Agreed. The only thing stopping Labour winning the next election is taking a controversial view on a wedge issue. Labour need to get in to power by not being too revolutionary and keeping a simple argument. Once they’re in and dominating the headlines, then they can release the Russian papers etc. If there is appetite then for rejoining the custom union etc., that will be the moment.
Corporation tax cut is clearly being reversed. Impossible for KK to survive. Truss may cling on, but she’ll be forced out soon, as the Tories will lose 2/3rds of their seats at the next election with her in charge.
Get’s said about her a lot but this is the ultimate example of Liz ‘if you don’t like my principals I have some others’ Truss.
Also, I hope there will be a serious operation to recover billions of our money embezzled by associates of the Tory party. By serious I mean prosecutions leading to custodial sentences, bankruptcies, etc.
Oh he has gone. Why do they act as if Kwasi makes decisions independent of Truss? This is HER budget.
Sunak presumably mixing up a well-deserved fruit flavoured soda water to celebrate. You have a leader who most of the party didn’t vote for, who then made no effort to reach out to those in her party who didn’t support her (including powerful ex ministers), trying to force through ideological views that are out of step with the majority of her party, parliament and the country. Whilst our electoral system is an utter joke, I’m actually pretty comforted that the market provides a sufficient level of checks and balances, to halt economic lunacy so soon after it was announced.
The level of policy incoherence and direction is genuinely something to behold. We've had incompetent governments before and all of them, whatever the party or leader or whatever, have had appallingly bad spells at one time or another, but this feels like other level type stuff.
I think Truss has got to go to the country and seek an election. I very much doubt that's what the 2pm press conference is going to be but it's surely where everything is pointing. She's completely boxed in. She can't deliver any of her leadership campaign promises without the markets taking fright, part of which at least is tied up in the lack of democratic mandate. Yet if she backs away from the promises she made repeatedly over 7 weeks of campaigning to the blue rinse brigade they'll hate her forever and she'll be knifed from the right wing of the party. And she's tanked in the polls and mortgage rates aren't going to drop any time soon, so any hope of seeking a popular mandate for any of her aims is essentially dead on arrival.
The Telegraph – a once fine newspaper now reduced to being wrong about everything on a daily basis in the most embarrassing way. Just quoting a man saying something without challenge in an attempt to prop up a failed administration. Not journalism in the slightest.
So Kwarteng is sacked for doing exactly what his boss wanted him to do. And she thinks that is enough to keep her job? I don't think so...
[QUOTE="UEA_Hornet, post: 3183328, member: 48"]I think Truss has got to go to the country and seek an election. I very much doubt that's what the 2pm press conference is going to be but it's surely where everything is pointing. [/QUOTE] That's the last thing she should do. The Tories will be annihilated. Better for some 'elder statesman' to quietly pass her the pearl handled revolver and once the mess has been cleaned up appoint Rishi as PM - without consulting the old duffers in the membership
That's the last thing she should do. The Tories will be annihilated. Better for some 'elder statesman' to quietly pass her the pearl handled revolver and once the mess has been cleaned up appoint Rishi as PM - without consulting the old duffers in the membership[/QUOTE] I expect you are right but at what point do people for whom Brexit heralded a golden age of sovereignty and democracy admit that they are being had? This Govt does not have a mandate for any of this. A second unelected leader in the space of a month would be the stuff of a broken, shambolic country. It is not democracy.
Depends whether you would rather go out having been PM for a few more months and losing at an election after you’ve had the chance to make your case to the country, or just wait for the inevitable vote of no confidence. Either way she’s a gonner, but the first forces MPs to stay on side and has a bit more of a laughing and smoking a cigarette in a burning building kind of vibe.
It gets worse and worse. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/10/13/anti-growthers-will-turn-us-east-germany/
For some reason my phone wants to add an apostrophe to gets but I take full responsibility for the second one. At least I didn’t sign off a letter with the addressee’s name rather than my own.
This is actually convention. It's normal for PM letters to have the name of the person the letter is going to at the bottom. E.g. see this letter from Boris to Nicola Sturgeon Sturgeon: https://assets.publishing.service.g...r_to_The_Right_Honourable_Nicola_Sturgeon.pdf
For some reason, I keep picturing the scene from Lord of the Rings: Return of the King where the Gondor steward sets himself on fire, sprints outside along an open promenade, and proceeds to throw himself over the side from a great height. Seems an apt visual to sum up the Truss government.
I'm astonished at how poor her delivery is. Most athletes receive media training from a young age. Surely some coaching would have been on offer? I'm sure I heard a reporter say "lessons have been learned" last night!