UK General Discussion: Rishecession

[EastAnglianLefty]

This might be embarrassing for the new PM.

https://twitter.com/itvcalendar/status/1567102473826885637?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7...

I think in a list of embarrassing things that could come out about Liz Truss, that's pretty low down.

[EastAnglianLefty]

This might be embarrassing for the new PM.

https://twitter.com/itvcalendar/status/1567102473826885637?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7...

That is the best thing she has ever said that i have heard.

(and even better than all nonsense keir starmer has ever said). This proofs to me that she actually is someone who cares.

Lol I hate the monarchy but there is more than enough evidence that Truss doesn't care about people.

What evidence? Your personal guts, the fact that she is a conservative?

Also, "i hate the monarchy but..." really doesn't sound like you hate the monarchy. The "but" indicates you don't care about it as an issue which at the end is the same as being in favour of the monarchy.

I strongly care about the issue, actually. I just think Truss's policies like not passing a windfall tax on new oil exploitation like the Norwegians did a couple decades back is proof that she doesn't care about working people.

Few nations have a windfall tax. Labor had power for longer than a decade and never passed a windfall tax on energy companies too.

I strongly agree with windfall taxes, but as of now few European nations have done it in this crisis so far, because we're all neoliberal and support neoliberal policies, and all don't give a damn.

The only one in the UK i would trust doing a windfall tax right now is Corbyn, the most hated man on this forum and esp. by you lol.

Labour literally came to power in 1997 on a promise (which was kept) of instituting a windfall tax and are calling for one now. And it is a very popular policy.

Is there anything else you would like to be entirely wrong on?

[EastAnglianLefty]

This might be embarrassing for the new PM.

https://twitter.com/itvcalendar/status/1567102473826885637?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7...

That is the best thing she has ever said that i have heard.

(and even better than all nonsense keir starmer has ever said). This proofs to me that she actually is someone who cares.

Lol I hate the monarchy but there is more than enough evidence that Truss doesn't care about people.

What evidence? Your personal guts, the fact that she is a conservative?

Also, "i hate the monarchy but..." really doesn't sound like you hate the monarchy. The "but" indicates you don't care about it as an issue which at the end is the same as being in favour of the monarchy.

I strongly care about the issue, actually. I just think Truss's policies like not passing a windfall tax on new oil exploitation like the Norwegians did a couple decades back is proof that she doesn't care about working people.

Few nations have a windfall tax. Labor had power for longer than a decade and never passed a windfall tax on energy companies too.

I strongly agree with windfall taxes, but as of now few European nations have done it in this crisis so far, because we're all neoliberal and support neoliberal policies, and all don't give a damn.

The only one in the UK i would trust doing a windfall tax right now is Corbyn, the most hated man on this forum and esp. by you lol.

Labour literally came to power in 1997 on a promise (which was kept) of instituting a windfall tax and are calling for one now. And it is a very popular policy.

Is there anything else you would like to be entirely wrong on?

From what i've read, those two "windfall taxes" aren't the same thing.

This is specifically a proposed windfall tax towards gas & oil companies

which btw surprise, surprise, i support.

But many center-left parties in EU are against, because basically no-one has enacted a windfall tax on gas & energy companies, even countries that have center left parties in the government. Most have been like "you can only do these policies on the EU level, while nothing happens on the EU level as usual, since there is always 1 country that will be against, if 28 have to vote".

The UK isn't in the EU, so I'm not sure what your point was.

Sunak instituted a windfall tax on oil and gas producer profits this year, but undercut it by effectively writing it off if businesses committed to investment in exploration (that they were already going to do.) The Labour policy was to cancel that tax break and increase the windfall tax.

In terms of revenue it's a small part of the cost of a price cap (because the North Sea reserves aren't great, wishful thinking notwithstanding.) But the politics of windfall taxes in the UK are not the same as in the EU.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Charles isn't any more 'tainted' as a name than George - the last two Georges would generally be seen to have been alright, but none of the four previous ones would exactly be seen as setting particularly auspicious examples, if for different reasons. The main reason why it wasn't chosen as a name for a long time was because it was associated with the Jacobite cause, but that's an extremely distant memory now. The one name that is essentially forbidden is Arthur, and that's for (rationally?) superstitious reasons as Prince Arthurs have a habit of dying young.

Also John, partially due to the terrible performance of the only previous one, and partially for the same reason as Arthur.

I don't think James has been used since the 17th century, for the same reasons as Charles, but like with Charles I don't think it would cause a stir now. For some reason Robert, though a very popular name amongst the Stuarts prior to Unification, never seems to have been used after 1603.

[EastAnglianLefty]

We should put the Northern Ireland religious issues aside and just resolve it for the sake of eliminating border gore.

How? The issue is that the religious and cultural issues prevent any resolution that's satisfying to a large enough proportion of the population to work.

[EastAnglianLefty]

There's been a suggestion today that the fracking announcement yesterday was a bait and switch to disguise the fact that they removed the effective ban on new onshore wind today.

Which is possible, but very dumb - whilst there are a lot of Tories who hates onshore wind, it's much easier to tell them to shut up because we've got an energy crisis on than it is to also piss off the Tories who hate fracking, especially in their constituencies.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The convention is that you keep a low profile during the opposing party's conference. That said, she's not a great respecter of convention.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Resigning from the government under Boris Johnson was very bad for your career, because it was viewed by the Tory grassroots as disloyalty. I do wonder how much longer where that stops being the case, and resigning from the government because "Have you seen her? How can I defend that?" actually becomes something that enhances your future prospects.

[EastAnglianLefty]

One final point. While financial bills and King’s Speeches are defacto confidence motions, any bill can be turned into an official confidence motion, as a nuclear option to get it passed. John Major famously turned the Maastricht Treaty bill into a confidence motion to force his MPs to vote for it. If Truss bundled the measures into a single bill, with a confidence rider added, she would get enough votes to pass it by default (see Xahar’s comment about turkeys voting for Christmas), but sacrifice a ton of political capital, and the final shreds of political goodwill left.

Though it's worth noting that a confidence motion failing brings down the government, but doesn't necessarily precipitate an election, if an alternate government that does command the confidence of the House could be formed. When the parliamentary constituency decides that enough is enough, if Truss tries to fight it then it's one of the less likely routes by which she could be dispatched (the more likely one being via the 1922.)

[EastAnglianLefty]

Appointing a new leader in a matter of days is possible - you simply need to decide on a consensus candidate and acclaim them. The difficulty would be in finding the consensus candidate.

[EastAnglianLefty]

When she was originally selected her mother agreed to campaign for her but her father refused. I suspect he ordinarily votes for candidates to the left of Labour - Leeds has historically been reasonably strong for the alphabet left.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The big difference is essentially quite basic: millions of people have just lost thousands of pounds from their pension pots and they will not get it back. Anyone trying to buy a house at the moment (we're obviously well into the thousands here) will have been screwed over quite terribly and in a life-changing manner, and anyone with a mortgage will be looking at the looming certainty of vaulting interest rates with serious fear. Material factors move polls like nothing else.

Are fixed rate home mortgages not a thing in the UK? The US has a quite scandalous way of subsidizing home purchases, and even second home purchases, because basically the Feds buy these mortgages, and assume all of the interest rate risk. It is the greatest subsidy to the middle and upper middle class, and the top 1% known to man.

Fixed-rate mortgages are a thing, but usually for a maximum of 5 years, and that means that there are millions of people whose mortgage fix is coming to an end pretty much every year.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Of course in most of the UK it was basically impossible to have attended a comprehensive in the modern sense from the start of secondary education if you were born before about 1958, which as far as UK PMs goes means either Truss or someone who went to Eton.

Not quite impossible, as you could have gone to comprehensive in the modern sense if you lived in a remote rural area, some of which moved away from selective education in the 1950s on purely pragmatic grounds: Anglesey went fully comprehensive in 1953, for instance. But British politicians who grew up in the deep countryside are not particularly thick on the ground. As you say it's an extremely (deliberately) misleading 'fact'; a rather pathetic attempt to pretend that Truss's privileged background was other than what it was.

But you see she saw how low growth caused poverty in Paisley and Leeds (what is the posh bit of Paisley anyway?) In the 1980s, though she wasn't eager to dwell on why that might have been...

[EastAnglianLefty]

Redfield and Wilton have published fresh polling this evening. Their general election tracker largely remains where it was last time they polled, with Labour on 52%, Tories on 24%, Lib Dems on 10%, SNP down by 1 point to 4%, and ReformUK stuck on 3%:

Isn't it strange that the swing away from the Tories is 100% to Labour? You'd think there'd be some significant share of disaffected Tories choosing Lib Dem or Reform first, but they're totally flat.

It would be consistent with people wanting the government out and everything else being secondary to that. In practice behaviour in individual constituencies would probably differ, but in most of the country if your priority is not having a Tory MP, voting Labour is the best way to do something about that.

[EastAnglianLefty]

You would think these people are deliberately trying to throw the next election.

The only sane conclusion at this point is that she's legitimately still a Lib Dem & is their ultimate anti-Tory sleeper agent.

I refuse to believe this as it implies a level of competence and strategic thought on the part of the LibDems that would be wholly out of character.

There's a much simpler explanation. She is a Lib Dem, but she's not a sleeper agent, this is just what a lot of early 90s Lib Dems were like in terms of both ideology and competence.

[EastAnglianLefty]

On the economic front Truss has

1.) Bought forward her budget and the report by the OBR.

2.) Appointed an ex treasury civil servant as head of the Treasury after railing against ‘Treasury orthodoxy’.

3.) Reversed the 45p tax rate abolition.

4.) Looks set to increase benefits in line with inflation.

Just like the Lady she is for turning!

It does show imho just how bad things weren’t both internally in the party and externally in the markets- the biggest u-turn in Government economic policy for a very long time and really should have been an issue that caused an election.

Unfortunately, despite announcing #1, gilt yields have kept rising today and are nearly where they were when the BoE had to step in as buyer of last resort. Things could get very dicey unless there's a sudden about-turn in the markets.

[EastAnglianLefty]

And because we had two snap elections so the full selection procedure didn't happen in most seats.

[EastAnglianLefty]

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

Tories hold Norwich North? Dave Rowntree just can't catch a break. Should've played in a better band and stayed out of the Cool Britannia astroturf circlejerk that everyone's soured on since imo tbh

The light blue stuff wasn't polled.

[EastAnglianLefty]

The Times is reporting discussions of a Sunak/Mordaunt “joint ticket” to replace Truss.

The Tories have actually gained a seat in a council by-election tonight, in Waltham Abbey, Essex, but it was a very odd by-election where the only other candidate was the Green ex-councillor whose disqualification for non-attendance caused the by-election.

They've gained another one in Leicester East, which is even odder because it's Leicester East.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Complete with weird looking around before picking out the Telegraph and Sun journos, neither of whom asked particularly helpful questions. Would be an embarrassing performance from a council candidate in an unwinnable ward.

Incidentally, not only is Hunt a poor administrator, but none of his previous ministerial roles have had any connection with the Treasury so he's likely to have a steep learning curve ahead of him.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I note there have previously been calls for part of Truss's reset to involve firing the Chief Whip.

Then again, it's been so long since they had a good one (Williamson was effective but not really good) that I'm not sure who they have who knows how to do the job properly. Given that Brady is known to have leadership ambitions, maybe he'd be their best bet?

[EastAnglianLefty]

Sacking a minister for being mad is risky for Truss. There are half a dozen others in Cabinet who can't be trusted with sharp cutlery and up until now they'd been in her camp. Not certain that will continue to be true. The risk is that more letters will go in as a result of this than are withdrawn.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Chris Matheson, Labour MP for the City of Chester has resigned, following the ruling of an ethics committee, recommending he be suspended from the Commons for a month.

Not to overweight my instincts here, but there was always something... off there.

In retrospect it's notable that his frontbench career came to an end in 2018.

[EastAnglianLefty]

For the millionth time… if the election was today yes. It’s in 2 years.

Labour ceilling will be 350-360 once the election comes around

This could have been said in 1995 too. Not saying a Labour 1997-style landslide is a sure thing, but the huge damage inflicted on the Tory brand over the past few weeks is not going to go away immediately.

Labour led by any where from 15% to 35% (with the vast majority being over 20%) between 1995 and 1997. The final result was Labour +12.5… and that was with a political titan like Tony Blair.

Unfortunately the conservatives putting party before country is going to pay off for them (just like the GOP)

It is worth noting at this point that polling from the 1990s should be taken roughly as seriously as we take you, but in the opposite direction - polling then had what was known as the "shy Tory" effect and found considerably fewer Conservative supporters than there were regular Conservative voters. So a 15% lead in the polls then did not imply that Labour were likely to win by 15%.

Polling methods adapted to deal with this, and whilst it's possible that there are effects skewing things slightly one way or the other, it's unlikely to be by more than a couple of points. An improvement in the polls is going to have to come from the Conservatives persuading more people to vote for them.

[EastAnglianLefty]

More broadly, lots of preventative care focuses on things like lifestyle measures, and action here has generally been driven primarily by local authorities rather than the NHS. Heavy cuts to local government spending has meant that local authorities are much less able to carry out this work now than was previously the case.