Liz Truss and her nonsense

[PermanentTemporary]

I'm almost afraid to start this thread... hearing that Liz Truss has blamed an 'underground transgender mafia' for her downfall made me groan. Her outlandish conspiratorial nonsense and her Trump love is going to be used against people who don't believe that gender identity is universal or should override or replace sex.

Just grumbling. Dim woman, there to get clicks for the Torygraph.

I guess that will all depend on what happens next. Will the story get successfully booted out of the public discourse as fake, or will it stick (irrespective of its veracity)?

Fun times. But maybe not so much if you're Liz Truss.
Unfortunately her comments about pork & cheese and her recent-ish interview about her autobiography lend themselves far too easily to fake news about transgender mafias. So easily in fact that it might even end up true 🤦‍♀️

She is just THICK. I don't think it's worth saying anything else about her!
She did some fantastic stuff in relation to gender identity belief, helping to stop it being pushed through legislation as fact. So I don't think she's thick. However, her soundbites sadly do often suggest otherwise.... Anyone for a slice of cheese? 🧀

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.

Just in case anyone thinks I am a Truss supporter I am not.

But that's why I asked earlier could any of us explain the financial implications of her budget and why it couldn't work (as opposed to the financial markets making sure it never go to be tried out).

Again not to defend her politics, but I think that people, especially the UK media dont like women who are single minded.

Thatcher being the exception!

I think Crispin Blunt’s APPG (all party parliamentary group) did a lot of the heavy lifting, and fed through via Women & Equalities Ministers like A Rudd, N Morgan and P Mordaunt, and Select Committee Chairs like M Miller, to the PM Theresa May who privately ok-ed it.

Then Johnson got in and made Truss his Women & Equalities Minister.

She spoke in the Commons that evening (just in time, I hasten to add) and faced down Crispin Blunt and nutters like Wera Hobhouse.

And then, sadly, Truss went socio-economically mad.

I'm not a financial expert. But then I'm not trying to be PM or Chancellor. A budget that causes such an incredible meltdown in the financial expectations of this country demonstrates that I don't think Truss and Kwarteng were expert enough either. Claiming that you were in some kind of moral conflict with 'the left' represented by [checks notes] the financial markets is just trivial. Ironically, she refuses to take responsibility for any of it, despite being into responsibility for other people.

A budget that causes such an incredible meltdown in the financial expectations

That still doesn't answer the question whether what was being proposed could never ever work on a technical level, or couldn't or didn't because the vested interests made clear they didn't want it.

Not that I expect anyone to take financial risks, but nobody can say what was wrong with it as a theory as opposed to saying "the market" (vested interests) didn't like it so made sure we never found out whether it could have worked.

A bit like the age old mantra that to get the best you must pay high wages, which it turns out only applies to senior managers, but never of course to nurses or cleaners.

According to The Spectator on the 16th September 2023, it wasn't 'vested interests'

"So in theory, Truss and Kwarteng were correct. In practise, the following points sank them:"

Was Liz Truss wrong – or wronged? | The Spectator

I understand what was wrong with her budget.

And I think Trump has a better awareness of the audience he's playing to, and how to appeal to them. I don't think she has the same understanding at all. But I would say sexism plays a part as well.

Not that I expect anyone to take financial risks, but nobody can say what was wrong with it as a theory as opposed to saying "the market" (vested interests) didn't like it so made sure we never found out whether it could have worked.

No, Kwarteng has said there were elements (specifically liability driven investments) in the market that they didn't fully understand, and that caused the problem. And that had he been more aware, he'd have made different decisions.
He partly blames (and I can see the case for this) experts for also not understanding the effect the mini budget would have on these either.

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 🙈

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."

And still thinks she's right about everything.

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

If only.

😐

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.)

Feel free to have a go with fake news!

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.

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

It would never have worked.

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

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 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.

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)

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!

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.

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?

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.

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.