UK General Discussion: Rishecession

[CumbrianLefty]

Boris's parties seem so quaint now, don't they?

With retrospect, Johnson was maybe the only person capable of holding the Tories together - in 2019 it is quite possible part of his appeal was seeming to offer an end to the seemingly interminable Tory psychodrama, as well as the more obvious thing of "get Brexit done".

However, as many suspected his personal shortcomings doomed that as a long term project.

And we are where we are.

[CumbrianLefty]

Surely by now Charles would reach out and suggest she resigns?

That would be.....unusual.

[CumbrianLefty]

But such a strongarmed vote "in favour" will be essentially meaningless.

The opposition (including in the Tories) won't go away, and fracking won't suddenly become more of a practical long term prospect than it was (not) before.

The "Tories last manifesto said the opposite" argument is pretty unanswerable too.

[CumbrianLefty]

She's flip flopped on the triple lock again, thus seemingly overruling Jeremy Hunt. In fact she even name dropped the Chancellor.

Time for another flip-flop or two before her time as PM is over, even if that's fairly soon

[CumbrianLefty]

Or to put it at its simplest, there are always some voters who like to back plausible winners.

[CumbrianLefty]

I still can’t get over it. This is textbook “free vote” stuff, right? A motion that ended up with a 100-vote margin, with specific defections already expected for constituency and manifesto-based reasons — why burn so much political capital on THIS, of all things?

The real reason is that fracking is both a sacred cause to the Tufton Street gang who own Truss, and also a magnet to the brain dead Braverman types because they literally only exist to "own the libs".

But together, these two groups aren't close to a majority of even the current Tory parliamentary party.

[CumbrianLefty]

Jesus I just realized conservatives have been in power for 12 years. No wonder the UK is such a mess

For a while, Johnson did a remarkably good job in convincing lots of people that his was a genuinely "new" government - "previous near-decade of Tory rule is nothing to do with us, guv"

But the spell has truly worn off now, and what it reveals is not pretty.

[CumbrianLefty]

Apparently just a few days ago Truss pleaded with some of her own MPs that she should at least be allowed to remain PM until early 2023, which would have meant her just outdoing Canning.

At the time many may have been inclined to agree, if only out of sympathy.

But then she wantonly, and totally of her own free will, blew everything up yesterday.

[CumbrianLefty]

Will she get resignation honours?

As an official PM - however short serving - she is surely entitled to them.

I hope so, just for the likely lolz if nothing else.

[CumbrianLefty]

So it looks like Brady is saying there will be a membership vote. If that's the case, wouldn't the process drag out for a couple months like it did with BoJo? Or can they actually speed up the calendar to a more reasonable time frame? I don't think the country can handle two months of Lame Duck Liz.

They could speed it up significantly, for sure - one reason why it took so long last time was that it coincided with the lengthy summer recess for parliament in any case.

[CumbrianLefty]

So it looks like Brady is saying there will be a membership vote. If that's the case, wouldn't the process drag out for a couple months like it did with BoJo? Or can they actually speed up the calendar to a more reasonable time frame? I don't think the country can handle two months of Lame Duck Liz.

Yep. May was "coronated" after Leadsom pulled out.

But even if she hadn't withdrawn, it very likely would have been done quicker than this summer.

[CumbrianLefty]

Liz Truss is the UK’s Kim Campbell

Well apart from the "getting to a GE and losing nearly all your seats" bit, but we can't have everything.

[CumbrianLefty]

Plugged these numbers into Electoral Calculus (taking into account the Scotland crosstabs):

Party	2019 Votes	2019 Seats	Pred Votes	Gains	Losses	Net Change	Pred Seats
CON	44.7%	365	14.0%	0	365	-365	0
LAB	33.0%	203	53.0%	350	0	+350	553
LIB	11.8%	11	11.0%	8	3	+5	16
Reform	2.1%	0	5.0%	0	0	+0	0
Green	2.8%	0	6.0%	0	0	+0	0
SNP	4.0%	48	5.7%	9	0	+9	57
PlaidC	0.5%	4	0.8%	0	0	+0	4
Other	1.1%	0	4.6%	1	0	+1	1
N.Ire		18		0	0	+0	18

Almost boring myself with repeating this - but the idea the SNP *still* sweeps Scotland when Labour are very obviously going to landslide England/Wales, remains utterly laughable.

[CumbrianLefty]

I get it that Sunak is not the best communicator, is a bit of a trimmer, and could never win a general election (but then who can at the moment for the Tories - Zelensky?), and that yes Boris has charisma, and that bouncing him for lying about party gate seems not the worst malum in se act imaginable, but that is just me (yes, I quite like the man, roguish as he is, sue me), but why on earth would Tory MP's want more of him, when the mere prospect of that, while not as confidence crushing as Liz Truss at the wheel, is roiling the markets. Why has the Tory MP judgment been so abysmally poor at all of this?  Has the party suffered a brain drain ala the Pubs, and what is left is largely a gravitas free zone of pols on the make?

https://www.ft.com/content/e8d941eb-c435-4897-b957-dbc87ece56ac

This.......is not what actually happened.

Amazing how many of even those not inclined to support him have bought the "cake" line.

[CumbrianLefty]

Well - it could be worse. At least we’ve disavowed Trussonomics as a country. Some people want to give it another try…
https://mobile.twitter.com/WSJopinion/status/1582551879703302145

A massive unfunded energy subsidy is restrained spending, news to me!

Trussonomics is somewhere in between zombie-Reaganite voodoo economics and Peronism.

(key word being "zombie". Reaganomics can work very well when tax rates are high to begin with, like they were 40-50 years ago. It doesn't work when tax rates are low!)

As I have said repeatedly, she saw that one significant concession to public opinion (which is, lest we forget, *massively* hostile to right wing libertarianism) as a green light to go full Britannia Unchained everywhere else. This was never likely to work, even if the speed of its implosion still surprised.

I do hope you aren't doing the "*real* libertarianism has never been tried" schtick

[CumbrianLefty]

Labour seem to have a current line of avoiding many specific money commitments, partly because they think it will distract from the Tories troubles and give them something to attack. Of course this cannot hold longer term, and I'm sure they know this.

And yes - some of us do see the media fixation with "gotcha" yes/no answers to often quite complex questions as a problem, and not something to be encouraged.

[CumbrianLefty]

Taking over the following day has been customary the last few times a new PM has been chosen by their party. In fact, Gordon Brown (quite graciously, especially given his more general reputation) was willing to wait 3 days after his unopposed election, so Blair could have his farewell at PMQs.

[CumbrianLefty]

Braverman at Justice when she committed a felony resulting in her sacking...my god...

Not impossible Sunak is calculating along the lines of "I have to give her a job after she endorsed me, but soon she will mess up and we will finally be rid"......

[CumbrianLefty]

Sunak did well enough at his first PMQs, then again so did his predecessor.

[CumbrianLefty]

You would expect the gap to narrow a bit further, but the "new" government seems to have got off to a bit of a rocky start - apart from the self-inflicted Braverman sore spot, proceedings in the HoC have been delayed today because Morduant was detained in the other chamber. Sunak has now made quite a few of the more junior appointments, but it seems a deputy Commons leader wasn't amongst them.

[CumbrianLefty]

You seem to think that everything is rosy in the Tories garden save for "bad leadership".

Its not, the underlying objective economic and political circumstances are very poor for them.

That doesn't mean they can't pull significant ground back from their nadir, just like they did pre-1997. But doing more than that is a real ask, and might well require some sort of "black swan" event.

[CumbrianLefty]

Slightly morbid thought. Given the typical tour typically lasts at least three months - I wonder whether Truss’ letter of last resort was ever placed on a patrolling Vanguard submarine, or whether it’ll skip straight from Johnson to Sunak…

Assuming the different subs have differently timed tours, there may very possibly be letters from all three recent PMs on varying ones soon.

[CumbrianLefty]

Like you, never heard of her and I follow this sort of stuff fairly closely.

[CumbrianLefty]

Surely someone in the Tory party has the number of some fellows who can mete out the same treatment to Johnson as happened to his great granddaddy.

Or even what Johnson and his mate Darius Guppy wanted to do to a bothersome journalist

[CumbrianLefty]

His big UK success was 2015, when the Tories got lucky with the "Great Scots Scare" - without that it is doubtful they would have won an overall majority, at least.