Conservative Party of the UK Leadership Election, 2022

[omar04]

https://mobile.twitter.com/MrMKimber/status/1554217910834454529

Hahaha, levelling up indeed.

And apparently that paycut isn't just for bureaucrats, it's for NHS/school staff as well.

they've already had to revise the initially released plan: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/01/liz-truss-plan-to-cut-11bn-in-whitehall-waste-ludicrous?

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

In other news, third placed Penny Mordaunt has backed Liz Truss. This might seem strange but it isn't really - she never was the woke caricature that some made her out to be.

I was expecting this because of Mordaunt's libertarian-ish points of view, not in spite of them. It's not like there's a ton of daylight between Truss and Sunak in terms of actual "convictions" (lmao), and Truss does seem less inclined to hammer economic and social buttons willy-nilly in an attempt to get the right public-opinion results.

[If my soul was made of stone]

https://mobile.twitter.com/MrMKimber/status/1554217910834454529

Hahaha, levelling up indeed.

And apparently that paycut isn't just for bureaucrats, it's for NHS/school staff as well.

Broke: Padania
Woke: Thadania

[YL]

Two explanations: she's garbled the messaging and actually just wants civil service cut (which would also mean her numbers are junk) or she wants to a Thatcher and stoke a strike so she can be Iron Lady. Except this is a version of Thatcher where she didn't carefully stage her battles so she would have opponents with bad PR and instead speedruns to mad poll tax era Thatcher.

The numbers appear to have come from a report from the "Taxpayers'" Alliance.  I suspect she saw the headline figure and didn't actually look properly at what they were proposing before turning it into an announcment.

[Blair]

Anybody know where I can watch the hustings from last night?

[Blair]

https://mobile.twitter.com/MrMKimber/status/1554217910834454529

Hahaha, levelling up indeed.

And apparently that paycut isn't just for bureaucrats, it's for NHS/school staff as well.

they've already had to revise the initially released plan: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/01/liz-truss-plan-to-cut-11bn-in-whitehall-waste-ludicrous?

A reminder that oppositions and party leadership campaigns not only lack the weight of the civil service but are uniformly staffed by people who really aren’t qualified to write broad sweeping policies like this. Hence why they often end up nicking think tank work which can be errr mixed.

Although it if helps I don’t even think Labour know who to Nick stuff from

[YL]

The lady's for turning.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/02/liz-truss-u-turns-plan-cut-public-sector-pay-outside-london-tory-leadership

[Filuwaúrdjan]

lol lmao lol

[CumbrianLefty]

Well it makes all the hacks who have recently been talking Truss up look a bit foolish doesn't it.

[afleitch]

The government really hates the people it employs to deliver it's sh--y policies.That's never been clearer.

Starmer probably has to rollback Labour's new policy of proposing the same as Truss, but slightly less or slightly slower. Probably.

[JimJamUK]

YouGov have found Truss’ lead expanding to 70-30 over Sunak. Rather different from the Techne private poll which found it in single digits.

[Blair]

The funny thing is that my hunch is that if this was Truss v Badenoch v Mordaunt v Sunak the result would be relatively unknown.

The final two system seems to historically always end up like this…

[CumbrianLefty]

Sunak might have used Truss pratfalling yesterday as the chance to appear the "adult in the room" - instead he chose to indulge in some idiocy of his own.

[YL]

Sunak might have used Truss pratfalling yesterday as the chance to appear the "adult in the room" - instead he chose to indulge in some idiocy of his own.

I think he's decided that the Tory membership isn't interested in choosing the adult in the room.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

How long do you think until Sunak will be promising to bring back Capital Punishment and Corporal Punishment in schools ?

[JimJamUK]

The Bank of England has raised interest rates by the biggest amount in 25 years, inflation to go even higher to 13%, longest recession since 1990s, deficit to get a lot worse.

This is obviously going to be completely solved by cutting public sector pay and offering basic rate tax cuts in a few years time.

[CumbrianLefty]

How long do you think until Sunak will be promising to bring back Capital Punishment and Corporal Punishment in schools ?

Never mind that, they will probably be trying to outbid each other on how many gunboats they will send out to RESTORE OUR GLORIOUS EMPIRE by the time this thing is finished

[TheTide]

The Bank of England has raised interest rates by the biggest amount in 25 years, inflation to go even higher to 13%, longest recession since 1990s, deficit to get a lot worse.

This is obviously going to be completely solved by cutting public sector pay and offering basic rate tax cuts in a few years time.

What did anyone expect when the Great Panic Saving the Lives of Your Grannies was pursued two and a half years ago? The support for which often outflanked support for the monarchy and the NHS in the polls, incidentally.

[parochial boy]

The Bank of England has raised interest rates by the biggest amount in 25 years, inflation to go even higher to 13%, longest recession since 1990s, deficit to get a lot worse.

This is obviously going to be completely solved by cutting public sector pay and offering basic rate tax cuts in a few years time.

What did anyone expect when the Great Panic Saving the Lives of Your Grannies was pursued two and a half years ago? The support for which often outflanked support for the monarchy and the NHS in the polls, incidentally.

Except basically everywhere reacted in the same way, and while inflation is an issue across the world, it is currently running at 6% in France and 3% in Switzerland. Both countries which spent enormous amounts in respoding to the panic and yet which are both in rather better economic situations than the UK.

Overall, how bad inflation is in Europe tracks pretty closely to the single factor of how much fossil fuel a country burns- Which is why Germany and the Netherlands are suffering badly too. But if the UK is the stand out worst. Well that is entirely the Conservative party's mismanagement of the country way beyond the response to Covid, and a very big part of it being down to the genius decision to erect a load of trade barriers in order to appease a crowd of elderly, white, homeowning reactionaries.

[JimJamUK]

Inflation in the UK is also very distributionally uneven. For the richest 20% it is fairly average for a European country, while for the poorest 20% it is the 2nd highest and around double the average for a European country. This is obviously very worrying for the people impacted, but also for the Conservative government which either has to move financial and ideological mountains for these people or pay the electoral price.

https://twitter.com/torstenbell/status/1555113537680424962?s=21&t=cc54XQ19QO...

[Cassius]

The Bank of England has raised interest rates by the biggest amount in 25 years, inflation to go even higher to 13%, longest recession since 1990s, deficit to get a lot worse.

This is obviously going to be completely solved by cutting public sector pay and offering basic rate tax cuts in a few years time.

What did anyone expect when the Great Panic Saving the Lives of Your Grannies was pursued two and a half years ago? The support for which often outflanked support for the monarchy and the NHS in the polls, incidentally.

Except basically everywhere reacted in the same way, and while inflation is an issue across the world, it is currently running at 6% in France and 3% in Switzerland. Both countries which spent enormous amounts in respoding to the panic and yet which are both in rather better economic situations than the UK.

Overall, how bad inflation is in Europe tracks pretty closely to the single factor of how much fossil fuel a country burns- Which is why Germany and the Netherlands are suffering badly too. But if the UK is the stand out worst. Well that is entirely the Conservative party's mismanagement of the country way beyond the response to Covid, and a very big part of it being down to the genius decision to erect a load of trade barriers in order to appease a crowd of elderly, white, homeowning reactionaries.

The point about the energy sources used by respective countries is correct, but the present rate of UK inflation is not ‘the stand out worst’ - the differences in the levels of inflation between the UK, Germany and the Netherlands (and the US and Sweden and Italy to pick some more examples) are not statistically significant. We certainly do have a tighter labour market thanks to leaving the EU, but that’s only a small part of the reason why prices are surging (energy, as you pointed out, although post-pandemic hangover is also a key factor).

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

I know Labour has a history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, but there must be some sort of miracle for them to loose against any of these two buffoons.

[Conservatopia]

I know Labour has a history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, but there must be some sort of miracle for them to loose against any of these two buffoons.

Maybe, maybe not.

The Tories are the natural party of government in this country. In countries that have one party historically dominant over the other, the opposition typically has to work a lot harder to win elections.

This is the case for Labour. Sure, the polls may look rosy now, but in two years time the new leader will have settled into office, the public have got to know them and all manner of things could have changed. Perceptions of the politicians can change dramatically too, see figures like Cameron, Major, Blair, even Truss in the last month.

The Tories could be returned with a strong majority or there could be a wipeout larger than 1997. We simply don't know.

There's also a tendency for people on the opposite side (the left in this case) to see the other party's leadership campaign as nutty and the policies as out-of-touch and ridiculous. To an extent they're not wrong, but the point is that Truss and Sunak's aren't aimed at you, they're not even aimed at voters, they're aimed at a politically engaged sector of the right.

I fell into this trap in 2020 with the Labour leadership election. Obviously, as a rightwinger, I disliked and ridiculed everything that the three Labour candidates put forward and I thought that whoever won would easily be swept aside by the Tories. But ultimately none of what they were saying was supposed to impress me - it was for Labour voters. Once in position, Starmer has changed tack and oriented towards the wider electorate and all of a sudden he seems sensible and reasonable to people like me.

People, even politically engaged ones like myself, are stupid.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

The Tories are the natural party of government in this country. In countries that have one party historically dominant over the other, the opposition typically has to work a lot harder to win elections.

Why, as a Swede I do believe I'm familiar with the concept of a historically strong and dominant party. But I also know that the dominance has a tendency to eventually turn into arrogance and that sooner or later it piss off the public. I'm pretty sure the Tories have reached that point and the bottom of the barrel of Tory talent are hardly likely to turn that around. But anything can happen in politics, so as you say maybe maybe.

I'm not sure though how strong of an endorsement it is of your favoured candidate that you believe she is lying to the Conservative membership and will u-turn as soon as it's politically convenient of her to do so, but considering her history it might very well be the correct thing to anticipate.

[parochial boy]

The alternative is also Cameron/Osborne who stood and won on what was actually a very radical economic agenda, but instead presenting it as being reasonable and winning the narrative in being able to do so.

That seems better - tactically speaking - than Starmer getting elected on an idea of more or less sticking to the core of his predecessors' economic programme before alienating a chunk of the party's supporters through his subsequent contortions. Or of Truss/Sunak just coming across as mad hatchet(wo)men before then alienating half the party when they have to backtrack on the messaging because they realise that impoverishing the country isn't exactly an election winning strategy.