UK politics general discussion

[Dave]

I'm not sure the population will stand for Austerity v2. People can see through the claims that "we're all in it together".

Services are already so chronically underfunded I don't know what else they think they can cut.

The only thing left is a final round of privatisation. Goodbye NHS…

 

[Rob]

Truss kept banging on about energy price guarantee last week, all but saying that it was her flagship policy. Now it sounds like we are about to hear that it is going to be scaled back. Quite incredible!

PMQs could be interesting on Wednesday, if Truss is still PM by then of course. She has lost all control.

 

[Matt N]

New Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt has made an address to the nation this morning. The key things he said were:

• Practically all of the mini-Budget announcements have been reversed. The only ones to be kept are the abolition of the health & social care levy and the the changes to stamp duty.
• The cut to the basic rate of income tax has been scrapped “indefinitely”. Mr Hunt said that the basic rate will remain at 20% until economic circumstances allow for it to be cut.
• The Energy Price Guarantee is being paired back, with it now only providing universal support until April 2023. After this, support will become more targeted, and the Treasury are conducting reviews into how help can still be provided in a way that costs the public finances less.
• Hunt has alluded to “more difficult decisions [lying ahead] on both tax and spending”, and has said that “all departments will need to redouble their efforts to find savings and some areas of spending will need to be cut”.

Hopefully this reassures the markets and solves the volatility of the last few weeks… what do you guys think?
Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/10/17/politics-latest-news-jeremy-hunt-budget-liz-truss/

 

[Rob]

• Hunt has alluded to “more difficult decisions [lying ahead] on both tax and spending”, and has said that “all departments will need to redouble their efforts to find savings and some areas of spending will need to be cut”.

Yet Truss said this less than a week ago:



She said it very confidently as well. She has no credibility whatsoever.

 

[Alsty]

The mini-budget was coauthored by Liz Truss. They represented what she wanted to accomplish during her premiership. As they are now all being rolled back, remind me why she's the PM?

 

[GaryH]

Surely there has to be a general election now. This maddness cannot go on

 

[jon81uk]

Based on polling if an election was held now the SNP might even be the official opposition with the Conservatives down to third place!

 

[Tibble]

Conservatives hold all the cards, If they know they are going to be wiped out then they'll just hold on and try to bounce back (hence why they are trying to get Rishi and Penny in)

 

[shakey]

Based on polling if an election was held now the SNP might even be the official opposition with the Conservatives down to third place!

Scotland has less than 10% of the total seats in the UK. So even if the SNP won them all they wouldn't have anywhere near enough to be the official opposition.

Unless Labour were to win just about every seat in England and Wales.

Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk

 

[GaryH]

So, Truss hasn’t bothered to turn up to the House of Commons to answer questions this afternoon. She’s definitely finished - at least Boris had the guts to face his opposition.

 

[Rick]

So, Truss hasn’t bothered to turn up to the House of Commons to answer questions this afternoon. She’s definitely finished - at least Boris had the guts to face his opposition.

Oh how his supporters forget ...

 

[Rick]

Scotland has less than 10% of the total seats in the UK. So even if the SNP won them all they wouldn't have anywhere near enough to be the official opposition.

Unless Labour were to win just about every seat in England and Wales.

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The polls that have been released this evening are quite astonishing, but they are alas, only polls.

 

[Matt N]

The House of Commons this afternoon was interesting… Penny Mordaunt, Leader of the House of Commons, answered Labour’s urgent questions, saying that Liz Truss was away on “urgent business”.

However, this business was clearly rectified more quickly than expected, because Truss appeared not long after and sat silently behind Mordaunt while she answered further questions. I assume she was waiting for Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt to make his statement.

For the entire time Hunt made his statement, Truss just sat there silently and somewhat expressionless, listening intently to what Hunt had to say.

Not long after Hunt finished, she then got up and left abruptly.

I know that Truss had urgent business to deal with that meant she couldn’t answer the questions, and I fully accept that, but is it only me who found it slightly strange that she turned up halfway through and didn’t say anything at all? I guess she didn’t want to interrupt Penny Mordaunt mid-flow, which is understandable, but I do wonder whether she needed to be there at all given that she authorised everything the Chancellor had to say and didn’t actually say anything herself.

I guess she could have finished her business quicker than anticipated and wanted to listen to the Commons reaction to her Chancellor’s announcement, but I did find it interesting.
EDIT - While I was typing, it’s been ascertained that Liz Truss was talking to Sir Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee, while Mordaunt was addressing MPs:


The meeting is said to have been pre-planned, but it’s thought that her lack of support among Tory MPs could well have come up.

 

[Craig]

Let's be honest, she wanted to hide away instead of facing the music, and going by her previous performances her colleagues likely wanted her to as well. They knew it wouldn't fly to just say it was a bog standard meeting, so Mourdant bigged it up with a serious tone. That was over-egged, especially considering the press reporting that she was IN the building - and resulted in far more questions, speculation and rumours about the whole reasoning for her not being there.

Wandering in coincidentally just as the urgent question was finishing up was the icing on the cake to demonstrate how utterly silly the whole charade was. It was a really bizarre sight seeing her sat there, completely emotionless, blinking fast and barely moving for the whole statement. i just can't see how the whole situation can go on for much longer, she looked weak - like a child sat watching while the adults were talking.

 

[Jonathan]

She's way out of her depth, and I think she knows it.

 

[Craig]

The beginning of the end I feel. My bet was on Thursday after a dire PMQs performance this week. But after today, I can't see how anyone can credibly believe she can remain in post when it appears there's an active effort to keep her away from being held accountable.


From: https://twitter.com/PaulBrandITV/status/1582062985807527937

 

[Matt N]

The petition calling for a general election was rejected; the government representative said that “the last thing we need right now is a general election”, saying that “the Conservative Party was elected with a majority in 2019”, “we are facing significant global events that have changed our economic circumstances”, “a change in the leader of a parliamentary party does not trigger a general election” (he reeled off a list of past unelected prime ministers who didn’t call elections), and that “an election would risk the anti-growth coalition gaining power”. Here’s the full debate, if you want to watch:

 

[Matt.GC]

The petition calling for a general election was rejected; the government representative said that “the last thing we need right now is a general election”, saying that “the Conservative Party was elected with a majority in 2019”, “we are facing significant global events that have changed our economic circumstances”, “a change in the leader of a parliamentary party does not trigger a general election” (he reeled off a list of past unelected prime ministers who didn’t call elections), and that “an election would risk the anti-growth coalition gaining power”. Here’s the full debate, if you want to watch:

Has anyone told this person that the world has moved on significantly from the "Anti Growth Coalition" nonsense of 2 weeks ago?

This is to be expected. Yet a general election is EXACTLY what the country needs right now.

 

[Jonathan]

There's a reason why the Tories don't want a general election right now.

They'd lose. Badly. This map will change over time, of course. It's currently not quite as drastic as that Redfield Wilton poll earlier, but it's still pretty bad news for the Tories.

 

[Matt N]

I’ve always liked Electoral Calculus as an election result predictor myself… and it makes for grim reading for the Conservative Party: https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/prediction_main.html

The current result shows that the Conservatives would not even be HM Opposition in a hypothetical election… Labour would hold a 364-seat majority, which is nothing shy of unprecedented.

The seat results EC predicts are:

• Labour: 507
• SNP: 52
• Conservatives: 48
• Liberal Democrats: 19
• Reform: 0
• Green: 1
• Plaid Cymru: 4
• Other: 1
• DUP: 8
• Sinn Fein: 7
• SDLP: 2
• Alliance: 1

Electoral Calculus also predicts that even in the best possible scenario for the Conservatives, they’d only win 192 seats, with Labour winning 369 seats…