7 ms·

Can anyone explain why??

andrea76 4y ago
It's politics, my dear.
SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago
> why? "How did you go bankrupt?" "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly." - Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises UK politics became intellectually bankrupt in 2016. Promises no longer needed to have a connection to reality. Isolationism could be sold as "pro-growth" etc. The disconnect has been growing gradually. The voters loved the pie-in-the-sky promises. So each leader's promises were more unrealistic than the last. They selected for ever more ideological belief, over pragmatism and admitting the downsides of choices. But who would be holding the can when the bill came due? The responses that "She was terrible" are not wrong, but you have to also ask why such a charmless, incompetent-and-unaware-of-it character came to be in power. This is the culmination of the Brexit ideology, make no mistake. This is the "Suddenly" phase.
bowsamic 4y ago
Because she caused fast, massive damage to the UK economy with her economic plan on which she was already advised was untenable even during her leadership race with Rishi. Yesterday there was a vote on banning fracking with a three-line whip on Tory MPs to vote no, but which many Tory MPs are very much for, which was very controversial, with bullying and forced voting using physical means (physically pushing the MPs into the side to vote no by force). Suella Braverman yesterday also resigned as Home Secretary leaving a letter calling out the UK government as basically incompetent...
- tialaramex 4y ago
  The Fracking thing was just simple tactical incompetence and thus definitive proof Liz wasn't up to the job. I think this might cause some second thoughts, at first for Tories, about whether it's actually a good idea to ask their membership who should be Prime Minister. Many of these MPs knew Liz wasn't fit for this post from the outset, but their own party's rules said they should allow ordinary members (a few thousand people who are disproportionately old, white and male IIRC) to decide from the best two put forward by MPs. The members, in effect, picked the woman who said the things they wanted to hear, even if those things were nonsense. If those members were your general electorate, then arguably the country gets what it deserved - but they're not, they're just the party members. If you thought US party primaries were a bad idea, well, yeah, that.
mcv 4y ago
She was terrible. She introduced a dramatic tax cut for the rich, which immediately crashed exchange rates and the stock market, and was even criticised by the rich it was meant to benefit.
- edmcnulty101 4y ago
  Gotcha. Thanks. Glad she'll go down in history as one of the worst PM's in history.
- cloutchaser 4y ago
  2/3 tax cuts she suggested were actually supported by labour previously. I think the mistake is more a massive communications and timing issue. She really should have announced these cuts in a staggered way, with better communication for the markets. It would have been fine. But she really screwed up on getting the political communication right.
  - mytailorisrich 4y ago
    No funding and incomprehensible timing of abolishing the 45p rate were IMO fatal for the markets and public opinion. worryingly it also seems that nothing was discussed with the BoE beforehand. But keeping the corporation tax at 19% was the right move, IMO.
  - actionablefiber 4y ago
    That 1/3 makes a pretty huge difference... And more importantly she was announcing these policies at an exact time when the Bank of England was trying to raise interest rates and sell bonds to fight inflation. So you have the government and the central bank pursuing contradictory goals: one trying to jumpstart consumption by borrowing and spending and the other trying to cool it by raising the cost of borrowing and reducing spending. This lead to a lot of wasted time, money and efforts and really destroyed the government's credibility.
    - neilwilson 4y ago
      It wasn't a contradictory goal. The sect Truss belongs to considers that aggregate demand is solely a matter for the central bank to sort out, and that it has to respond to the fiscal setting of the government. Not the other way around. This is enshrined in law at s11 of the Bank of England Act 1998. "In relation to monetary policy, the objectives of the Bank of England shall be— (a)to maintain price stability, and (b)subject to that, to support the economic policy of Her Majesty’s Government, including its objectives for growth and employment."
motogpjimbo 4y ago
She and her chancellor announced a series of tax cuts at a time when inflation is running at 10%. Even worse, they sidestepped the usual processes on fiscal responsibility and declined to explain how the tax cuts would be funded. The bonds market then panicked as a result, with the Bank of England having to step in and bail the market out to prevent gilts from entering a death spiral, which would have bankrupted pension funds. Since then, she's been a dead woman walking.
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
  Not all the tax cuts announced were bad or badly received. Especially, I think that the cancellation of the rise in corporation tax was very welcome and in fact economists now say that the rise to 25% will make the recession deeper and longer (unsurprisingly, frankly). The issue was that the other cuts, especially abolishing 45p income tax rate but frankly also the decrease of the basic rate, were not discussed, not funded (which is what spooked the markets since we already borrowed and spent like crazy during Covid), and frankly everyone agrees that they were useless. Of course abolishing the 45p rate now was also extremely bad symbolically (though in fairness it only exists since 2010-2012). I think the plan has shifted from "pro-growth, nevermind inflation" to "a good recession will solve inflation". And a 'good recession' along with higher interest rates, the incoming budget spending cuts, and maybe tax increases is also going to be quite painful for the people.
  - paganel 4y ago
    > Not all the tax cuts announced were bad or badly welcomed. Not a tax cut per se, but I'm curious what will happen with the energy bill support scheme? That seemed like a good thing to implement, one for which Truss and her cabinet got a lot of critics from a certain part of the media. Granted, I'm not from Britain so maybe I'm reading the room wrong and that support scheme was, in fact, not liked by everyone involved, I wouldn't know.
    - mytailorisrich 4y ago
      Frankly, this energy support scheme is a blank cheque to the energy companies. It guarantees that the energy companies will fully profit from high energy prices, all in effect funded by the taxpayer, and Truss also rejected any windfall taxes on energy companies. I think it makes sense to limit it in its current form to this winter instead of 2 years (which is the latest status). It'll still be possible to reassess the situation next year and perhaps come up with a more targeted scheme if needed. Edit in response to reply: Truss had formally said in Parliament that there would be no additional taxes on energy companies when the £2500 price cap scheme was announced. The current windfall tax was implemented by Boris Johnson and considering it taxes energy companies at 25% instead of the normal 19% when the plan was, and again is, to tax all businesses at 25%, it's more spin than anything else.
samwillis 4y ago
A few things: Her “mini budget” immediately crashed the economy, after she ignored all the advice saying it was a bad idea and would crash the economy. Her party, the Conservatives, are in such a divided and shambolic state there is no one in the party who can command the confidence of the majority.
gadders 4y ago
On top of all the economics stuff, the final choice for Tory Leader is voted on by the Conservative party membership, who tend to be more right-wing than the soft righ, Davos-man Tory MPs. The Tory MPs resent this.
cameronh90 4y ago
Every day that politics has been operating since she took office has been one crisis after another. The first disaster was the mini budget that everyone pointed out and how poorly it was handled, but the nail in the coffin was the chaos in parliament yesterday. In short, the opposition called a vote on fracking, which is supported by Truss' "pro growth" government, but was opposed in the conservative manifesto. The government declared that anyone who voted against the government (and for what they promised to their constituents when they were elected) would be kicked out of the party. MPs who then tried to vote against the government were reportedly manhandled and assaulted to force them to vote with the government. There is a whole load of other chaos that happened in the last 24hrs that was just ultimately impossible to recover from. I think the last 24hr has just proved even to her final supporters that she is completely incapable of leading a government.
- edmcnulty101 4y ago
  "Assaulted!" God damn British politics is crazy! The need to put a UFC octagon in Parliament.
  - cameronh90 4y ago
    This is very not-typical and the details are still in flux. That being said, towards the end of a long run of a party in power, things do tend to get rather bumpy. It's clearly time for a general election and end of the Conservative tenure in government.
- hardlianotion 4y ago
  To be honest, I think that the fracking debacle only moved her demise forward by a weekend.

It's politics, my dear.

> why? "How did you go bankrupt?" "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly." - Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises UK politics became intellectually bankrupt in 2016. Promises no longer needed to have a connection to reality. Isolationism could be sold as "pro-growth" etc. The disconnect has been growing gradually. The voters loved the pie-in-the-sky promises. So each leader's promises were more unrealistic than the last. They selected for ever more ideological belief, over pragmatism and admitting the downsides of choices. But who would be holding the can when the bill came due? The responses that "She was terrible" are not wrong, but you have to also ask why such a charmless, incompetent-and-unaware-of-it character came to be in power. This is the culmination of the Brexit ideology, make no mistake. This is the "Suddenly" phase.

bowsamic 4y ago

Because she caused fast, massive damage to the UK economy with her economic plan on which she was already advised was untenable even during her leadership race with Rishi. Yesterday there was a vote on banning fracking with a three-line whip on Tory MPs to vote no, but which many Tory MPs are very much for, which was very controversial, with bullying and forced voting using physical means (physically pushing the MPs into the side to vote no by force). Suella Braverman yesterday also resigned as Home Secretary leaving a letter calling out the UK government as basically incompetent...

tialaramex 4y ago
The Fracking thing was just simple tactical incompetence and thus definitive proof Liz wasn't up to the job. I think this might cause some second thoughts, at first for Tories, about whether it's actually a good idea to ask their membership who should be Prime Minister. Many of these MPs knew Liz wasn't fit for this post from the outset, but their own party's rules said they should allow ordinary members (a few thousand people who are disproportionately old, white and male IIRC) to decide from the best two put forward by MPs. The members, in effect, picked the woman who said the things they wanted to hear, even if those things were nonsense. If those members were your general electorate, then arguably the country gets what it deserved - but they're not, they're just the party members. If you thought US party primaries were a bad idea, well, yeah, that.

mcv 4y ago

She was terrible. She introduced a dramatic tax cut for the rich, which immediately crashed exchange rates and the stock market, and was even criticised by the rich it was meant to benefit.

edmcnulty101 4y ago
Gotcha. Thanks. Glad she'll go down in history as one of the worst PM's in history.
cloutchaser 4y ago
2/3 tax cuts she suggested were actually supported by labour previously. I think the mistake is more a massive communications and timing issue. She really should have announced these cuts in a staggered way, with better communication for the markets. It would have been fine. But she really screwed up on getting the political communication right.
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
  No funding and incomprehensible timing of abolishing the 45p rate were IMO fatal for the markets and public opinion. worryingly it also seems that nothing was discussed with the BoE beforehand. But keeping the corporation tax at 19% was the right move, IMO.
- actionablefiber 4y ago
  That 1/3 makes a pretty huge difference... And more importantly she was announcing these policies at an exact time when the Bank of England was trying to raise interest rates and sell bonds to fight inflation. So you have the government and the central bank pursuing contradictory goals: one trying to jumpstart consumption by borrowing and spending and the other trying to cool it by raising the cost of borrowing and reducing spending. This lead to a lot of wasted time, money and efforts and really destroyed the government's credibility.
  - neilwilson 4y ago
    It wasn't a contradictory goal. The sect Truss belongs to considers that aggregate demand is solely a matter for the central bank to sort out, and that it has to respond to the fiscal setting of the government. Not the other way around. This is enshrined in law at s11 of the Bank of England Act 1998. "In relation to monetary policy, the objectives of the Bank of England shall be— (a)to maintain price stability, and (b)subject to that, to support the economic policy of Her Majesty’s Government, including its objectives for growth and employment."

motogpjimbo 4y ago

She and her chancellor announced a series of tax cuts at a time when inflation is running at 10%. Even worse, they sidestepped the usual processes on fiscal responsibility and declined to explain how the tax cuts would be funded. The bonds market then panicked as a result, with the Bank of England having to step in and bail the market out to prevent gilts from entering a death spiral, which would have bankrupted pension funds. Since then, she's been a dead woman walking.

mytailorisrich 4y ago
Not all the tax cuts announced were bad or badly received. Especially, I think that the cancellation of the rise in corporation tax was very welcome and in fact economists now say that the rise to 25% will make the recession deeper and longer (unsurprisingly, frankly). The issue was that the other cuts, especially abolishing 45p income tax rate but frankly also the decrease of the basic rate, were not discussed, not funded (which is what spooked the markets since we already borrowed and spent like crazy during Covid), and frankly everyone agrees that they were useless. Of course abolishing the 45p rate now was also extremely bad symbolically (though in fairness it only exists since 2010-2012). I think the plan has shifted from "pro-growth, nevermind inflation" to "a good recession will solve inflation". And a 'good recession' along with higher interest rates, the incoming budget spending cuts, and maybe tax increases is also going to be quite painful for the people.
- paganel 4y ago
  > Not all the tax cuts announced were bad or badly welcomed. Not a tax cut per se, but I'm curious what will happen with the energy bill support scheme? That seemed like a good thing to implement, one for which Truss and her cabinet got a lot of critics from a certain part of the media. Granted, I'm not from Britain so maybe I'm reading the room wrong and that support scheme was, in fact, not liked by everyone involved, I wouldn't know.
  - mytailorisrich 4y ago
    Frankly, this energy support scheme is a blank cheque to the energy companies. It guarantees that the energy companies will fully profit from high energy prices, all in effect funded by the taxpayer, and Truss also rejected any windfall taxes on energy companies. I think it makes sense to limit it in its current form to this winter instead of 2 years (which is the latest status). It'll still be possible to reassess the situation next year and perhaps come up with a more targeted scheme if needed. Edit in response to reply: Truss had formally said in Parliament that there would be no additional taxes on energy companies when the £2500 price cap scheme was announced. The current windfall tax was implemented by Boris Johnson and considering it taxes energy companies at 25% instead of the normal 19% when the plan was, and again is, to tax all businesses at 25%, it's more spin than anything else.

samwillis 4y ago

A few things: Her “mini budget” immediately crashed the economy, after she ignored all the advice saying it was a bad idea and would crash the economy. Her party, the Conservatives, are in such a divided and shambolic state there is no one in the party who can command the confidence of the majority.

gadders 4y ago

On top of all the economics stuff, the final choice for Tory Leader is voted on by the Conservative party membership, who tend to be more right-wing than the soft righ, Davos-man Tory MPs. The Tory MPs resent this.

cameronh90 4y ago

Every day that politics has been operating since she took office has been one crisis after another. The first disaster was the mini budget that everyone pointed out and how poorly it was handled, but the nail in the coffin was the chaos in parliament yesterday. In short, the opposition called a vote on fracking, which is supported by Truss' "pro growth" government, but was opposed in the conservative manifesto. The government declared that anyone who voted against the government (and for what they promised to their constituents when they were elected) would be kicked out of the party. MPs who then tried to vote against the government were reportedly manhandled and assaulted to force them to vote with the government. There is a whole load of other chaos that happened in the last 24hrs that was just ultimately impossible to recover from. I think the last 24hr has just proved even to her final supporters that she is completely incapable of leading a government.

edmcnulty101 4y ago
"Assaulted!" God damn British politics is crazy! The need to put a UFC octagon in Parliament.
- cameronh90 4y ago
  This is very not-typical and the details are still in flux. That being said, towards the end of a long run of a party in power, things do tend to get rather bumpy. It's clearly time for a general election and end of the Conservative tenure in government.
hardlianotion 4y ago
To be honest, I think that the fracking debacle only moved her demise forward by a weekend.