The political tectonic plates are shifting. After last night's 1922 Committee hearing at which Truss addressed her backbench MPs the kindest word used about her appearance was “deluded”. I think Tory MPs, like so many others, have had enough of a leader who could actually open not one but two comments at Prime Minister's Questions earlier in the day with the phrase “I am genuinely unclear”. There was no dissent. She very obviously is.
If that was not the case I would be worried about a situation where financial markets would appear to be bringing a prime minister down. I had hoped we were past that era. I do, however, think appearances are deceptive in this case. The markets are not bringing Truss down. It is her own failure to explain, reinforced by that of her Chancellor, that has created this mayhem.
In particular, remember that there was no obligation on Truss to have her Chancellor deliver a non-budget days after she got to office. She could have made the necessary statement on energy costs and said it would be matched by QE and markets might have grumbled a bit, but then got on with life until a proper budget could be delivered later.
She did not do that. Instead, she had Kwarteng deliver a half-cocked and deeply ill thought through mini-budget that made massive and unnecessary spending commitments whilst giving no hint on funding. That was her mistake. Nothing done since then has remedied the errors made. The 45p tax rate was sacrificed at serious political cost. But it was not the focus of financial concern. The absence of a plan was, and we are still awaiting that.
So, what happens next? We could remain the laughing stock of the world as the first developed nation that has made a serious attempt to implode within living memory. We could also continue as the biggest potential contagion risk in world markets. We might just watch interest rates rise by the day. Or Tory MPs might being her down. No one else can.
There are two ways to achieve that last goal. Tory MPs could, relatively easily, depose Truss as leader by calling for another Tory leadership ballot, although hopefully with revised rules. However, that solves little because Rishi Sunak, as her likely heir, is as crazy as Truss in many ways and he does not break the commitment to Brexit that lies at the very heart of the ruin of the Tories.
Alternatively, forty Tories could join with the Opposition to vote Truss down in a vote of no confidence. This could follow the budget now scheduled for 31 October. That would require a general election in which the Tories would be all but eliminated on the basis of current polling, but some may think this the only way of securing any chance of long term survival for their party. It is now thought this is possible. Tory MPs know that the game is over for them. If they could not install a new leader before that election it would be even worse.
What do I think will happen? I suspect that Truss will be gone well before Christmas. I doubt that even the Tories can suffer her for any longer than that. I also think an election likely, although the precise route to it is as yet unclear. After yesterday, where the storm was as much political as financial, I cannot see any other real option for them, and believe sufficient will realise that.
And then? What will a profoundly neoliberal Labour government with a landslide majority do? That is a question for another post.
What we might safely assume is that it could plan for ten years in office. It would take at least that long for the Tories to regroup, not least because there is no obvious leader in waiting with the slightest chance of winning public confidence.
The void that is left on the political right in that case is what might be most worrying. Farage is always looming. Worry.
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Even Baldrick could have come up with a better plan than Truss.
What a disaster.
The disaster budget, written by the chancellor but inspired by so called Think Tanks at Tufton Street, has shown the hallmark disregard for real world consequences that these wreckers always have.
When will the BBC – and other broadcasters – start questioning the dark money funding of these libertarian groups, and their credentials for pontificating on economic masters as if they were sensible?
I did, live on Radio 2, two weeks ago
Good! I hope that the MSM journos and presenters follow suit. Asap.
Well done, Richard. The clip you posted from LBC shows the first time – your good self apart – that the funding of the IEA is getting scrutiny, indeed a roasting, in what is close to the MSM. And your unwavering onslaught on the bogus neo-liberal shibboleths of the day, is cutting through elsewhere – even in the usually limp, so-called Guardian – witness Rafael Behr’s bruising piece yesterday. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/12/liz-truss-populist-brexit-mandate-economic
However, on Tory MPs voting for an election….mmmm. Don’t see that tribe breaking the self-serving habits of a political lifetime. I keep remembering that line in Frederic Raphael’s lovely script for the film “Nothing But The Best” – “They’d rather ride two to a horse than give up hunting.” The notion that many are, instead, busy providing for their post-Westminster futures when they will have, as Belloc put it, “An hour or two to spend/At luncheon with a City friend” seems much more likely. It’s ironic that they’ll find the City somewhat changed – won’t they?
I was thinking of writing a political thriller: in it an un-named country leaves a large-economic grouping on the basis of fantasical claims, a congenital liar becomes its leader, it then faces a global pandemic where through inaction lots of people die, the congenital liar gets found out and deposed to be replaced by somebody best characterised as a weather vane (& with all the mental capacity of a weather vane) who in turn, within weeks of assuming office (having been voted in by party members) has her own MPs plotting against her – because they never wanted her in the first place. Her finance minister is a simpleton, the central bank is out of control and also controlled by a simpleton. And they all think that a country’s finances run like those of a corner shop. & lots of people in the country still like the congenital liar and think he did “a good job”.
I thought of running it past Armando Iannucci – but it seems a bit fantastical. What do you think?
🙂
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry Mike…..
The truth is stranger than fiction!
I’d say go for it, Mike. After all, Iannucci managed to turn The Death of Stalin into a comedy, although I’d put money on it that he’s already thinking about the same plot as you and is probably just waiting to see how it finally pans out (as indeed is the rest of planet).
I think Truss will go, but a General Election? Don’t think so. The Tories will elect a new leader, and carry on as before. Well, maybe not exactly as before, but the changes will purely be designed to try to save their skins.
I am sure most Tories will want to hang on as long as possible, in the vague hope that somehow things turn in their favour.
But there must be a lot of backbench MPs in marginal constituencies who must surely be busy networking to find themselves a cosy well-paid job after they are voted out. Once enough of them have got themselves a parachute it is just a matter of when they choose to pull the cord. As you say, 40 Conservatives supporting the Opposition in a no-confidence vote currently seems unlikely, but 80 abstaining is much less so.
Unfortunately, that rings true. They won’t be swayed by the chaos and suffering caused by Truss’s hopeless government, despite their professed patriotism (ha!), but by saving their own skin.
Perhaps I should ask my own tory MP who is always portayed standing in front of the union flag, whether he’ll be prepared to vote with the opposition on a no-confidence motion to save the country from this disastrous government?
He’s a backbencher, so not part of the government after all. Any bets on what his reply will be?
Torsten Bell told the Treasury Select Committee this week that the markets needed to hear that the mini-budget was being reversed in toto. Kwarteng can’t do that, but I think Truss can. And the weird bit is that I don’t think she will.
She is impervious to convention and, like all Brexiters, is resistant to inconvenient facts. I am certain she still thinks the Budget will be efficacious, and will be tolerated if not welcomed by the public once they see their own tax cuts. But the markets don’t agree with her, so it would be comfortably in her nature to say right, let’s have an election, and sort this out democratically. It would avoid an embarrassing contretemps with the OBR, it would be the moron’s version of accountability that has got us into this mess to which she subscribes, and it would be the midget stateswoman’s answer to the Bank of England.
Rather than resign, she will face the voters! Betcha.
So a few hours later I am proven wrong on all points. Hey ho.
Liz Truss was not a Brexiteer. She campaigned and voted to Remain. She became a Brexiteer when it was expedient to do so. Says it all, really.
Never underestimate what our very right-wing media can do for the Tory party.
In 1990 Tory MPs sacked Margaret Thatcher, a much bigger favourite of their Membership than Liz Truss.
They replaced her with John Major, who despite having been Chancellor was relatively unknown to the British public.
Major took over in the aftermath of the Poll Tax riots and during yet another recession caused by the incompetence and ideological dishonesty of the Tory party.
Although his not being Thatcher was a major relief to most British voters Major’s only Political virtue was his appearance of being a normal Human being.
Having staved it off for as long as possible the Tories, still well behind in the opinion polls, were finally forced to call a General Election in 1992.
John Major was portrayed by the media as honest John, man-of-the-people and Neil Kinnock was relentlessly monstered, at about level 7 on a scale where the anti-Corbyn campaign scored a 9.
We all know what happened next.
Would John Major have been elected by Tory members though? Had it gone to the membership back then, Thatcher would have won assuming she would have been in the final two.
It’s the Tory membership that now pick the leader after the MP’s have whittled it gown to the final two. I seriously doubt that Truss would have won had it just been a vote of Tory MP’s.
The Tory membership is to the right of Atilla the Hun. Nigel Farage would probably win their vote with ease. He’s the kind of charlatan opportunist the Tories like.
The 1922 committee can make up the rules as it goes along. If replacing Truss with an MPs coup is what they think is needed. then it will happen.
If there is an unknown John Major type buried somewhere within the Tory cabinet or back benches, Murdoch, the Mail and the Telegraph have probably got the encomium already written.
That can’t all be useless, greedy, blood-suckers can they?
Yes….
Who would be in the frame to lead the party into an election? Boris Johnson???
Sunak
I can’t see anyone else
Prince Andrew, considered to be less toxic under the circumstances.
Considering the spinelessness of the average Tory MP coupled with their rat like instinct for self preservation I think it unlikely they will vote themselves out of office. They may well get rid of Truss. If they were being sensible they would elect a personable middle of the road character like Ben Wallace to steady the ship and at least keep them from complete annihilation at the next election. Considering the current character of the parliamentary party I am doubtful if that is possible.
I wish that I could agree with this, but since 2010 I’ve developed something of a 1000 yard stare (as in Don McCullins’s famous photo of a Vietnam war GI) about British politics.
Look – from Cameron onwards, these people should not even be in politics.
But they are.
And it is money and the vested interests of money that put them there and might well keep there whether we like it or not.
The world is not a rational place. It is the cunning of unreason that dominates our lives at the moment – dominated by vested self-interests engorged by the profits from cod liberal low taxation and regulation we’ve let them have and pulling the strings.
I want to be wrong BTW………………………
I hope you are….
Yep – me too!!
I suspect if they were to run another leadership contest, the membership would end up choosing another hard-right idiot, whomever seems to annoy the left the most that week. Competence won’t come into it.
They will doubtless avoid a general election at all costs, even if they have to try to force through legislation to make an election impossible.
Then they could also change their own rules to make it possible to elect Johnson again, and the madness will resume.
In normal times an election would soon follow, but today’s tories are very far from democrats.
I think it very, very likely that they will want to ensure there is only one candidate by the final stage, like May
Considering the prime minister does not have to be a member of parliament, the neo-liberal way is to out source the job.
Apparently Parliament is set to debate the petition: “Call an immediate general election to end the chaos of the current government”, on 17 October 2022. https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/619781
On the world at on today Nigel Lawson pointed out that Blair had a 30% lead at the worst period of the Major government, and that such a lead won’t last – not that he said anything good but this fact was important. Remember that headline lead in the polls translated into a 7% swing and delierbe the 1997 Labour landslide. Such a swing in the near future will only deliver a hung parliament and it would need a full 12% for Labor to get a majority. We have to get it through to Starmer that Labour will not do it alone – and that the should be planning for that eventuality now.
Patrick Minford seems to agree with you Richard – at least on on the BoE! Whatever next?
“It can readily and effectively quell the turmoil by market intervention; buying long gilts in large amounts (known as Quantitative Easing or QE).
“We saw this at work two weeks ago when the pension problem surfaced. Gilt long rates fell nearly 100 basis points (1 percent) on that intervention. We also saw it at work with the Covid crisis when huge gilt sales were made by the Treasury to fund the costs, and Bank QE greatly helped the market to absorb these sales.”
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1682409/Liz-Truss-Patrick-Minford-economic-crash-Bank-of-England-Andrew-Bailey-update
Bizarre…..
Meaning of Neoliberalism…
“Neoliberalism is contemporarily used to refer to market-oriented reform policies such as “eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers” and reducing, especially through privatization and austerity, state influence in the economy.”
Do you really believe that a Starmer government could be described as ‘profoundly Neoliberal’?
Yes
New Labour was