To be starting to really worry about Liz Truss

[Anothernamechangeplease]

OK, so I'm not a Tory. I hate Boris, and despise the rest of them. I don't hold or much hope of any of them actually doing anything to address the problems that we're currently facing, because I don't think any of them actually give a toss about ordinary people. Of the two candidates that are left in the Tory leadership contest, I would pick Rishi, because I think he has a more realistic understanding of the economic challenges, but obviously, I'm not a party member so I have no say in the matter.

Nevertheless, I have been relatively sanguine and the prospect of Liz Truss as leader, a) because I figured that things couldn't get much worse than the shit show that we have had under Boris, and b) because I am pretty sure that she will be utterly unelectable when it comes to the next general election, so worst case scenario would be that we have another couple of years of crappy Tory government, exacerbated by the cost of living crisis, and then we can be pretty confident of getting shot of them. So, pretty shit all in all, but survivable.

But listening to everything that she is saying she wants to do, to the economic forecasts, and to the analysis from both within and beyond the Tory party, I'm starting to get really very worried. All this talk of huge tax cuts and massive reductions in public spending...I fear that she is going to make the looming economic crisis infinitely worse at a time when we can least afford to risk it. Nearly all economists seem to agree that her plans are going to make things worse, not better.

We are already at breaking point. Public services are on their knees. Businesses are struggling to stay afloat. People both in work and out of work are struggling. The most vulnerable are already having to choose between bare essentials such as eating and heating. Inflation continues to soar, energy prices are going off the scale, interest rates are going up... and she is about to make it worse! We just don't have the resilience in the system to cope with this.

I am actually very worried about what is going to happen. This could be very bad indeed, and a lot of people are going to suffer. If we end up with austerity on steroids in the midst of an unprecedented economic crisis, there will be massive civil unrest, surely?

He's a finance dude. Sometimes you need to watch and wait and observe trends before jumping in.

She seems to see her life story as being one of having escaped the deadwaters of the the North of England. Clearly she aspires to being upper class without really understanding what it is to have class. I can identify to an extent but she has a very negative vibe. She's dangerous. That's all I know. Don't ask me why as it's just a gut feeling.

She is a classic Hyacinth Bucket.

I never heard of this! That is brilliant!

@Dalint indeed though is it PM he wants to be? finance dudes don't often make good PMs or CEOs when anticipating trends and acting immediately on available information can sometimes be required. Coincidence the timescale for 'watch and wait' was to act just before the election?

I think he's cautious and not gung-ho. I have no idea what he was like as a trader. I don't even know whether he was a broker or a Hedge Fund manager or what the fuck he was. I just that he worked in Finance and they have a spectrum from bottom-up to top-down investment managers, the former being cautious and the latter being high risk, high yield. As a PM, we don't really need to go high risk at the moment so caution isn't necessarily something I'm against or view negatively. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that extreme caution is required now in some respects with the caveat that swift action is required in other aspects. I think he's watching markets, he's watching consumer confidence, he'll sure as hell be watching wholesale prices of energy, but it is actually believable that he needs to observe a little longer to establish a trend and thus to establish policy.

He won't need to just look at UK trends, he will also be looking at world trends. I would trust that he knows more than I do as at his level in government he will have access to information that Joe Soap and Dalint does not have access to. In particular I'm thinking about war!

I just know that he worked in Finance

I think he set up a hedge fund that is now in a blind trust whose 13F shows a large holding in Moderna! Have no insight into at what point he made his wealth whether in the US nor how nor to what extent family money was involved to provide access to patient capital.

At the end of the day, our future comes down to money and I'd prefer to have an apparently successful trader dabbling with our finances than an accountant without a conscience!

That's interesting. Thanks for the info. I should google him I suppose. I hate googling lol.

I suppose an analogy might be COVID support though there are concerns at how that was done, self-employed missed and the enormous fraud but imagine the conversation -
Chancellor who is a finance dude and admirably cautious - let's wait for a couple of years to see how the pandemic turns out.
PM - grants for business and payments for furlough immediately otherwise no workers will isolate and half the businesses will close.

Sometimes action is required using the best information that is available.

It is odd. Major got the nod by the party over Hurd and Heseltine and possibly Clarke because he'd been a banker and usually finance is felt by the Conservatives to be key. Interesting Truss is favourite though to be fair, I think she is a CMA and held a senior position with C and W.

I have a weird soft spot for Truss (I think it’s the massive chips on both of our shoulders, and possibly the fact that she knows what a woman is) but YANBU at all. I’m worried that we’ll loose some of the things I value most about this country.

The way I see it is like as if you're a parent handling the household finances.

I guess I see him as the cautious parent who has stalled all outings (despite 2 bored children demanding to go to the seaside) until they find out what the budget is going to be after the new energy pricing.

Conversely, I see her as the parent who has decided to re-mortgage the home to fund an extension, in order to be seen to be keeping up with the Jones' and she has also taken a unilateral decision to aggressively install a hot-tub to piss off her neighbours who she believes look down at her 😁

The unfortunate truth right now is that money is actually key. When we have an established budget, then we can allow everyone to stand up and argue their case for how it's spent. If we don't have any money, then it's all moot!

Yeah, that's the caveat I included. On the one hand, you need to try to make decisions in the dark as not doing anything can negatively affect the outcome of what you're trying to observe!

Please don't look at a very tiny policy or ideology to form your view on someone for whom it will be less than 1% of the things within her remit to consider.

The household finances and national finances analogy always breaks down and leads to really poor decision making though resonates with party members as Mrs Thatcher used it a lot drawing on her daughter of a grocer background. Government can borrow to build roads and rail that will add to economic growth for 50-100 years while households can't.

The difficulty is that not doing something has consequences too. Twelve years of austerity has led to a massive transfer of wealth to the 0.1% and the worst? economic growth and productivity compared with comparative economies. Easy to cut funding for adult education then see the results in lower productivity for many years hence Truss 'graft' comments which were completely incorrect but played to the members' prejudices. Now at the margins borrow and spend causes problems (Venuzuela) equally economic growth is harmed by raising taxes and a lack of investment - difficult to grow a fire if all the fuel is removed like the 1930s depressions. The forthcoming recession will be terrible and is now leading to lobbying by all the corporates who normally are somewhat ignored by government in favour of the truly powerful but the corporates can see the catastrophic effects of increased costs and massively reduced consumer demand. The traditional relatively highly leveraged UK corporates won't be able to stand headwinds compared with less leveraged and better capitalised and managed corporates overseas. UK inflation is the highest in the G9?

Ok, I googled.

www.goodto.com/family-news/rishi-sunak-net-worth

Before entering politics, Sunak was a partner at two highly-profitable hedge funds and from 2001 to 2004 he was an analyst for the investment bank, Goldman Sachs. According to The Times(opens in new tab), Sunak was a multi-millionaire in his mid-twenties.

the vast majority of Sunak's family wealth comes from his wife, Akshata Murty, who as well as being an heiress to a fortune worth billions and having a stake in her father's company, owns a fashion label called Akshata Designs(opens in new tab). She is also director of a venture capital firm and is said to be richer than the Queen(opens in new tab).

What I don't know is how much of that trajectory of being a multi-millionaire as most Goldman Sachs analysts would tend to become to being worth many hundreds of millions came from his hedge fund work and individual contribution and how much came from access to free capital from the in laws. I've seen private sector finance people struggle in government with contested means and ends without the ultimate deciding factor of does it make more money. I think being parachuted into a safe seat and Chancellor hasn't done him a favour as he has a poor interview technique with mantrums when gently pressed. The commitment to a foreign power to become a US citizen and relocate to the US while being an MP and Chancellor and not giving it up until scrutinised might come back and bite him too. Have equally strong concerns about Truss.

They are both in the same party though.

Bringing it back to the household analogy, one parent wants to invest in tutoring or piano while the other wants to go on frivolous holidays.
You'd do well to look at what Ireland did wrong in the Celtic Tiger period. Popularity policies broke the bank. Literally.

Given that he spent 3 years as an analyst, he will be grounded a little as you can't un-train that out of you.

I'm very much thinking of the lesser of two evils. He went into hedge funds which is essentially creaming the top off finances. He would have been young then and money is king when you're in your twenties and thirties. You spend in thousands and chatter in millions.
Truss however has never made money really. She balances books (accountant) but aspires to loftier status for herself. I'm pretty sure that she does not give one shiny shite about us.

He appears to have developed a conscience, even though it was forced at times (tax domicile). To go from Hedge Fund into politics might not have been popular with his FIL unless perhaps it was seen as something of a status symbol.
I think they both have axes to grind.

I'm kicking myself that I joined the Conservative party and then stopped paying membership after 6 weeks when I received a particularly awful email from an MP in relation to how he thought and a speech he had given.

I've a little understanding though always more to learn. Need to check the figures but did Ireland go from having a smaller per capita GDP to having a GDP 91% higher than the UK? Think the post-2008 and recent GDP growth figures look like they knock the UK's growth into a hat. Some of the growth might be explained by a larger 2008 crash though not the recent growth and the much much bigger GDP per capita wouldn't be explained by that. Don't think Ireland have run their economy to prioritise transferring wealth to the top 0.1% though their even less affordable property prices might have achieved this anyway.

Have seen Trust net worth estimated to be c£10m though no insight into where that was gained. I understand she had a senior role in C and W relatively young but haven't looked.