Liz Truss’s time is up

[Serene]

I told my boss today that my poor performance was due to the anti-growth coalition. That it is because my entrepreneur skills are punished by regulation.

 

[SysOut]

Comparisons with Thatcher.:
Thatcher had North Sea oil and gas. She stood on solid ground there, as well as - yes - the coal, car, rail industry and so many things which she herself got rid of, or whose demise she prepared.
Saudi oil minster Yamani criticised her for not investing the oil revenue in infrastructure etc.
The point being, there can be no comparison with Thatcher.

 

[eightball]

Gotta be some scope for confusion between the AGC and the ACG

Splitters

 

[LDC]

I told my boss today that my poor performance was due to the anti-growth coalition. That it is because my entrepreneur skills are punished by regulation.

Good work! It is asking for some strong meme making creativity to make the term go comically viral. Didn't do your homework? Yeah, anti-growth coalition stopped me.

 

[Serene]

Need to keep an eye on the Downing street cat. She will probably have it put down to save on feeding it.

 

[Wilf]

This could be on the polls thread, but I'll put it here as it's ultimately about whether truss survives. We are at around 25% Labour leads at the moment and it's actually hard to know how firm they are. It's a solid assumption that there isn't much active attraction to Labour there. My take/guess is the bonkers leads - or at least the ramping up from the 10-15% leads over johnson - was almost entirely an explosion of 'fuck me, they've broken the markets/fucked us even further/gone into hiding/it's fucking madness'. All of that, along with Labour currently being a void, a party that has missed its moment to promote public sector solutions, could be temporary. I'll be honest, I thought the leads would be back around 15% or less now.

Maybe it really is 'the economy stupid', underneath which is a massive attack on working class living standards and security (also affecting swathes of the middle class is lesser but significant ways). A laying bare of neo-liberalism along with ceding any claim to being economically competent. If that's the driver, rather than just 'fuck this madness', it could actually get worse for the tories with the rise in mortgage payments. I know most people on here have been arguing the tories are fucked, with or without truss, but I'm only just coming round to that. It will actually be quite an achievement if they can propel Labour and starmer into power, a non-party led by an empty suit at the moment. And not even the glitzy self confident non-party of new labour, with all it's gloss and blather. Something even... emptier.

 

[billy_bob]

Yes, I heard someone talking about this recently, sorry, can't remember who but it was coming from left of Labour and it struck a chord: in comparison to this Labour, New Labour actually had ideas and then did something about at least some of them when they got in. It was the wrong solutions to the problems, it was insufficient, sure, and politically engaged people might have seen that from the start, but in the run-up to 97 it looked to the more casual observer like a transformative, even radical programme.

I'm old enough to have accepted that no Labour party that'll ever get a sniff of power will be a Labour party I'd fully support, but even taking that as read, this current incarnation is beyond infuriating - it's so lead-footed, so unable to seize obvious moments and capitalise on them, so incapable of and apparently uninterested in projecting a narrative that could conceivably appeal to anyone.

 

[Pickman's model]

Yes, I heard someone talking about this recently, sorry, can't remember who but it was coming from left of Labour and it struck a chord: in comparison to this Labour, New Labour actually had ideas and then did something about at least some of them when they got in. It was the wrong solutions to the problems, it was insufficient, sure, and politically engaged people might have seen that from the start, but in the run-up to 97 it looked to the more casual observer like a transformative, even radical programme.

I'm old enough to have accepted that no Labour party that'll ever get a sniff of power will be a Labour party I'd fully support, but even taking that as read, this current incarnation is beyond infuriating - it's so lead-footed, so unable to seize obvious moments and capitalise on them, so incapable of and apparently uninterested in projecting a narrative that could conceivably appeal to anyone.

that's because shammer's war is against the labour left and not the tories

 

[Wilf]

I'm old enough to have accepted that no Labour party that'll ever get a sniff of power will be a Labour party I'd fully support, but even taking that as read, this current incarnation is beyond infuriating - it's so lead-footed, so unable to seize obvious moments and capitalise on them, so incapable of and apparently uninterested in projecting a narrative that could conceivably appeal to anyone.

Yep, just imagine if Labour had already got plans to nationalise rail and various parts of the public utility infrastructure. Not only could they hammer home the need for public sectors solutions in those moment of malicious intent from the tories, they could also point out that this was what Labour had always been about. Labour would still have pretty weak bonds with the working class, but at the policy level, this would seal the deal.

 

[two sheds]

Senior Conservative MPs have urged Liz Truss to launch a public information campaign to encourage people to reduce their energy use after No 10 blocked the idea over fears it would seem like the actions of a “nanny state”.

she's afraid of nannies now

 

[Wilf]

that's because shammer's war is against the labour left and not the tories

Aye and even now you hear the mantras about starmer's Labour being different. This is actually the moment for Labour to emphasise the return to the party's history. However weak that would be, this is the time to bang on about 'Labour created the NHS/nationalised railways, public utilities... this is the time to run these services for the workers and users, not shareholders...'. Fuck me, it's a strategy that writes itself.

 

[two sheds]

Sounds too much like Corbyn for him.

 

[Wilf]

Sounds too much like Corbyn for him.

Unfortunately, I think that is a pretty central part of Labour's positioning at the moment. And, ironically, the public sector policies were the best received bit of the Corbyn era (even if they were presented as an increasingly incoherent mishmash in 2019). There's an element of throwing away your best weapons because they were also your predecessor's best weapons.

 

[billy_bob]

And its always been true that people will support certain policies perceived as 'too far left' if they are put forward by people who are not perceived that way, just as support for BNP policies was always far higher if you presented them to people without saying they were BNP policies. Ergo, if Starmer and his team were more agile they could quite easily have picked some of the more popular policies associated with Corbyn straight off the shelf and just given them a little sprinkling of centrist glitter and they'd have been good to go.

 

[two sheds]

We're not Corbyn as opposed to we're not tory.

 

[belboid]

We're not Corbyn as opposed to we're not tory.

Neither Corbyn nor Tory, but International Vacuity.

 

[two sheds]

Merger with the Lib Dems on the cards then

 

[Knotted]

*sigh

Does anyone have a clue what this 'anti-growth coalition' actually is. ?

Reminds me a lot of Tony Blair's "Forces of Conservativism", it also reminds me of the sort of thing Frank Furedi and his sect were saying 25 years ago. Fairly standard demagogy where you identify the various elements that oppose you and lump them together in a "you're either with me or against me" sort of way. With Truss the fanatic/true believer I think it's heartfelt as well and I actually thought it was rather good as a piece of demagogy in a "go woke, go broke" sort of way - that has real resonance with right wingers I think. The problem is of course that the wheels have come off her bus and everything she says sounds absurd. She's happily demolishing decades of conservative thinking.

 

[izz]

Reminds me a lot of Tony Blair's "Forces of Conservativism", it also reminds me of the sort of thing Frank Furedi and his sect were saying 25 years ago. Fairly standard demagogy where you identify the various elements that oppose you and lump them together in a "you're either with me or against me" sort of way. With Truss the fanatic/true believer I think it's heartfelt as well and I actually thought it was rather good as a piece of demagogy in a "go woke, go broke" sort of way - that has real resonance with right wingers I think. The problem is of course that the wheels have come off her bus and everything she says sounds absurd. She's happily demolishing decades of conservative thinking.

Using the word 'coalition' kinda gives it more weight, implies her enemies have organised and conspired against her, rather than disagreed independently but also reveals paranoia. I wonder who it was first coined it ?

 

[two sheds]

A bit wishy washy

 

[JimW]

Imagine if the anti-growth coalition goes woke, it'll be the beginning of the end times.

 

[Knotted]

Corbyn had actual supporters around him. Not just in the membership but on his front bench. OK, they may not have been very effectual in the end and they may have shared the bench with a wolverine or two, but some of them were genuinely on his side. I'm not sure that's the case for Truss.

I'm also not convinced she's 'ideologically driven' in the same way Corbyn was - or to make a closer-to-home comparison, in the way Thatcher was. Thatcher was vicious but even those who despised her can acknowledge that to some extent it was rooted in a genuine belief that small state etc. was better for people. When Truss talks about 'the right thing to do' it's hard to see even a grain of anything but instrumentalism in it - it just means 'the best way to wring what we can out of this place before someone grabs the wheel off us'.

I actually think it's the other way round. Thatcher in practice wasn't small state and I don't believe for a minute she believed the small state ideology. Thatcher was a class warrior who deployed ideology to carry out that class war - too smart to be a true believer. I think Truss does actually believe this stuff.

 

[Bingoman]

Merger with the Lib Dems on the cards then

I know the Tories are finished but the Lib Dems are not that desperate yet

 

[brogdale]

Truss' numbers look like the pound tanking:

 

[Knotted]

This could be on the polls thread, but I'll put it here as it's ultimately about whether truss survives. We are at around 25% Labour leads at the moment and it's actually hard to know how firm they are. It's a solid assumption that there isn't much active attraction to Labour there. My take/guess is the bonkers leads - or at least the ramping up from the 10-15% leads over johnson - was almost entirely an explosion of 'fuck me, they've broken the markets/fucked us even further/gone into hiding/it's fucking madness'. All of that, along with Labour currently being a void, a party that has missed its moment to promote public sector solutions, could be temporary. I'll be honest, I thought the leads would be back around 15% or less now.

Maybe it really is 'the economy stupid', underneath which is a massive attack on working class living standards and security (also affecting swathes of the middle class is lesser but significant ways). A laying bare of neo-liberalism along with ceding any claim to being economically competent. If that's the driver, rather than just 'fuck this madness', it could actually get worse for the tories with the rise in mortgage payments. I know most people on here have been arguing the tories are fucked, with or without truss, but I'm only just coming round to that. It will actually be quite an achievement if they can propel Labour and starmer into power, a non-party led by an empty suit at the moment. And not even the glitzy self confident non-party of new labour, with all it's gloss and blather. Something even... emptier.

Just to be a bit contrarian, I wonder if Starmer is cutting through atm. He had a good conference and making a small but significant headway against the SNP can't be put down to Truss's failures.

 

[brogdale]

Just to be a bit contrarian, I wonder if Starmer is cutting through atm. He had a good conference and making a small but significant headway against the SNP can't be put down to Truss's failures.

I think it can; he's just not Truss, that's all.

 

[agricola]

Just to be a bit contrarian, I wonder if Starmer is cutting through atm. He had a good conference and making a small but significant headway against the SNP can't be put down to Truss's failures.

I don't think he is - this collapse in the government is almost entirely self-inflicted, they aren't being routed because Sir Kier has forensically pulled all the rugs out from under them. If (when) she is binned off and replaced by Sunak I think the Tory polling goes up by a minimum of 10% overnight.

 

[two sheds]

Unfortunately, I think that is a pretty central part of Labour's positioning at the moment. And, ironically, the public sector policies were the best received bit of the Corbyn era (even if they were presented as an increasingly incoherent mishmash in 2019). There's an element of throwing away your best weapons because they were also your predecessor's best weapons.

2017 was the best chance of an updated post war social contract. I've been told on here repeatedly that it wouldn't work again now but what else should be done than invest in infrastructure and people? As you say 2019 became a wish list of all sorts of stuff.

 

[Wilf]

Just to be a bit contrarian, I wonder if Starmer is cutting through atm. He had a good conference and making a small but significant headway against the SNP can't be put down to Truss's failures.

I think you are right in the sense that a space has opened up for someone/something like starmer, by virtue of being 'the other party' and also not scaring the horses - not even knowing how to scare the horses. I suspect his delivery and performance has/will improve also. He's been like a deer in the headlights the last few months, but he certainly can get better, basically, getting back to being forensic kieth. A bit of confidence won't exactly work wonders, but could get him to the point where he's able to mount an effective attack.

 

[Wilf]

I don't think he is - this collapse in the government is almost entirely self-inflicted, they aren't being routed because Sir Kier has forensically pulled all the rugs out from under them. If (when) she is binned off and replaced by Sunak I think the Tory polling goes up by a minimum of 10% overnight.

I think that would be the outcome if they found a way to get sunak in. Trouble is, given that she didn't resign last week after she killed the markets, I don't see how that happens now.