A pithy summary from Jonathan Pie:
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Kwarteng and Truss humiliated and wounded
A fortnight ago at the top of the Empire State Building in New York, the prime minister told me she was willing to do things that were unpopular. That is a theory she very efficiently tested to destruction, her partyâs poll ratings plunging as deep as that Manhattan skyscraper is tall.
The markets were spooked, Conservative MPs spooked more - this policy was destined to crowd out everything else here for a simple reason. Tory MPs from ministers down said it was unsellable, offering the best paid a tax cut with the prospect of public spending and benefits cuts at the same time.
This leaves the new Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng - and by extension the prime minister - downcast and humiliated, wounded and weakened. But Liz Truss will hope it creates space to move forward, hauling herself out of the political quagmire of a budgetary statement that imploded on contact with political reality. This is another defining moment for a young government not yet a month old.
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The fuck is that supposed to mean?
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It means âLetâs hold hands and pretend sheâs playing five-dimensional chess, and not just as ideologically stupid as everyoneâs been saying she is.â
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Martin wolf in the FT -
Trussâs growth plan is nothing but a magic potion
Hoping that reality will adapt to your desires is folly: Britain needs stable and credible policies, not zealotry
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Proposal: announce unfunded tax cut for top rate earners and unfunded cut to basic rate tax and NIC etc. Let sterling tank to allow market shorters to take their profits. Watch sterling recover automatically (albeit to a few cents lower than it was, but not remotely close to parity levels) as the shorters do that. Then declare that you are reversing the âunpopularâ top rate cut in the hope that everyone will have forgotten all the other stuff that wasnât the headline but is still unfunded.
The reason Iâm sure this clearly wasnât the âplanâ is that it, um, makes sense? [/jk]
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I heard that the top rate cut only cost ÂŁ2bn, which is tiny in context, and isnât a whole hill of beans in the context of the ÂŁ18bn of cuts to services.
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Yup, it also essentially makes no difference because people at that income level are generally well-off enough to be able to pay other people enough to reduce their tax bills so the actual amount raised is relatively small.
Itâs the cancelling of the NIC uprating that is one of the major funding gaps here, because that was supposed to be going to the NHS (and social care if there was anything left over.) By pulling that, theyâve got to figure out how to fund the NHS. Or, you know, just not bother and let it fail. Why do I think itâs the second option theyâve got in mind?
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Didnât know the C4 sale had a mandate taken to the country. I thought that was just that article who didnât even know it wasnât publicly funded on a solo run, that would end up costing the country.
ETA
Dorries didnât know C4 was commercially funded rather than state funded.
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Is that the same party where hedgies in the corner were overheard to call him âthe useful idiotâ?
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Hereâs the uncorrupted version.
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A silver lining?
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(ETA Apologies @Doctor_Faustus - this was intended as a general reply, not specifically to your post.)
An extract from the Truss speech today (my bold):
I will not allow the anti-growth coalition to hold us back. Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP, the militant unions, the vested interests dressed up as think-tanks, the talking heads, the Brexit deniers and Extinction Rebellion
Astonishing. It is the Tufton Street brigade of right-wing think-tanks who have effectively captured 10 and 11 Downing Street. All funded by hidden vested interests.
From The Guardian
While the rest of the Conservative universe gulped at Kwartengâs high-stakes experiment in neo-Thatcherism, one group was proclaiming its triumph: a cluster of obscurely funded free-market thinktanks that count Kwarteng and Liz Truss among their closest political allies.
From another article, by George Monbiot.
âŚthe Institute of Economic Affairs, the Adam Smith Institute, the Taxpayersâ Alliance, the Centre for Policy Studies and Policy Exchange. These groups also happen to have been rated by the campaign Who Funds You? as among the most opaque of all those it investigated.
But for a both sober and parodic assessment, Stewart Lee calls it like it is. You can tell he is even more outraged than usual because the flights of parodic fantasy and abuse in this weekâs column are dialled right down; it almost reads like straight journalism (and anyone whoâs read his Observer columns over the years will know this was a departure - read it below and then compare it to George Monbiotâs article above. Either article could have been written by the other author).
Basically, the more bland the name of a âTufton Streetâ outfit the more evil it is. Of the following 15 Tufton Street organisations only seven are real: the Taxpayersâ Alliance; the Adam Smith Institute; the Sensible Peopleâs Organisation; Leave Means Leave; the Imperial Legacy Forum; the Global Warming Policy Foundation; Brexit Central; the Plausibility Trust; the Centre for Policy Studies; the Racial Implementation Commission; Ignite!; the Institute for Economic Affairs; the European Strategy Pergola; Operation Mindfuck; and the Fanny Quint Content Discharge. Iâm not telling you which are the fakes. Youâll have to use Google, like the BBC should before it books yet another neoliberal mouthpiece for balance, the twats.
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I have no idea how he does this so quickly- Casseteboy is back with his take on Truss.
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