The Economy

It seems that the reaction of the markets has prompted Truss to change tack and to sack Kwarteng and appoint Hunt in order to seek to calm them. It further seems that Hunt has taken a look at the public finances and found himself staring into the abyss. The impact of the pandemic and latterly, the war in Ukraine cannot be ignored. But it seems inescapable that things were in an extremely dire strait way back before Putin invaded. So what the hell was Sunak doing? Zahawi was a brief footnote, and Kwarteng is now dismissed as a short-lived bad joke. But Sunak must have had a handle on how bad things were. To think that the Tories usually campaign on the basis of being the party of sound money is beyond satire. And Truss still sits there like a dummy whose ventriloquist has deserted her. I didn't think there could be worse than Johnson, but........... WTF?

 

Johnson is ultimately to blame for it all. He was far too bothered about taking the piss for 2 years than he was about running the country and when it was painfully clear people wanted him out for being a lying criminal he hung on for months and months because of some warped power trip yet actually had the audacity to say that he wasn't going to actually do the job of prime minister anymore and wouldn't make any decisions. That vital time lost has led us to where we are now

 

Looking after your friends instead of looking after the best interests of the country might go some way to explaining it.

 

Does anyone think that at the minute Labour wouldn’t want the gig knowing how fukd up things are?

 

No. We have to believe that calm measures from Labour would improve things, even if it takes time. In times of turbulence, the boring man is King!

 

Robert Peston reckons Truss will be there till the end of the month, what’s worrying is how much more damage can they do in next 12 days!!!
When she goes they surely can’t hold off from a GE much longer.....could this signal the end of the blue tie brigade for many many moons

 

Sunak, like the rest of them, is too wedded to ideology to act rationally.

The Conservative Party as such is dead. They no longer act in the national interest but on narrow ideological grounds.

Peter Oborne nails it here an old School tory I have all the respect in the world for



Labour will have a very hard job sorting the mess out and they are too scared to tackle the Brexit elephant in the corner. Yes covid. Yes Ukraine. But Brexit is causing far more long term systemic damage. Labour electorally can’t face that down.

Starmer isn’t brave enough and cynically you can see why. But at some point If we are to recover and invest in all the good stuff we as a nation are going to have to face it.

A move towards membership of the SM would be a massive step. A move to PR where a consensus led approach to major national issues rather than an ideologically led minority hijacking our politics would be another.

 

Labour should get LBD on board with comms

 

The Economy was always going to be a mess after 2 years of worldwide lockdowns. So many things impacting each other.
The rise in Gas prices may have actually emboldened Puting to invade Ukraine as he thought we were too dependent on Russian Gas to stand upto him. He was partially correct as this has made a terrible situation worse.
The Covid response across the Western countries was always going to lead to economic damage and struggles.
On these shores we have to tackle all these issues with the added fallout of Brexit and a shambles of a Government.
I'm not sure any Government could navigate this mess and be classed as successful but I'm struggling to think how anyone could make a worse job of it than this lot.

 

We've still got one?

 

No, the ultimate blame lies fair and square with Cameron. First for allowing the referendum - purely for the sake of his party - and second for effing off as soon as the referendum was lost. All that followed is a direct consequence.

 

The rot set in much before BoJo.

Cameron playing the game with the brexit referendum, doing next to **** all to campaign, arrogantly assuming it was a foregone conclusion then pissing off into oblivion when the house of cards came crashing down is the root cause of all of it.

The absolute state we find ourselves in as a country can all be traced back to his decision to have a referendum on leaving the eu. Everything that has happened since, including Boris being prime minister and winning a big majority, were all because of that.

 

You could argue it all goes back to the GFC. We bailed out the banks and didn't prosecute any of the bankers. Since then we've used QE and low interest rates to prop up the markets arguably to the detriment of the man and woman in the street.

 

i suspect when Starmer gets in power he will try to move us back closer to the EU without actually rejoining and he’d generally be supported to do that.

 

You would hope that if and when Starmer does get into power and, hopefully, tries to manoeuvre us closer to the EU the absolute w***ers in the Tory Party who engineered Brexit will have lost so much credibility over the last two years and, especially, last two months that they lack any serious platform to challenge it.

 

Majority of Tory MP’s (56%)at time voted to remain, Labour 95% not sure how that sits now in terms of who is in Office still but hopefully it will make things easier.

 

We've just had a 2 year, worldwide orgy of uncontrolled spending the likes of which are unprecedented in peace time, combined with a massive stifling of supply which is still ongoing due to the fractures visited upon the global supply chain. When you combine this with the continued impact of Brexit and the UK and Biden's policies of uncontrolled money printer go brrrr, its actually laughable that anyone is laying this at Kwarteng's door.

He's just a convenient muppet that can take the flak and be booted.

Starmer can't do anything to fix this, no one can. The damage is done, there is going to be a deep and miserable depression and yet I still think some people are in denial about it because they don't want to admit what the policies they failed to oppose have done to future generations, to the prospects of my children having some semblance of a decent living. And people gawp at my posts and wonder why I am still angry about it.

 

The Cameron/Osbourne pursuit of austerity has a lot of blame. Instead of investing to improve things while interest rates were at an all time low, they racked up a mountain of national debt with nothing to show for it. They also cancelled the "green crap", which saw the number of houses being insulated and solar paneled fall significantly after 2013, and basically abandoned investment in nuclear power - leaving us more vulnerable to the events of now than we would have been. And arguably, the effects of austerity saw a number of people vote to Leave to change things and "punch Cameron in the nose". Maybe not enough to swing the vote, but if he hadn't been involved with the Remain campaign I suspect Leave wouldn't have won.

And Brexit, as well as weakening the balance of trade with our closest countries (and losing soft power in the bargain) has forced a large expansion in the civil service - 50,000 customs officials, etc. The preparations for Brexit cost us more than 40 years of membership did.

 

Mate, I'm as Remain as anyone, but have you seen the state of the EU's finances? Have you seen the absolute shitshow that Germany and France are in? OK it might help a bit with trade agreements and freedom of movements but if you think that's going to fix this you're dreaming.

 

It would be at least a step in the right direction after more than a decade of stepping in exactly the wrong direction.