UK General Discussion: Rishecession

[Pericles]

My take is it has to be Rishi. Boris is toxic with both MPs and the public. Mordaunt and Wallace are unknowns, they have high upsides and downsides but right now it should be someone who is already respected by the markets, the public and MPs. Sunak is unpopular and Labour have plenty of attack lines against him, but he is the least unpopular of the lot. He has some economic credibility and is the least tainted by the mini-budget disaster (unlike those who signed off on it in Cabinet). He can calm the markets and start to repair the Tory brand, so at least Starmer is held to a minority government.

[Pericles]

This is unacceptable from Labour. Public services are already on their knees, there can't be any more austerity. Find the money from tax hikes alone.

[Pericles]

What's with all these references to ancient Rome in Tory resignation speeches?

[Pericles]

Liz Truss is one of the few Prime Ministers that I genuinely believe was an empty-headed person lacking in brain cells. She wasn't robotic like Theresa May because of a mere social awkwardness but because there simply wasn't any extra level of thought beyond the pathetic soundbites.

[Pericles]

It was right to keep Hunt on now because there has been so much turnover in that position already and the markets might freak, but also because he should be saved as a ritual sacrifice to appease public anger about the upcoming cuts.

[Pericles]

I think they can just ride this out. Sunak will have to, it would be a terrible start for his premiership for his judgement to look so bad, and breaking the deal he's made would undermine his authority too.

[Pericles]

Lol removing the whip from Hancock seems awfully harsh, but he won't be missed if this really is the end. I wonder if his book provides any useful information, he'll be distorting a ton of facts to self-congratulate and blame-shift.

[Pericles]

As well as losing their advantage on the economy, the Tories have alienated their base by failing to stop the Channel boats and not cutting the overall levels of immigration. Now that Brexit is done, anti-immigration voters aren't getting what they hoped for from the Tories. If the Tories were going to ditch their economic promises, they at least had to be good at the culture war. That, plus all their other problems, mean there are a lot of right-wing voters who don't like the government.

[Pericles]

I expect we already know this, but this article from the Institute for Government is good in-depth look at Hunt's promise to make 'efficiency savings'. It shows how there are very few options to reduce spending, because public services have very little 'fat to trim' after the 2010s austerity. Practically, he is going to have a hideously difficult time. The UK really shouldn't be considering a 50-50 split for austerity but more like all of the 'fiscal hole' being filled by tax increases and public services being maintained at their current levels. That is a non-starter with the Tories, obviously. I can't see the public accepting the cuts, but the underfunding will be so bad that it is unlikely to be fully fixed quickly (if at all) by the upcoming Labour governmet.

[Pericles]

Rishi looks decisive reading the letter, but weak considering the time it took him to send it.

[Pericles]

Meanwhile, the wreckers have learned nothing.

[Pericles]

Do any of you remember who Liz Truss is?

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/01/30/liz-truss-republican-party-00080280

Articles like this remind us what absolute nutjobs the US Republican Party are.

[Pericles]

Sunak has proved to be crapper than expected (didn't have high expectations to begin with) but surely he's still the best candidate they have? I'm sure he'll get plenty of grief after the local elections but I think the lack of any alternative will keep him in place until the next election.

And the fact Truss is already attempting a comeback is beyond any description, just absurd.

Boris is a better candidate because he's still a good salesman unlike Sunak. He can sell the turds he's produced better than any Tory candidate.

It doesn't work when the public loathe the salesman rather than seeing him as an irresponsible rogue. Partygate especially made him toxic, for being an elitst scumbag not respecting the huge sacrifices he imposed on people.

[Pericles]

Hopefully in such a meltdown given that almost all their targets are Tory seats the LibDems can make huge net gains and become the Opposition instead.

Realistically the core right wing vote isn't that split at the moment so the Tories will be able to crawl back to maybe a mere landslide defeat or even slightly better rather than a wipe out, even without other improvements for them.

[Pericles]

Tories have briefed quite an hilarious piece about crime being higher in labour controlled areas which errr ignores who has been in power since 2010.

They’re really struggling over what their actual attack on Labour will be- currently a mix of Corbyn and not knowing what a women is- so good to see they’re v online!

Truly shocking revelation from Tory spin that crime is higher in poor areas than rich ones.

Doesn't help that they've been diverting the levelling up funding from those actually most in need.

[Pericles]

'Get Brexit Done' meant that the shenanigans seen in 2019 were not supposed to repeat endlessly. If the large majority given to Boris can't even pass that, it's completely useless.

[Pericles]

It's not in the interests of the Conservative Party for its MPs to be droning on about how Boris was framed.

[Pericles]

I find it odd that this is the same guy who argued against the government in the prorogation case.

[Pericles]

Him quitting has helped him obscure that he was set to be found guilty of something that no Prime Minister ever had and shows that despite his allies claims the report would call for a 10 day plus suspension. Even I didn’t they would and it’s a credit to the Conservatives on the committee.

The biggest irony is that Boris was still PM when this inquiry was voted for by the commons; the whole saga could have been avoided if he just corrected his statement in the House. What an idiot.

It's an interesting hypothetical if this report would still have happened the same way and ended his career if he was still PM. If he'd survived into 2023 then he still didn't stand a chance of contesting the GE, and if he had run and won after Truss then the Tories would be even more screwed than they are right now (which is what Sunak supporters said at the time).

[Pericles]

That so many Red Wall voters were conned into voting for him in 2019 reveals just how deep the pro-Tory tabloid rot goes.

The press have been hysterically anti-Labour for over a decade (including Corbyn’s 2017 election), the 2019 result was overwhelmingly down to circumstance and his own doing rather than the Sun printing an extra negative headline.

The media was especially anti Corbyn.

Maybe so, but the point you ignored is that was true for both the 2017 and 2019 elections when Corbyn was leader. Since his popularity fell so much in those two elections, it was mainly not the media but his own failures as party leader that caused it.

[Pericles]

Starmer's Labour takes the lead among Leave voters. Very interesting thread to read, if true it's obviously great news for Labour-though this could just be a midterm mirage.
https://twitter.com/Beyond_Topline/status/1671559553446445067

[Pericles]

UK polling is so volatile that I wouldn't rule it out completely. In a somewhat similar situation, the Tories were leading by 20 points a year before the 2010 election that resulted in a hung parliament (and infamously lead by 20 points a few weeks before the 2017 hung parliament, but such a quick shift in a campaign was likely a perfect storm).

[Pericles]

Even Nigel Farage has concluded that Brexit has been a miserable failure:

Brexit: More than half of Britons would vote to rejoin the EU, poll finds

Yet even now, the leader of the Labour Party can't say it. He has to focus group and poll everything before he opens his mouth, he's honestly pathetic.

[Pericles]

The reality is though that a landslide victory does not give a mandate for things that were not campaigned on, and especially those that were explicitly ruled out. The only option that has been left on the table is a tweaking of Boris Johnson's deal-which will be good but won't change the fundamentals of the relationship with the EU. So nothing much will change until the 2030s.

If that were just one issue, that would be tolerable. But Labour is ruling out so much that nothing much is changing on lots of issues-he literally focus grouped himself into keeping kids in poverty.

[Pericles]

Party manifestos aren't taken as vague guides in my country, and if something is explicitly ruled out that (almost always) means it doesn't happen. We do have a different political culture though. I do wonder though whether what happened in 1979 and 1945 is really that useful for predicting what will happen in 2024. I really don't think it is easy to do big changes without a mandate.