UK General Discussion: Rishecession

[Torrain]

Getting a bad feeling about the next few days...
https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1579914091749314561

[Torrain]

Stephen Hammond (the MP for the ultra marginal Tory-Lib Dem seat of Wimbledon, not to be confused with Philip Hammond, May’s former Chancellor), has broken cover as the first Tory MP to openly call for Trussonomics to be scrapped:
https://mobile.twitter.com/SamCoatesSky/status/1579912033562398720
It remains to be seen whether Hammond is a lone actor, or the first to come out of the woodwork as part of a concerted effort to grab the narrative ahead of PMQs tomorrow - amid serious concerns about the markets.

[Torrain]

Ironically the Bank has u-turned.

They're apparently assuring markets off the record but it's a game of chicken between the BofE trying to avoid fiscal dominance and the government. If they intervene again it will be the minimum necessary to avoid market failure but they will be loath to shield the govt's policy.

Aye. I must say, I’m a little worried the Bank are overplaying their hand here. If you publicly say one thing, then immediately brief you’re planning to do the opposite to the FT, you risk significantly undermining confidence in yourself - or at least your public statements.

[Torrain]

I maintain that appointing Braverman as Home Secretary was Truss’ first mistake. If she had to promise the job to Braverman to win the leadership, then she’s in a fundamentally weak position, and if she just offered it up to her as an ally, then she’s made a major error in judgement.
https://mobile.twitter.com/matt_dathan/status/1580091335763075075
She’s proven not just to be a hardliner with some eye-watering views (see cannabis, Brexit, ECHR, immigration etc), but also a bit of a loose cannon, who doesn’t seem to care for cabinet collective responsibility.

[Torrain]

Rowdy PMQs in a packed chamber today. Highlights/lowlights:

• Starmer opened asking if Truss backed up Rees-Mogg's claims that the economic crisis is independent of the Government's action over the past week. She dodged the question entirely, and basically read out a paragraph from her conference speech instead.
• Starmer then doubled-down, and focused on mortgages, invoking several constituents who've lost financial security in the past week - asking if Truss understood why they were furious with her.
• Truss kept trying to imply that people were criticising her energy policy, rather than her tax policy. Was actively shouted down by the House when she first tried that strategy - had to stop and try again.
• At one point, Truss had to stop, and then restarted with the words "Mr Speaker, I'm genuinely unclear..." then paused dead in her tracks, at which point the Labour benches started jeering and waving goodbye.
• There are some very loud voices on the government benches cheering Truss on, but wide-shots of the Tory benches look pretty rough. Marginal-seat MPs like Andrew Bowie just staring at Truss in genuine disbelief. Penny Mordaunt looks like she wants the ground to swallow her up.

Truss committed to not cutting public spending - which was met by confusion and laughter in the chamber. Very unclear where any of the money is going to come from for Trussonomics now. U-turn incoming?

Truss ends PMQs with the words: "The last thing we need is a general election."

[Torrain]

It’s been doing the rounds, but felt it was worth sharing the first paragraph of the ‘The Iceberg Lady’, the leader article published in this week’s Economist.

Liz Truss is already a historical figure. However long she now lasts in office, she is set to be remembered as the prime minister whose grip on power was the shortest in British political history. Ms Truss entered Downing Street on September 6th. She blew up her own government with a package of unfunded tax cuts and energy-price guarantees on September 23rd. Take away the ten days of mourning after the death of the queen, and she had seven days in control. That is the shelf-life of a lettuce.

Given how closely aligned she is with the magazine on issues like planning reform (they share a mutual disdain for the green belt), it’s impressive just how quickly she’s managed to get them to shun her project for sheer incompetence.

[Torrain]

Truss ends PMQs with the words: "The last thing we need is a general election."

LoL.  Nice cliffhanger there.

Supposedly she went to the Tea Room afterwards too.

And she’ll be in front of the 1922 committee at 17.00, the same time that Redfield and Wilton releases their inaugural Blue Wall poll of 42 marginal Tory seats - which is expected to show the Tories far behind.

Quite a day!

[Torrain]

Can we actually get a NUT map to look at?

Maps:
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1575929404366106624
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1575526882853810192
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fd1jJFjXkAA3vLH?format=jpg&name=medium

Tools:
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/prediction_main.html
https://sotn.newstatesman.com/2022/10/britainpredicts

All of the NUT maps just seem to be uniform swing type of thing, has anyone attempted to do a map with a sizeable chunk of strategic voting?

Tactical voting is pretty hard to map, especially because it can result in massive swings, not only from right-left, but between Lab and Lib Dem, in a very ideosycratic way. And sometimes it just fails to materialise.

It also varies massively between election cycles. In Scottish elections from 2016-20, tactical voting spiked, preserving a number of unionist MPs and MSPs from all three national parties - but willingness to play ball with the Tories has significantly subsided since then.

We also don't have a clear idea of how much territory the Lib Dems will make up - remember that they doubled their seat count in 1997, even though they received a reduced percentage of the national vote compared to 1992.

Polling like the R&W Blue Wall tracker due this evening may shed some light - but it's not all that representative. The Lib Dems didn't pick up momentum in 1997 until right before the election (a point when Labour lost a few points in the aggregate) - so we might just see people use Labour vs Conservative voting intention as a de facto approve/disapprove metric for the government this far out from election day.

[Torrain]

https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1580226802617753600
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1580227603645878272

[Torrain]

A couple of other selected highlights from the 1922:

• MP leaving 1922 room after about 30 mins of PM, one quips to hacks through gritted teeth: ‘I’m going to get drunk.’
• Other MPs monosyllabic. Speech was ‘great’ ‘fine’. One helpfully deadpans ‘the Prime Minister spoke to us’.
• Liz Truss was accused of “betraying” blue collar conservatism by one of her MPs in tonight’s 1922 committee. Apparently the PM looked shellshocked at the attack
• So keen was one MP for us to know how well Truss was doing down that they thumped on the inside of the committee room door for about 20 seconds. We did wonder for a moment if they were trapped and trying to get out...
• One Tory MP describes Truss' appearance at the 1922 committee as "funereal." Another, asked if she had done more to reassure colleagues, replies "absolutely not."
• After PM's appearance at the 1922 tonight, one Tory MP told me it was the "worst 1922 I've ever been to". They said: "With each tough question she looked like she’s had the wind knocked out of her, 31st Oct could finish her off on the basis of the reception she got in that room."
• A pro-Truss MP admitted there was "a big split" but they wanted her to "plough on ahead" with anyone who rebels losing the whip. If PM rows back they said she will have "been leveraged into that position by our own party" and those agitating were those "with 20,000 majorities".

One MP has been named as attacking Truss during the meeting: Robert Halfon, who chairs the education select committee, told Truss she had "trashed the last 10 years" of the Conservative economic record, according to one colleague.

I remember when Johnson addressed the 1922 after several rounds of partygate, and while the mood was dire, there were always some MPs who'd come out with a spring in their step, concerns assuaged - and always a few journalists briefing that the mood within the party had rallied.

In contrast, this just sounds dire.

[Torrain]

https://mobile.twitter.com/peston/status/1580262987402616837?s=46&t=FFecqrgK...
This would almost certainly not be borne out in practise. But the fact that members of the cabinet have reached the point where they’ve decided it’s appropriate to brief the ITV Political Editor that Truss has likely lost the confidence of the House, right before he goes on air, really shows you how much worse things have become today.

[Torrain]

From this evening's audience:
Truss: Your majesty, it's lovely to see you again.
Charles: So you've come back again
Truss: It's a great pleasure.
Charles: Dear oh dear. Anyway...

https://twitter.com/chrisshipitv/status/1580264025648431105

[Torrain]

I wonder if Truss has a humiliation kink. From weeks of record low poll ratings, to her cabinet nearing the point of revolt, to being openly dissed by the King in front of the cameras, how has she not stepped down yet? Most people probably would’ve called it quits by now.

I will say, you have to at least admire her mental fortitude.

Whatever her deal is - it has to be exhausting to be so unpopular that even the Windsors think it’s safe to take potshots at you.

[Torrain]

On this - There’s probably some rough decisions ahead for Graham Brady. Assuming we see Truss forced out in the next 6 months (which sure seems likely at the minute), he’ll have to decide a nomination threshold with the 1922 Executive.

If most of the party favours a coronation, he could set an arbitrarily high nomination threshold (like, 100 MPs), in the hopes that a Wallace/Sunak/Gove/Mordaunt emerges who can unite the party. Problem is that there will probably be dissenters.

If the threshold is too high, the Right will probably accuse him of freezing them out, and if the threshold is too low, he risks someone like Braverman getting nominated too, and then wooing the membership with red-meat policy (which would probably be the final straw for a number of centre-right MPs).

And all this, aware that his own seat (with his 6,000 vote majority) is almost certainly lost.

[Torrain]

When the Foreign Secretary has to go on Radio 4, and bring up, unprompted, that we shouldn’t change PM, things must be pretty febrile within the party.
https://mobile.twitter.com/BBCr4today/status/1580468411175665664
Worth noting that the rest of the interview is dire. Cleverly won’t let the interviewer finish a single sentence, and keeps telling her that we have to ‘stay the course’. When she told him people didn’t understand the budget, he gave a patronising response about how we just need to believe in economic growth.

It’s a reminder about the z-list MPs Truss has been left with, between those purged by Johnson, those who back Sunak and made her an enemy, and those who just refused to serve under her.

Also noteworthy that his ‘stay the course’ rhetoric is ringing pretty hollow this morning, when both Conservative backbenchers, and even the editor of Conservative Home are all implying that a complete rejection of the mini-budget may now be on the cards:
https://conservativehome.com/2022/10/12/its-now-more-likely-than-not-that-the-mini-budget-will-be-withdrawn-and-that-the-chancellor-may-have-to-go/

[Torrain]

https://twitter.com/nicholaswatt/status/1580517767299547136?s=20&t=qOJZLCKrh...

[Torrain]

Ed Balls

[Torrain]

How exactly did Truss win the leadership election?

She had been the darling of the Right for a while - throughout partygate, it was assumed that we were headed towards a Truss-Sunak runoff if/when Johnson fell on his sword.

Sunak was the most popular politician in the country during the first half of 2020, and actually achieved a net positive approval rating (nigh unheard of for a modern Conservative chancellor), but suffered a number of damaging stories in 2021 (see the greencard, his wife's tax status), largely assumed to be encouraged by Johnson, who saw him as a threat.

Sunak was still seen as the most viable alternative to Johnson among MPs, aside from a brief flirtation by some backbenchers with Penny Mordaunt. But Truss managed to consolidate support amongst the Right of the party, as well as those who thought Johnson had been unfairly pushed out, and eased past Mordaunt to clinch a spot in the run-off.

At that point, all she had to do was throw red meat to the party base, and let Sunak's reputation as the man who ended Johnson's career linger in the air.

[Torrain]

Bit of an odd Westminster day. Some big names in Conservative politics have come out against Truss, with direct criticism from George Osbourne, and a call for her resignation from ConservativeHome founder Tim Montgomerie.

There’s been even more anonymous sniping from Conservative MPs (including a former cabinet minister saying Truss has ‘unleashed hell’ since becoming PM - because hyperbole seems to be baked into Tory politics now), but no one has made a public move or statement on the record against the leadership. Hard to tell whether we’re building up to open rebellion, or just starting a new, even less stable phase of the Truss premiership.

[Torrain]

https://mobile.twitter.com/JulianSmithUK/status/1580574612030517249

Former chief whip and key Truss opponent fires the starting gun.

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https://twitter.com/redfieldwilton/status/1580594534349578240?s=21&t=hkk5l-X...

[Torrain]

https://twitter.com/redfieldwilton/status/1580594534349578240

Feel like I’m missing out on the crème-caramel visual pun.
Is it a flan-slide?

[Torrain]

https://twitter.com/redfieldwilton/status/1580594534349578240

Feel like I’m missing out on the crème-caramel visual pun.
Is it a flan-slide?

"Flanby" was the nickname of François Hollande, president of France who left office with 4% approval.

Ah… I remember the car crash that was the end of the Hollande premiership, but I wasn’t following it closely enough to pick up on the nicknames.

[Torrain]

Is it possible that instead of the drawn-out counting that preceded the fall of Johnson, one day we'll just find out out of the blue that Sir Graham got the required number of letters and it's over?

Brady has implied that he’s not going to change the rules, but would intervene if a majority of MPs wrote him letters of no confidence. So, in theory, we really could wake up one morning and find out that it’s all over.

But… this is the Conservative Party, in 2022. So odds are we’ll see all the twists and turns play out publicly, with catty one-liners leaked to the press on a near-daily basis, and all the big developments leaked out to sympathetic journalists ahead of time.

[Torrain]

Kwarteng is flying home early from the IMF…

No explanation has been given why he’s ’hurtling home’ (to use the BBC’s political editors wording) a day early, but he’s expected to go see Truss as soon as he’s back in London, later this morning.