As a political package, Marxism is of course rubbish: but Marx does offer one or two insights that are useful in the abstract. One of these is the idea that in certain circumstances (we needn't press Marx too hard on what he thought those were) people intuitively grasp that any political change whatsoever would be better than the way things are.
I'd say Liz 'Teenage Tantrum' Truss is entering that territory now.
It's a tremendous irony that we Conservatives used to say of Corbyn: you can't be having a government like wot he'd have, because the markets would take it down within days.
They'd opened the books on 'next PM' even before KK got the boot. Oh well, first things first: a new Chancellor. The idea that Chris Philp should be on anyone's list [Guido] just shows we'd be wrong if we thought one of those Marx moments was already upon us.
ND
40 comments:
Not visited for a while, however I am sad to say I have been vindicated in my view months back (stated here) that idiot Truss(tm) was and is was incapable.
The talent pool is so small, that there is no answer, to this, only more pain.
A great reset indeed is needed the question is whose.
History seems to be speeding up dramatically over the last 22 years.
(I do wonder a bit with KK - obviously a bright chap, but has no one in his entire life said 'this idea is crap' to him, because of the colour of his skin? I guess he can always find a well paid gig at the BBC)
Comment at Guido when someone said Hunt was the final nail in the Tory coffin:
"The Tory economic coffin is now more nails than wood anyway."
I think a tax cutting conservative wouldn't be a great idiological fit at the BBC.
If they want a poc then I'm sure Diane Abbot is available. She's also famously good with numbers.
Fair to say that Truss is holed below the waterline. Will she sink, or can she bail furiously enough to keep her head above water?
Whatever else, the rise to 25% Corporation Tax is a body blow to a lot of small businesses who came out of the aftermath of Covid barely alive.
It’s a terrible tax. A tax on the profits of business.
No wonder the BBC, ( no profits) are delighted. Another 6% off the profits of all their rivals.
Forgive my ignorance, but is there anything Truss could have done to solve the problems? At this stage the function of any PM is simply to own them.
And how would Keir Starmer do better? And how much worse?
On a related note, missus just had her clutch replaced.
We recently discovered a young mechanic just a stones throw from us operating out of a lock-up. He quoted just over £300 cash. New parts, next day turnaround. Commendable customer service from a sprightly and motivated young lad.
I imagine not a lot of that is going to end up at the treasury.
At what point does Britain turn into Greece?
What's the plan now?
Tax our way out of a recession?
Keep the huge numbers of economically inactive people comfortable enough to not bother contributing anything to the economy?
Not reducing spending on anything because there is always some special interest that objects?
Live beyond our means for longer now the market might lend the government money again?
It's a total clusterfuck. The Tory party are dead after this as the Red Wall will not vote for them again.
The self-serving, short-sighted, back-stabbing, sack-of-shit MPs can't even keep it together enough to try something different after their preferred continuity candidate (Sunak) wasn't chosen by the members of the party.
May as well just have an election and late Labour come in.
If the media and political hysteria is only going to allow us to enact socialist policies, may as well let Labour take the blame when it all goes tits up.
If we didn't continually run deficits, then we wouldn't have to get out the begging bowl and convince foreigners to buy our debt.
But that would mean sensible economic, energy and foreign policies, and that just wont do.
One of the issues that the Unionists in NI had was that with corporation tax in the Republic @ 12.5% , how would they be able to attract businesses to NI with a tax rate of 19% ? Of course that will soon be 25%.
Is this just the EU and their remainer friends in Britain just turning the screw to splinter NI away from the rest of the UK?
Nobody in the Conservative party seems to want to do anything to resolve the situation.
Just one long series of can-kicking whilst they get to swan around in government limos while milking their expense accounts.
Farage has the chance to get himself in the history books (beyond the massive part he played in Brexit) by running the latest iteration of his party in 650 seats and finishing the Tory party forever.
Truss tried to do a Thatcher without the cuts in Big State.
Tax cuts are a good aspiration in themselves. Both of my lads are in single rooms in houses of multiple occupancy yet are charged higher tax with £200 per month student charges on top that. There is no escape from bedsit land for them for the foreseeable.
As one said here this week "Children are a luxury that the educated middle classes can no longer afford." And so reverse Darwinism and a spiral of lower national IQ (increasing IQ our only route out of this mess) it is.
By chav expansionism or by immigration of the unvetted our capabilities are dwindling. No wonder much of the country looks like there has been a mass escape from a lunatic asylum - tattoos up necks and on faces. Watch any ambulance or police fly-on-wall documentary to see what is taking up state resources.
Truss is a bottle job, not a tantrum queen.
What a pathetic lot the Tory party have become. Liz may not be good but the whole shower should have got behind her and put aside their sniping.
The thoughts of the vegetarian donkey field Starmer, the smug Lady Nugey? and two GG's appall me but we will have to get used to it.
We will hear more from Queen Nichola the ferry farce maker and her noxious man from Skye.
E-K: could your lads move to a cheaper part of the country?
Went back to my home town today, 50 years ago a pleasant Midlands market town, now literally half the High Street is shuttered, 25% charity shops. Used to be a nice place.
My rural fastness now is fast disappearing as the nearest villages to the town are now joined to it by new estates, all the people getting out of Bristol/London/Brum are coming here. The lovely Georgian centre now features skunk-smoking hoody types.
Went to Cheltenham Lit Fest - lordy even that place is going downhill. They've built a new shop zone in Lower High Street, traditionally the rough end of town, now footfall is going there and the top of town is full of empty shops. And there are people sleeping in the empty shop doorways.
"Things fall apart, the shopping centre cannot hold"
@dearieme
They wanted to leave home. Cost was not the issue. LOL 😆
Shopping centres are disintegrating because of the Internet in general and Amazon in particular.
There was a time when things were sold by street traders and at markets. Then everyone moved into shops, to keep the stock and the staff dry. When I was a child, the butcher, the baker, the milkman, the fishmonger and the laundry all delivered to your door. Now the supermarkets have a delivery service for orders over the web. Things keep on changing.
Don
The lads shouldn't be paying an effectively high tax at such a junior level. It's not the house prices but the inability to save.
There are an awful lot of younger people who choose to live in one of the most expensive cities in the world and then complain about the cost.
Just when I thought 'Oh good, they might just see sense and allow the building of housing'. That idea is totally stuffed, Lizzy dare not touch the housing market - only thing holding the whole edifice up. Totally totally stuffed, she will have to ask permission to go to the loo.
Which I would not care about but it leaves our country in a very tight spot. As the saying goes 'Better to stay silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and have the matter amply confirmed'. That is what happened, the market may have suspected the Tories of being all fur coat and no knickers, now it is clear to everyone the Tories have no clue how to run the show.
Well that is not completely true, they know that major housebuilding, offices infrastructure and a clampdown on NIMBYs and newt fussers is the way forward. Billy clubs rather than cosy chats for those who glue and to proscribe the NT and RSPB. A decade of hard focus on making money - for the nation rather than the rich and comfy. I can hear the screaming now.
The difficulty is getting elected - they won't. Starmer will get the job and TBH he will not do the necessary either. So we just drift, the markets know without any doubt what to look for and will do to us what our politicians don't have the guts for. Now about that pay rise for MPs....
@ jim
Performance related pay for MPs/Lords - get the national debt (not just the deficit) down, raise growth to 3%, reduce percentage of GDP spunked by government etc and you can have 500% bonus.
Of course, they won't do that because they know they'll fail. Better to have a lower guaranteed sum that doesn't require any hard decisions. Even better if the lower sum is more than most people in the country earn.
Dearieme
Leeds and Salisbury since you ask.
Your argument fails when junior doctors and chemists decide not to live or work in rich areas, which is good because it's about time the liberal lefty middle classes felt the full force of their love of high tax and mass immigration.
Jim - Control of mass immigration is the answer. Also, we are about to wipe out (by hypothermia) a lot of the people we wrecked the economy to save from Covid.
I don't understand.
We have mass immigration because there is a population implosion... and people demanding unfettered house building (which has already been rampant 'round 'ere for years) because there is a population explosion....
I just don't geddit. I really don't.
There is going to be a sudden shortening of the demographic bulge at the older end - ergo a lot of family houses coming on the market.
@Matt: School report: "He sets himself low standards, which he consistently fails to achieve."
What a time to be alive!
Missing a word between Time and Alive.
Fill in your own.
( am I right in thinking that the last competent ( air quotes ) prime minister, was David Cameron ? And even he made the sort of catastrophic error that Lizz has made.)
@ BQ
Surely you jest, Cameron? Really?
Matt.
Well, maybe not. Holding that must win referendum, that he lost.
So if not him, then it’s,
Brown.
Blair
Major
Thatcher
Callaghan
Wilson
Heath
Douglas-Home?
There is basically only one choice from the list - Thatcher.
Even if you hate her, look at the competition and tell me who did better?
"a lot of family houses coming on the market"
I think 56,000 people have crossed the channel so far this year. Plus all those visas - 1.1 million to July 2022.
Call me Dave and let my mate have the money so I can cash in . Champion Woke man, Surely not!!!!
It's a deliberate invasion perpetuated by our own ruling class. Who then wear half-and-half GB/Ukrainian badges so we must risk nuclear war and definitely suffer hard winters to protect Ukraine's borders and right to join the EU.
Tories
Must
Die
Long live the Tories.
I back major as he didn't really make anything better or worse.
All the rest did things.
Yes he did - he created the Cones Hotline!
I think I back Major too. A decent bloke who kept the show on the road.
Macmillan was good.
Don Cox
Things won't get better until the price of electricity goes down substantially, or at least stops rising as fast as inflation. The Dogger wind farm and Hinckley Point will help a bit, but they are both more than two years away.
The fundamental problem is catching up with the cost of Covid. The economy is suffering from a bad case of Long Covid.
At least we have finished with lockdowns, while the Chinese are still in the thick of it. Xi is a fool.
Don Cox
Fundamental problem is the cost of energy. We've been following a retarded strategy of "Greta mollification" as our politicians are incapable of understanding the difference between a potential temperature rise over 100 years and the predictions of what might entail if it happens.
The CV-19 lockdowns were a stupid distraction from the fundamental issue that energy powers growth and without cheap energy we're fucked.
I think I back Major too. A decent bloke who kept the show on the road.
.......
I also think back to Major. A complete fool who facilitated the final hand-over to the EU and left the door open to the Blair terror and all that has followed.
"I also think back to Major. A complete fool who facilitated the final hand-over to the EU and left the door open to the Blair terror and all that has followed."
Quite. Had Major not forced the Maastricht Treaty through the HoC, then the EU would not have come into existence. We could still be in the economic free trade area we actually joined. We could have demanded a 'halfway house' status for the UK, as the price for our allowing the rest to continue on the 'ever closer union' through EEC structures.
"The fundamental problem is catching up with the cost of Covid. The economy is suffering from a bad case of Long Covid."
No the fundamental problem is that we attempted to solve the problem of a debt fuelled financial crash by printing money. Instead of purging all the bad debts out of the system and allowing new growth to bloom from firm foundations, we entrenched the bad debts, and juiced all the Western economies with yet more debt. All of Western economic growth since 2007 has been predicated on more debt, stolen from the future in effect. Well the future's here now, and it wants payback.....
@Sobers - dead right. A very good analysis.
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