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Here’s the thing it’s possible that Truss could spend the 40/50 billion needed to sort the crisis for utility bills.
Interesting, but even if she tabled the idea, do you really think her tory puppet masters/donors would allow it?
Heaven knows.
But it's effectively passing money to the companies so it might get a golden ticket.
It could just be the lowest teir of support too.
I don't rule anything out these days.
If Truss wins the leadership election by the margin she is expected to she will have imo significant personal authority over the direction of the party.
Would Tory Party donors continue to give their support - why not? A stable Tory government is on their favour so they are unlikely to shift their support elsewhere I would have thought.
Plus it's not just political stability and minimising the risk of a more radical alternative that might concern them, as rone points out it also about providing economic/market stability.
On the wider question of 'what then for Labour?' I would expect them to probably continue on the course which they currently embarked on - denouncing "money tree" economics and offering themselves as the party of fiscal prudence. Why would they abandoned that line of attack if the Tories were found to be gorging themselves on the fruits of the money tree?
Edit: Just to be clear I have no idea whether Truss would sort out the utilities bill crises with such a package. Unlikely I would have thought - is she giving any hints that she is thinking along those lines?
If Truss wins the leadership election by the margin she is expected to she will have imo significant personal authority over the direction of the party.
Really. Pmsl! This is a person who claimed the UK could strike a lucrative trade deal, and I quote...
"selling yorkshire tea to China"
So you think that someone who wins the leadership of the Tory Party by a very comfortable majority and simultaneously becomes UK Prime Minister has no personal authority over the direction of the party and government?
Her personal authority won't be based on what she said concerning Yorkshire tea but on her position of power as both the leader of the Tory Party and as Prime Minister.
When you have finished pissing yourself laughing perhaps you should face that harsh reality.
is she giving any hints that she is thinking along those lines?
She just u-turned on no handouts!
Pmsl
Her personal authority won’t be based on what she said concerning Yorkshire tea but on her position of power as both the leader of the Tory Party and as Prime Minister.
Which worked so well for May. The Tory leadership are hamstrung to the headbangers of the ERG and that ilk
So you think that someone who wins the leadership of the Tory Party by a very comfortable majority and simultaneously becomes UK Prime Minister has no personal authority over the direction of the party and government?
Yes. That is precisely what I think. Are you seriously trying to suggest Truss is anything more than a glove puppet?
A glove puppet to mysterious "Tory puppet masters"? Just her or all the Tory leadership candidates?
And yeah, if she beats Sunak by the margin it is suggested she will have considerable authority over the Tory Party, at least in the immediate future. Yorkshire tea doesn't come into it.
I don't think you understand. I can explain it for you but I can't understand it for you.
Well you could just explain if it's all the Tory candidates that are controlled by "Tory puppet masters" or just Liz Truss.
I'd say probably all of the front bench... To the point I don't really care whether sunak or truss wins, I don't think it really matters.
So probably all the front bench then. Since you offered an alleged comment about Yorkshire tea as proof that Truss must be controlled by Tory puppet masters I have to assume that they have all made similar comments. Out of interest what was Sunak's daft comment?
Btw you might not really care who wins, Sunak or Truss, but it probably does matter.
And to get back to the subject matter of this thread Starmer and his team probably care too. I suspect that they see Truss a more formidable opponent than Sunak. They are likely to feel that she has far more the common touch than the wealthiest man in UK politics.
And then there is the thorny issue of how to deal with her - insulting and patronising the third UK female prime minister (a tactic which might well have worked against Johnson) is unlikely to endear Starmer with the electorate, especially as Sunak's mansplaining appears to have worked heavily in Truss's favour.
Truss might yet prove to be a far greater headache for Starmer than Johnson has been, but only time will tell.
Truss might yet prove to be a far greater headache for Starmer than Johnson has been, but only time will tell.
I reckon both Truss and Sunak offer significant but different challenges to Starmer. Like Johnson Truss will probably take a populist approach. She's preaching thatcherite monetarist tough love now to keep the unhinged tory base happy but as evidenced by her recent u-turns, she'll cave in and start spending to keep people happy, and that will cut Starmer off at the knees in terms of being on the side of working people.
Sunak on the other hand directly challenges Starmer and Reeves economic prudence narrative as well as their claim to competence and seriousness. Why vote for economically austere, sensible and serious Starmer when you can get exactly the same from Sunak leading a party which actually believes in that stuff rather than one pretending to do so to win an election?
The problem for Starmer is that he's still playing on the pitch as defined by the tories, and now two different pitches at once. Until he starts defining his own approach and going on the offensive he'll contiue to look like a weak, ineffective, out of touch technocrat who cares more about not upsetting the establishment than helping working people.
The problem for Starmer is that he’s still playing on the pitch as defined by the tories, and now two different pitches at once.
Tories constantly out manoeuver Starmer. Windfall tax for example - because Starmer's pitch is constantly too small.
I reckon Truss will support the energy market one way or another and Labour won't be ready.
I can see it coming.
Centrists angered by Johnson on holiday - best place for him surely?
Anyone seen the wet fart that is Starmer?
Nothing on his Twitter feed other than Rachel Reeves going on about growth but no indication how to achieve this.
"Anyone seen the wet fart that is Starmer?"
Skid mark Starmer. Or: Sir Skid Mark.
Which has the better ring to it?
I think you might appreciate this article rone. It focuses on how the Tories always exploit crises in their favour, even those caused by their own ideology, whilst Labour tend to be on the defensive and are invariably overcautious.
It claims that Starmer's extreme caution strategy might at the very best result in Labour being in office but not in power.
Will do it just before bedtime Ernie!
Ta.
Which has the better ring to it?
Lol. Don't go there.
Lol, this thread is nothing more than a circle jerk amongst the same people.
And those people don't get why Labour are unelectable. And so continues the circle:
Lol, this thread is nothing more than a circle jerk amongst the same people
And here you are!
Feel free to break the mould and share some Labour optimism then.
(Wonder why the next PM thread is not a circle jerk?)
So according to you mattyfez Truss is incapable of governing as PM because 8 years ago she made a comment concerning how Yorkshire tea was being sold in China, which was both factually correct and by any measure quite remarkable.
And now you are claiming that Labour are apparently, quote, "unelectable".
Which I guess must mean that we are all at the neverending mercy of the "Tory puppet masters" which you mentioned earlier.
Does your tinfoil hat itch much in the heat we have been having recently?
Sky News: Gordon Brown - not Keir Starmer - played a blinder by calling for emergency cost of living measures.
https://news.sky.com/story/gordon-brown-not-keir-starmer-played-a-blinder-by-calling-for-emergency-cost-of-living-measures-12668629
"Some Labour activists must be wondering, however, why it's the ex-PM, who left the Commons in 2015, who's leading the charge on the cost of living crisis and not Sir Keir Starmer and his top team."
I reckon Starmer has got until Christmas / new year to grow a pair.
When the cost of living crisis really starts to bite it won't only be Labour supporters who will be imploring him to act, even non Labour supporters will begin to show frustration at his ineffective opposition.
You could argue that he's waiting for the leadership non election to run its course so he knows what he's up against.
You could argue that he's waiting for things to get really really bad before he comes out all guns blazing.(or at least some sort of policy to deal with the cost of living crisis)
Or you could argue that he'll be booted out by his own party before the spring. I am sure there must be many labour politicians taking notes from Mick Lynch with regards how to communicate with the electorate and an ageing Gordom Brown has just torn him a new one, saying more in a couple of minutes on Sky than Starmer has managed in two years.
Thing is about Brown, listening to him on LBC he didn't actually suggest anything to do.
Brown straddles new Labour and old Labour thinking for me. He might be charitable but he just get kept going on how he made the BoE 'independent'. But the government sets the inflation rate selects and the governer.
It was a load of nothing.
All of these people are wedded to a broken model which doesn't allow them to offer an actual solution.
I reckon Starmer has got until Christmas / new year to grow a pair.
I don't think he has that long. If he's not got his act together by early September the new incumbent will get a free hit with whatever half-arsed cost-of-living measures they come up with.
https://twitter.com/MartinSLewis/status/1556939639675654150
We are currently hurtling into something that will destroy lives on a scale which should be unthinkable in a country as wealthy as ours. The PM is on his holidays, no-one else in government is saying a word.
The initiative is there to be grasped. There is so much of our national infrastructure that is falling to pieces that we need the equivalent of the post-war Labour government to take it on. I still think that Labour and the LibDems should be working together more closely, and creating some kind of opposition consensus.
It will be the minimum possible at the last moment.
Starmer is not interested in rocking the boat - just pointing out occasionally the Tories are doing a bad job.
Thats the thing that frustrates me. If Labour can't win without shuffling to the right, why can't they see that they need to work together with the Lib Dems/Greens. etc.
I see Ed Davey is in the news alongside Martin Lewis leading the calls for action on energy prices. Total silence from Starmer and Labour. He should be on every news channel calling for urgent radical action, but instead he's as anonymous as Johnson. I hope his holiday is worth it.
24 hours later and not a single labour front bencher on the news talking about energy prices! A crisis on the scale of the pandemic and they've all gone on holiday. It's astonishing.
*Gordon Brown says energy firms unable to offer lower bills should be temporarily re-nationalised"
Good luck with that Gordon but I do appreciate you putting the boot in on Starmer.
(I mean why even temporary. Changing energy providers was sbit at the best of times.)
I mean why even temporary.
Because it is the New Labour way.......nationalise the losses, privatise the profits.
"Energy companies that cannot offer lower bills should be temporarily brought into public ownership, Gordon Brown has said"
So if it is not financially feasible for them to offer lower bills the government should do that, at a loss, until wholesale gas prices fall and the energy companies are once again able to make a profit.
The New-Labour/Neo-Liberal narrative is that governments should not make a profit from UK energy consumers, unless bizarrely it is the French government. Apparently only the hard left would argue against that.
And btw I believe that the French government has limited energy price increases to 4%, whilst in the UK it is forecast to rise 230%.
Because it is the New Labour way…….nationalise the losses, privatise the profits.
Oh yeah we're in that scenario for sure but it's still not a good reason.
And btw I believe that the French government has limited energy price increases to 4%, whilst in the UK it is forecast to rise 230%
The French government bought back more shares for EDF - is facing a bit of a shareholders court case now.
Hope they get a good kicking, financial sector has had it too good for too long at expense of everything else.
As it is a government and in reality can do what wants could it not just tell ofgem to get lost for a bit and set the price cap to say £1200 a year (abusing what the price cap was for but hey ho). The energy companies would let need to claim back losses from government which could be reviewed/paid as necessary
Everyone is then instantly protected, while any hardship is temporarily felt by energy companies.
“Energy companies that cannot offer lower bills should be temporarily brought into public ownership, Gordon Brown has said”
He's said that it's something that should be considered as last resort; after both loans and/or some other form of financing don't work.
He’s said that it’s something that should be considered as last resort; after both loans and/or some other form of financing don’t work.
Yeah, doesn't suprise me anything to prop their failing markets.
Classical economics really has a lot to answer for.
https://twitter.com/DPJHodges/status/1557616619635068928?s=20&t=l3MzQxs025g75pmbRRwUlQ
If the right-wing commentators agree - this is very hard for Starmer Island to dodge.
https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1557664459178524672?s=20&t=WGwLb-IlbZPmYGJiDLswIQ
Holy smoke - Green bonds ?
https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1558031441400942593?s=20&t=qNXK-ntPnwLNksvZKz_gDA
An effective £46 off a 4200 energy bill for pre-payers.
Jesus H Christ.
An unfair premium paid by those on the lowest incomes should be removed. Alone it won’t be nearly enough, much more help is needed and no doubt will be proposed. But that this policy even needs proposing shows how messed things are right now. We need the Tories out. This is a good policy. It won’t be the last word on energy from Labour. And you know that. Why knee jerk react to any policy Labour propose? This one is a no brainer that everyone should support, unless they think the worst off somehow deserve to pay more.
EDIT: Here’s a key line in that short and direct tweet…
This is part of our energy package to tackle the cost of living crisis.
An unfair premium paid by those on the lowest incomes should be removed. Alone it won’t be nearly enough, much more help is needed and no doubt will be proposed.
Agreed, and this something from 2016 I believe and do understand there is more to come but it doesn't bode well as your opening gambit.
And it's not nearly enough.
Why knee jerk react to any policy Labour propose?
Because it's a dint and not good enough. I will not knee jerk when I see something substantial.
My argument is largely built around not pushing back hard enough against the Tories. Time and time again we see these tidbits. Then as witht the windfall the Tories usurp.
I'm afraid where we are economically is simply go big or go home.