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The brits are in for a rough ride

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pmv said:
Be nice if we actually could have an election. But capitalism doesn't really like democracy.
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Tories were voted in with a majority in 2019. So they set about doing what they do best, screwing the little guy. Not like their agenda ever changed.
 
sdifox said:
Tories were voted in with a majority in 2019. So they set about doing what they do best, screwing the little guy. Not like their agenda ever changed.
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The agenda they put across in that election was different to the one they are now pursuing. True, those who voted for them 'to get Brexit done' or because they thought Boris Johnson was an amusing fellow and a good laff, probably should have known better and not been so stupid. Not much sign of "levelling up", now. Not a lot of high-earning City bankers living "oop North".

The only positive is that a disproportionate amount of the damage due to this new direction - including both most of the 'fracking' and the impact of energy price inflation will be inflicted on those "former Red Wall" seats where all those Boomers switched to voting Tory, out of fear of "drag queen story hour" or whatever the reasoning was.

But radically changing direction like this mid-term really demands a new election.
 
Funny thing is I've seen much Republican mockery of Biden for several occasions when he had trouble finding his way out of a room after giving a speech - but Truss has been seen having exactly the same problem, multiple times. And she's not nearly as old as Biden.
 
pmv said:
Funny thing is I've seen much Republican mockery of Biden for several occasions when he had trouble finding his way out of a room after giving a speech - but Truss has been seen having exactly the same problem, multiple times. And she's not nearly as old as Biden.
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Yeah but Truss is genuinely very, very stupid.
 
Hard not to see Truss's coming to power as a kind of coup. Less noisy and showy than the completely botched attempt in the US, but essentially a coup. Exploiting the vulnerabilities in the system to bypass democracy.

This budget makes it clear that she's a dim-witted puppet of those who maneuvered her into office. We are in the midst of a crisis where the less-well-off are facing complete immiseration and her response is massive tax cuts for the rich (in turn causing an immediate slump in the value of the pound and thus making the cost-of-living crisis for ordinary people even worse).

Borrowing a fortune to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy (and a subsidy for private energy companies already making massive profits) at a time when the country's credit position is already looking precarious is the nation-level equivalent of hijackers crashing a plane into a building.

Unlike Trump she didn't have to play the race or populist resentment cards to win power, because she didn't have to worry about the electorate at all.

She indirectly benefited from Johnson doing that, with Brexit and the rest, but in the UK, as opposed to the US under Trump, it's been a two-step process, because Johnson himself didn't have much interest in taking Thatcher's class-warfare to the next level. Plus, Truss seems much more malleable and less-inclined to go wildly off-message (indeed, off-planet) than was Trump. She lacks the entertaining panopoly of psychological dysfunction of a Trump. She's the Stepford PM. She may actually be a robot.
 
biostud said:
More good news to come
www.bbc.com

Pound hits record low after tax cut plans

Sterling sinks close to $1.03 as global markets react to the UK's biggest tax cuts in 50 years.
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com
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The plunge in the pound means the Bank Of England will probably have to raise interest rates. Which means higher mortgage and borrowing costs, which will deepen the recession. Also will make it more expensive for the government to fund the borrowing it was planning to pay for the tax cuts. The benefits of which will be entirely wiped out for all but the wealthiest people (who got by far the lion's share of the tax cuts) by the increased mortgage costs and general increased inflation.

If Putin had planned to hijack the British state, by having his agent appointed PM, in order to destroy the UK economy (perhaps so it couldn't afford to supply Ukraine with weapons?) how would events look any different from what has just happened?

I'm not saying that's literally what happened (though the Tory party's membership rules would make such a plan perfectly feasible if any Putin-like figure had realised it) but the fact that the results are indistinguishable surely emphasises how incompetent this government is. But we are stuck with them for at least two more miserable winters.
 
Really, the only definitive evidence that Truss is _not_ a KGB agent on a mission to destroy the UK, is the fact that the increase in Tory Party membership subscription income for the Westminister branch (where foriegn members are treated as residing) is too small to account for more than a small minority of the Tory membership, and thus a small minority of votes for the leadership.

bylinetimes.com

Conservatives Posture About Foreign Enemies While Ignoring Own Membership Rules

Sam Bright digs further into the party’s permissive approach to foreign members, as the Conservatives stonewall questions about the risk of political interference
bylinetimes.com bylinetimes.com

(I don't know anything about the above publication, but have no reason to doubt the numbers it cites for Tory party subscription fees)

That fact alone suggests she's not a Russian asset so much as just the idiot she appears to be.
 
pmv said:
The plunge in the pound means the Bank Of England will probably have to raise interest rates. Which means higher mortgage and borrowing costs, which will deepen the recession. Also will make it more expensive for the government to fund the borrowing it was planning to pay for the tax cuts. The benefits of which will be entirely wiped out for all but the wealthiest people (who got by far the lion's share of the tax cuts) by the increased mortgage costs and general increased inflation.

If Putin had planned to hijack the British state, by having his agent appointed PM, in order to destroy the UK economy (perhaps so it couldn't afford to supply Ukraine with weapons?) how would events look any different from what has just happened?

I'm not saying that's literally what happened (though the Tory party's membership rules would make such a plan perfectly feasible if any Putin-like figure had realised it) but the fact that the results are indistinguishable surely emphasises how incompetent this government is. But we are stuck with them for at least two more miserable winters.
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With the military support to Ukraine, I don't think they are Putin supporters; I really just think that they believe in the trickle-down economy. (Or potentially don't understand economy at all)
 
biostud said:
With the military support to Ukraine, I don't think they are Putin supporters; I really just think that they believe in the trickle-down economy. (Or potentially don't understand economy at all)
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Well as I say, I'm not saying I believe in a literal "Putin conspiracy" explanation, just that it says something about the level of incompetence of this (unelected) government that the results are, frankly, indistinguishable from if it had been a deliberate plot to wreck the economy.

Furthermore, given the absurd Tory membership system and their penchant for repeatedly changing leaders mid-term (there are already rumblings about getting rid of Truss, if the £ falls below parity with the $), at some point Putin or someone like him will notice how vulnerable this system is and do it for real.
 
Vic said:
Cutting taxes when your economy's biggest threat is inflation has to be the stupidest policy decision ever.
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Not to mention cutting taxes almost exclusively for higher-earners, when the economy is in recession (we have "stagflation" at the moment) is pretty dumb, given that it's the less-well off who tend to spend any increase in income, while the wealthy tend to hoard it or even send it overseas.

Interesting that there are already letters of 'no confidence' being sent in by Tory MPs. Not surprising given she was chosen by the membership against the wishes of most of the parliamentary party - and then proceeded to pick only her own supporters for cabinet positions.

 
pmv said:
Not to mention cutting taxes almost exclusively for higher-earners, when the economy is in recession (we have "stagflation" at the moment) is pretty dumb, given that it's the less-well off who tend to spend any increase in income, while the wealthy tend to hoard it or even send it overseas.

Interesting that there are already letters of 'no confidence' being sent in by Tory MPs. Not surprising given she was chosen by the membership against the wishes of most of the parliamentary party - and then proceeded to pick only her own supporters for cabinet positions.

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Tax cuts are not about class warfare per se, but many struggling voters do see it that way.

What's pathetic is that trickle-down economics has been debunked for decades, yet survives as bedrock GOP policy in the U.S., and has now infected the UK as well. As long as voters here (or across the pond) vote against the interests of themselves and their fellow citizens, we'll continue to get screwed by the political elite.
 
manly said:
As long as voters here (or across the pond) vote against the interests of themselves and their fellow citizens, we'll continue to get screwed by the political elite.
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That may be true, but in this case it doesn't even involve that. "The voters" got no say in Truss becoming PM, or in the wild tax-cuts she immediately implemented. Because there hasn't been a general election.

She was foisted on everyone by the anonymous Tory membership (which includes non-UK citizens and non-residents, and could even, in theory, include entirely non-existent people, potentially invented by foreign lobbyists prepared to pay the membership fees of such fictional characters).

Even Tory MPs didn't really want her as PM (which is why some of them are apparently already sending in letters of 'no confidence' to the 1922 committee...unfortunately it will take a very long time for enough such letters to accumulate to trigger a no-confidence vote and yet another change of leader).

I personally doubt that the Northern 'new Tories' of the former Red Wall would have voted for her and her policies, if given the chance. They voted for 'good bloke' Johnson and his promises of "levelling up", but it turned out to be a bait-and-switch and now we are stuck with Truss.
 
pmv said:
That may be true, but in this case it doesn't even involve that. "The voters" got no say in Truss becoming PM, or in the wild tax-cuts she immediately implemented. Because there hasn't been a general election.

She was foisted on everyone by the anonymous Tory membership (which includes non-UK citizens and non-residents, and could even, in theory, include entirely non-existent people, potentially invented by foreign lobbyists prepared to pay the membership fees of such fictional characters).

Even Tory MPs didn't really want her as PM (which is why some of them are apparently already sending in letters of 'no confidence' to the 1922 committee...unfortunately it will take a very long time for enough such letters to accumulate to trigger a no-confidence vote and yet another change of leader).

I personally doubt that the Northern 'new Tories' of the former Red Wall would have voted for her and her policies, if given the chance. They voted for 'good bloke' Johnson and his promises of "levelling up", but it turned out to be a bait-and-switch and now we are stuck with Truss.
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This sort of bait and switch is technically possible in the US but would not be as helpful due to the massive number of veto points in our system of government.

Like if Biden and Harris resigned tomorrow and Pelosi became president there would probably be some significant federal regulatory changes to the left within the executive but the laws that got passed would not be meaningfully different.
 
fskimospy said:
This sort of bait and switch is technically possible in the US but would not be as helpful due to the massive number of veto points in our system of government.

Like if Biden and Harris resigned tomorrow and Pelosi became president there would probably be some significant federal regulatory changes to the left within the executive but the laws that got passed would not be meaningfully different.
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The main difference seems to be that the 'chain of succession' is clearly defined beforehand in the US system. Anyone who is utterly aghast at the idea of Biden being replaced by Harris is free to not vote for the Biden-Harris ticket in the first place. The possibility of going all the way through to the Speaker seems a bit less clear-cut (was that a plot point of the US version of House Of Cards?), but generally seems to me that people know beforehand who that will be.

To be like the UK version it would have to be Biden resigning and being replaced by someone almost entirely random, selected by some secretive clique behind the scenes, possibly involving non-US citizens.

The problem is, maybe, that the rules on changing PMs mid-term date from when Party leaders were always chosen by the Party's elected MPs. That's since changed for both major parties to involve the membership having the deciding vote. The two systems don't play well together.
 
pmv said:
The main difference seems to be that the 'chain of succession' is clearly defined beforehand in the US system. Anyone who is utterly aghast at the idea of Biden being replaced by Harris is free to not vote for the Biden-Harris ticket in the first place. The possibility of going all the way through to the Speaker seems a bit less clear-cut (was that a plot point of the US version of House Of Cards?), but generally seems to me that people know beforehand who that will be.

To be like the UK version it would have to be Biden resigning and being replaced by someone almost entirely random, selected by some secretive clique behind the scenes, possibly involving non-US citizens.

The problem is, maybe, that the rules on changing PMs mid-term date from when Party leaders were always chosen by the Party's elected MPs. That's since changed for both major parties to involve the membership having the deciding vote. The two systems don't play well together.
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My point is in the US from a law perspective you could probably replace Biden with a random democrat and it wouldn’t change much.

Where it DOES matter a lot is in the regulatory state that the executive controls and that’s definitely a lot but the wholesale change like that can’t happen here because our system of government is biased to ensure nothing ever gets done.
 
fskimospy said:
My point is in the US from a law perspective you could probably replace Biden with a random democrat and it wouldn’t change much.

Where it DOES matter a lot is in the regulatory state that the executive controls and that’s definitely a lot but the wholesale change like that can’t happen here because our system of government is biased to ensure nothing ever gets done.
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Americans be like:

Are you unhappy that Congress doesn't get things you want done? Yes, of course.

Do you want to change literally anything about the workings of the government to fix that? Absolutely not. Why would you ask such a thing

How about we just hobble along until the wheels finally come off in some right wing coup and people start shooing at each other? Ok, sounds good.
 
If Truss and Kwarteng think they can wreck the economy serving their own interests, then piss off without recourse to million pound handshakes....

A few bullets will convince them - and whoever is then in power - otherwise.

For far too long, have politicians hidden behind a farcical system of unaccountability while they line their own pockets off the suffering and death of others.
 
Atari2600 said:
If Truss and Kwarteng think they can wreck the economy serving their own interests, then piss off without recourse to million pound handshakes....

A few bullets will convince them - and whoever is then in power - otherwise.

For far too long, have politicians hidden behind a farcical system of unaccountability while they line their own pockets off the suffering and death of others.
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And where are brits going to get those bullets? Not like there's a 2nd amendment! Murica!! /S (obligatory sarcasm disclaimer)
 
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