It is Reeves and Starmer who get the gold medal.
I lost a quarter of the value of one of my pensions, on supposedly low risk investments, thanks to Liz Truss.
I don't feel warm and fuzzy towards her.
Nobody is asking you to feel warm and fuzzy. , just to stay vaguely in touch with the facts.
The facts are that Liz Truss willfully did a stupid thing, which had bad consequences. Why should anyone afford her the benefit of the tiniest doubt? She deserves every bit of blame in her direction, and to the extent she involved the Conservative Party in her shenanigans, so do they.
Dear Lord in heaven above, sorry to shout, but BOND YIELDS ARE HIGHER NOW THAN THEY WERE DURING THE WORST OF THE LDI/MINIBUDGET CRISIS.
I am really struggling to see what part of this you don't understand. There is a higher premium for lending to Starmer and Reeves than there was for lending to Truss and Kwarteng. And that's without an energy price shock, or the Bank of England deciding to flog off £80bn bonds.
I don't particularly wish to relitigate the minibudget - by all means think as you wish, I am merely saying that the borrowing position is worse now.
Isn't is more intellectually honest than to compare the premium (or discount!) that investors demand for holding UK assets relative to peers?
And on that score again the UK is in a worse position than any of the other G7 countries.
Japan, Canada and Germany have Bond Yields below 4% (Germany is a whole 2% points lower than the UK) France, Italy and the USA are below 5%.
So there is a clear Premium being demanded for UK assets. And it is getting worse, not better.
Which is why anyone claiming Reeves has been anything short of a disaster really doesn't know what they are talking about. She is costing us serious money.
How much will the Burnham premium be ? One hopes he will realize that whether he likes it or not you can’t take too many liberties with the bond market .
Liz Truss was immensely stupid, actually reckless, but she did teach anyone paying any attention that the envelope available to British politicians is much smaller than we like to think. I very much hope that even Burnham has got that.
Liz Truss and Kwarteng moved the Bond markets alone
Trump has massively moved the Bond markets alone
Reeves actually has their confidence.
To suggest Burnham is Truss is bordering on insanity.
Yep. Truss was suet genderbus thankfully.
Trump has cracked it then by the sounds of it?
"At some point when everything has settled down we'll go in and get the Nuclear Dust."
Do we know if Restore and Reform voters are fully fungible?
I'd say no. Perhaps they are partly fungible.
Ref UK have many tribes.
I do not see all the grumpy Labour and Conservative voters currently supporting going for Rupert's concentration camps, for example, or all of Reform's ethnic minority supporters.
I'd agree.
There used to be the 'joke', that "not all Reform voters were racist, but all racists voted Reform".
Clearly Farage has been very, very good at making people feel like they're not racist, despite spending his political life stoking fear of "others". However, all that hard word has helped create an environment where a lot more people don't care if they're seen as racists - and Restore have capitalised.
Exhibit A:
Rupert Lowe has posted leaflet showing how Restore define Reform to voters - Scale of deportations: "millions must go" inc legal migrants - Death Penalty - Disagrees with Farage warning on "alienating the whole of Islam" [to tackle extremism] saying "Islamification" must end - Jenrick + Zahawi
'millions must go' is a clear sign of how far politics has come along in the last 10 years, or even 5 years - even if is a position only held by Restore voters, that it is on the table signals what a different environment we are in.
David Cameron promised to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands and people repeatedly voted for restrictions on immigration, but instead the government invited millions more into the country. It seems hard to argue that wanting to reverse that shouldn't be a democratically legitimate opinion.
Should the trend of the last 2 years continue much longer, Cameron's target of reducing net immigration to the tens of thousands will be met by the end of 2026.
A lot of that is just boriswavers going home. When 1000000 people come in one year, you can expect maybe 400000(?) of them to leave some time in the following five years.
Net migration might be the headline figure, but it's not the whole story.
Net UK migration by year ending: Dec 22 891k Dec 23 848k Dec 24 331k Dec 25 171k
Drops of 61% and 48% in the last two years respectively. A consistent trend - in every one of the last 11 quarters, the 12 month rolling total has been lower than for the quarter before. So with that consistent trend there seems a decent chance of the figure dropping to the tens of thousands by Dec 26.
At which point the far right focuses not on arrivals but on those already here.
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
What’s the current cost to the UK of the Ukraine war, both in terms of military support (in actual money, not made-up military accounting), and in benefits to Ukranian refugees and host families in the UK?
Because that is money that no longer needs to be spent once we’ve put Putin back in his box, and should be able to be taken into account by the bond markets.
The total figure given by the government is £21.8bn since February 2022.
But I don't think that includes the spending on Ukrainian refugees in the UK, and it probably overstates the military support (if equipment provided from stocks was valued at its replacement cost).
It's a pretty small sum of money compared to the increase in defence spending that Britain has signed up to, so it doesn't affect them necessity of having to choose between some mix of spending cuts and tax increases if Britain intends to fulfil that commitment.
That's about £5.5 billion a year which is the equivalent of around 9 % of the current defence budget. Not really a small sum of money.
The public commitment is £3bn per annum, which is separate from the defence budget. It is met from something called the "Treasury Reserve". I think there has been more effectiveness in how that is spent in general, than the defence budget, despite John Healey's good, and careful, work on a number of foundational aspects.
Clearly there will be some bleed at the edges, though.
Don't misunderstand me, I think the money spent on Ukraine is not only morally right but also very sensible froma prctical point of view. I would be happy to see far more spent. I was only disputing the original claim from Lostpassword that it is a pretty small sum compared to what we are commiting to within NATO.
To hit our declared target of 3.5% of GDP on core defence spending would require an increase of £30bn pa, I believe, more than six times the spending on Ukraine.
Apart from here on PB, are there any old wise men left in the country beyond David Attenborough (Who is amazingly wise)?
Martin Lewis is the next one we produced but he is only 54. On that basis there should be an 8 year old coming through the ranks somewhere we should watch out for.
He's a decent shout.
When I was young there were a whole host of not exactly national heroes, but along those lines. Now there is one. DA.
What's happened? Maybe Dyson?
I guess the scale of things has diminished the prominence of the individual, but there still seems to be an inexplicable gap.
(Obviously it would have been me, but somehow...)
National Treasures
Dr Alice Roberts
Robert Plant
John Craven
Jules Holland
Twiggy
David Blunkett
Whispering Bob Harris
Gary Lineker
Lenny Henry
Tom Jones
Mo Farrah
Martin Brundle
Really?
I mean, really?
Why not
All have made significant impact
In the case of Plant, Farrah, Harris as good as there has even been in their field of expertise
Rowan Williams is astonishingly well informed / thoughtful, on a huge range of topics. But his material can be quite hard to engage with, so wide an deep are his references.
There are many others, but we have a tabloid politics as well as a 95% tabloid media, both broadcast and printed.
There are also various I think in the House of Lords, who of course are mainly non-political appointees.
Do we know if Restore and Reform voters are fully fungible?
Well if you give them £5m in crypto....
Sorry, thought you said "fundable".
Anyone know why the Farage donation wasn't paid in crypto so it would have been impossible/difficult to trace. Know sod all about crypto but it seems a fundamental schoolboy error to me.
he would have had to declare the source when buying one of his numerous houses with it
Thanks for that, I thought they would have to be an explanation.
Do we know if Restore and Reform voters are fully fungible?
I'd say no. Perhaps they are partly fungible.
Ref UK have many tribes.
I do not see all the grumpy Labour and Conservative voters currently supporting going for Rupert's concentration camps, for example, or all of Reform's ethnic minority supporters.
I'd agree.
There used to be the 'joke', that "not all Reform voters were racist, but all racists voted Reform".
Clearly Farage has been very, very good at making people feel like they're not racist, despite spending his political life stoking fear of "others". However, all that hard word has helped create an environment where a lot more people don't care if they're seen as racists - and Restore have capitalised.
Exhibit A:
Rupert Lowe has posted leaflet showing how Restore define Reform to voters - Scale of deportations: "millions must go" inc legal migrants - Death Penalty - Disagrees with Farage warning on "alienating the whole of Islam" [to tackle extremism] saying "Islamification" must end - Jenrick + Zahawi
'millions must go' is a clear sign of how far politics has come along in the last 10 years, or even 5 years - even if is a position only held by Restore voters, that it is on the table signals what a different environment we are in.
David Cameron promised to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands and people repeatedly voted for restrictions on immigration, but instead the government invited millions more into the country. It seems hard to argue that wanting to reverse that shouldn't be a democratically legitimate opinion.
Should the trend of the last 2 years continue much longer, Cameron's target of reducing net immigration to the tens of thousands will be met by the end of 2026.
A lot of that is just boriswavers going home. When 1000000 people come in one year, you can expect maybe 400000(?) of them to leave some time in the following five years.
Net migration might be the headline figure, but it's not the whole story.
Net UK migration by year ending: Dec 22 891k Dec 23 848k Dec 24 331k Dec 25 171k
Drops of 61% and 48% in the last two years respectively. A consistent trend - in every one of the last 11 quarters, the 12 month rolling total has been lower than for the quarter before. So with that consistent trend there seems a decent chance of the figure dropping to the tens of thousands by Dec 26.
At which point the far right focuses not on arrivals but on those already here.
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
What’s the current cost to the UK of the Ukraine war, both in terms of military support (in actual money, not made-up military accounting), and in benefits to Ukranian refugees and host families in the UK?
Because that is money that no longer needs to be spent once we’ve put Putin back in his box, and should be able to be taken into account by the bond markets.
The total figure given by the government is £21.8bn since February 2022.
But I don't think that includes the spending on Ukrainian refugees in the UK, and it probably overstates the military support (if equipment provided from stocks was valued at its replacement cost).
It's a pretty small sum of money compared to the increase in defence spending that Britain has signed up to, so it doesn't affect them necessity of having to choose between some mix of spending cuts and tax increases if Britain intends to fulfil that commitment.
That's about £5.5 billion a year which is the equivalent of around 9 % of the current defence budget. Not really a small sum of money.
The public commitment is £3bn per annum, which is separate from the defence budget. It is met from something called the "Treasury Reserve". I think there has been more effectiveness in how that is spent in general, than the defence budget, despite John Healey's good, and careful, work on a number of foundational aspects.
Clearly there will be some bleed at the edges, though.
Don't misunderstand me, I think the money spent on Ukraine is not only morally right but also very sensible froma prctical point of view. I would be happy to see far more spent. I was only disputing the original claim from Lostpassword that it is a pretty small sum compared to what we are commiting to within NATO.
To hit our declared target of 3.5% of GDP on core defence spending would require an increase of £30bn pa, I believe, more than six times the spending on Ukraine.
But only 2% of total government spending of £1,368 billion.
An interesting video about the SAS operating far more widely and deeply in Ukraine, especially during Operation Orbital, from Cappy Army - who is one of those US military commentator who is not down the US rabbit hole.
It's not my favourite channel for style - I find it a bit frenetic, but worth a watch.
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
What’s the current cost to the UK of the Ukraine war, both in terms of military support (in actual money, not made-up military accounting), and in benefits to Ukranian refugees and host families in the UK?
Because that is money that no longer needs to be spent once we’ve put Putin back in his box, and should be able to be taken into account by the bond markets.
The total figure given by the government is £21.8bn since February 2022.
But I don't think that includes the spending on Ukrainian refugees in the UK, and it probably overstates the military support (if equipment provided from stocks was valued at its replacement cost).
It's a pretty small sum of money compared to the increase in defence spending that Britain has signed up to, so it doesn't affect them necessity of having to choose between some mix of spending cuts and tax increases if Britain intends to fulfil that commitment.
That's about £5.5 billion a year which is the equivalent of around 9 % of the current defence budget. Not really a small sum of money.
The public commitment is £3bn per annum, which is separate from the defence budget. It is met from something called the "Treasury Reserve". I think there has been more effectiveness in how that is spent in general, than the defence budget, despite John Healey's good, and careful, work on a number of foundational aspects.
Clearly there will be some bleed at the edges, though.
Don't misunderstand me, I think the money spent on Ukraine is not only morally right but also very sensible froma prctical point of view. I would be happy to see far more spent. I was only disputing the original claim from Lostpassword that it is a pretty small sum compared to what we are commiting to within NATO.
To hit our declared target of 3.5% of GDP on core defence spending would require an increase of £30bn pa, I believe, more than six times the spending on Ukraine.
But only 2% of total government spending of £1,368 billion.
I still think we should have rebased the currency when KCIII took over. It would have given ourselves smaller numbers to talk about, and delayed parity with the dollar (or the Euro) for a few more years.
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
What’s the current cost to the UK of the Ukraine war, both in terms of military support (in actual money, not made-up military accounting), and in benefits to Ukranian refugees and host families in the UK?
Because that is money that no longer needs to be spent once we’ve put Putin back in his box, and should be able to be taken into account by the bond markets.
The total figure given by the government is £21.8bn since February 2022.
But I don't think that includes the spending on Ukrainian refugees in the UK, and it probably overstates the military support (if equipment provided from stocks was valued at its replacement cost).
It's a pretty small sum of money compared to the increase in defence spending that Britain has signed up to, so it doesn't affect them necessity of having to choose between some mix of spending cuts and tax increases if Britain intends to fulfil that commitment.
That's about £5.5 billion a year which is the equivalent of around 9 % of the current defence budget. Not really a small sum of money.
Incredible value for money though given it's actually being used to destroy our primary adversary's army and economy. £60 billion on defence doesn't even get us an operating attack sub; you'd be mad to send more money that way instead of Ukraine.
Oh agreed. I would like to see us do far more targeted support for Ukraine but we should also be spending far more on our own defence.
Although Ukraine is our own defence in that it's the frontline war on the eastern border of our continent against the greatest (probably only) serious military threat to it.
You are naïve if you think that Russia is the only serious military threat. Its probably not even the greatest, its just currently the most active.
The greater threat is China. Thank goodness they're not currently invading anywhere on Europe or Taiwan, but were they to choose to do so the consequences would make Russia's invasion of Ukraine look like but a minor skirmish.
I'm not sure I see what we could possibly do if Taiwan is invaded or blockade at least militarily.
We could bankrupt our universities by sending the Chinese students home.
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
What’s the current cost to the UK of the Ukraine war, both in terms of military support (in actual money, not made-up military accounting), and in benefits to Ukranian refugees and host families in the UK?
Because that is money that no longer needs to be spent once we’ve put Putin back in his box, and should be able to be taken into account by the bond markets.
The total figure given by the government is £21.8bn since February 2022.
But I don't think that includes the spending on Ukrainian refugees in the UK, and it probably overstates the military support (if equipment provided from stocks was valued at its replacement cost).
It's a pretty small sum of money compared to the increase in defence spending that Britain has signed up to, so it doesn't affect them necessity of having to choose between some mix of spending cuts and tax increases if Britain intends to fulfil that commitment.
That's about £5.5 billion a year which is the equivalent of around 9 % of the current defence budget. Not really a small sum of money.
The public commitment is £3bn per annum, which is separate from the defence budget. It is met from something called the "Treasury Reserve". I think there has been more effectiveness in how that is spent in general, than the defence budget, despite John Healey's good, and careful, work on a number of foundational aspects.
Clearly there will be some bleed at the edges, though.
Don't misunderstand me, I think the money spent on Ukraine is not only morally right but also very sensible froma prctical point of view. I would be happy to see far more spent. I was only disputing the original claim from Lostpassword that it is a pretty small sum compared to what we are commiting to within NATO.
To hit our declared target of 3.5% of GDP on core defence spending would require an increase of £30bn pa, I believe, more than six times the spending on Ukraine.
But only 2% of total government spending of £1,368 billion.
I still think we should have rebased the currency when KCIII took over. It would have given ourselves smaller numbers to talk about, and delayed parity with the dollar (or the Euro) for a few more years.
One new pound equals ten old pounds? N£1 = £10.
Then the extra defence spending would only cost N£3 billion. Could work.
I see Restore had 1000 activists in Makerfield today - I'm not quite sure what having 1000 activists achieves, the videos I've seen show most of them standing round chatting in a park.
Labour have worked this seat properly and will, I suspect, get the needed result and Reform will learn some lessons how to campaign in seats when facing determined opponents.
As for Restore, you only have to look at the Yarmouth results on Norfolk County Council in May to see the potential for such a party - they annihilated Labour and the Conservatives completely and utterly.
There is clearly a constituency for the nonsense Rupert Lowe is peddling - Nigel Farage may be anti-immigrant but he's no ethno-nationalist. The economic and social consequences of the implementation of Lowe's ethno-nationalism would be catastrophic - in my part of the world, I imagine half to two thirds of the population would be deported.
Unfortunately, I fear there is a significant minority in the population who, while they wouldn't say it openly, would support wholesale mass deportation of the non-white population.
IF we tried to implement such a policy, we would be the Gilead de nos jours but the mood currently is so set against "immigrants", the debate has moved on from boats via remigration to mass deportation of British citizens - presumably once a Restore Government has passed its own version of the Nuremburg Laws and redefined what being "British" means - there seems no ability or willingness to defend or support even a limited points-based immigration system which was where I thought we were going after we voted to leave the EU.
I don't fear mass deportations but I do fear the civil war that would result from any efforts in that direction.
The current government is conducting ICE-style raids on delivery warehouses without any sign that it's leading to civil war.
Seriously?
Few would object to the removal of those here illegally but you and I both know Reform and especially Restore would go a lot further. My neighbours on both sides would be thrown out under a Lowe Government - the irony is the three daughters on one side, all born in Britain, are training to be Doctors, to help poor old decrepit White Christian types but there you go....
I'd also maybe add as a complete wildcard the most whimsical outdoor Youtuber in the world, Sort of Interesting, who has somehow (I know not how) just hit 100k subscribers: https://www.youtube.com/c/sortofinteresting
I see Restore had 1000 activists in Makerfield today - I'm not quite sure what having 1000 activists achieves, the videos I've seen show most of them standing round chatting in a park.
Labour have worked this seat properly and will, I suspect, get the needed result and Reform will learn some lessons how to campaign in seats when facing determined opponents.
As for Restore, you only have to look at the Yarmouth results on Norfolk County Council in May to see the potential for such a party - they annihilated Labour and the Conservatives completely and utterly.
There is clearly a constituency for the nonsense Rupert Lowe is peddling - Nigel Farage may be anti-immigrant but he's no ethno-nationalist. The economic and social consequences of the implementation of Lowe's ethno-nationalism would be catastrophic - in my part of the world, I imagine half to two thirds of the population would be deported.
Unfortunately, I fear there is a significant minority in the population who, while they wouldn't say it openly, would support wholesale mass deportation of the non-white population.
IF we tried to implement such a policy, we would be the Gilead de nos jours but the mood currently is so set against "immigrants", the debate has moved on from boats via remigration to mass deportation of British citizens - presumably once a Restore Government has passed its own version of the Nuremburg Laws and redefined what being "British" means - there seems no ability or willingness to defend or support even a limited points-based immigration system which was where I thought we were going after we voted to leave the EU.
I don't fear mass deportations but I do fear the civil war that would result from any efforts in that direction.
The current government is conducting ICE-style raids on delivery warehouses without any sign that it's leading to civil war.
Seriously?
Few would object to the removal of those here illegally but you and I both know Reform and especially Restore would go a lot further. My neighbours on both sides would be thrown out under a Lowe Government - the irony is the three daughters on one side, all born in Britain, are training to be Doctors, to help poor old decrepit White Christian types but there you go....
Much as I share your distaste for Restore, it's time we stopped pretending doctors are charity workers. It's a reliable, well-remunerated, satisfying career.
Isn't that what Healey said? Reeves wasn't willing, and Starmer wasn't able to overrule her.
How can he be unable to overrule her? He's the Prime Minister.
Either she had broader cabinet support or threatened resignation and he preferred to lose a defence secretary than a Chancellor. I'd suspect the former.
Given this govt seems to think hosing money at the public sector and getting nothing for return is a good idea I’m not cracking open the champagne just yet.
"Janet Daley We have misunderstood the meaning of free speech You have a right to express an opinion, but you must identify yourself and be prepared to be held to account"
Isn't that what Healey said? Reeves wasn't willing, and Starmer wasn't able to overrule her.
How can he be unable to overrule her? He's the Prime Minister.
Starmer does that a lot. He wanted money from something, he wanted to reduce Miliband's budget, Miliband told him no. Starmer cringed and knelt. He wanted money from something, he wanted to reduce Reeve's budget, Reeves told him no. Starmer cringed and knelt.
HE CANNOT MAKE A DECISION. HE CAN'T FIGHT AGAINST DETERMINED OPPOSITION. HE IS, FOR THE N'TH TIME OF ME POINTING THIS OUT, NOT MENTALLY SUITED FOR THE POSITION OF PRIME MINISTER.
Updates from Neo North Korea on Trump's "deal" starting to come in:
Aaron Rupar @atrupar · 17m Burgum: "President Trump won the war militarily. Then he won the war economically ... diplomatically, militarily, economically -- three ways to win a war. Trump won all three of them."
If you have to explain how you won, you probably haven't won.
And there is the small matter of not actually having a deal. Again.
No deal is better than a bad deal.
Not in Trump's...I was going to say brain but you know what I mean. He is absolutely desperate for any deal, any deal at all that he can lie about. No deal just makes him look even more stupid than usual.
Thrump will get a great deal...he always does.
Watch the Apprentice (film).
The Three Rules of Winning.
Attack, Attack, Attack: Go on the offensive and counter-attack relentlessly when threatened. Admit Nothing and Deny Everything: Never concede fault, regardless of the evidence or circumstances. Always Claim Victory: No matter what happens or how badly a situation unfolds, declare that you won and never admit defeat.
Peter.
Trumps No 1 concern is that he can claim it is better deal than Obama's.
Even obvs when it clearly isn't.
The guy is obsessed and yet another example of how unwell he is.
But hey ho. Nothing to see here. GOP will continue to back him until the end.
"If Obama had done his job I wouldn't have had to beat them up so bad they begged for mercy and said I could have their Nuclear Dust at some point when things have settled down".
Truss really upset the bond markets by her cavalier cutting of taxes with a complete rejection of the OBR or any expert opinion of the consequences. But that was very extreme.
If I were Starmer I would get Bowler, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, and Rachel Reeves in a room and say to Bowler "We are going to provide an extra £20b for defence by borrowing it, a War Bond if you like. I want you to find the best way of doing and presenting this. I don't want any objections. Just do it. If you feel you can't, then I'm happy to accept your resignation." And then to Rachel "Rachel I need your support on this. If not, then I'm happy to accept your resignation too."
The bond markets will accept higher borrowing during war, because the survival of the state is at risk, and if the state does not survive then none of the existing government debt gets repaid.
I don't think you can work that argument absent total war like WWI and WWII, simply by calling the extra debt war bonds.
Remember that the bond market has been very lenient in allowing Britain to borrow vast sums of money already to spend on whatever it likes. But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid.
If your government finance plan involves borrowing so much that you can't even create a theoretical explanation of how you would close the deficit in five years then you shouldn't expect anyone to willingly lend you money, because they would have no confidence in being repaid.
That's not how it works. There's never a plan to stop borrowing or repay all the debt. Any specific debt will repaid when it falls due by rolling it over and borrowing more. That is how businesses finance themselves. The UK public debt is about equal to the UK's annual income (GDP). Households often have mortgages much in excess of 100% of their annual income.
It is what all the various fiscal rules have been about, and why British budget plans continue to include fictional increases in fuel duty in future years, so that the budget deficit can be shown to be reduced at the end of the budget plan.
I think your are missing deficit and debt. I did not claim that there's a plan for Britain to repay the debt, but there is a plan to close the deficit - and that's what creates the confidence to allow Britain to continue borrowing.
You said "But it's done so because there's always be a plan to stop borrowing within x years, and so there's been confidence that the money can be repaid."
I'm not confusing deficit and debt. It looks as if you are.
The current fiscal rules are that day-to-day government spending must be covered by tax revenues rather than by borrowing, but the government can borrow to fund long-term capital investments. Some defence expenditure will be capital investment.
I was using "repaid" in an informal sense - i.e. that the country is good for the money. But if the government lose the confidence of the bond market then they won't be able to roll over debt, and so existing debt won't be able to be repaid when it falls due. So it's relevant without it being a scenario where the total amount of debt is reduced.
The point being that we can only borrow if there is credibility over the country's solvency, and that means demonstrating that there are limits on our borrowing.
Truss showed how brittle that credibility was. Simply adding increases in defence spending to already high levels of borrowing isn't credible in my view.
I don't know why we're still using the Truss episode as the nadir of bond market instability when things now (afaik) are far worse. It is Reeves and Starmer who get the gold medal.
I lost a quarter of the value of one of my pensions, on supposedly low risk investments, thanks to Liz Truss.
I don't feel warm and fuzzy towards her.
Nobody is asking you to feel warm and fuzzy. , just to stay vaguely in touch with the facts.
The facts are that Liz Truss willfully did a stupid thing, which had bad consequences. Why should anyone afford her the benefit of the tiniest doubt? She deserves every bit of blame in her direction, and to the extent she involved the Conservative Party in her shenanigans, so do they.
Dear Lord in heaven above, sorry to shout, but BOND YIELDS ARE HIGHER NOW THAN THEY WERE DURING THE WORST OF THE LDI/MINIBUDGET CRISIS.
I am really struggling to see what part of this you don't understand. There is a higher premium for lending to Starmer and Reeves than there was for lending to Truss and Kwarteng. And that's without an energy price shock, or the Bank of England deciding to flog off £80bn bonds.
I don't particularly wish to relitigate the minibudget - by all means think as you wish, I am merely saying that the borrowing position is worse now.
Isn't is more intellectually honest than to compare the premium (or discount!) that investors demand for holding UK assets relative to peers?
And on that score again the UK is in a worse position than any of the other G7 countries.
Japan, Canada and Germany have Bond Yields below 4% (Germany is a whole 2% points lower than the UK) France, Italy and the USA are below 5%.
So there is a clear Premium being demanded for UK assets. And it is getting worse, not better.
Which is why anyone claiming Reeves has been anything short of a disaster really doesn't know what they are talking about. She is costing us serious money.
How much will the Burnham premium be ? One hopes he will realize that whether he likes it or not you can’t take too many liberties with the bond market .
Liz Truss was immensely stupid, actually reckless, but she did teach anyone paying any attention that the envelope available to British politicians is much smaller than we like to think. I very much hope that even Burnham has got that.
Liz Truss and Kwarteng moved the Bond markets alone
Trump has massively moved the Bond markets alone
Reeves actually has their confidence.
To suggest Burnham is Truss is bordering on insanity.
Yes it is, because if he were Truss, the bond markets would improve. If he actually worsens the bond market situation from Starmer's all time low, there isn't a valid historical comparison.
Comments
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02gs42y
The guy was a popular governor, is worth a very large amount of money, and is spending his golden years as a performing court sycophant for Trump.
Why ?
"HuffPost UK has learned that Burnham supporters at Westminster are already gathering nominations for his leadership bid should he win next Thursday.
They hope to collect far more than the 81 required to trigger a contest, thereby creating a sense of unstoppable momentum which they believe would be enough to quickly see him sweep to power."
All have made significant impact
In the case of Plant, Farrah, Harris as good as there has even been in their field of expertise
He found David Attenborough to be a bit off hand and rude - perhaps due to his age.
The nicest and most grateful was David Beckham.
Oh yes, there's an SMS button but that says I've requested too many OTPs, which I haven't, and the online help does not have an option that covers this. FFS Bezos; no wonder Elon's beaten you into space.
Japan, Canada and Germany have Bond Yields below 4% (Germany is a whole 2% points lower than the UK)
France, Italy and the USA are below 5%.
So there is a clear Premium being demanded for UK assets. And it is getting worse, not better.
Costing the economy £10bn's year after year.
Example:
- Character 1: "You mean the cops are committing the murders?"
- Character 2: "Always have been" (shoots character 1, frames him for the murder)
The origin of the meme, and why they are depicted as astronauts, is outside scope.So I waste my time here until TSE thinks we are a bit short on TLA so brings in 2FA.
His xenophobia is directed wherever he thinks it will serve his current politics.
In 2015 he was telling the world how much he preferred Indians to Eastern Europeans ('Indians' obey the law"). Now he is doing it precisely the other way round, exploiting a once in a generation attack on a Pole by a British Indian, because he thinks he can exploit THAT.
Trump has massively moved the Bond markets alone
Reeves actually has their confidence.
To suggest Burnham is Truss is bordering on insanity.
Welfare spending is about 10.6% of GDP, as a proportion thats lower than most other European countries, & the majority of it goes on pensioners.
Zack Polanski is not infected with this inexplicable obsession.
Whether i vote Green or Labour would be in the balance if the KoN agreed with Zack on this subject
Clearly there will be some bleed at the edges, though.
So he's my top pick for a Labour figure who would rerun the Truss experience, but I wouldn't panic about it, unless KCIII dies shortly after appointing him.
Sorry but the excuses don't work.
Watch the Apprentice (film).
The Three Rules of Winning.
Attack, Attack, Attack: Go on the offensive and counter-attack relentlessly when threatened.
Admit Nothing and Deny Everything: Never concede fault, regardless of the evidence or circumstances.
Always Claim Victory: No matter what happens or how badly a situation unfolds, declare that you won and never admit defeat.
Peter.
Dec 22 891k
Dec 23 848k
Dec 24 331k
Dec 25 171k
Drops of 61% and 48% in the last two years respectively. A consistent trend - in every one of the last 11 quarters, the 12 month rolling total has been lower than for the quarter before. So with that consistent trend there seems a decent chance of the figure dropping to the tens of thousands by Dec 26.
And what would we do if they choose to look outside their region and invade Europe? Its not impossible.
I'd be interested in seeing at what point[s] Reeves and Starmer lost market confidence, and what the scale of the movement was compared to that under Truss.
Even obvs when it clearly isn't.
The guy is obsessed and yet another example of how unwell he is.
But hey ho. Nothing to see here. GOP will continue to back him until the end.
No hypnosis of the bond markets required either as taxes will rise and the Defence Budget wont.
A model of Fiscal Prudence is our Zack
Back in 2014 the Qatari National Library entered into a project with the British Library to digitise the entire corpus of the British Indian Office Archive - basically every single document we hold concerning India from the start of the British East India Company in the 1600s to Indian independence in 1947.
The whole lot, every diary, message, briefing and memo is now online and free to access. I have been using it as part of my research for a book on the British interventions in Southern Russia at the end of WW1 and have so far downloaded about 40GB of data.
It also has a load of manuscripts relating to Arabia from the British Library.
It is well worth a visit and can be found at:
https://www.qdl.qa/en
Seems Makerfield would now vote to rejoin the EU says Luke Tryl.
https://x.com/LukeTryl/status/2065860695770452123/photo/1
Trump has cracked it then by the sounds of it?
"At some point when everything has settled down we'll go in and get the Nuclear Dust."
Top bit of dealmaking.
Kate Ferguson
@kateferguson4
EXCL: Rachel Reeves was in “open rebellion” over defence funding and torpedoed a higher settlement, Whitehall insiders say.
Inside the blame game rocking government after Defence Secretary John Healey's bombshell resignation
https://x.com/kateferguson4/status/2065854085715103871
Kate Ferguson
@kateferguson4
EXCL: Rachel Reeves was in “open rebellion” over defence funding and torpedoed a higher settlement, Whitehall insiders say.
Inside the blame game rocking government after Defence Secretary John Healey's bombshell resignation
https://x.com/kateferguson4/status/2065854085715103871
There are many others, but we have a tabloid politics as well as a 95% tabloid media, both broadcast and printed.
There are also various I think in the House of Lords, who of course are mainly non-political appointees.
It's not my favourite channel for style - I find it a bit frenetic, but worth a watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0_iOV-Jo-4
Then the extra defence spending would only cost N£3 billion. Could work.
Exclusive: Sturgeon donated £290 shoes to SNP fundraiser…and watched Murrell buy them back for £4,000
https://x.com/HRwritesnews/status/2065861838018121842?s=20
Few would object to the removal of those here illegally but you and I both know Reform and especially Restore would go a lot further. My neighbours on both sides would be thrown out under a Lowe Government - the irony is the three daughters on one side, all born in Britain, are training to be Doctors, to help poor old decrepit White Christian types but there you go....
She is the person who has been instrumental in things like Village Greens and strategic work for countryside access.
She now focuses, at 69, on creating a new generation of enthusiasts.
Her blog, which was started in 2010: https://campaignerkate.wordpress.com/
I'd also maybe add as a complete wildcard the most whimsical outdoor Youtuber in the world, Sort of Interesting, who has somehow (I know not how) just hit 100k subscribers:
https://www.youtube.com/c/sortofinteresting
eg https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZZXZN2bdb18 or https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hiEC5y9aW4w .
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj9g1wgxng2o
Given this govt seems to think hosing money at the public sector and getting nothing for return is a good idea I’m not cracking open the champagne just yet.
55 Join/45 Stay out probably maps pretty well onto
55 Andy/45 RefRef.
We have misunderstood the meaning of free speech
You have a right to express an opinion, but you must identify yourself and be prepared to be held to account"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06/13/we-have-misunderstood-the-meaning-of-free-speech/
NEW THREAD
He wanted money from something, he wanted to reduce Miliband's budget, Miliband told him no. Starmer cringed and knelt.
He wanted money from something, he wanted to reduce Reeve's budget, Reeves told him no. Starmer cringed and knelt.
HE CANNOT MAKE A DECISION. HE CAN'T FIGHT AGAINST DETERMINED OPPOSITION. HE IS, FOR THE N'TH TIME OF ME POINTING THIS OUT, NOT MENTALLY SUITED FOR THE POSITION OF PRIME MINISTER.
Take the most recent YouGov;
https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/documents/VotingIntention_MRP_Results_260608_w.pdf
2016 Leavers:
Ref 47 Con 26 Lab 8 LD 7 Grn 3
2016 Remainers:
Lab 29 LD 18 Grn 18 Con 17 Ref 8