Liz Truss and her nonsense

What do you think austerity is? It is not cutting spending for the sake of it, it is doing so to try to balance the books. The alternative is increasing spending in the hope of stimulating economic growth which is what Truss’s plan was. Other Tory PMs did not think increasing spending like that would work, hence trying (unsuccessfully even outwith Covid) to balance the books. The markets seemed to agree with them, at least with Truss’s version of borrow and spend.

There was no end to Austerity in PM Truss's "fiscal event". How did you come to that conclusion?

Of course. Just because you dislike someone or their politics doesn’t make them thick. Even making significant misjudgements doesn’t make her thick. Regardless of stereotype, thick people don’t get into Oxford and don’t work their way up to PM. It is a lazy accusation thrown about to avoid engaging with the real reasons for her failures which are not as straightforward as people would like to claim.

Are you serious?????

they committed to a dramatic increase in government spending at the same time as a massive reduction in taxation to increase government debt using the justification that economic growth

In other words, an end to austerity….

Trump says things that are clearly bananas but dont think anyone has every said its because he is thick.

They definitely have. From he became POTUS in 2017 until he left in 2021 a common insult was "There's wiser in the White House".

His stupidity has receded into the background as people, rightfully, tend to prioritise the fact that he's a corrupt, sex offender with no respect for democracy.

Of course she isn’t thick. You don’t get to be PM if you are thick.

Do you remember the Comic Strip's Strike!?

'Al Pacino IS Arthur Scargill!' [played by Peter Richardson, and Jennifer Saunders plays Meryl Streep ...]

LT and KK committed two cardinal sins. Firstly, they committed to a dramatic increase in government spending at the same time as a massive reduction in taxation to increase government debt using the justification that economic growth would close the gap. Secondly , they refused to allow the OBR to mark their paperwork. The markets were not convinced. The dirty, hidden secret of the frightenly high use of Liability Driven Investments in the pensions industry was just sugar on the cake. This is the only good news from the debacle. LDIs are now toast.

It is possible that a more moderate approach, underwritten by the OBR, might have been better received. In any event, all that she managed to do was to pull forward an interest spike by about 3 months. That harmed but didn't crash the economy.

What is your definition of a populist, steel? It's quite hard to engage with the argument without that being defined, as you seem to be using it in a slightly different way than I would.

If noone can explain why it would or wouldn't work, surely that makes it even more reckless to bet the farm on it, a la Truss?

IwantToRetire · Today 17:53

I wonder if a male MP made out on a limb remarks they would get the same response, ie his thick. Trump says things that are clearly bananas but dont think anyone has every said its because he is thick.

Oh, I think he's very dim indeed. And in need of a new jacket, one of the ones with very long sleeves, which fasten round the back.

ReadWithScepticism · Today 13:40

lolol at the underground transgender mafia. Sounds like it could make a good movie, a kind of Ken Loach /Martin Scorsese crossover. Tough miners, dressed in sequins and coal dust, taking over the gambling industry.

Ha hah! I love the idea!

I know "populism" is the boo word of the moment, but Truss is the opposite of a populist. (So is Kemi, who is much smarter than Truss, but still doesn't quite seem to get the point that politics is a retail business.)

Truss's basic ideological offer is that of the German FDP. Which has a certain constituency, but people who know Germany could have told her that constituency is 6% of the electorate on a good day.

Also, the Conservative membership is much less ideological than the Labour membership. It's quite common for candidate, either for leader or MP selection, to win on the "vibe" they project and turn out to be the opposite in office. The members seemed to like her Thatcher cosplay, but with her promising optimism and Sunak being downbeat, 57-43 was not a massive win with the members.

My starting point is that the 2019 Conservative electorate, once Brexit was done, wanted a government that would get a grip on immigration and do something about levelling up the left behind regions. It wasn't that ambitious an ask.

Matt Goodwin says he briefed Boris Johnson twice on what the polling said about who was voting for Boris and why. Boris wasn't interested. He thought the public were voting for him because he was just a charming and charismatic guy. That's why he was handed an electoral realignment and pissed it away without a thought.

Truss seems to have thought the 2019 election was a mandate for Singapore on Thames, the markets would be delighted to fund her turning Britain into Singapore on Thames, and the voters would love her for it.

Little to say about Kwasi except that he disproves the stereotype of Etonians being clever. As for Truss, her autobiography is some kind of weird psychological study of a woman who's unable to admit that she might ever have got anything wrong.

Dom Cummings always said she was crackers and shouldn't be allowed near power.

I also appreciate how quickly the Tories can assassinate a dud leader (looking at you, Labour MPs)

It would never have worked because borrowing in order to cut taxes is a red flag at the best of times. It's like a business borrowing money with the sole intention of increasing management wages. She used "trickle down economics" to justify it. "Trickle down economics" is a nonsense.

There was no investment announced.

She laid bare the fact that the UK had no post-Brexit growth strategy.

It would never have worked.

I am not asking because I support Liz Truss but because nobody has been able to explain why.

In the article linked above it said even the "experts" didn't allow for these mysterious LDIs and it is them that stopped her budget from working. And so to cover themselves the "experts" all said she was wrong rather than them not knowing about the LDIs.

Can you or anyone explain (excluding the unknown LDIs) why it wouldn't have worked.

So long as nobody can explain why in theory it wouldn't work, it just seems we are in some sort of echo chamber.

Seriously, in plain english why wouldn't it have worked.

It would never have worked.

I watched it live with my jaw on the floor, knowing she'd just tanked the economy.

A potential leader of the Tory Party? I think it would get more votes than the current candidates.

She is not a good person
She doesn’t seem to have the ability to self reflect. I think she’s got megalomaniac traits. She’s had lots of affairs and doesn’t treat those close to her well. She comes across as a dishonest, self promoter who’ll not consider the consequences of her actions on others as she doesn’t care about anyone else.

A bad person, seemingly with no aspiration to be good. Just to be powerful.

Like Boris, perhals the difference is he might know himself marginally better, he’s just too weak to change.

Feel free to have a go with fake news!

That's a bit rich, given that Kwarteng & Truss chose not to put their budget in front of any experts before they announced it to the press. Usually budgets are stress tested internally and challenged so all questions can be answered, adjustments made, and the Treasury site how they will support it. Not for Truss, though. Apparently her lack of leadership was everyone else's fault. (Haha.)

"Economics is based on the idea that people will behave rationally."

If only.

😐

And still thinks she's right about everything.

Thanks - I will probably have to read it 5 or 6 times to begin to grasp it.

Then the bomb: a staggering £500 billion in pension peculiar investment vehicles (LDIs) sensitive to the large interest rate rises now underway. But no one pointed this out at the time*.

But regulators and financial commentators had all missed* this massive bomb under the UK economy so it suited everyone (Sunak, Starmer, analysts and financial pundits) to blame it all on Truss.

I have always known I dont and still dont grasp how economics works. Not helped by my being at 16 being given a text to read supposedly to help grasp economics. It started with the sentence "Economics is based on the idea that people will behave rationally."

Is it fake news? I was totally taken in, partly because she blamed her downfall on "a civil service full of transactivists"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2024/02/22/liz-truss-donald-trump-cpac-blames-trans-state-blame/

The Tory leadership candidates are all outdoing themselves in saying stupid things that you would think were parody though 🙈