The Premiership of Mary Elizabeth Truss.Sept 2022 - Oct 2022

[mandryka]

I was referring to her personality, her policies were well sold but ultimately iffy.

She was popular with my mother because she was a strong and successful woman.

 

[mandryka]

If we accept this as true, which as someone who lived in one of the worst unemployment black spots in the country I don’t without a huge pinch of salt, that sense of aspiration and social mobility no longer exists. It has been bludgeoned and crushed to the point of extinction. The Conservative Party of May, Johnson and Truss just sell cheap nationalism and tabloid English exceptionalism in order to divert attention away from the millions of once aspirational working people now queuing at foodbanks and with no hope of buying any house, let alone the unicorn-grade rarity of a council house.

Your post made me think - and this may not be really relevant, I’m not sure. I knew North Manchester in the time of Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, James Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher. At that time there were communities, quite large ones I think, of long term unemployment - children, parents, grandparents and great grandparents not holding down jobs, families surviving through benefits and little short term insecure jobs on the black. I don’t believe these people became Thatcher’s share owning, property owning, aspirational working class.

I’ve got a feeling that things are going to get harder with Truss. I was really disturbed by Kwarteng’s refusal today to say that benefits would keep pace with inflation.

 

[paulfromcamden]

I was really disturbed by Kwarteng’s refusal today to say that benefits would keep pace with inflation .

Any pretence of giving a stuff about anyone but the obscenely wealthy does seem to have gone out the window in the last couple of weeks.

I mean we all knew it of course, but I don't think it's been anything like this blatant before. That they apparently don't care what the electorate think is very very odd.

 

[Joe Hutch]

It’s probably libellous to suggest that drugs were involved, so I won’t.

 

[Tony L]

Any pretence of giving a stuff about anyone but the obscenely wealthy does seem to have gone out the window in the last couple of weeks.

In fairness the poor don’t fund the Conservative Party.

 

[ff1d1l]

 

[ff1d1l]

She was popular with my mother because she was a strong and successful woman.

Interesting...suppose your mother had been weak and underachieving?

 

[kensalriser]

Another poll here on Electoral Calculus that doesn't seem to have garnered the same attention as the YouGov poll.

https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/blogs/ec_mrppoll_20220928.html

Lab 45 Con 27 Lab maj 112

Scroll down for the seat by seat prediction. There are some names to savour among the losing Tories.

 

[miktec]

Scroll down for the seat by seat prediction. There are some names to savour among the losing Tories.

I think Truss and co already have a cunning plan in the run up to election time to avoid such a humiliating defeat
- make as many people homeless as they can, thus making huge swathes of the population ineligible to vote; they are well on track with that as we speak.....

 

[mandryka]

Interesting...suppose your mother had been weak and underachieving?

I think she thought that too many women at the time were underachieving because they accepted expectations about what was right and wrong for women to do, unfair expectations. She thought that Thatcher would help women see that they had no need to compromise, no need to accept a secondary or passive status.

 

[mandryka]

Any pretence of giving a stuff about anyone but the obscenely wealthy does seem to have gone out the window in the last couple of weeks.

I mean we all knew it of course, but I don't think it's been anything like this blatant before. That they apparently don't care what the electorate think is very very odd.

I posted somewhere about an interview Truss gave to Sky where she was explicit about this. Her view is that the electorate don’t care about the distribution of wealth, fair or not. What they do care about is that they are doing better for themselves - wages increasing, safer communities. She believes she can make this happen after a couple of years for enough people, enough people will feel as though their life is on the up to vote for her and elect her.

 

[Hook]

I think she thought that too many women at the time were underachieving because they accepted expectations about what was right and wrong for women to do, and that was unfair. She felt that even in the 1970s too many women didn’t feel strong enough to defy those expectations, challenge the role they had been allotted. She thought that Thatcher was a good model for the emancipation of women, that Thatcher would help women see that they had no need to compromise, no need to accept a secondary or passive status.

“What did Margaret Thatcher do for women? Nothing.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/09/margaret-thatcher-women

 

[Joe Hutch]

I posted somewhere about an interview Truss gave to Sky where she was explicit about this. Her view is that the electorate don’t care about the distribution of wealth, fair or not. What they do care about is that they are doing better for themselves - wages increasing, safer communities. She believes she can make this happen after a couple of years for enough people, enough people will feel as though their life is on the up to vote for her and elect her.

So, how's that going?

 

[ks.234]

The appeal of Thatcher was that you could buy cheap shares in British Gas and you could buy your council house at a bargain price. She won against the Argie Bargies and she handbagged Up Yours Delors.

Remember Sid

British Gas "Tell Sid" Advert Series (1986) - Ad #3 - YouTube

The appeal of Thatcher should be a warning from history. Buying your council house has led us to the situation where many cannot afford to buy a house at all and flogging off energy companies for has led to vast profits and higher gas prices. Up Yours Delors has led to Brexit and isolation.

Thatcher was a disaster that created more disaster. Thatcher is why we are where we are.

 

[Alex S]

That gets an 'agreed' and a 'like'. Throw in flag waving, union bashing, deregulation, monetarism, USA pandering, Harry Enfield and padded shoulders.

 

[Tony L]

I posted somewhere about an interview Truss gave to Sky where she was explicit about this. Her view is that the electorate don’t care about the distribution of wealth, fair or not. What they do care about is that they are doing better for themselves - wages increasing, safer communities. She believes she can make this happen after a couple of years for enough people, enough people will feel as though their life is on the up to vote for her and elect her.

I see the logic; first absolutely ruin the whole economy (other than for party donor hedge funds etc), drive the nation into poverty, isolation and insecurity, and from that rock bottom everything, however slight, seems like an up. She’s certainly nailed the first phase.

 

[Nick_G]

I see the logic; first absolutely ruin the whole economy (other than for party donor hedge funds etc), drive the nation into poverty, isolation and insecurity, and from that rock bottom everything, however slight, seems like an up. She’s certainly nailed the first phase.

Driving the nation into poverty, isolation and insecurity is leaving the door wide open to fascism. Is this part of the plan too?

 

[Tony L]

Driving the nation into poverty, isolation and insecurity is leaving the door wide open to fascism. Is this part of the plan too?

Given the Tory Party policy department is little more than a tape echo recycling US Republican Party politics one assumes so.

We are most of the way there already; nationalism, xenophobia, authoritarianism, isolationism and corruption all flooded back up the shit pan with Brexit and have been strengthened and legislated hugely since. It appears far-right scapegoating and demonisation has now stretched in scope from the initial gypsies, ‘benefit scroungers’ and immigrants to anyone who isn’t a hedge fund manager, oligarch or Tory donor. We lack the extreme fundamentalist religion of the USA, but make up for it with the rose-tinted revisionist flags and patriotism of monarchy. If we aren’t quite there all the criteria to take that final step certainly are.

The good thing is people do finally seem to have noticed the far-right have trashed the economy and that might be the cue to jump out of the pan. We can at least hope.

 

[SteveS1]

The appeal of Thatcher should be a warning from history. Buying your council house has led us to the situation where many cannot afford to buy a house at all and flogging off energy companies for has led to vast profits and higher gas prices. Up Yours Delors has led to Brexit and isolation.

Thatcher was a disaster that created more disaster. Thatcher is why we are where we are.

Kind of you not to mention that her reputation of "good housekeeping" was against a backdrop of "can only do it once" flogging off many other assets and with the benefit of never to be seen again levels of north sea oil receipts.

She not only divided and plundered, she did it while in receipt of more income than any PM before or since. Christ, even MacMillan accused her of "selling the family silver". Mind you, Truss is setting new records for wealth transfer. Not so much "trickle-down" as "flood-upwards" economics.

Never mind, musn't grumble etc. I wonder if those Red Wall voters are enjoying this version of "levelling up".

 

[ks.234]

I see the logic; first absolutely ruin the whole economy (other than for party donor hedge funds etc), drive the nation into poverty, isolation and insecurity, and from that rock bottom everything, however slight, seems like an up. She’s certainly nailed the first phase.

I posted this before, but I can’t help thinking that Truss’s economic policy is based on the model of the East India company.

The EIC went into India in the early 17th century when India was producing 25% of global GDP and Britain around 1%. By the mid 18th century it had control of much of the Indian economy and milked it to the point of devastation, exploiting weavers in specially built concentration camps to the point that they cut their own thumbs off to escape. In the famine of 1770, the EIC still demanded taxes by going into villages and hanging and bayoneting villagers to extract payment from people who we already starving. About 10 million people died of starvation. In that year the EIA declared record profits and announced bigger shareholder bonuses. The consequences were no weavers and the collapse of the EIA.

The EIA appealed to Parliament for a bailout, and because most MP’s had investments in the EIA, were shareholders and in many cases were on the board of the EIA, they got it.

Liz Truss can’t quite exploit workers to the point of self mutilation, and she has to take note of modern notions of democracy and fairness, but it seems to me that the same primacy of company profits above all else and the ideological if not financial investment in wealth at the expense of everyone and everything else, remain pertinent to a certain Tory mindset