Sajid Javid just resigned

[achillestoes]

That’s all.

lovely 13 year interlude?
I must've been living in some parallel universe

Plus Starmer isn’t Blair and if you cut out the bad parts I did like lots of what Blair did, hence voting for him

But even Labour from back then have similar issues with Starmer - he’s not getting the same cut through which it’s up to Labour to fix

You must. What did you experience in those 13 years that were so awful?

Sure. I am not voting for any party whose focus is on divisive identity politics and replacing sex based rights and understanding of the world with the new authoritarian religion of gender identity and queerness. This completely rules out the current iteration of Labour amongst others.

For most of the electorate, a lot that was associated with Boris will go by the wayside. Dedicated political types not so much but often they don't change their vote anyway.

I don't think that in conservative circles worldwide, austerity has quite the same kind of following that it did.

That being said I suspect that there isn't going to be a lot of room to wiggle in terms of economics, no matter what party is running the show. There is a lot of global level stuff at play plus the after effects of the pandemic.

Labour would win if they'd pull themselves together but if I were a betting woman I'd be willing to make a good sized bet that they won't.

The question should be why no politician on either side of the house seems capable of even articulating what the main problems facing the country are and WHY people are suffering the consequences, let alone proposing and sensible ways forward to fix some of those problems.

Answers on a postcard?

*any

Where is the analysis of what has gone wrong and how to fix it? Every economist worth their salt knows. So the Government were told repeatedly as the Civil Service has economists in their employ even if Ministers were clueless. Why have those people who know what to do not been listened to? Why have the public not even been informed of the nature of their predicament so that they can make rational choices about a way forward?

Rhetorical questions, obviously.

@MangyInseam "Labour would win if they'd pull themselves together but if I were a betting woman I'd be willing to make a good sized bet that they won't."

What you say here I agree with. I'd love to vote Labour. I want to be able to vote Labour. But even if you choose to set aside the gender stuff, they seem incompetent. I listened to Keir and Angela responding to the Boris stuff yesterday and they just gave nothing. Repetitive, soundbitey, nonsense with no meaning.

Some of the backbench conservatives who spoke did so with passion and sincerity, even if I wouldn't usually agree with them on a lot of things.

If Labour just don't care, which it feels like they don't, likely because they're too busy infighting, we're in trouble!

This current circus should be a gift to Labour and at this stage if a snap GE was called win hands down. But I don't have confidence in Labour and I wouldn't vote for them. I can't support a party who has pledged to amend the GRA/gender ID and who denies biological science.

It’s very complex and not every economist will agree on best approach

To take a small example if this BoE won’t all agree with each other so they have a voting system amongst nine.

We are in a very difficult position which results in different levers - which all impact on each other eg interest rates / taxes but the one that concerns me overall debt

Lately I’ve heard more about debt tipping into problematic territory impacting the pound

I know you said rhetorical but I try to listen out for economists speaking

Yes, it's one thing to identify that we're in a pickle now and that economic policy in recent years hasn't helped with that: poor decisions like QE, emergency inflation rates for a dozen years etc. It's quite another to ascertain what best to do. Very much an 'I wouldn't start from here' one. A lot of the issues we face now are baked in.