WTF is happening in the UK?

[PHXPhlyer]

Looks like the UK is Trussed ?

Well it was that or be Sunaked!

PP

[Woody]

Well he’s gone, anybody want to join the sweepstake on when he’s back

[Woody]

Oh the irony, he’s flying to Scotland in a French built aircraft

[Woody]

If only

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

ISTR H'Angus the monkey did pretty well as Mayor of Hartlepool. Re-elected twice and the only way they could get rid of him was to abolish the post of Mayor.

More importantly, the embarrassment of his election was probably a major factor in Peter Mandelson b*ggering off to Europe (he was then the town's MP).
And, he delivered on his main campaign promise - free bananas for schoolchildren!

n.b. H'Angus recently announced he is emigrating to Australia.

Reporting by Fox3, expert on all things Banana

[FD2]

Suzanne Moore has written a slightly critical attack on Boris Johnson's 'legacy'. I normally steer clear of these 'opinion pieces' but this one caught my eye as it seems to sum up much of what I think has happened back in the U.K. since 'BoJo' became P.M. Is this too damning an assessment or is she 'on the money'?

BTW I had a look at the woman who emerged from Number 10 in her see-through frock. Is she going 'commando' or is that a dark thong? Is that a suitable frock to wear to meet the Queen? What was she doing at Balmoral anyway? Maybe I missed the events but did SamCam go with 'Call Me Dave' to Buck House to resign, and did Mr May or Mr Thatcher do likewise? I know I'm slightly biased but...

Carrie OMG.png (448.3 KiB) Viewed 467 times

Moore seems to be pretty even handed in the papers she writes for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Moore

Comment
Will anyone miss Boris when he’s gone?

As new PM Liz Truss is anointed, the longest applause at the announcement was for Mr Johnson – but what is his true legacy?
Suzanne Moore 6 September 2022 • 6:00am Suzanne Moore


“All hail Borisconi – formerly known as Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson,” I described him thus in 2012 when he “won” so much praise for the London Olympics. “The idea of him as party leader is terrifying even to many in his own party. The laissez-faire chaotic individuality is superficially attractive but what does he want power for?” I asked all those years ago.

Well, as Bonaparte had it, “History is a set of lies agreed upon” and already the history of Johnson’s premiership is being rewritten amazingly quickly. The longest applause in the room as Liz Truss was anointed was, indeed, for him.

He wasn’t so bad really. Really?

His defenders are out there mumbling about Ukraine - which sadly would have happened anyway - and the vaccine roll-out, which was thanks to Kate Bingham. Not him. Oh and the fact that he nearly died after ignoring most public health advice.

Dulce periculum!

What has he left for the hyperactive leader Truss to do: Well everything. Instead of sorting out anything at all about the apocalyptic fuel bills that will wipe out small businesses and vulnerable people, he just went on a couple of holidays. Let them eat cold baked beans while huddled in warm banks.

He apparently has money to make. He has to get some “hay in the loft” said one of his colleagues. He doesn’t appear to have actual friends. There is talk of a comeback and a vote of no confidence in Truss by Christmas.

If he had a smidgeon of conscience he would not be contemplating any return to public life as he lied in office. It was not always called lying but ‘rule-breaking’, as though that made it more exciting somehow.

He did not get Brexit Done. Entirely. Hello Ireland, anyone? We did not take back control, instead we gave up our freedom of movement while immigration numbers rose. New hospitals were not built. Schools may have to be closed as they cannot be warm enough this winter. Corpses piled up because we locked down too late. NHS staff are leaving in droves. Wages have stagnated. He promoted a man to be responsible for party discipline when he know that man had several sexual misconduct allegations against him.

He partied during lockdown, he lied to Parliament about it. He got party donors to pay for doing up his flat. He gave a peerage to the son of a former KGB agent. All of this was just Boris being Boris. He refused any idea of accountability and avoided the media. His ministers did the same.

Rules are for little people. Well, look, he had brought in the red wall vote, life-long Labour voters who saw in him a joie de vivre! The anti-politician. He delivered those on lowish incomes but with larger aspirations leaving the college towns to Labour. You have got to hand that to him: The Eton Bullingdon boy turns Labour into the party of graduates.

Did he ever have any real intention on “levelling up”? He governed from day to day and, of course, the pandemic demanded that the State did not shrink, far from it. It was utterly necessary and we saw who we needed day-to-day to keep us working and healthy.

That those folk now demand a pay increase is hardly surprising and yet another problem he leaves in his successor’s in-tray, which by now must reach the ceiling.

There was, it seems, no long-term thinking at all. He didn’t even fake an interest in the day-to-day business of government, instead he was forever in high-viz jackets and hairnets pretending to do jobs he would never dream of doing. He was in constant campaigning mode - for himself alone.

The normal checks and balances on political power were not for him. He took a sledgehammer to them. What once propelled him into power – his unconventionality - became darker, his modus operandi was grabby egotism. If the values that for centuries have underpinned our political culture got in his way, he thuggishly dismantled them.

There is no going back. Much lies broken that cannot be repaired. That the Conservative Party watched him do this – proroguing and lying to Parliament - and sat silent showed their desperation. Yet all of the law-breaking was aimless, a saving of his own skin with an utter disregard for colleagues. Who needs an ethics advisor after all? Certainly not someone who dispensed with ethics decades ago.

Liam Byrne has said he would regret forever the note he left for Cameron, “I am afraid there is no more money left”. Reginald Maudling, the Tory Chancellor, apparently told Jim Callaghan in 1965, “Sorry to leave it in such a mess, old cock”.

What note would Johnson leave Truss? If he had any self-awareness it would be “Qui totum vult totum perdit” - “He who wants everything loses everything”.

More likely it’s the old Vini, Vidi, Vici. The old lie. That still gets applause - from those desperate I suppose to feel they have not been taken for fools. Oh but you were, you were. That’s his legacy.

[FD2]

ps I see that Truss's husband went to Balmoral too. Must be a 'tradition' then. I hope he was properly dressed.

[G-CPTN]

Would same-sex partners have been acceptable for HM?

[Ibbie]

Major mistake by Truss already in replacing Schnapps as The Fat Controller of the railways with Anne-Marie Trevelyan, who has no experience of running a Hornby Dublo train set.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

I Refer the Honorable Gentleman to the Reply I Gave Some Moments Ago...

I doubt there will be any problem filling Cabinet seats.
The competence question, however......

[Boac]

With Therese Coffey sitting at the Cabinet table there may not be much room for any more members?

[FD2]

I Refer the Honorable Gentleman to the Reply I Gave Some Moments Ago...

I doubt there will be any problem filling Cabinet seats.
The competence question, however......

+1

[Woody]

"I'm getting another one today. It's another rescue. I take them in for a few months until I can find them a permanent home. I hope this one will be ok but the last one was a nightmare!"

[TheGreenAnger]

The markets aren't impressed by Truss and her lack of credible economic plans. The pound is tanking against the dollar, markets down again. There goes my pension plan...

Just a day after Liz Truss assumed office, the pound’s value has sunk to a low not seen since 1985, knocked by the UK’s worsening economic outlook and the strength of the US dollar.

Financial markets have been rattled by the new prime minister’s plans to boost the economy through tax cuts while also potentially providing around £100bn to cap energy costs in a support package expected to be unveiled on Thursday.

At their first PMQs clash, Sir Keir Starmer has accused Liz Truss of seeking to “protect Shell’s profits and give Amazon a tax break” rather than help households and public services weather the cost of living crisis, after she ruled out a windfall tax on energy firms.

The Labour leader warned Ms Truss would force taxpayers to “foot the bill” for her reported plans to freeze rocketing energy bills, dubbed a decades-long “Truss tax” by the SNP’s Ian Blackford.

Despite fears she was ditching party unity in favour of a “cabinet of cronies” upon entering No 10, one incoming minister told The Times: “I doubt she’ll last two years.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/p ... 61413.html

[TheGreenAnger]

Like many major currencies, the pound has fallen sharply over the past 12 months. It has dropped from as high as 1.40 against the dollar in the middle of 2021 to 1.15 <<1.1403 today>>, fractionally above its March 2020 pandemic lows.

Other than briefly in the mid-1980s, it’s never been weaker. Indeed, after a year of trending lower, various sentiment and technical models, not surprisingly, suggest the downside to the pound is now limited.

For contrarian traders, therefore, that’s a signal that now is the time to start building long positions in the pound. The argument is that sentiment is so widely bearish that all the bad news is in the price and the currency is notably oversold.

While generally a rewarding way to approach markets, every once in a while those types of contrarian bets fail. In particular, they typically fail when the macro theme driving the markets is unusually strong, compelling and overwhelming. This is probably one of those times.

The US economy looks destined for recession in 2023. The debate now occurring among many in markets is whether the recession will be mild or severe. In the mild camp are those who cite limited western economic imbalances. Driving the concerns of those worrying about a severe recession are the expected future high levels of interest rates and their impact upon a corporate sector with large shares of zombie companies kept alive only by the low cost of debt.

Either way, recessions lead to a sharp tightening of liquidity, which is something that is about to be accentuated by the US Federal Reserve’s quantitative tightening programme, the unwinding of its great asset buying spree to support the economy and markets. From this month, the Fed’s planned reduction of its balance sheet doubles to $95bn a month from initial levels in June. That, coupled with rising interest rates, drains liquidity from global markets.

In the good times, when liquidity is abundant, economies can run significant economic imbalances. Structural balance sheet factors (whether households, corporates or governments) are rarely of interest to market participants when the good times are rolling. In the downturns, though, they are (almost) all that counts.

Unfortunately for the UK economy (and its incoming prime minister), Britain is the worst offender, among the major western economies, in terms of imbalances.

One good catch-all measure for imbalances is the current account balance — effectively an aggregator of the fiscal, household and corporate sector imbalances. The UK is now (on the latest data) running a deficit equivalent to 8 per cent of gross domestic product. While some question marks exist about the accuracy of the first-quarter data, the trend of the past two years is clear. The country is living, as the former Bank of England governor Mark Carney put it, on the “kindness of strangers”. Going into the financial crisis, that imbalance caused the UK economy problems when it was 3.5 per cent of GDP. In the run-up to the early 1990s recession, it reached about 4.5 per cent of GDP.

Adding to the woes, productivity growth (a measure of true wealth creation) has all but flatlined since 2010, implying the UK economy is not creating much new sustainable income with which to pay its bills.

That poor productivity trend reflects the rise of zombie companies and the over-financialisation of the British economy, as well as the lack of capital investment. In effect, though, it means that much of the economic growth in the past 12 years has been somewhat illusory. That is, either built on more debt, less savings and/or a wealth effect from rising asset prices.

Further adding to its challenges, the country also has a central bank that seems reluctant to embrace the need for higher UK rates (and thereby defend the currency level). And if Liz Truss implements promised tax cuts as prime minister, then imbalances will surely grow.

As such, and given that impending US and therefore global recession in 2023, the dollar’s rapid rise against sterling looks set to continue, with the pound heading for parity against the dollar (and perhaps beyond) over the next six to 12 months. If that is correct, then one hedge (in a world lacking in obvious means of hedging) is to buy insurance against the risk of loss on UK government debt, ie five- and 10-year credit default swap instruments.

At a time of large current imbalances and tight liquidity it becomes essential to “live within your means”. Market worries over the UK will rise as its imbalances increase. The kindness of strangers can only be stretched so far.

https://www.ft.com/content/72e286b4-def ... c1eb17584b

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

More importantly, the Tories were elected on a promise to fix the Current Account Balance, and it's worse than it was when they were elected (and was so before the Pandemic).
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kin ... nt-account
The UK is currently way past the peak of its Laffer Curve. This means increasing tax rates will only cause total tax revenue to decline. Tax cuts by the new PM could therefore actually increase tax revenues, but the cuts must be targeted at the average consumer and small businesses, not the rich. Historically however, this never happens.
https://capx.co/in-a-global-economy-the ... take-note/
The major emphasis of the UK government (and for that matter all Western governments) must therefore be on reducing spending.
War, inflation, green agenda, LBGTQ2SXYZ$%#, uncontrolled immigration, huge wasteful public projects (e.g. HS2), chucking money around to buy elections - all these mean reducing spending seems highly unlikely to happen.
They will, of course, continue to promise that it will.

[TheGreenAnger]

More importantly, the Tories were elected on a promise to fix the Current Account Balance, and it's worse than it was when they were elected (and was so before the Pandemic).
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kin ... nt-account
The UK is currently way past the peak of its Laffer Curve. This means increasing tax rates will only cause total tax revenue to decline. Tax cuts by the new PM could therefore actually increase tax revenues, but the cuts must be targeted at the average consumer and small businesses, not the rich. Historically however, this never happens.
https://capx.co/in-a-global-economy-the ... take-note/
The major emphasis of the UK government (and for that matter all Western governments) must therefore be on reducing spending.
War, inflation, green agenda, LBGTQ2SXYZ$%#, uncontrolled immigration, huge wasteful public projects (e.g. HS2), chucking money around to buy elections - all these mean reducing spending seems highly unlikely to happen.
They will, of course, continue to promise that it will.

+1

But as a small businessman I would agree wouldn't I.

[G-CPTN]

Field's first wife was former investment banker Michele Acton; they married in 1994. They divorced in 2006, Field having had an extra-marital affair in 2004–2005 with Liz Truss, who was also married; the Conservative Party had appointed him as her political mentor at the time.

However, unlike his wife, who became a councillor for Eltham South in 2006, he was unsuccessful.
That same year, the couple went through a tricky period when details of an affair between Ms Truss and her fellow Conservative Mark Field came to light.
This later led to an attempt by local party members to oust her when she was selected as the candidate for the South West Norfolk constituency.
At the time, Ms Truss said: "I am really sorry about that [affair]. It's a mistake I made and as far as me and my husband are concerned, it's water under the bridge."
Reflecting on the incident in 2019, she said: "It was a baptism of fire.
"And, actually, even though it was a really unpleasant thing to go through, it made me stronger afterwards because I had to have that fight."
Asked if it made her marriage stronger she replied: "I think that's a separate thing. But I am really happily married."

[compo]

[TheGreenAnger]

Bring back Carol Vorderman and I would happily switch the object in that sentence.