Black Monday anyone? The tories should be in jail

[Upthebracket22]

The pound is now at its lowest point against the dollar since decimalisation in 1971 at 1.03. It’s probably going lower and the Bank of England will likely need to step in with an emergency interest rate rise today. Black Monday possibly?

All because of the mini budget on Friday. The Tories should be in jail. Especially if their rich backers were shorting the pound as it appears to get rich.

The disgusting sexism on here is so evident - typical of Labour haters of women or can they even call us women yet? You know that invisible lot, and now we have another one running the country.

Just because Truss is blonde and didn’t benefit from public school debates as a child does not mean she isn’t a political and intellectual heavy weight.

No, it's the fact that she's managed to crash the pound and most likely the economy, by ignoring the most basic principles of economic prudence even subscribed to by her OWN party that mean she's not a political and intellectual heacy weight.

To be clear, there are plenty of male politicians I think are not very bright too. They just don't happen to be prime minister at the moment so are not the subject of discussion. Having a vagina doesn't get you off the hook of having your actions scrutinised, I'm afraid, particularly when you have a job as important as this one.

Other social measures also show a similar story - life expectancy is stagnating and even going backwards in places, increased homelessness, reliance on food banks.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

I urge people to find the Phillip Hammond interview ( it might be on u tube , it must be somewhere on line) where he is asked if Ms Truss's economic plans are going to work ..
He just smiles enigmatically and basically said ' we're all screwed ' , only much more succinctly than that.
Told me all i needed to hear

I think allowing people to keep more of what they earn is a good thing. The proportion of the tax revenue taken from higher earners has increased substantially, it's fair to ease that off a bit.

It will all end up in the economy via personal spending and investment, rather than the preferences of government workers. Good for competitiveness.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-growth-plan-2022-factsheet-on-income-tax/income-tax-factsheet
Further background on Income Tax rates in the UK
Despite the reduction in the additional rate from 50% to 45% in April 2013, the share of total Income Tax liabilities accounted for by the top 1% of taxpayers by income rose from 25.1% (£39bn of £157bn total) in 2012-13 to 28.3% (£71bn of £251bn total) in 2022-23.

Additional Rate taxpayers will account for 36% of all Income Tax liabilities in 22-23 (£89.2bn of £251bn). This has increased from 23% (£34.5bn of £152bn) in 2010-11. As the threshold has been frozen, at least some of the increase will be due to more people being captured as Additional Rate taxpayers rather than all being additional revenue raised at the Additional Rate.

Well anyone who thinks increased reliance on food banks is a sign of a healthy economy and a meritocratic society is not someone I would trust with cutting my hair or driving a car

It will all end up in the economy via personal spending and investment

How do you know it will all end up in the UK economy?

You're a formidable team @vera99

Why did they elect her, why didn't they listen to sensible people? I don't understand how she managed to get in at all..

@Kissingfrogs25 Even the US President disagrees with the trickle down economics policy. He has been around long enough to know it doesn’t work. Otherwise he’d be using it… and he’s leading the largest economy in the world.

Stop playing the victim card in Truss’ defence.

This has everything to do with her irresponsible arrogance (not publishing the OBR report to enforce an economy-changing budget), lack of credibility and lack of accountability.

She wanted to be “unpopular” (her words). She’s getting what she set out to do. She’s unpopular. Not a difficult goal to achieve… but there you go. Low standards

Liz and Kwasi don't know what they are doing, and this is what happens when people who don't know what they are doing are placed in power over every single resource in our country.

Well anyone who thinks increased reliance on food banks is a sign of a healthy economy and a meritocratic society is not someone I would trust with cutting my hair or driving a car

Me neither. However we aren't talking about people cutting hair or driving cars. We are talking about the people running the fucking country.

She's not brown

Why did they elect her, why didn't they listen to sensible people? I don't understand how she managed to get in at all..

You may not have noticed, but the country is not being run by (or for) sensible people.

We have to be brave now - there is every chance it will work and pay off, and if it does, everyone will eventually benefit.

@Kissingfrogs25 do you have a timescale for eventually ? Or is it like Rees Mogg's Brexit benefits in 50 years type of eventually ?

Yip - running the country for their own personal benefit

Any suggestion along those lines didn’t go down well

That long term planning worked in China. Maybe that’s where JRM got his 50 year plan idea from?

Except. China isn’t a democracy, is it?

Democracies tend to have shorten terms in power.

I don't know that and haven't claimed to.

Yes, that is exactly why people had issues with Boris Johnson. The cake. Nothing else. 🙄

That’s always a possibility.

Which is why I’m amazed Truss is being allowed to get away with this. She side stepped the requirement for an OBR report with semantics ‘it’s not a budget, no, it’s a mini-budget’.

Are there no meaningful checks and balances? Accountability, hello?

When you make Rees-Mogg business secretary then you know we have entered the madhouse and what was KK doing at the Queen's funeral? A senior economist previously at the Bank of England on LBC now saying that this budget literally terrifies him.

I think couple of issues have been conflated here

1. Tax cuts for the rich. My personal view is reprehensible and does nothing for the poorer people with a cot of living crisis. These will not (I think) have any effect/impact/cause for the run on the pound. Politically, they are awful, but not economically disastrous
2. The lack of funding for the above - THAT is what is driving the markets. They are borrowing to give out huge payouts, with NO clear economic model on how it will be re-payed. The supposed method they are quoting ("More rapid growth" etc.) simply does not work, economically. Where it has been tried, you get a brief period of stimulus and then massive inflation. Mind you - this one is so bad (and badly targeted) that we are STARING with the inflation and going down-hill from there.....

Heaven forbid people thought the Tory members might elect a PM that wasn't intent on shorting the pound/embracing inflation/using word play to avoid an OBR forecast/playing chicken with BoE.

Bollocks Tory Apologist Narrative No. 374: "Oh dear, if only we could have the nice sensible Tories like Boris back. They're the ones we voted for, not this lot!"

Everything about the Conservative stewardship of the country since 2010 has led to this point. They somehow managed to both destroy public services AND run the economy into the ground with austerity. They provided the Brexit referendum to free the country from EU "bureaucracy" and lay it open to deregulatory abuse by libertarian extremists. They had their cronies in the media launch the most shamelessly biased and sustained character assassination on a political candidate in living memory, to eradicate any chance of a genuine alternative and reduce the Labour party to a Tory-lite tool of the establishment, so that even if by some miracle they do get voted out it won't change the long term trajectory.

Truss is an idiotic ERG zealot. Her lack of intelligence is not her fault although clearly she's in the wrong job. Johnson is neither an idiot nor an ERG zealot; he's an operator who was able to see that aligning himself with the ERG, giving them power and serving their pet project was what he needed to do to serve his personal ambition, and didn't give a shit what that meant for the country.

That's worse.

Trashing the country to own the lefties, eh? What larks.