Matters little who gets the top job... what remains is a set of problems they are not ideologically prepared to address.
The frog boiling will continue.
The elder will vote conservative because they remember what it was like under Labour.
1997 - 2010?
I rememberer it and on the whole it was MUCH better than 1979 - 1997 and 2010 to now thanks.
Interesting to see how the 'magic money tree' is now refered to on here as though it was part of economic orthodoxy. Some of these young uns so easily taken in by DM Tory ideology, and they support Labour!
And these are the more politically savvy people. You can see why it goes so badly with the arguably less interested/more gullible average voter.
I read an interesting article in last month's Economist yesterday..
In the decade from 1997 to the financial crash, UK productivity was second only to the US amongst the G20 nations.
In the subsequent decade, the UK comes bottom of that list. (although we are projected to climb above Russia by the end of 2023).
Relatively low productivity arises from a failure to invest due to the availability of cheap labour. It's a systemic problem not one of laziness. Capital has been pouring into the property market, however, it's easier to be a rent-seeker than a producer. Have any of the candidates mentioned the housing crisis? Thought not.
Interesting to see how the ‘magic money tree’ is now refered to on here as though it was part of economic orthodoxy.
I can't be sure what your point is here - do you think there is such a thing as a magic money tree, or not?
Nope, don't believe in father christmas either.
Where do you think money comes from then? What do you think money actually is?
I think this is the point in the election process where is gets to be interesting for an outside observer (well, are any of us outside observers? - One of these plonkers is going to be PM, we just don't get any say). Tactical games will make all the difference here on in. If you are anti Truss and Badenoch (the more I read about her, the more I despise her) and currently voting Sunak, do you switch to Mordaunt? Or do you role the dice and switch to Bedernoch thinking if she gets into the last 2 your man would easily win in the members vote.
I think it was fourth form Economics class - our teacher said that a useful way to think about money is that is is not a thing that exists in its own right but a useful scale by which to measure the value of other things compared to each other. A portable version of barter that has been extended. So you don't create wealth you just change the value of things compared to other things.
There is totally a magic money tree.
Have you ever taken out a mortgage? Borrowed money to buy a car, or a bike? That money came directly from the magic money tree. It didn't exist before you asked for it, and as soon as you signed the papers - bang! It was magicked into existence. And that is how all money is created - just by asking for it and promising to pay it back.
another -1 vote for Penny M, Tobias Ellwood has had the whip removed for not turning up to vote in the confidence motion.
There is totally a magic money tree.
The tories have a magic money forest. Although they will sell it off cheap as with most other assets and then pay over the top for a small portion back.
The elder will vote conservative because they remember what it was like under Labour.
Should they ever get in again the graph will repeat itself as the young get older.
The young will eventually pay for the Labour magic money tree, while the elder may benefit but won’t have to pay the price.
A reminder that the Tories doubled the National Debt, in the decade BEFORE Covid.
This magic money tree?
'Where do you think money comes from then?' It's printed for the exchange of use-values and Keynes (no socialist) argues that printing money and Govt Exp should be against the trend of the markets and not behave like a Micawberish household economy. No magic involved at all.
It’s worth reading this thread
"If the government could just create money without limit it would soon be worthless."
argues that printing money and Govt Exp should be against the trend of the markets
spend in the bad times and save in the good?
'spend in the bad times and save in the good?' Exactly.
Tobias Ellwood has had the whip removed for not turning up to vote in the confidence motion.
Nice to see them acting quicker against MPs stuck in Moldova than against those accused of sexual assualt.
spend in the bad times and save in the good?
Yes. The past 12 years have proved that you can't cut your way to a recovery. But it's also important to direct that spending to the right place - giving all the money to the rich achieves nothing as 'trickle-down' is not a thing.
Nice to see them acting quicker against MPs stuck in Moldova than against those accused of sexual assualt.
It all depends if Boris regards you as 'one of us' or not.
I expect that we'll be see a lot more score-settling from the man presently masquerading as PM as he inexplicably continues in this weird pime ministerial theme park ride he's got going on at the moment
There has been a systemic failure in the UK and western economies to ensure that QE or the extra money is used to best effect. Rather than invest in people or new technology, big businesses simply used cheap money to finance share buy-backs thus reducing the number of traded shares, increasing profits per share and thus increasing dividends, bonuses and remuneration of executives rather than improve volume or productivity. Cheap money meant those existing property owners could leverage their wealth to buy more property, thus fuelling house price increases. Add in the billions used to fund useless PPE from their mates, lackadaisical response to fraud and tax avoidance and this government can hardly call themselves economically responsible. Ironically, just as we enter a recession, a large scale social housing building programme could be a sensible use of money - but as they’re not likely to be of benefit to Tory voters, then there’s little chance of it happening.
Apparently Elwood’s whip withdrawal is tactical as he is a Maudant supporter, so it helps Truss.
Can I recommend "The Deficit Myth" by Stephanie Kelton as a relevant read to some of the comments?
Topics not being discussed adequately - anthropomorphic climate change, housing, disparity between rich and poor.
I'm also finding some of the topics being discussed toe-curling as driven by gammons, such as trans issues. What is wrong with being woke? It's laudable?!
Democracy is on its death bed.
Trickle down is all they'rer offering, Tory and Labour...'get economy back on track, take a pay cut, don't strike, jam tomorrow.' The only one who's actually experienced trickle down is M Hancock.
Another comment about Elwood having whip withdrawn...whip's office made no attempt to pair him with an opposition MP so it's clear retaliation for his perceived 'disloyalty' - and it's one less vote for Mordaunt which might suggest she isn't johnson's preferred candidate.
Can I recommend “The Deficit Myth” by Stephanie Kelton as a relevant read to some of the comments?
Everyone should read it with even a remote interest in economics.
It was not the first but definitely the most accessible books on MMT.
And yes people are banding printing money and Q/E around without even a basic understanding of government finances.
It's not their fault, they've assumed it be a certain way for years. So did I until about 5 years ago.
But printing money is a nonsense that tends to be chucked around by right-wingers like John Redwood.
They don't understand that their own government signed off 400billion of spending to save the economy. Funded in theory by Q/E - which is not necessary to pay for things. But Q/E helps it look like there's a balance sheet at play. But it's balls. The spending happens first - bond issuance and subsequent buy back via Q/E is not needed.
Boris has a graded list of scores to settle, with presumably Rishi pretty much at the summit, so is this meant to tell us that he thinks that Truss is the only one with a hope of beating him?
she isn’t johnson’s preferred candidate
Surely Truss has to get the job for Johnson's knee-trembler-in-chief to have any hope of a government position after the beginning of September. And say what you like, Boris loves a knee tremble.
and it’s one less vote for Mordaunt which might suggest she isn’t johnson’s preferred candidate.
I honestly don't think Boris gives a toss who gets the job. All that matters to him is the continued "its SOOOOO NOT FAIR!!!' persecution complex.
The whole Elwood thing is sheer malice, as you'd expect from a tragic, petty, insecure little man like Johnson
Nice to see that 'I need you to do me a favour though...' diplomacy isn't just a Trumpian thing.
Her mettle, inner steel, and clarity of purpose have been indispensable in crafting crucial decisions.
What do you mean....that is exactly the sort of phraseology you'd conjure up in your non native language......and in no way something that would be copied and pasted in from a text you'd been sent to use.
Have you ever taken out a mortgage? Borrowed money to buy a car, or a bike? That money came directly from the magic money tree. It didn’t exist before you asked for it, and as soon as you signed the papers – bang! It was magicked into existence. And that is how all money is created – just by asking for it and promising to pay it back.
completely incorrect. At some level of money supply its arguable that there is more money moving around, but your +£10,000 on your current account has a matching -£10,000 on your loan account. Nothing has been "created". if your current account is with a different bank to your loan, the loaning bank transfers the money (netted, at the end of the day) to the current account bank, and they're only able to do this if they have cash in reserve provided by savers (in addition, they're not allowed to loan out all the money that the savers have deposited).
if the retail bank was really a magic money tree then they would all just print a limitless amount of money, be infinately rich and never go bankrupt. none of these things are true
giving all the money to the rich achieves nothing
Well if you give money to those who already have plenty they will look after it by putting in the bank and keeping it nice and clean and crisp.
Give it to those who haven't got a pot to piss in and they will go out and spend it on goods and services, thereby causing it to become dirty and grubby and limp.
Well if you give money to those who already have plenty they will look after it by putting in the bank and keeping it nice and clean and crisp.
They also will probably hand some of it to the tories as well which the plebs will fail to do.
Poorer people are much more likely to spend all of any increase and on locally produced goods or services whereas the rich are more likely to save it or spend on luxury goods from overseas according to the marginal propensity to leak. To stimulate the economy reward the poor!
I think Truss will pick up most of Badenochs support moving into 2nd tomorrow. How’s she doing in polls of conservative members vs Sunak?
I think Truss will pick up most of Baenochs support moving into 2nd tomorrow
That's how I see it too, I'm pretty much convinced we're gonna have Truss as PM by the 5th Sept
That’s how I see it too, I’m pretty much convinced we’re gonna have Truss as PM by the 5th Sept
Did folk who voted for Brexit in 2016 or Tory in 2019 realise where the 'chain of events' could deposit us?
they’re only able to do this if they have cash in reserve provided by savers
If you think that banks have to take in deposits in order to lend them out, then it is you that is completely incorrect. The reserve requirement in the UK is zero. You are right about it balancing - you have £10k to spend, the bank has a £10k loan on it's books - an asset. Where did the money come from?
How’s she doing in polls of conservative members vs Sunak?
Sunak is being trounced in all combinations of the final-two polls, I believe.
I’m pretty much convinced we’re gonna have Truss as PM by the 5th Sept
Yup.
FFS.
The plus side being that surely, surely(?), Labour can beat a Truss-led Tory party at the next general election.
I put a bet on Liz Truss as next PM last September at 5/1
I thought at the time that post-brexit Britain is now so absolutely ****ed that it had a certain crushing inevitability to it. It was almost preordained to happen
The bookies may as well pay out now as its surely just a formality.
I suspect my modest winnings aren't going to be much compensation for the horror that awaits us. I look forward to gnawing my own fist off while listening to hr stumble through her acceptance speech like a malfunctioning Speak and Spell
Let's be honest with ourselves.
Prime Minister Truss is the leader we currently deserve
We are once again going to have to add the caveat 'so far....' to the title 'the worst prime minister ever'
Thats the fourth time running now
From Conservative Home (I went so you don't have to)
Here are the run-off scores from our latest Next Tory Leader survey for the top three candidates in the Parliamentary Party ballot.
–
Penny Mordaunt: 41 per cent. (Last Monday: 58 per cent.)
Rishi Sunak: 43 per cent. (Last Monday: 31 per cent.)
Don’t know: 15 per cent. (Last Monday: 13 per cent.)
(844 votes cast.)
–
Rishi Sunak: 42 per cent (Last Monday: 34 per cent.)
Liz Truss: 49 per cent. (Last Monday: 51 per cent.)
Don’t know: 9 per cent. (Last Monday: 15 per cent.)
(845 votes cast.)
–
Penny Mordaunt: 41 per cent. (Last Monday: 51 per cent.)
Liz Truss: 48 per cent. (Last Monday: 33 per cent.)
Don’t know: 11 per cent. (Last Monday: 16 per cent.)
(845 votes cast.)
I put a bet on Liz Truss as next PM last September at 5/1
I put 3 £10 bets on 8 July on the ones I thought would get to the end.
Truss 9:1
Mordaunt 6:1
Little Rishi 10:3
So i,m up if any of them win
Truss has the highest cash out of £30
Mordant is £10 cashout
Ritzi is £10.80 cashout
So looks like the bookie is worried about Liz the most !
( aren't we all)
Whilst typing that Mordant has gone down to £9.35......
Is it a cunning plan to make me cash out ?
The plus side being that surely, surely(?), Labour can beat a Truss-led Tory party at the next general election.
The negative being that they can just go on offering to be the same but a "safer pair of hands" rather than offering any kind of alternative direction.
but as they’re not likely to be of benefit to Tory voters
Well you say that but I thought Tory voters now came from all over the place and were not just The Surrey Pensioners.
Labour having the best fun with this
https://twitter.com/UKLabour/status/1549337977704402954?t=hqvT_C7_rUMmq0y4NbxPHA&s=19
I put a bet on Liz Truss as next PM last September at 5/1
I can only commend you on your farsightedness on this one
Labour having the best fun with this
That was amazing!
It's finally clicked why Truss and Rishi pulled out of the debate yesterday
Truss! Oh sweet Jesus!
What would her cabinet look like?
No doubt a shower of shitehawks and privileged miscreants, but who would it be?
(Not sure if I really want to know)
It’s finally clicked why Truss and Rishi pulled out of the debate yesterday
Conservative home were suggesting it prior to them pulling out it would be a good idea to end as apparently were lots of senior party officials.
It’s finally clicked why Truss and Rishi pulled out of the debate yesterday
Yep its an insane political position to put yourself in.
Pointing out that the last 12 years have been so bad under your parties leadership,
whilst the incumbent PM is trying to tell everyone how good it is.
You can't attack against your own party just to get the top job, its an insane own goal.
The harsh spotlight of truth they are weilding is just total bonkers.
Yep its an insane political position to put yourself in
We live in insane times.
Yep its an insane political position to put yourself in
Not necessarily. In any sane political system you’d have candidates who could talk about their own achievements in government (in this case: absolutely nothing), then articulate their vision for the next couple of years with them at the helm (the sum total of ‘vision’ in this case being economically illiterate uncosted, unfounded tax cuts)
So this isn’t a sane political system. It’s a million miles from that. This is the madhouse of Post-Brexit Britain where all political discourse has been reduced to peddling outrageous lies, but just shouting louder.
Of course this system, such as it is, having delivered King Boris will now serve us up PM Truss. It was inevitable
She’s going to have to go some to be the worst prime minister ever, but she will certainly be the thickest. She’s so dense, light bends around her
Labour having the best fun with this
…and still they fail to say what they’d do differently.
They’ve got two years to convince people, no good releasing a manifesto a couple of months before the next general election. People will have made their minds up by then.
The finger-pointing game doesn’t work.
They’ve got two years to convince people
Unless a snap election is called, which personally I think is unlikely, in which case as little as 25 days.
I totally agree that counterarguments and alternative policies to the Tories should be offered to the electorate right now.
Convincing voters to reject the Tory narrative and sign up to a fundamentally different one is very unlikely to be a quick process, it needs to begin as soon as possible.
Plus the earlier the support is established the more stable it is likely to be - people who change their minds at the last minute are just as likely to change it back.
The problem however is that the present regime in control of the Labour Party does not have an alternative vision or agenda to that of the Tories. Nor do they want to have imo.
They just want to be in government and enjoy the unique pleasures of being transported in chauffeur driven ministerial limousines as so well epitomised by Nick Clegg. And then bugger off to enjoy generously rewarded careers exploiting the connections which they established whilst in government - the revolving door is hard for any career politician to resist.
inkster
Free MemberI read an interesting article in last month’s Economist yesterday..
In the decade from 1997 to the financial crash, UK productivity was second only to the US amongst the G20 nations.
Though as ever we have to remember that what we measure as "productivity" isn't actually productivity at all. Real world productivity is incredibly hard to measure- it's not even easy to agree on what it is. So instead we have a synthetic definition which has the advantage of being easy to measure and the disadvantage of not really measuring productivity.
Which is fine, it's still a useful tool for some specific things. It only goes wrong when people try to use it as an analogue for real productivity- but that happens essentially all the time.
(the world's full of things like this. I used to work in a job whose outcomes were really hard to measure, for a company that was obsessed with metrics, so they just picked up a few things that were easy to measure and used that as our entire performance metric. None of it captured what we really did, some of it was completely out of our control, but it was easy to measure...)
Catching up on the news. Seems like we’re finally going to have a radical as PM. Solidarity Liz! ✊
https://twitter.com/cllrdavidcox/status/759747222984495104?s=21&t=iIahbMEwEs1yb_-wnTR-Sw
Yup, looks increasingly like Truss will be the next UK PM.
Is this the bottom of the barrel yet? They can’t keep getting worse can they…
I still can't quite believe that the Tories are considering putting Truss in 🤣
Saying that the membership seems to have completely lost the plot
https://twitter.com/christopherhope/status/1549372954416381952?t=VZjtfV1TdQOWteQ9m7ax5g&s=19
Is this the bottom of the barrel yet?
She's going to deliver pork barrel markets.
please let them put Boris on the vote. It’ll be an even more glorious farce.
And there's the full trump option.
PM Elizabeth 1st.. probably how she views it.
Thicker than Boris, that took some flushing out.
I actually think that the the membership are right,they did vote for him to be the pm and didn’t get a vote to remove him.
Letting the Tory mp’s decide they want a change of leader seems undemocratic well the same as letting the Membership pick the next pm.
The news ramming it down our throats of an ‘election’ that we cannot vote in also seems mad.
they’re only able to do this if they have cash in reserve provided by savers
Sorry, but that's not how modern commercial banks work.
they’re only able to do this if they have cash in reserve provided by savers
There is a reserve system between commercial banks and the BOE but nothing to do with savers.
An other note let's just say the majority of politicians and parties are simply out of ideas, and have nowhere to go other than argue about tax cuts.
Between them they've ruined the notion of how government spending works, and saddled themselves with a restrictive debate that I can barely listen to about funding public services.
Whilst we all suffer.
I predict (no real time frame) that the government of the day's hand will eventually be forced on spending due to things getting so bad.
I actually think that the the membership are right,they did vote for him to be the pm and didn’t get a vote to remove him.
Letting the Tory mp’s decide they want a change of leader seems undemocratic well the same as letting the Membership pick the next pm.
Well, I suppose there are other parties available, whoever said this was a democratic process? Yes there's some voting involved, not necessarily the same thing as democracy though...
I'm looking forward to it now, Truss as PM will be hilarious, obviously a disaster, but wouldn't that be the case with any of them?
Yep…. I don’t think the smart people are being allowed to rise to the top and we are getting the old guard who have nothing to bring to the table.
The brilliant ideas of deregulating the finance just makes me think they are gearing up for financial companies that take your money promise the earth and then go pop and they can just read you the small print. Ah you didn’t read the small print sir.
Thicker than Boris, that took some flushing out.
I don't think Boris is actually thick, just completely unsuited to any position of authority.
I predict (no real time frame) that the government of the day’s hand will eventually be forced on spending due to things getting so bad.
Ah the north will get that promised HS2 railway and the 40 hospitals shalt be built.
It’s the weird thing about his lies, there was no reason not to actually do them for real.
Based upon beatability in an election and entertainment value as a cherry on top, I hope Truss wins.
She's so busy repeating the words delivering/ delivered/ delivered that she has little time for much else hopefully.
Hopefully her utter incompetence limits the damage she causes... Though I see Northern Ireland potentially exploding. She will see that as a price worth paying though.
Actually, she is pretty dangerous, but they all are.
@rone Thanks for that easy to follow explanation of commercial banking and how government spending "creates" money.
Whether I'll remember all of it in the future is another thing.