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UK politics general discussion

Matt.GC said:
We are in agreement here. This is exactly the point I was making when you went on the "politics of envy" rant. The events of the last 2 weeks, up to and including this conference, are raising serious concerns about the competence of the top 2.

If we forget political views for a moment, the fortnight we've had seems to scream out that she really is not fit to hold her position. She seems wedded to a certain ideology, fine if that's her genuine belief, but it's almost as if she's cocooned into it. This speech did little to calm those concerns. It was almost as if she was still campaigning for the leadership. Loads of sound bites that you'd expect a Tory to make to get a room full of them frothing at the mouth, but seemed out of tune with everything that appears to be going on around her.

If we think about Thatcher with the poll tax, Blair invading Iraq and Cameron over the EU referendum, these were all massive blunders of incompetence from PM's who had a few years experience behind them and had grown confident. You can imagine MP's cabinet ministers and some advisors throwing newspaper headlines on their desks lobbying hard for them to reconsider.

But in just one month, Truss already seems like she's somewhere else. Tonnes of MP's briefing against her, some of them cabinet ministers! She had a lot riding on this speech, but didn't seem to do much other just repeat what she's been saying all summer in the most flat and boring way. And whoever made the M People decision should be sacked.

Sixth Form debating chamber speech indeed.
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To be fair she has managed to balls it up in two weeks not four, the first two weeks of her premiership were mourning for the queen.
It’s a good point about previous Prime Ministers, they all get a bit over confident and think they can’t mess up, you could even apply that to Boris.
But in just two weeks? Nah that’s just incompetence.
 
There was a stand out moment to me and that was when Kwateng made his "slight" turbulence comment. If you listen, the conference began to laugh thinking he was trying to be humourous. But his face was completely straight.
 
AstroDan said:
Yeah - pay them less, make them work real hours. The hour long socials at lunchtime and teachers out the gate at 4pm needs to stop.

Teachers don't know how easy they've got it.

9-3.30 for 39 weeks a year. What a hoot.

Sent from my SM-G991B using Tapatalk
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I was going to move on from this as it’s going off topic slightly but maybe you could point out where I said that teachers get it easy or anything about pay discussions, I specifically avoided that debate and made a point of it.
The point I am making is that you can’t just look at base salary when deciding on a career you have to look at all the benefits and one of the big benefits of teaching is the social hours that can often fit around a family / social life.
The same can’t be said of nurses, police and a lot of other vocational type jobs that do shift work so it is actually a benefit whether or not you want to admit it.
 
Been there, done that.
Teachers hours are anything but social, and only fit in with family life in the dreams of someone who hasn't done teaching.
Twelve hour days, six days a week are routine for many, probably the majority of teachers.
As someone used to working in an educational setting with kids, it still completely floored me within a term.
And I was only a part timer!
 
I think we can end the teacher chat at this point, as whilst pay is a political factor that's worth discussing as part of this topic, we're probably heading well away from politics discussion now :).
 
One thing I’d like to round back to is we’re talking as though Liz Truss is unique in her incompetence, where looking back I’d argue we haven’t had a competent Prime Minister since Cameron left. And there’s no indication that if Truss were to go that there’s anyone competent left in the Conservative Party at all - most of the more rational MPs were demoted, called “dissenters” and booted from Boris’s cabinet.
 
A bit of nonsensical one coming out from the front page of The Times tonight. No10 have killed off a public information campaign with an aim to give tips on reducing energy. This comes on the same day National Grid advised of a worst case scenario of the potential for rolling blackouts if gas supplies run low. It's worth reading the whole Twitter thread:


From: https://twitter.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1578135758040403971


Completely bewildering as to why an information campaign (just advice, not rules) is being shot down purely because the government "don't want to tell people what to do". It's advice, and whilst there was an aim behind the scenes to reduce energy use, the primary reasoning was a way to save money, nothing more. The ridiculous reasoning of a risk to the elderly if they heeded the advice is insane. If the elderly are capable of turning down their heating according to advice, then I fail to see how they would be incapable of turning it back up if they're cold?

The fact that this was approved by none other than Jacob Rees-Mogg - known for blasting nanny state culture in the past yet shot down by No.10 should ring some real alarm bells. The lack of common sense at the top is worrying to say the least!

tayspru said:
One thing I’d like to round back to is we’re talking as though Liz Truss is unique in her incompetence, where looking back I’d argue we haven’t had a competent Prime Minister since Cameron left. And there’s no indication that if Truss were to go that there’s anyone competent left in the Conservative Party at all - most of the more rational MPs were demoted, called “dissenters” and booted from Boris’s cabinet.
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There was competence with May, but she was just left with a party that was at war thanks to an idiotic referendum arranged by Cameron to solve party infighting which started the whole spiral that we're in right now. She was in an impossible position, and if she didn't have a warring party, then perhaps they'd have accepted her first deal which was probably the best of the worst options and perhaps we'd be in a better position than we're in right now.

As for Johnson, I completely agree that the buck stops with him as to why we're where we are now. Opposing voices are needed to have a functioning government, simply getting rid of them on a whim has merely diluted the talent pool into the mess that we have now. The "my way or the highway" approach to leading was seeded by Vote Leave/The ERG and it resulted in a complete loss of the party's ability to compromise on pretty much anything. It's literally a binary choice between doing something or u-turning now.
 
Craig said:
A bit of nonsensical one coming out from the front page of The Times tonight. No10 have killed off a public information campaign with an aim to give tips on reducing energy. This comes on the same day National Grid advised of a worst case scenario of the potential for rolling blackouts if gas supplies run low. It's worth reading the whole Twitter thread:


From: https://twitter.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1578135758040403971


Completely bewildering as to why and information campaign (just advice, not rules) is being shot down purely because the government "don't want to tell people what to do". It's advice, and whilst there was an aim behind the scenes to reduce energy use, the primary reasoning was a way to save money, nothing more. The ridiculous reasoning of a risk to the elderly if they heeded the advice is insane. If the elderly are capable of turning down their heating according to advice, then I fail to see how they would be incapable of turning it back up if they're cold?

The fact that this was approved by none other than Jacob Rees-Mogg - known for blasting nanny state culture in the past yet shot down by No.10 should ring some real alarm bells. The lack of common sense at the top is worrying to say the least!
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Yeah but let's face it Craig, this has nothing to do with "telling people what to do". Our Liz's political hero signed off many scary public information campaigns around a nuke landing on the UK and the AIDS epidemic. She also didn't like "telling people what to do" and neither does the guy who signed this new campaign off - JRM.

What this has everything to do with is Truss promising there would be no rationing of energy during the last hustings of her leadership bid. She was asked if there would be fuel rationing during her premiership this winter and she confidently said there wouldn't be. Rishi Sunak on the other hand, did not, which is the realistic approach to take.

This is yet again another concern for me over her competence to govern. Her comments at those hustings have been doing the rounds today in light of this news. Yet even if she was the best PM we've ever had, the UK imports so much of its gas supply (and gas seems to be causing the problem) that she has very little control over how much comes in. There are shortages coming out of Qatar, USA and Norway due to global demand nearly exceeding the available supply.

Sunak knew he couldn't control this in the short term and made no promises. I don't think she's purposely promised something she can't deliver out of dishonesty, she just didn't seem to understand the question.
 
The chancellor has cut short his US IMF conference visit to fly back to the UK to meet with colleagues and the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister herself is due to hold a last minute press conference today.


A lot of rumours are doing the rounds as Tory MP's and even cabinet ministers are briefing journalists. These range from the best case scenario for the government that they'll overturn much/all of their car crash mini budget coinciding with a sacking of Kwasi Kwateng as chancellor to more extreme plots of removing Liz Truss as Prime Minister.

Although I think the former scenario is more likely, there's an elaborate plot doing the rounds that Tory MP's can get around the party leadership rules by keeping Truss as leader if she wishes but appointing a new cabinet headed up by Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordant and made up of MP's from different wings of the party.

She is little more than 1 month into her premiership. Extraordinary.
 
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This was entirely predictable even 24 hours after their 'mini-budget'. Surprised it wasn't a bit quicker to be honest. Whatever happens with Truss she has zero credibility now so she may as well and probably will be gone soon.
 
Did Truss have any credibility to start with? I think Boris had more. Anyway I think that’s her finished already.

Who’s next…..
 
She was the co architect of all this, she's written about it and spoken about it very publicly over many years. They were 2 peas in a pod. By her handpicked friend and associate going, this is the end of her plans and in reality is the end of Truessenomics and therefore should really be the end of her premiership if these were normal times.

With pretty much every ideological tool in her toolbox used up, there's little point in her now. I'm fully expecting someone who is not closely ideologically linked to her to take over the treasury to settle things and keep the immediate wolves at bay. Batman has thrown Robin under the bus to stop the bat cave from collapsing.

For the second time in just a few months, we have yet another lame duck zombie Prime Minister.
 
Word is that the new Chancellor will be Jeremy Hunt, if what's being widely reported is true.
 
She tried to give it the Bertie Big Balls talking about how she was the one to be brave enough to make the big decisions and stick to them. Any credibility is gone when you U-turn so quickly and throw your partner and friend under the bus in a final throw of the dice to attempt to keep your job. Like Matt said, there's little or no point to her now.
 
Interestingly, Truss herself is holding a solo press conference at 2:30pm.

This is thought to be reversing the mini-Budget, but would that warrant a whole press conference on its own? I wonder if she might announce anything else…

I must admit, I’m incredibly surprised by how quickly the Truss ministry has seemingly imploded. Following the turbulent late Johnson era, I was hoping that the Truss era could bring stability and a relatively constant government once again, but it appears that Truss’ time as PM could be even more stormy than Johnson’s…

The fact that people are already heavily debating her demise on her 39th day in the job is truly unprecedented stuff… I do feel somewhat sorry for Liz Truss, seeing as she’s only been in the job for 1 month, but it must be said that it has been one pretty turbulent month what with everything that has gone on in the aftermath of the mini-Budget…
 
Hopefully she announces her resignation.

She won’t last much longer. The budget was her plan and her vision. Sacking your friend to try and deflect blame and show you’re taking action won’t fool anyone.
 
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