In Liz We Truss
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shakahislop
Well-known member
she's the first PM to be sexualised in this way i think, it's been interesting to watch that internet flotsam floating about, the thing about her taking it in the arse, the thing about the collar, corpsey's very frequent comments about her tits in totally unrelated threads
shakahislop
Well-known member
it's been interesting as well watching the guardian coverage of the usd vs pound exchange rate. i look at this every day at the moment for boring reasons, and the guardian is in full reality distortion mode in its reporting, absolutely no mention when it gains even a couple of percent, and on the front page at the moment apparently 'the pound slides further', which is their way of describing a minute loss after a few days of much bigger gains. guardian-brain is definitely an affliction in the same way as daily mail-brain, although they're on the right side so it's does less damage i think.
sufi
lala
the tory shaggers spreadsheet alleged she and kwarteng were shaggers together - noone says a word about that these days
IdleRich
IdleRich
That's par for the course though, you can disregard that.
After the excitement of this morning's sacking has worn off, I have to say that getting rid of Quasi-chancellor is a pretty shameless exercise in blaming someone else and sacrificing them to save your own skin. As I remember it before the "mini-budget*" Truss was doing the rounds explaining that it was really important to borrow money and give it to the richest people in the country so that they would get richer and... well, actually, and nothing, that was it. Anyway she said that that was an important thing to do and she and her chancellor were a team who had come up with that idea together and were implementing it, she was fully committed.
Then after that all fucked up she blinked and u-turned and then did something else and then u-turned on that and so on.... and it seems that, today, to her horror, Truss suddenly discovered that through all of this, behind her back Kwarteng had been doing exactly what she told him to! And obviously that had disastrous consequences for the country and he had to be let go...
I suppose it's possible that Truss and Kwarteng may have met and spoken sensibly and maturely until they came up with something like "Yeah we dreamt this up together and are equally responsible... BUT we simply can't change PM again now, it will spook the markets and reveal to the country that the Tories are, as a party, unfit to govern, so the best option we have here is for you to pretend to be solely to blame and to step down leaving me to right the ship and sail onwards alone, rewarding you with a lordship or dukedom or something when no-one is looking in a couple of weeks time" - which was probably the best response available to them (other than just calling a GE)... more likely though what actually happened is that Lizzie just called him in and said "This is all your fault and as a result the main requirement is for everyone in the country to put aside their differences, grit their teeth and get on with Operation Save Big Bitch - your part in that is to get fired now fuck off".
*I think they today announced some sort of replacement for the mini-budget and it's called something like "Temporary small-scale status report and prediction of spending" - it seems they are running out of laughably made up titles to call something that is clearly a budget but for some reason they want to pretend isn't.
shakahislop
Well-known member
super interesting to see over the past two weeks some proof that UK government is constrained by financial markets and how they are likely to react to tax and spending policy. I suppose its something that's always been in the background to all kinds of decision-making. but this kind of disciplining effect, where market movements can possibly take out an (admittedly weak, although with a big majority) prime minister, and at a minimal a chancellor, makes it clear what happens if a government steps too far out of line.
it reminds me a bit of how i (badly) understand italian politics works, where whatever tax / spending / borrowing-wise is decided through the democratic process is ultimately overruled by the EU in one way or another
it reminds me a bit of how i (badly) understand italian politics works, where whatever tax / spending / borrowing-wise is decided through the democratic process is ultimately overruled by the EU in one way or another
shakahislop
Well-known member
i'm not saying this is a hitjob by nefarious sinister financiers or whatever btw, just that it makes it apparent how big this constraint is on elected governments, i hadn't really appreciated it before
IdleRich
IdleRich
I think that when a government makes a decision there are consequences and if those consequences are bad enough then it hits the government. That's maybe most obvious when there is a thing - such as the financial markets - that has clear metrics that we can see and which directly affect people in the pocket. I dunno if there is anything else where equivalent effects would be measurable so easily and so quickly. I'm just sort of thinking out loud really, and I guess just coming to a conclusion that is exactly what you said.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Truss just gave a press conference. It was eight minutes of bollocks and she said that she had appointed Hunt as the new chancellor. She then took questions, four to be precise, three of them were basically "You and Kwarteng did all this together, how come he is fired but you are carrying on?" and one was "Are you going to apologise to the Tory party for destroying their reputation at handling the economy?" - she didn't really attempt to answer either question.
IdleRich
IdleRich
One thing I'd say is that this government has totally embraced the - Trumpian/Johnsonian - idea that they can just lie their way through anything, that simply repeating something often enough and loud enough makes it true. And with the number of sycophants and cultist type followers they have it is true that in general people will repeat it and also insist that it's true... so there is something quite satisfying in seeing them smash right into reality and being totally crushed. It's taken way longer than it should and of course they are still fighting it but to me the very fact that reality does kick in and the demonstration that you can't simply lie about it and deny it for ever is reassuring.
IdleRich
IdleRich
I'm gonna try and answer this off the top of my head.
After Johnson was booted out there was an interminable contest to decide the leader... the whole country was on pause while 80k Tory members spent ages picking a new leader, and eventually she won. At the point the country was facing numerous issues, one of the worst being these huge energy bills, everyone was crying out for her to do something about that but she at first refused, what she did do was announce a "mini-budget" which did literally nothing to help the poor but which gave uncosted tax relief to the wealthiest - and she gave television interviews saying that she was very happy to make the rich richer, she believed that was the best thing for the country. She then gave in to pressure and capped energy bills but refused to tax energy companies (that would make Britain uncompetitive apparently) which also cost money.
The reaction to the so-called mini-budget, especially the decision to borrow money and give it to the richest, was market panic with the pound falling like mad - and lots of the people getting tax discounts were bemused saying "I don't really need this, why is the country borrowing money to make me richer?". So the Bank of England stepped in saying that they would need to pump £65bn into the markets to arrest the fall of the pound and to prevent disaster, they also said that the inevitable consequence of the budget would be interest rate rises which would cost anyone with a variable rate mortgage more than the government was saving by capping their energy bills. Oh and loads of mortgage companies suddenly made it harder to borrow or simply stopped lending altogether.
So basically a horrendous budget. Then after loads of bad press about all the above, they announced that they would not be doing the tax give away. So at this point we had an all but unelected leader whose first move had been to deliver a terrible budget that crashed the markets, pissed everyone off, needed the bank to step in and spend loads of money.,.. and then a u-turn on the whole thing. And then she went round the country being interviewed by local journalists - thinking they would be low quality parochial bumpkins who would be unable to challenger her like smarter national ones - all of whom rang rings around her and made her look totally stupid.
They then said that they were going to cancel the previous government's decision to raise the top rate of corporation tax (I think that's right, something like that anyhow) - and the response was loads more howls of rage from pretty much everyone. Then she recalled the chancellor from a meeting in the US, they u-turned on this tax break too - and scapegoating the chancellor she fired him.
So you have a leader who was elected only by members of the tory party which is a tiny fraction of a fraction of the country, every economic policy she announced has been deemed so bad it's spooked the markets and she has flip-flopped on two major policies meaning now she's not doing any of the stuff that she said she would do when she was campaigning to be leader; so what mandate does she have to be the leader? Also, firing the chancellor seems to be an admission that his economic policy has been disastrous, but it was very much her policy, she talked it up before-hand and claimed responsibility - so if it was so bad that the architect needed to be fired how can she stay? Every interview she has given has been catastrophic with her unable to explain what she's doing.
The overall impression is of a leader who makes terrible decisions and then walks them back after the damage is done. She is unable to explain what she is doing, she is blaming everyone else for her cock-ups, she just gave a really shit conference and every question was about how she can stay as leader and she couldn't answer. Labour are suddenly ahead by an unprecedented amount in the polls with numbers that mean that the Tories would be all but wiped out as a political force if there was an election now. There are rumours that her MPs already want her to step down - but if they did and had ANOTHER leadership contest that paralysed government for months it would surely be unacceptable.
So right now it feels that Truss is fucked and she's fucked her party and the country - but they can't really get rid of her... plus really who would replace her? And the Tories daren't call an election. So... what is happening?
IdleRich
IdleRich
The thing I said about colliding with reality was a reference to the min-budget. Everyone told them it was the wrong thing to do, all the "experts" predicted what would happen, but as usual the Tories knew best and insisted that they would do what they want. Once again they really seemed to think that if they just believed hard enough and said it enough times they would get the result that they wanted... but strangely enough they didn't.
And this is what they always do, and normally get away with... they said that after Brexit we would "hold all the cards" and "it would be the easiest deal ever" and when it wasn't they somehow claimed that the EU hadn't played fair... but the weird thing was, that with that and with so many other things, their supporters believed them, or at least pretended to. It felt like a huge collective delusion with everyone insisting that brexit was going well.
And this is what they always do, and normally get away with... they said that after Brexit we would "hold all the cards" and "it would be the easiest deal ever" and when it wasn't they somehow claimed that the EU hadn't played fair... but the weird thing was, that with that and with so many other things, their supporters believed them, or at least pretended to. It felt like a huge collective delusion with everyone insisting that brexit was going well.
william_kent
Well-known member
Daily Star live feed - Can Liz Truss outlive a lettuce?
IdleRich
IdleRich
Ha yeah, I read about that...
My analysis is as follows... the Brexit vote totally threw the Tories into disarray as they tried to square the circle and deliver the impossible. Nobody could actually fulfil the promises that had been made but Johnson was the most prepared to lie and pretend that he could as... well, cos he's a massive liar and hugely ambitious. Once he was leader he pretty much got rid of all the talent and filled posts with loyalists who were prepared to pretend that he had successfully delivered brexit and back his other lies while turning a blind eye to his many failings and corruption. By the time his laziness and dishonesty had become too much even for this sorry lot and done for him, the party was filled with people whose only quality was ambition.
Truss is a good case in point, she was a Lib Dem and then a Tory, she was a republican and is now pro-monarchy, she was anti-brexit and became a cheerleader for it. As foreign secretary she demonstrated no ability whatsoever, achieved nothing and whenever she was interviewed on telly simply confirmed that she was stupid and prepared to lie.
The fact that such an obvious idiot could become the leader is a clear sign of the dearth of talent in the party. She has nothing to offer except a desire to lead, the party now is completely empty of any belief in anything. There is nothing they particularly want to do except stay in power and they don't know how to do that - and if they did they would do nothing while they were there. You can see this now in the desperate propaganda on twitter, all they can do is insult Labour cos the Tories have achieved precisely nothing and have no plans to do more. Her greatest achievement is to dream up an imaginary enemy in the form of the so-called "anti-growth coalition" - a ridiculous construction from a party whose record on growth is such that the name could apply to them.
I remember the mid-nineties when it was clear that Major "in government but not in power" was a busted flush and the Tory party was doomed to lose the next election, "tory sleaze" filled the headlines and laughable initiatives such as the "traffic cone hotline" were desperate attempts to distract the public from that. This feels much worse for them, at that point the Tories were hammered and would take fifteen years to come back to power, hopefully now they will be consigned to oblivion for considerably longer. In their long twelve years in power they have failed on every metric, even those who cling to the idea that Tories are somehow better with the economy must concede that this government has been considerably worse than the Blair/Brown years on that too.
My analysis is as follows... the Brexit vote totally threw the Tories into disarray as they tried to square the circle and deliver the impossible. Nobody could actually fulfil the promises that had been made but Johnson was the most prepared to lie and pretend that he could as... well, cos he's a massive liar and hugely ambitious. Once he was leader he pretty much got rid of all the talent and filled posts with loyalists who were prepared to pretend that he had successfully delivered brexit and back his other lies while turning a blind eye to his many failings and corruption. By the time his laziness and dishonesty had become too much even for this sorry lot and done for him, the party was filled with people whose only quality was ambition.
Truss is a good case in point, she was a Lib Dem and then a Tory, she was a republican and is now pro-monarchy, she was anti-brexit and became a cheerleader for it. As foreign secretary she demonstrated no ability whatsoever, achieved nothing and whenever she was interviewed on telly simply confirmed that she was stupid and prepared to lie.
The fact that such an obvious idiot could become the leader is a clear sign of the dearth of talent in the party. She has nothing to offer except a desire to lead, the party now is completely empty of any belief in anything. There is nothing they particularly want to do except stay in power and they don't know how to do that - and if they did they would do nothing while they were there. You can see this now in the desperate propaganda on twitter, all they can do is insult Labour cos the Tories have achieved precisely nothing and have no plans to do more. Her greatest achievement is to dream up an imaginary enemy in the form of the so-called "anti-growth coalition" - a ridiculous construction from a party whose record on growth is such that the name could apply to them.
I remember the mid-nineties when it was clear that Major "in government but not in power" was a busted flush and the Tory party was doomed to lose the next election, "tory sleaze" filled the headlines and laughable initiatives such as the "traffic cone hotline" were desperate attempts to distract the public from that. This feels much worse for them, at that point the Tories were hammered and would take fifteen years to come back to power, hopefully now they will be consigned to oblivion for considerably longer. In their long twelve years in power they have failed on every metric, even those who cling to the idea that Tories are somehow better with the economy must concede that this government has been considerably worse than the Blair/Brown years on that too.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Roger Melly tells it like it is
Seems apt to bring this back today - just in case your eyes are as bad as mine and you can't read it, the gist of it is; Roger is down to interview Jeremy Hunt who was culture secretary at the time. Every panel has Roger practising saying "Jeremry Hunt, Culture Secretary... Hunt Culture, Hunt Culture..." he is clearly very keen not to make the obvious mistake. In the final panel he indeed avoids the error beginning his interview "Today I am joined by Jeremy Hunt, Culture Secretary - so Jeremy, people think you've acted like a total cunt over the Sky merger fiasco..." - and he wasn't wrong, I don't know how he survived that and remains in government to this fucking day. The cunt.
Seems apt to bring this back today - just in case your eyes are as bad as mine and you can't read it, the gist of it is; Roger is down to interview Jeremy Hunt who was culture secretary at the time. Every panel has Roger practising saying "Jeremry Hunt, Culture Secretary... Hunt Culture, Hunt Culture..." he is clearly very keen not to make the obvious mistake. In the final panel he indeed avoids the error beginning his interview "Today I am joined by Jeremy Hunt, Culture Secretary - so Jeremy, people think you've acted like a total cunt over the Sky merger fiasco..." - and he wasn't wrong, I don't know how he survived that and remains in government to this fucking day. The cunt.
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Luka isn't saying you literally said this. He just knows you well enough to know that you thought it.