Liz Truss’s time is up

[cupid_stunt]

Just nine per cent have a favourable view of Liz Truss

archived 13 Oct 2022 20:10:34 UTC

archive.ph

And, this sums it up very well...

“The problems facing the Prime Minister are twofold. She has pursued a course of public policy that most voters don’t agree with – they are not won over by the case for tax cuts driving economic growth," he said.

“You could argue that politicians shouldn’t be led by public opinion. But on top of that, most voters don’t seem to like Liz Truss, which is a bigger problem. They don’t seem to think she is particularly competent, trustworthy or likeable.

“It is a combination of opposing her politics and not really liking her personality. It is difficult, if not impossible, to see how she turns that around.”

It's all very Laurel and Hardy - another fine mess.

 

[cupid_stunt]

The Times is running with 'Tories plot to replace Truss with Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt', and assuming this is actually the plan, I think it could work, it would dig them out of the hole they are in, and whilst politically embarrassing in the short-term, if they go on to run a stable government, that would soon be forgotten.

Senior Conservatives are holding talks about replacing Liz Truss with a joint ticket of Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt as part of a “coronation” by MPs.

Party grandees are in discussions about replacing Truss with a “unity candidate” just weeks after she became the fourth Conservative leader in six years. Unlike the summer leadership contest, MPs would propose just one person to succeed the prime minister.

One senior Tory told The Times: “A coronation won’t be that hard to arrange. In 2019 candidates needed eight MPs to get on the ballot paper. This year they needed 20. Next time it will be however high it needs to be for only one candidate to clear it.”

They predicted a pact between Sunak, who lost to Truss in the members’ ballot, and Mordaunt, who finished third in the leadership contest, would have the support of an overwhelming majority of Conservative MPs.

Around “20 to 30” former ministers and senior backbenchers are attempting to find a way for a “council of elders” to tell Truss to quit. “Conversations are stepping up,” said one former minister.

Another MP added: “Rishi’s people, Penny’s people and the sensible Truss supporters who realise she’s a disaster just need to sit down together and work out who the unity candidate is. It’s either Rishi as prime minister with Penny as his deputy and foreign secretary, or Penny as prime minister with Rishi as chancellor. They would promise to lead a government of all the talents and most MPs would fall in behind that.”

Under the rules of the 1922 Committee, the prime minister cannot face a confidence vote until she has been in office for a year. However, in practice, if enough MPs pressure Sir Graham Brady, the committee chairman, one would probably take place.

The party’s constitution states that if only one candidate is on the ballot after MPs’ nominations, the party board — which includes members’ representatives — can demand their elevation is “ratified” by a grassroots vote.

 

[Karl Masks]

I dont want them replacing her and becoming more stable and popular. I want them to crash and burn causing a general election while they are likely to lose

 

[SpookyFrank]

I dont want them replacing her and becoming more stable and popular. I want them to crash and burn causing a general election while they are likely to lose

Any replacement will at best slow the decline a bit. The cupboard of competent politicians is bare. And the very act of replacing a leader after a month would be a huge blow for them and a fuck you tomthe membership, not that they're much use for anything anyway.

 

[kebabking]

I dont want them replacing her and becoming more stable and popular. I want them to crash and burn causing a general election while they are likely to lose

Great in the abstract, shit for people this week.

Tory MP's are pretty unlikely to vote for a NC motion - they might do of course, Starmer only needs to 40 who have decided to leave parliament anyway, can't stand Truss, and who don't think 3 PM's in one term is outside of democratic acceptability - but I think they'd be more likely to try something else first.

I think this from SpookyFrank is more likely.

I live in a very Tory area, and pretty much everyone thinks the Tories have fucked it, and that - whether they want it or not - there'll be a Labour government after the next election. It's all very reminiscent of that 1995-97 period: fag-end government lurching from failure to failure, with everyone looking on and knowing exactly what was going to happen, regardless of this or that twist and turn.

Writ ten in the stars stuff. No escape.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

So,

1. There has been an unmistakable sound of a nail being driven into a particular form of neo-conservative politics. Apt that the first Thatcher sell off was of the government stake in BP and Shell and that an energy crisis has crashed the aspirations of her tribute band.
2. Its defeat was by the market, not by the organised working class or the left. The former is a timely reminder of a) what would also happen in the event of the election of a government elected on genuinely social democratic programme and b) overwhelming proof that capital is moving on from the neo-liberal experiment of the last 45 years. The only people left who don’t know it are the Conservative Party membership (a dwindling group of old people hankering for imagined pasts) and the British left (ditto).
3. This feels like an end. An end of Truss and Kwarteng for sure. An end of Tory rule for a decade or more too. But also the end of an economic era. The particular dominant form of Capital doesn’t require trickle down. It’s role in society is established. It’s power has been embedded. Organised Labour is defeated. The state has already been swept aside. Red tape has already been shredded and shredded.
4. The coronation of Sunak - what MPs wanted all along - will narrow the polls. It will also be the moment the conservative PLP seized control away from its activists: those who elected Truss as a melancholic ache for Maggie. They ended up with Truss as a result: a politician who knows the words but not the tune of their hero. But the really interesting poltical question is what eventually emerges out of the coming interregnum.

 

[ska invita]

Any replacement will at best slow the decline a bit. The cupboard of competent politicians is bare. And the very act of replacing a leader after a month would be a huge blow for them and a fuck you tomthe membership, not that they're much use for anything anyway.

yeah.... but... if they rip the plaster off quickly there'll be at least a good 18 months for a new leader before an election - a long time in politics
im less convinced by Sunak going down well with the public as he'll have the smell of the old regimes about him but I can imagine Penny Mourdant doing a little bit better with the public. They both come across as plumby posh tories though, which somehow Johnson managed to overcome but I dont think they will

but then again, Mourdant's platform at the leadership hustings seemed to be more low tax classic Tory shit. They might look at what has happened with Truss and come up with something else, but what else have they got? The problem is less about competent politicians than the fact that the Tory party has no ideas apart from crashing the UK against the rocks so the robber-beachcombers can make some money off the wreckage

 

[Jeff Robinson]

My worry is that if Truss does get replaced, it will be with someone even worse like the barbaric Neo-Hitlerite Braverman.

 

[ska invita]

2. Its defeat was by the market, not by the organised working class or the left. The former is a timely reminder of a) what would also happen in the event of the election of a government elected on genuinely social democratic programme and b) overwhelming proof that capital is moving on from the neo-liberal experiment of the last 45 years.

....what is "capital" moving on to though do you think? to me it looks a lot like continued neoliberalism but with a ready reliance of a welfare state to prop up corporate losses and shocks...in many other countries we are seeing neo/quasi fascistic parties coming to power, presumably with heavy financial backing.
I cant imagine how "capital" can move on from anything much more than whats gone before, when whats really required goes so profoundly against capitals interests

 

[steveo87]

My worry is that if Truss does get replaced, it will be with someone even worse like the barbaric Neo-Hitlerite Braverman.

I think lurching even more to the right would be even more damaging than anything they have now.
For years, up to Truss, the right (or at least those NOT in the 1922 Commission) have always been painted as mad, bad and dangerous to know. Truss puts a couple of them in a position of power, and just as their PM, have at best looked incompetent, and at worst mad.

 

[kabbes]

....what is "capital" moving on to though do you think? to me it looks a lot like continued neoliberalism but with a ready reliance of a welfare state to prop up corporate losses and shocks...in many other countries we are seeing neo/quasi fascistic parties coming to power, presumably with heavy financial backing.
I cant imagine how "capital" can move on from anything much more than whats gone before, when whats really required goes so profoundly against capitals interests

I’ve seen it suggested that there is a trend from neoliberalism back towards classic liberalism. Slowly and in bumps, though.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

....what is "capital" moving on to though do you think? to me it looks a lot like continued neoliberalism but with a ready reliance of a welfare state to prop up corporate losses and shocks...in many other countries we are seeing neo/quasi fascistic parties coming to power, presumably with heavy financial backing.
I cant imagine how "capital" can move on from anything much more than whats gone before, when whats really required goes so profoundly against capitals interests

In British terms, it means interregnum both because our political class is bereft of ideas or profoundly disoriented and because Britain was a leader in the experiment of global capitalism - in fact it was a hub - as a result in national economy terms we’re a husk. British capitalism is indistinguishable from global capitalism. Ditto industry and production. Ditto our politics and culture. As such it’s easier for ‘us’ to imagine the end of the world.

In terms of wider capital it means inversion as a response to rising populism and two shattering economic shocks in a decade. The era of high globalisation gives way to a countervailing trend. This is not just a moment of involution/backlash, but also of re-centering and internal re-organisation of political units.

 

[killer b]

My worry is that if Truss does get replaced, it will be with someone even worse like the barbaric Neo-Hitlerite Braverman.

if Truss is to be replaced (unconvinced as yet it'll happen, but larks if it does) it'll be by a palace coup of the parliamentary party - the likes of Braverman don't have anything like the support they'd need to be the person in the frame for replacing her.

 

[ska invita]

I’ve seen it suggested that there is a trend from neoliberalism back towards classic liberalism. Slowly and in bumps, though.

I dont understand the difference tbh

 

[Pickman's model]

I think lurching even more to the right would be even more damaging than anything they have now.
For years, up to Truss, the right (or at least those NOT in the 1922 Commission) have always been painted as mad, bad and dangerous to know. Truss puts a couple of them in a position of power, and just as their PM, have at best looked incompetent, and at worst mad.

The 1922 committee consists of all backbench tory mps

 

[ska invita]

In terms of wider capital it means inversion as a response to rising populism and two shattering economic shocks. The era of high globalisation gives way to a countervailing trend. This is not just a moment of involution/backlash, but also of re-centering and internal re-organisation of political units.

...I dont know what you mean by inversion and re-centering, but what you described sounds to me like still the same system but with maybe just a little less globalisation. ???

Thing is the financial masters of the universe may know that zombie capitalism isn't really working properly but they are both personally immune from any fall out and are so blinkered in a view of how the system can be any different that no real alternative can be imagined... I dont really go along with the idea that "capital is moving on from the neo-liberal experiment of the last 45 years", not in any profound way. Maybe they're after the odd new managerial bit of fine tuning, and definitely getting used to multi billion state handouts, but I cant see any meaningful change.

What am I missing?

 

[brogdale]

So,

b) overwhelming proof that capital is moving on from the neo-liberal experiment of the last 45 years. The only people left who don’t know it are the Conservative Party membership (a dwindling group of old people hankering for imagined pasts) and the British left (ditto).

A useful post, but I'm not convinced by that particular take.
In a very obvious sense this flexing of the global, financialised corporate muscle of fincap could be seen as a metric of just how deeply entrenched and asymmetric power relations between neoliberal capital and state actors have become.

 

[Rob Ray]

I’ve seen it suggested that there is a trend from neoliberalism back towards classic liberalism. Slowly and in bumps, though.

Mm a major focus for a lot of billionaire brains, and I'd imagine a lot of the merely millionaire ones, seems to be acknowledging and preparing for the onrush of social breakdown across a great deal of the globe, under whatever banner is most appropriate (water scarcity, climate change, capital crisis etc, take your pick). Which tends to inspire a mindset of drawbridges, powerful levers of control and stability in Western holdfasts where they have massive static strategic investments - very much including Britain. Dramatic "economic experiments" are not what the powers that be want from our political class while it's supposed to be minding their assets.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

Maybe not the thread for this, but if we are facing a 'paradigm shift' with regard to western capitalism - analogous to the move from the post-war consensus to neo-liberalism - then surely an overtly authoritarian capitalism is an option?

Either a fascistic or state capitalist variant is a potentially available option should capital judge that the acommodations required were worth it.

Apologies for being so cheery at breakfast time.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[Karl Masks]

My worry is that if Truss does get replaced, it will be with someone even worse like the barbaric Neo-Hitlerite Braverman.

That's the obvious concern, but I don't think she could hold it together as PM either. Braverman is largely also incompetent and driven solely by ideology. She walked out when Yvette Cooper gave aher a dressing down yesterday when the house was half empty. Doing that at PMQ's would be disastrous. She can't take criticism and has no answers. Watch her defend Brexit on QT, using tired divisive language 'remoaners' etc; whem challenged all she could do was shake her head and look away like she was having a strange tic. Complete disconnect

 

[Lurdan]

Financial Times:

A source close to the chancellor said: “The medium-term fiscal plan and fiscal responsibility is core to what we’re doing.”

The chancellor spent two days in Washington, where he heard the IMF and other finance ministers recommend that he reverse the tax cuts quickly before more financial damage was done.

The source said the chancellor’s hasty departure while the meetings were under way was not the same as a previous early exit, when the Greek finance minister left G20 talks at the height of the eurozone crisis in 2011.

 

[Rob Ray]

surely an overtly authoritarian capitalism is an option?

Yep. In fact Britain has been quietly moving towards that model for a while now under multiple Prime Ministers. Freewheeler Truss hasn't done away with the anti-protest law.

 

[Tanya1982]

Great in the abstract, shit for people this week.

Tory MP's are pretty unlikely to vote for a NC motion - they might do of course, Starmer only needs to 40 who have decided to leave parliament anyway, can't stand Truss, and who don't think 3 PM's in one term is outside of democratic acceptability - but I think they'd be more likely to try something else first.

I think this from SpookyFrank is more likely.

I live in a very Tory area, and pretty much everyone thinks the Tories have fucked it, and that - whether they want it or not - there'll be a Labour government after the next election. It's all very reminiscent of that 1995-97 period: fag-end government lurching from failure to failure, with everyone looking on and knowing exactly what was going to happen, regardless of this or that twist and turn.

Writ ten in the stars stuff. No escape.

Yes, with two major differences - 1995 to 1997 saw the economy on the upswing, and there were exciting things to look forward to. This time, the first factor not at all, and the second not so much. There's no hope in the air at all, and subsequently far less enjoyment of the Tories being in another self made crisis.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

if Truss is to be replaced (unconvinced as yet it'll happen, but larks if it does) it'll be by a palace coup of the parliamentary party - the likes of Braverman don't have anything like the support they'd need to be the person in the frame for replacing her.

Yeah, would most likely be Mordaunt or Sunak, but I will never underestimate the depths the Tories would sink to. Braverman's right populist rhetoric probably strikes a chord with a good chunk of the public too.

 

[Tanya1982]

I think that's right. On the outside, it might seem obvious they'd choose the most sensible option, but they haven't shown any tendency to do that - and they've cycled through quite a few options. Left to them, it keeps getting worse. They might well think that as long as a semi-competent chancellor takes care of the money stuff, a leader like Braverman with all her horror is just what Britain needs - and enough of them and enough of the electorate might just buy that, for a time, until the fuck up continues to get more extreme.

 

[kabbes]

I dont understand the difference tbh

They’re pretty different. Classic liberalism believes in the social contract. People give up some power to an authority, who then rules with the permission of the people. This authority is tasked with ensuring a society that allows people to exercise their remaining freedoms. It’s a limited government, with the “invisible hand” of the market place kept in check by regulation.

Neoliberalism wants full deregulation and privatisation, with the primacy of individual choice and property rights over all else. That makes it sound a bit like libertarianism, which it does have some overlaps with, but there are differences there too.

 

[killer b]

Yeah, would most likely be Mordaunt or Sunak, but I will never underestimate the depths the Tories would sink to. Braverman's right populist rhetoric probably strikes a chord with a good chunk of the public too.

She didn't even make it past the first round in the recent election, and I doubt her performance so far as HS has improved her standing with the parliamentary party.

 

[ska invita]

Maybe not the thread for this, but if we are facing a 'paradigm shift' with regard to western capitalism - analogous to the move from the post-war consensus to neo-liberalism - then surely an overtly authoritarian capitalism is an option?

Either a fascistic or state capitalist variant is a potentially available option should capital judge that the acommodations required were worth it.

Apologies for being so cheery at breakfast time.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

totally agree. the range of options seems to go from technocratic but still voracious, privatising capitalism on the "left" to what you describe on the right...and the more crisis faced the more the options on the far right will be reached for

 

[brogdale]

They’re pretty different. Classic liberalism believes in the social contract. People give up some power to an authority, who then rules with the permission of the people. This authority is tasked with ensuring a society that allows people to exercise their remaining freedoms. It’s a limited government, with the “invisible hand” of the market place kept in check by regulation.

Neoliberalism wants full deregulation and privatisation, with the primacy of individual choice and property rights over all else. That makes it sound a bit like libertarianism, which it does have some overlaps with, but there are differences there too.

Agree with this. On the Neoliberal point I'd say that on the way to full privatisation it requires competent state actors/institutions that are prepared to consolidate the state via regressive transfers of wealth from taxes on labour to unearned wealth and its defence. It's no coincidence that after 12 years of tory governance and 46 years of neoliberal ascendancy, we're at such a high level of tax take. One reason why "the markets" have blocked the Truss agenda.

 

[killer b]

I think that's right. On the outside, it might seem obvious they'd choose the most sensible option, but they haven't shown any tendency to do that - and they've cycled through quite a few options. Left to them, it keeps getting worse. They might well think that as long as a semi-competent chancellor takes care of the money stuff, a leader like Braverman with all her horror is just what Britain needs - and enough of them and enough of the electorate might just buy that, for a time, until the fuck up continues to get more extreme.

If it went to the membership and she somehow got on the ticket perhaps, but there is zero chance of a full leadership election if Truss is ousted. The MPs have no appetite for a headbanger in charge.