Will Liz Truss really last only 17 more days?

[Uninspiredusername]

Newspaper reports as scathing as ever, and The Times suggesting Tories are lining up Sunak and Mordaunt as a duo.

can’t stand the woman but surely she’ll hold on for a bit longer - everyone was saying Boris would go much earlier than he did. And why on earth did they vote her into power in the first place 🙄

The ( recent ) new chancellor will go to all the government departments and say ' we need cut backs ' and every single one may say ' sorry, we can't !'
Defence will argue that there is a war in Europe
Coffey might be on board with further cuts though ! Not sure about education, but that's bound to happen

The teaching unions are predicting there being a 15% cut to education

Kids don't vote and frankly, their parents and GPs don't seem to care 🤷‍♀️ so easy target

My undergraduate ds1 is being head hunted to provide catch up literacy lessons in deprived schools.

That ^ tells you all you need to know about the state of education in this country.

You get the feeling we are heading to developing country status. Where the state provides the basic infrastructure, basic primary health, basic free education which will be all the poor can afford and anything on top you will need to pay for. Virtually the destruction of the middle class and the end of the leisure economy. Work until you drop and the time you spend not working you'll be resting because you're so knackered. Meanwhile the rich just keep on getting richer and play with their rocket toys and virtual signalling pretending that they 'care' in their gated communities and private islands. But don't worry hand wringing royals will be here to distract the masses with their crocodile tears and soap opera lives.

Vera , your right
At least the LP are being honest that they can't fix it all.

The Tory’s don’t want a middle class. Many of the working class and upper class also hate the middle class so will continue to support Tory’s until 95% of the population are working poor cap doffers, bowing and scraping and marvelling at Kate Middletons swishy hair.

The boomers are mostly already retired and owe their own homes and if they can keep out of hospitals they are generally protected from any cut backs or rise in the pension age. If they are conservative voters they will just go about the Labour Party being bad
I know a few people like this , in their own little protected bubble.

I know lots of Tories... Tories may be many things, but they're generally not racist like that - they really aren't.

They didn't vote for Sunak because he was seen as betraying Boris and because Truss promised to cut taxes. If the roles had been reversed, Sunak would have won.

He is very concerned that we could be on the brink of a global war, and wants to make sure that we are well-protected as a country.

Meanwhile the rest of us want a country worth protecting.

Alan Clarke the brilliant writer but truly awful man was a Tory minister back in the 80s and wrote scandalous diaries. He said when he went racing he always preferred the company of toffs or working-class folk. A toff he was and the working class he said had no airs or graces but just enjoyed life in a bucolic devil may care way and made good company especially when drunk. The middle classes though he loathed as he said they were always insecure knowing they could never get to the next rung and fearing falling down into the seething mass below them. So lacked spontaneity and guile and all was about keeping up appearances. These days he would have probably spent time in prison for his peccadillos and would certainly have been expelled from Parliament.

unherd.com/2022/08/the-tory-party-belongs-to-alan-clark/

Well, how has that worked out for them…

The Tories are a broken party and have been for over 30 years largely over the EC/EU

Thatcher was a supporter of the EC / common market but became increasingly sceptical over the EU's push for increasing power to be transferred from member states to Brussels.

She was defenestrated by those who supported this process - Major was a front for people like Clarke, Howe, Heseltine and Hurd (look at his recent pronouncements on Brexit). He promptly signed the Maastricht treaty and I'm sure the older members on here remember him referring to the Eurosceptics in the party as "bastards". All three successors were on the Eurosceptic wing and in any case were not political competition for Blair at the height of his powers.

Cameron kept the lid on it by posing as a somewhat EU sceptic and ultimately promising the referendum. The result of that brought the rifts out into the open with May trying to sneakily keep the UK in the EU but once the members got a say again we had Boris (who won the members and the country by promising to execute Brexit) and now Truss who is trying to emulate Thatcher but is nothing like as formidable a politician.

I don't think she can survive long - she does not have the backing of the MPs nor the country. Removing her won't solve the problem though (particularly if someone like Sunak or Hunt is crowned by acclamation rather than by membership vote). The MP's are much more pro-EU than the general population who in turn are less Eurosceptical than the Tory members. Some of the MPs like Ellwood and Merriman would be better off in the Lib Dems as it is more in line with their views. They've all seen what happened to people like Soubry and Umunna who went off-piste 2019 though

I am starting to think a split in the Tory party is becoming likely

It continues to mystify me how resigning from the Cabinet is equated to stabbing the leader in the back, any more than me leaving my job would be stabbing my employer in the back. When I was young, resigning on a point of principle was considered to be the decent thing to do. Rishi & Co's failing in my view was taking so damned long to take a stand against anything at all.

Robert Halfon didn't hold back earlier today on sky!
Quite refreshing to hear a Conservative actually be honest about things.

"and now Truss who is trying to emulate Thatcher but is nothing like as formidable a politician a human being"

Fixed that for you.

What are the odds that Truss gets covid and skips PMQs next week? Sir Keir needs to be absolutely brutal and forensic but I suspect he will go easy and get her to dig her own grave. The last thing Labour needs now is another leader pivot say back to Sunak.

I have no time for Tory MPs who’ve kept quiet since 2019. They used culture wars as a distraction technique whilst our pockets were being picked by their colleagues. Easy to try and appear reasonable now in an attempt to keep their seats.

Truss is under strain and showing it a bit however she has a knack at just delivering lines back which may help her. I can’t bear terrible PMQs eg I heard Johnson’s last one which was a mess and caused what came next.

Both parties have given the extremes of their party a go now to their cost so at least as a centrist type country (within our parameters) they have been rejected.

Luckily two extremes haven’t gone head to head in an election

Quite. They are desperately trying to hold on to their seats for a coming GE and put some supposed clear blue water between themselves and the shit-show leadership. The real culprits are the ERG and their fellow travellers whose militancy turned the one-nation Tory party into UKIP.

I'm glad. I don't think you have to be an amoral, self-serving bastard to be a member of the Tory party. It's just an awful lot of the current ones are.

I've got a lot of time for some Tories, eg Damian Collins. Disagree with him vehemently on some things, but can still admire his work elsewhere.

It's such a shame his party is being run by headbangers.

Ah, that's a fair point as well.

@vera99 if Truss is 'sick', doesn't a Deputy Prime Minister have to step in for PMQs or next most senior member? Maybe Coffey will have to have 'covid' too...then Cleverly to step up over Hunt (to avoid the who is the 'real' PM type now type taunts etc). Would imagine most Tories would see Hunt's main job right now as reducing the Labour lead in the polls but also not letting Truss get anywhere near a lecturn or despatch box.

@PerkingFaintly - don't have much time for Collins but your point is a good one. I strongly disagree with Tom Tugendhat's views on many things but can appreciate his expertise on defence matters

Tradition would dictate that but I guess the PM can nominate anyone she wants after all Deputy PM is not an official position constitutionally. We are in uncharted territory here with Hunt effectively in charge and able to string an intelligent sentence together on the hoof without the strings showing. There is a universe where she just breaks down in tears at the despatch box and Sir Keir steps over the floor to offer a hanky. Then she resigns to spend more time with her current lover. 😁

I’m shocked 80s I never had you down as ageist. There are pensioners on the breadline too, a lot of old people who’ll be cold this winter.

I'm not an ageist , honestly. I didn't mean it to read like this !
Only writing about the ones that I know of and who live around me
I appreciate that many will be struggling and not every older person is wealthy
I'm older myself , not quite a ' boomer '
Might be the area where I live, but most seem fairly comfortable and are conservative voters