UK General Discussion: Rishecession

[Filuwaúrdjan]

lol lmao lol

[Torrain]

lol lmao lol

I’m pretty sure that’s a direct quote from Labour HQ this morning.

[Torrain]

I’d like to update my submission for worst-aged news article, with this piece from the Telegraph that was submitted last night:

[Antonio the Sixth]

Beautiful.

[CumbrianLefty]

The finger-pointing has commenced.

Penny Mordaunt at a late night conference event: “Our policy is great but our comms is sh*t”.

Pippa Crerar: Tory insiders claim that it was, in fact,  Treasury chief sec Chris Philp who had the idea to cut the 45p tax rate, presenting Truss and Kwarteng with a paper on it during leadership campaign.

It has been claimed by some who were there that Penny Dreadful didn't actually mean that literally. In other words, a not too subtle dig at the policies as well.....

[Battista Minola 1616]

I guess 20% of the government party's electorate flipping to the opposition overnight is an effective form of public pressure!

[Torrain]

The finger-pointing has commenced.

Penny Mordaunt at a late night conference event: “Our policy is great but our comms is sh*t”.

Pippa Crerar: Tory insiders claim that it was, in fact,  Treasury chief sec Chris Philp who had the idea to cut the 45p tax rate, presenting Truss and Kwarteng with a paper on it during leadership campaign.

It has been claimed by some who were there that Penny Dreadful didn't actually mean that literally. In other words, a not too subtle dig at the policies as well.....

It’s hard to tell from the clip - she’s hamming it up enough that it could go either way. Not a great look though. I’m sure it’s not the most damaging thing to come out of a fringe event, but it’s an impressive bit of backbiting whether she’s being sarcastic or genuine.

[Torrain]

Nadine Dorries casually endorsing a general election to get a mandate for Trussonomics. Wouldn’t be noteworthy in most circumstances, but after Gove’s comments yesterday, things could get a little dicey. Any more of this, and the media will probably start printing report about how “former cabinet ministers agree Truss needs mandate”.

https://mobile.twitter.com/NadineDorries/status/1576894518703423489

[Silent Hunter]

It's not turning when it's a reverse ferret!

[omar04]

https://twitter.com/peterwalker99/status/1576888448450969600

[mileslunn]

I don't think Truss had a choice.  It was either reverse it or get it voted down by parliament and risk a possible election that party would lose badly.

[RFK Jr.’s Brain Worm]

https://twitter.com/redfieldwilton/status/1576965307930857475

[DINGO Joe]

https://twitter.com/peterwalker99/status/1576888448450969600

https://twitter.com/peterwalker99/status/1576888448450969600

Just fixing this for everyone not willing to click on the link

[Torrain]

And another:
https://mobile.twitter.com/SavantaComRes/status/1576962260773539841?t=bixLls_V2o...

[YL]

I don't think Truss had a choice.  It was either reverse it or get it voted down by parliament and risk a possible election that party would lose badly.

I don't think an election would have ensued: as I said the other day there is precedent for defeat on a Finance Bill amendment not being regarded as a confidence matter.  But the optics of a Government with a working majority of 79 [1] being defeated on something like that would be truly awful, and probably even worse than a U turn.

I think someone commented upthread on it being a mistake for Truss to only appoint loyalists to her Cabinet.  I think this affair makes that point well: there were several "big beasts" (by the standards of the modern Tory Party anyway; we're including Grant Shapps here...) who she seems to have made enemies of and who were among those threatening to rebel.

[1] I'm counting the four MPs elected as Tories but currently whipless with the Government here, but it doesn't make very much difference.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The finger-pointing has commenced.

Penny Mordaunt at a late night conference event: “Our policy is great but our comms is sh*t”.

Pippa Crerar: Tory insiders claim that it was, in fact,  Treasury chief sec Chris Philp who had the idea to cut the 45p tax rate, presenting Truss and Kwarteng with a paper on it during leadership campaign.

It has been claimed by some who were there that Penny Dreadful didn't actually mean that literally. In other words, a not too subtle dig at the policies as well.....

It’s hard to tell from the clip - she’s hamming it up enough that it could go either way. Not a great look though. I’m sure it’s not the most damaging thing to come out of a fringe event, but it’s an impressive bit of backbiting whether she’s being sarcastic or genuine.

This makes me like Mordaunt more tbh.

[Blair]

Curious- why do people think that the poll collapse has been so large?

Bernard castle, the 2008 financial crash and other such events didn’t cause such a huge and sudden shift- is it the 45p/bankers bonus angle? The impact on pensions/mortgage rates?

[Oryxslayer]

Curious- why do people think that the poll collapse has been so large?

Bernard castle, the 2008 financial crash and other such events didn’t cause such a huge and sudden shift- is it the 45p/bankers bonus angle? The impact on pensions/mortgage rates?

I hate to lend the "Boris is an electoral titan theory" credence, but there is an argument that even during the decline he kept the Tories trending water through appeal with a certain cadre of voters. Truss's actions just revealed to these voters that the Tories were no longer the party for these people, so this loaned/unique/circumstantial support all bolted at once for similar reasons and justifications. Essentially, the support was always conditional, so it didn't take much to jump ship.

[Cassius]

Curious- why do people think that the poll collapse has been so large?

Bernard castle, the 2008 financial crash and other such events didn’t cause such a huge and sudden shift- is it the 45p/bankers bonus angle? The impact on pensions/mortgage rates?

As regards Barnard Castle, I seem to remember that there was a steep drop in the government's poll numbers, but only from the absurdly inflated figures of the initial part of the pandemic. More to the point, I think that most of the public anger about that focused upon Dominic Cummings himself, as opposed to Johnson and the government, and of course that was the point at which the latter began to distance themselves from Cummings so serious damage was avoided (as opposed to a year later with Haremcock's antics and Partygate, where public anger very much focused upon the government, causing the party's numbers to start sagging down into the low thirties). But, you know, I think the difference between Barnard Castle and the mini-budget is that whilst the former angered a lot of people, the latter (or rather the market reaction to it) scared a lot of people, something that was compounded by Truss hitting the ground (so to speak) for nearly a week afterwards. You had the value of the pound crashing, the possibility of a number of pension funds becoming insolvent and mortgages being yanked off the market with the prospect of interest rate rises to come... and Truss was nowhere to be seen. I think that  cut through to a lot of people who would normally fall in behind the Conservative party as long as things were going okay for them personally.

[bore]

Its not the policy its the comms is fast becoming the tories version of the good tsar and his wicked advisers.

[afleitch]

Curious- why do people think that the poll collapse has been so large?

Bernard castle, the 2008 financial crash and other such events didn’t cause such a huge and sudden shift- is it the 45p/bankers bonus angle? The impact on pensions/mortgage rates?

Lethargy.

We think of Black Wednesday as a similar event, but the election of John Smith a few months earlier turned the polls. We think of Blair as cementing the 'big' leads, but that was also John Smith.

This is a sharper and harder poll shift, than Black Wednesday but it's been in the making for some time. It was 'Partygate' last Christmas that was the most recent shift. That all fed into the 'Tories look after their own and don't care about you.' narrative which always gets them in the end

And the public do, even when they are in the sh-tter, think Labour 'cares'

There's a lot of public support for things like strikes, nationalisation that in terms of polling hasn't been seen for decades. The Tories COVID poll highs was exactly because they pursued state intervention.

So the Tories are probably much further away from where the general public stands on such things even than in the years preceding 1997.

It's why a genuinely substantial loss isn't out of the question.

When a Labour government becomes inevitable in the public consciousness, then it happens.

And that's exactly what the last week was about too.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

So this tax bracket thing just makes me wonder if the Stories are just that bad at politics. Pretty much any right-wing austerity pushing party tries to pair a tax cut for the rich with some nominal cut for the middle class too....just doing it outright like that is obviously going to be unpopular and a PR disaster.

And then failing.... that's just LOL.

[TheTide]

The equivalent moment in the previous government was actually the fairly forgotten fiasco (there's some alliteration) about the 10p tax in April 2008.

[YL]

Curious- why do people think that the poll collapse has been so large?

Bernard castle, the 2008 financial crash and other such events didn’t cause such a huge and sudden shift- is it the 45p/bankers bonus angle? The impact on pensions/mortgage rates?

I think there's a reasonably significant section of the electorate whose default position is that the Tories are not very likeable but that they are good at running the economy.  Black Wednesday in 1992 damaged the Tories' standing a lot with these people, and I suspect that's part of it again.

Truss also seems to be a remarkably poor media performer.

[MABA 2020]

Todays u-turn was funny, but also the right decision if she wants to make it to next year