UK General Discussion: Rishecession

[Torrain]

Would things really be any better under Sunak? He's a vapid failure himself; he's just not the vapid failure who's already been in office for over a month as the worst PM since at least Chamberlain.

Not really - but at least he doesn't have a net -48% approval rating, and bear personal blame for the spiralling cost of mortgages in the minds of a plurality of voters. Unless the current popularity death-spiral miraculously reverses, I think the self-preservation instinct will make it impossible for MPs to stick with Truss.

"We've listened, got rid of her, and we're a brand new government", isn't going to save them in 2024, but it might stop the haemorrhaging.

He's also vindicated by the Truss implosion - and his economic agenda is essentially being implemented. So he's got a degree of credibility back, that he lost over the past 12 months.

[Torrain]

RIP Brady's mailbox:

https://twitter.com/sundersays/status/1581352682979479552

You might be on to something - there’s some pretty open criticism of this from Tory MPs this evening. Two examples from different factions:

Steve Double, public rebel against Trussonomics:
That call for unity thing going well then I see ‍♂️

Amanda Milling, government minister under Johnson:
Comments like this about @Conservatives colleagues from No10 are totally unacceptable. No10 need to focus on tackling the issues facing our country, not sniping against their own MPs.

[Torrain]

Incidentally, whose bright idea was it to have a major economic statement on October 31st? Will the next one be on April 1st?

It is clearly the policy of this government to tempt the tabloids to make the worst puns possible in their headlines. I.e:

• Hunt spooks the markets.
• Trick(le Down) or Treat.
• Grow the (Pumpkin) Pie
• Zombie Government Reveals Budget
• Voodoo Economics
• Devil’s Bargain: Truss Sells Out

[Torrain]

More Tory dissenters going public, with a slight escalation in rhetoric:
https://mobile.twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1581552042346131456

It’s worth noting that Halfon is also furious about the attacks made on Javid by No.10 sources - branding them “disgusting” attacks on a “good and decent man”. You’ve got to remember, while Javid isn’t “make him PM” popular, he’s viewed as a safe pair of hands, and a hardworking minister.

He also recently lost his brother to suicide, and has spoken within the past week about his grief, and desire to strengthen mental health services on the Today programme on R4. Awful timing for Truss to brief that she openly laughed at the idea of him as a minister, and attempt to discredit his entire ministerial career as “sh*t”.

[Torrain]

Intervention from the Sunday Times:
The PM must go. Sunak has to step up — then call an election

Liz Truss is barely still in office and certainly not in power. It has taken less than 40 days for her radical tax-cutting agenda to unravel, plunging the economy into crisis and toppling her chancellor. Truss has wrecked the Conservative Party’s reputation for fiscal competence and humiliated Britain on the international stage. Senior Tories must now act in the national interest and remove her from Downing Street as quickly as possible.

In these exceptional circumstances the 1922 Committee of backbench MPs must approach Truss and demand her resignation, with the threat that it will change the rules if she refuses. Her successor must then be crowned unopposed rather than subjected to another lengthy leadership election.

The one person who could limit the damage to the UK’s credibility as Truss’s successor is Rishi Sunak. The former chancellor correctly warned during the leadership hustings about the dangers of tipping unfunded tax cuts onto the blaze of inflation.

After the immediate crisis has passed, the Tories must call an election. Britain cannot tolerate a further two years of instability, and it would be more strategically astute for the Conservatives to let Labour confront the economic challenges of the next few years if they are to stand a chance of returning to power in the near future.

As things stand, the party should expect to be punished severely when the next election comes, whether that is in six weeks or six months. The Tories look like a government that has lost all sense of discipline and purpose.The economic situation is serious but recoverable. The political outlook for the Tories is grim. Only by moving decisively can they hope to salvage either.

[Torrain]

Personally, I don’t support calls to remove her as PM. I want truss to stay so she can lose to Keir Starmer

It's not really feasible that Truss sticks around, the party is too determined to survive to do that.

But the Times editorial (from the paper's senior writers, no less) is a bit of a watershed. The Times papers tend to endorse the Tories, only backing Labour in 1945 (which was a unique election), and Blair's second and third terms (2001, 2005), where it was clear Labour was going to win convincingly, and most papers were vying for influence.

It suggests Murdoch is considering cutting the Tories lose, like he did in the run up to 1997, and letting his papers wash their hands of this government to save what remains of their influence and readership figures. And without a sympathetic press, things could get rather worse for the Tories - especially during this winter.

The Sunday Times line is still basically, "let Labour take control so they get the blame for this winter", but that's willfully ignorant of the fact that once a fresh party is in, it's hard to dislodge them, and they gleefully spend their first term blaming the last government for their troubles.

[Torrain]

https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1581628814593241088

[Torrain]

Side note on Crispin Blunt (who’s the first MP to openly call for Truss’ resignation): wasn’t he also the first MP to call for IDS to go in 2003?

[Torrain]

Shipman's weekly column has some interesting tid-bits.

This bit of melodrama from someone in No.10 is quite something:

A Downing Street source said: “The people who plotted against one PM are now trying to get rid of another. They do not care about our economic prosperity or the markets or the situation in Ukraine. They know who they are. The world should know who they are: Julian Smith, Gavin Williamson, Simon Hoare, Mel Stride. This is a vendetta-driven plot to re-run the leadership election because they don’t like the fact that they lost to a woman. It’s a public-school takedown. They don’t care about anything except their own careers. It is time the plotters thought about who they work for: it is the British people.”

Team Truss have some wild ideas about ways to how to steady the ship:

Truss and her aides had discussed bringing George Osborne back as a “break glass in case of emergency” candidate, an echo of Gordon Brown bringing Peter Mandelson into his cabinet. Sources say Truss contemplated giving Osborne the job “for about a second” before dismissing the idea.
But asked how she would have found him a parliamentary seat, she replied: “We could have created a vacancy in central Devon” — (Mel) Stride’s seat since 2010.

And Shipman pours cold water on the Sunak-Mordaunt ticket:

The plan seems to be a non-starter, however, not least because neither Sunak nor Mordaunt is prepared to defer to the other. “Penny is busy meeting lots of MPs and thinks she can do the job,” a former cabinet minister said.

[Torrain]

Andrew Bridgen has no confidence in Liz Truss - MP no.2 to go public. No real surprise though - he put in a letter against David Cameron, Theresa May, and two in against Boris Johnson. He's almost cartoonishly antagonistic at this point.

[Torrain]

Andrew Bridgen has no confidence in Liz Truss - MP no.2 to go public. No real surprise though - he put in a letter against David Cameron, Theresa May, and two in against Boris Johnson. He's almost cartoonishly antagonistic at this point.

Didn’t he also withdraw one of his letters and make a big song and dance?

Aye - he submitted a letter against Johnson during the early phases of partygate. He withdrew it during the early stages of the war in Ukraine, because of "national unity" or something - in March 2022.

When momentum built to remove Johnson later in the year, he made a fuss about submitting a new letter - in May 2022, less than 8 weeks after revoking his last one. Even amongst MPs, you get the sense that he loves getting the limelight for a few hours.

[Torrain]

No.3 over the top: Jamie Wallis - full letter sent to Truss can be found here.

[Torrain]

No.3 over the top: Jamie Wallis - full letter sent to Truss can be found here.

It’s not exactly the most impressive collection of Tory MPs going public so far, is it?

Aye - all three have a public scandal under their belt from the last year alone. Maybe it’s an attempt at an image overhaul? Blunt is retiring, so it definitely feels like his attempt at a last hurrah. Bridgen is a chronic backstabber, and I’m not sure why Wallis staked a claim to the moral high ground. 

[Torrain]

Opinium modelling released in the Guardian this evening.
https://mobile.twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1581768645239529472
It’s a detailed, seat by seat model indicating a 1997-level of anti-Tory tactical voting, that would see Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Therese Coffey, and Jeremy Hunt, among others falling victim.

It also projects a bad night for the SNP - with Labour reclaiming significant territory in Scotland, and the Lib Dems pulling back into 3rd place, (which has implications for news coverage, electoral spending and weekly slots at PMQs, as well as the obvious optics of them sliding into 4th). Obvious disclaimer that attempting to predict Scottish seats is an imprecise form of alchemy (the BBC exit poll is typically a few seats off, more than nationally).

Full write-up here: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/16/rees-mogg-coffey-and-hunt-would-lose-seats-in-election-poll-suggests

[Torrain]

Ahaha the poll was carried out in September, so just after the Mini Budget of Doom but as the markets and the public were still digesting it and polls were showing Labour leads in the higher teens but creeping up.

Ah - so things are much worse for the gov.
To quote Brian: “Dear oh dear”.

[Torrain]

Aye - feels like it could go either way this morning. Either Hunt stabilises the situation, and Truss limps on for weeks longer, or the rebels double-down, and the bleeding of support continues apace.

[Torrain]

This feels like a more sensible policy, but makes Truss look ridiculous, again. She and her surrogates have been attacking Labour for supporting a six-month (rather than two year) cap for the past fortnight, and it was her go-to attack line at the last PMQs. Now she’s adopted their position.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1581945801479446528

[Torrain]

Hunt junks all tax cuts other than the NI cut in a televised address. Things seem to be pretty rough behind the scenes, as the Commons Speaker has made a rare exception to the rule that new legislation must be announced in the House first.

The rumours that a pension provider was at serious risk of going under unless the government calmed the markets seem more plausible now.

[Torrain]

Angela Richardson is MP no.4 calling for Truss to go, during a TimesRadio interview:
"I just don't think that it's tenable that she can stay in her position any longer. And I'm very sad to have to say that."

[Torrain]

Tory MP Mark Garnier endorses an early election, saying it needs to happen "soon":
"Fundamentally I believe we can’t expect people to put up with the psychodrama of the Conservative party indefinitely."

Feels like the bottom is really starting to fall out now. Just an incredibly febrile day - to steal the most overused word of the final months of the Johnson premiership.

[Torrain]

Labour have been granted an Urgent Question, to try and summon Truss back to the Commons to explain the firing of Kwarteng. Contrary to tradition, Truss isn't going herself.

Instead she's sending Penny Mordaunt - giving Mordaunt what might be her last gift-wrapped opportunity to set out her own stall.

Even wilder, while Truss has made excuses to avoid the UQ debate, she's then expected to immediately pitch up in the chamber to sit next to Hunt while he lays out economic plan.

[Torrain]

Labour lead is holding/building:
https://mobile.twitter.com/DeltapollUK/status/1582012756974182400
Word on the street is that R&W have a similarly lopsided set of figures in the poll they’re releasing at 17.00.

[Torrain]

https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/033/046/b94.jpg

Save that for an hour-&-a-1/2 from now:

https://twitter.com/electionmapsuk/status/1581934240085995520

The Day Today feels about the right level of surreal for today. Pretty sure we’re only a few days away from ‘some sort of drubbing incident’.

[Torrain]

“The lady’s not for turning up” - Keir ‘dad-joke’ Starmer in his UQ speech.

[Torrain]

The Prime Minister is not under a desk.

Words just uttered by Penny Mordaunt in the House of Commons.

Delivered with the same solemnity that she used to proclaim the King. We’re through the looking glass now.