“Time is up” – Daily Mirror
Tory MP’s turn on Liz Truss – BBC
“Truss sacks Kwarteng in bid to save the premiership” – Financial Times
“Truss fights for survival” – The Times
“A day of chaos” – The Guardian
Many thought that after Mr Johnson left 10 Downing Street only a couple of months ago, the outlook for British politics couldn’t get any worse. I was proved wrong.
So many people, who often might not have been interested in politics, are now really “switched on”. While picking up my daughter from school yesterday, someone simply asked: what is going on in the UK? The second conversation, also in passing, was equally quite interesting. This comment gave me an idea of how much the standard of politics fell in Britain. In the past, people with opposing views might have looked up to politicians as people with conviction and integrity. Many people, even if they strongly disagreed with various government policies, could see some rationale behind implementing them.
The government of today is so politically immature. It has absolutely no sense of direction. The leadership doesn’t exist and it seems like the whole Cabinet is running around like headless chickens trying to find a way out from a simply impossible position, which is of their own making!
The government keeps blaming the war in Ukraine for British economic instability. There is some truth in it, however I am absolutely convinced that most of all, it is the incompetence of this and previous government that has created such a huge mess and turmoil for the country and its citizens. It is even more worrying (and so frustrating) that when asked, after sacking her Chancellor, the Prime Minister wasn’t brave enough to apologise for making so many mistakes and so many U-turns. Where are the signs for growth, which Liz Truss promised at the Conservative Party Conference? No signs, whatever.
Like many, I worry about what it all means for ordinary people. High inflation, interest rates, many people up and down a country are counting every pound. What next? New Prime Minister? Elections? Caretaker Prime Minister? But who?
I know one for certain. The “Mother of all Parliaments” is falling apart at the speed of light. What a national and global embarrassment.
* Michal Siewniak is a Lib Dem activist and councillor for Handside ward, Welwyn Hatfield.
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11 Comments
” Many people, even if they strongly disagreed with various government policies, could see some rationale behind implementing them.”
Are you suggesting there was no rationale behind Lis and Kwasi’s economic views? I think there might have been. It looks like some form of right-wing Keynesianism. Just as a leftish Keynesian would argue that increased Government spending would be reflationary rather than inflationary, so might someone of their views argue that the same effect would apply to reduced Government taxes.
Their huge blunder was to attempt to try to push this through without even trying to explain their thinking to anyone and at the worst possible time of economic and political crisis in the western world. It’s no use being right if everyone else thinks you aren’t! There is a lot of psychology involved in Economics and that is ignored at anyone’s peril.
The sensible approach would have been to move far more carefully and avoid any kind of controversy until after the next election. As it is, they don’t look like there is much chance of the Tories winning that so we do have something to thank them both for!
I find it sad in many ways, as our values in life just disappear.
In many cases with the government, if you can get away with something it is acceptable.
The working class taxpayer is taking the burden of debt. After 3 years of pandemic related stress, there are none or very little concerns for the added pressures of debt.
Back into Victorian times, it was realised that human waste could not be poured into waterways and it carried illnesses.
There is a bottomless pit with spending and we all know from our own housekeeping that overspending will go on to cause yet more debt,
“In the past, people with opposing views might have looked up to politicians as people with conviction and integrity. ”
There were many fantastic politicians of the past – there are many today though it takes a little longer to identify them – but I would be wary about romanticizing how things used to be. Boris Johnson acting in wholly self-serving manner and thinking about politics as matter of birth right rather than responsibility or Liz Truss being so keen to protect rich at cost of the poor, these aren’t behaviours that were absent from the time when politics was calmer and more polite, it’s just that it wasn’t so much out in the open.
British politics is losing its good reputation around the world but, at least until Liz Truss cuts away at it completely, being active with foreign aid and supporting Ukraine probably ensures our overall international policies are more welcome than before – especially when we’re so desperate for international trade that we’re willing to give up anything.
The “Mother of all Parliaments” built itself up though ill-gotten gains of The Empire, aggressively attacked “the enemy within” and then opened its doors for business with Russian oligarchs and Middle Eastern states with dubious human rights records. But yes, it was far more polite and indeed effective than the shambles we currently have.
“The government of today is so politically immature.”
I would say: politically corrupt.
Are we surprised Conservative MPs are more driven by personal political survival and the healthy salary they get as representatives of constituencies than the national good of the country. They would spin on a sixpence policy wise so long as they retained their seat. They are consummate career politicians who put self-first. Democracy is not a driver on their agenda .
I agree with Peter that the recent budget had a very clear rationale behind it. Its authors have suffered a calamity mostly through very poor planning and messaging rather than being intrinsically wrong about everything, which has now become the tenor the debate. Moral, and some economic, condemnation by opponents was as expected, but the real disaster was to be destroyed by same the market forces that they were genuflecting to.
Having said that, I did not support the budget. Tax cuts for the wealthy appeared both morally provocative and bad economics at this moment in time. The tax cuts on the basic rate and corporation tax were welcome in principle, but borrowing money simply to stoke demand seemed like something from the endless post -war stop-go cycles. In those days a sterling crisis usually took a couple of years to develop – this time it was just a few days.
The lesson from all the blind panic that Michal describes is that Keir Starmer will have a incredibly hard job. I wish him the best and we clearly need a change of government. But this government, and the next, are now on a very narrow path indeed. The slightest whiff of ‘irresponsibility’ – in any direction, left or right – and it’s straight over the precipice. I sense that we might be hearing more from Labour about Prudence than we have since the late 1990s.
>“What happened to British Democracy?”
This is “British Democracy” – hence why I regard such matters as tinkering with the voting system as being equivalent to rearranging deckchairs….
Scandals in British politics are by no means rare nor do have they only occurred recently. Consider for example David Lloyd George and the cash for homours scandal of 1922. Or the pound sterling leaving the Gold Standard in 1931.
From the different perspective consider the 2017 ~ 2019 Parliament: which successfully held the Government to account.
As Peter Martin and James Fowler have pointed out there was nothing irrational about the budget itself. Although many people including me thought it wouldn’t work, at least as it was intended to. The problem was the failure to supply the evidence that the tax cuts could be paid for.
The Conservatives have been in power for too long and it shows. Even President Ching had a two term limit up to recently. I think Margaret Thatcher’s third term was also a disaster. We need to limit a single Party having control for so long and PR is the best way.
@ Andrew Tampion “Or the pound sterling leaving the Gold Standard in 1931”. That wasn’t a scandal in 1931, Andrew, it was a good thing.
The real scandal was ex-Liberal Winston Churchill re-joining the Tories in 1924, becoming Chancellor, and putting the pound back on the gold standard at its pre-First World War parity of $4.86 to the pound (what is the rate now ?) in his first Budget in April 1925. Whilst the decision delighted Montagu Norman of the Bank of England and the Tory Party – economists such as John Maynard Keynes warned such a measure would seriously damage British export industries such as coal. Keynes was correct. It did.
Outcome ? In 1926 a General Strike for ten days, and, after their wages were slashed, coal miners (my Granddad amongst them) were out for nine months before being starved back to work. That was the real scandal and Churchill’s action was on a similar level of incompetence as the Truss/Kwarteng effort a few weeks ago.
Thank you for your comment David. I expressed myself poorly. The point I was trying to make is that going on to and then coming off the Gold Standard was a poor economic policy poorly executed. Similar in many ways to the current crisis; although the current crisis has come to a head more quickly.
But you could, plausibly, argue that the roots of the current crisis go further back in that in 2018 the UK Nationasl Debt stood at 85.2% of GDP, whereas in 2022 it was 99.6% of GDP. This increase is mainly due to Covid-19. If this increase had not occurred it would have been easier for the Government to justify borrowing to fund tax cuts. So it is at least as mnuch the Governments failure to account for this as the policy itself that caused the immediate crisis.
Also the Bank of England has failed to raise interest rates after the 2008 crisis. Whatever the benefits this has caused vast house price rises. These rises contribute to the cost of living crisis. Inflation is also an issue. If, in 2021, the Bank of England had raised interest rates , in stages, to say 1% it may well have been possible to mitigate inflation and avoid most of the current inflation problem.