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

paulfromcamden said:
Can I be a bit cheeky and ask how you would vote in a GE tomorrow if they were still in office?
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Probably A N other but realise it would be a wasted vote. Based on what I’ve seen of Sir K this week (mainly positive in fairness) I could get behind him, it’s the rest of them which worry me. Probably another wasted vote though as where I am they could put a blue ribbon on the coffin of Fred West and win.
 
Seanm said:
But this is coming from the exact same place - the exact same *person* - that resisted financial support for Covid measures until it became unavoidable, and which still resists proper sick pay and proper funding for health and social care. He would have said the exact same thing had his opponent suggested borrowing to nationalise energy, or to fund infrastructure investment. He doesn’t need to be insightful or competent to say exactly what anybody in his position automatically says about anything that isn’t basically austerity.

Not defending Truss’ measures BTW, just pointing out that what she’s broken with is also awful and we shouldn’t be pining for the ****s who did it. They’re all awful. It’s not even that they’re as bad as each other. They’re all *worse* then each other.
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Precisely. It's amusing to watch Britannia Unchained unravel immediately upon contact with reality.

But can we try not to rehabilitate financial markets (remember 2008?), the IMF and Rishi ****ing Sunak, while we're all having a good chuckle.
 
paulfromcamden said:
Well, none of us saw this coming...

[John Redwood] also hinted that the government’s response to concerns about unsustainable public finances would be a new programme of austerity and spending cuts to balance lower tax revenues. “We haven’t yet seen the whole policy. We need to see what the overall budgets look like, looking at the spending side as well as the revenue side,” Redwood said. Lord David Frost, the UK’s former Brexit negotiator, added: “The only way forward for Britain is lower taxes, spending restraint, and significant economic reform.”

https://www.ft.com/content/843e2f5d-1264-4acd-8f5c-c276c8d7b289
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I'll ask again the questions, genuine questions, not snide ones, which are really bugging me, and none of the pundits here or elsewhere have addressed. Why do we have to wait till Nov 23 for the plan? Why not publish now and remove some of the uncertainty? Why is the Government being so coy? What is supposed to happen over the next two months to make it necessary to keep everyone in the dark?
 
So what's worse?
  1. Austerity.
  2. Tank the economy and the pound, make the rest of the world think we're economically illiterate, give money to the super rich and thump the poor. And then in a couple of months' time, austerity.
 
droodzilla said:
Precisely. It's amusing to watch Britannia Unchained unravel immediately upon contact with reality.
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As of course did Brexit. The big Tory ideas tend not to be even remotely reality-proof. Austerity too, very rapidly reversed-out to a clone of Alistair Darling’s spending plans once Osborne saw the double-dip recession he’d caused despite all the rhetoric to the contrary.
 
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paulfromcamden said:
Well, none of us saw this coming...

[John Redwood] also hinted that the government’s response to concerns about unsustainable public finances would be a new programme of austerity and spending cuts to balance lower tax revenues. “We haven’t yet seen the whole policy. We need to see what the overall budgets look like, looking at the spending side as well as the revenue side,” Redwood said. Lord David Frost, the UK’s former Brexit negotiator, added: “The only way forward for Britain is lower taxes, spending restraint, and significant economic reform.”

https://www.ft.com/content/843e2f5d-1264-4acd-8f5c-c276c8d7b289
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Yup, the missing piece of the jigsaw. See the Adam Tooze article that seanm linked to earlier:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/27/kwasi-kwarteng-cut-taxes-austerity
And that is not even the last of the bad news. Defenders of the government insist that the mini-budget was only the start. Kwarteng promises further tax cuts. But he also promises to bring the deficit under control. How is that to be squared?

The answer is public spending cuts. Among Republicans in the US, the tactic is known as “starving the beast”. Cut taxes and, as public revenues contract, this will create irresistible pressure for spending cuts. The argument is all the more urgent if you can invoke pressure from the financial markets.
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Did the Truss government unleash this avalanche on purpose? That is hardly what the “moron premium” suggests. But we should certainly expect them to turn the crisis that they have created against the public sector in pursuit of their misbegotten vision of a small-state revolution.
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As cunning plans go, it's pretty dumb, but it might be where we're heading.
 
mandryka said:
I'll ask again the questions, genuine questions, not snide ones, which are really bugging me, and none of the pundits here or elsewhere have addressed. Why do we have to wait till Nov 23 for the plan? Why not publish now and remove some of the uncertainty? Why is the Government being so coy? What is supposed to happen over the next two months to make it necessary to keep everyone in the dark?
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The plan is most likely written on the same (blank paper) as Boris’s oven-ready deal and countless other pieces of fiction that never existed.
 
Seeker_UK said:
So what's worse?
  1. Austerity.
  2. Tank the economy and the pound, make the rest of the world think we're economically illiterate, give money to the super rich and thump the poor. And then in a couple of months' time, austerity.
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To be honest, they both look equally bad.

Austerity is thumping the poor (and it kills them).

We need an alternative.
 
Seeker_UK said:
So what's worse?
  1. Austerity.
  2. Tank the economy and the pound, make the rest of the world think we're economically illiterate, give money to the super rich and thump the poor. And then in a couple of months' time, austerity.
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You see the point, then: you don’t have to choose! It’s not an either or matter. They are both worse, partly because you always get both. Praising the perspicacity of a bonehead austerian just makes the next round of austerity all the more irresistible.
 
droodzilla said:
As cunning plans go, it's pretty dumb, but it might be where we're heading.
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The answer is mass strike action and civil unrest. There are way more of us than there are of them. We all need to recognise that. I do not respect the authority of this government. They are without legitimate mandate.
 
mandryka said:
I'll ask again the questions, genuine questions, not snide ones, which are really bugging me, and none of the pundits here or elsewhere have addressed. Why do we have to wait till Nov 23 for the plan? Why not publish now and remove some of the uncertainty? Why is the Government being so coy? What is supposed to happen over the next two months to make it necessary to keep everyone in the dark?
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They need to have some time to come up with a plan because there currently isn't one!
 
mandryka said:
I'll ask again the questions, genuine questions, not snide ones, which are really bugging me, and none of the pundits here or elsewhere have addressed. Why do we have to wait till Nov 23 for the plan? Why not publish now and remove some of the uncertainty? Why is the Government being so coy? What is supposed to happen over the next two months to make it necessary to keep everyone in the dark?
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Perhaps they're waiting to see how this plays out

"The Bank of England says it will intervene in bond markets to try and stabilise them, after the recent selloff. It will start buying long-dated gilts from today to “restore orderly market conditions”. Here’s the full statement:

As the Governor said in his statement on Monday, the Bank is monitoring developments in financial markets very closely in light of the significant repricing of UK and global financial assets. This repricing has become more significant in the past day – and it is particularly affecting long-dated UK government debt. Were dysfunction in this market to continue or worsen, there would be a material risk to UK financial stability. This would lead to an unwarranted tightening of financing conditions and a reduction of the flow of credit to the real economy. In line with its financial stability objective, the Bank of England stands ready to restore market functioning and reduce any risks from contagion to credit conditions for UK households and businesses.

To achieve this, the Bank will carry out temporary purchases of long-dated UK government bonds from 28 September. The purpose of these purchases will be to restore orderly market conditions. The purchases will be carried out on whatever scale is necessary to effect this outcome. The operation will be fully indemnified by HM Treasury.

On 28 September, the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee noted the risks to UK financial stability from dysfunction in the gilt market. It recommended that action be taken, and welcomed the Bank’s plans for temporary and targeted purchases in the gilt market on financial stability grounds at an urgent pace. These purchases will be strictly time limited. They are intended to tackle a specific problem in the long-dated government bond market.

Auctions will take place from today until 14 October. The purchases will be unwound in a smooth and orderly fashion once risks to market functioning are judged to have subsided. The Monetary Policy Committee has been informed of these temporary and targeted financial stability operations.

This is in line with the Concordat governing the MPC’s engagement with the Bank’s Executive regarding balance sheet operations. As set out in the Governor’s statement on Monday, the MPC will make a full assessment of recent macroeconomic developments at its next scheduled meeting and act accordingly. The MPC will not hesitate to change interest rates by as much as needed to return inflation to the 2% target sustainably in the medium term, in line with its remit.

The MPC’s annual target of an £80bn stock reduction is unaffected and unchanged. In light of current market conditions, the Bank’s Executive has postponed the beginning of gilt sale operations that were due to commence next week. The first gilt sale operations will take place on 31 October and proceed thereafter. The Bank will shortly publish a market notice outlining operational details."


https://www.theguardian.com/busines...nsider-tax-cuts-stinging-attack-business-live
 
matthewr said:
Although if the BoE decides to monetise this particular deficit increase then, oh boy, hang on to your hats (although I don't think they will).
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"To achieve this, the Bank will carry out temporary purchases of long-dated UK government bonds from 28 September. The purpose of these purchases will be to restore orderly market conditions. The purchases will be carried out on whatever scale is necessary to effect this outcome. The operation will be fully indemnified by HM Treasury."

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/news/2022/september/bank-of-england-announces-gilt-market-operation
 
If the Labour Party act on the conference vote this week make PR a formal election pledge Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwateng will be the last Tory PM and Chancellor in UK history. Just saying. There really is a solution to this mess.
 
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