British Politics Guide

[Ares Land]

Listening to Trump going on and on about how great he is while keeping a stiff upper lip must be incredibly painful. Nobody deserves that!

[Linguoboy]

Listening to Trump going on and on about how great he is while keeping a stiff upper lip must be incredibly painful. Nobody deserves that!

If you can't take the heat, give back the Koh-i-Noor and become an ordinary organic farmer.

[bradrn]

Listening to Trump going on and on about how great he is while keeping a stiff upper lip must be incredibly painful. Nobody deserves that!

Even worse— she had to listen to Boris Johnson every week for three years!

[Raphael]

Wait, do I get this right that the British government just cancelled their planned highest-income-bracket tax cut? A conservative government that can't even successfully pass a tax cut for the rich? What is the world coming to?

[Rounin Ryuuji]

One with better sense than usual.

[Travis B.]

Wait, do I get this right that the British government just cancelled their planned highest-income-bracket tax cut? A conservative government that can't even successfully pass a tax cut for the rich? What is the world coming to?

This probably only happened because they happened to tank the valuation of the pound overnight by even suggesting it.

[Ares Land]

I don't really know how to make sense of it, but following British Twitter is quite an experience.

I'm also amused by the sudden spur of popularity of King Charles.

[Jonlang]

Wait, do I get this right that the British government just cancelled their planned highest-income-bracket tax cut? A conservative government that can't even successfully pass a tax cut for the rich? What is the world coming to?

This probably only happened because they happened to tank the valuation of the pound overnight by even suggesting it.

The near-rioting in Birmingham (at the Conservative Party conference) probably didn't help either. Jacob Rees-Mogg is a disgusting person, btw.

[alice]

Jacob Rees-Mogg is a disgusting person, btw.

Although he has said he welcomes fracking in his back garden.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

That sounds like a rather bad thing to welcome.

[Raphael]

This probably only happened because they happened to tank the valuation of the pound overnight by even suggesting it.

But why? The people who work on "the markets", and who determine how "the markets" react to events, strike me as the kind of people who would normally welcome tax cuts for the rich.

[Linguoboy]

This probably only happened because they happened to tank the valuation of the pound overnight by even suggesting it.

But why? The people who work on "the markets", and who determine how "the markets" react to events, strike me as the kind of people who would normally welcome tax cuts for the rich.

Tax cuts have to be paid for somehow and the math simply didn't add up. (It still doesn't; the specific tax cut on higher incomes only accounted for about £2 billion of a budget shortfall estimated at more than £40 billion.) Even some rich people understand that you can only squeeze ordinary consumers so much before the economy breaks.

[Ares Land]

This probably only happened because they happened to tank the valuation of the pound overnight by even suggesting it.

But why? The people who work on "the markets", and who determine how "the markets" react to events, strike me as the kind of people who would normally welcome tax cuts for the rich.

The UK already suffers from inflation. In practical terms, this means there are not enough good and services around to meet demand. This is due to many issues -- production capability hasn't recovered from COVID, there's not enough energy to go around and produce things plus Brexit means Britain can't import as much or as good a price as it used to. (Oversimplifying here, but you get the idea.)

As far as I can see, Truss had the idea of fixing this by voodoo economics. You give money to the rich, they work their magic and production restarts.

Rich people who hold pounds, though, don't really believe in magic any more than we do. What they saw is that people in the UK would get some extra pounds to spend (less taxes) but still have to spend it on insufficient good and services (because the underlying issues are still there and the government has no apparent plan to fix these besides magic.) So even more inflation.
Then there's the budget shortfall, which would definitely lead to more economic trouble -- most likely, inflation again.

So rich folks that hold pounds hurried to sell them before inflation finished making these pounds worthless. Lots of people selling pounds, well, yeah, the pound tanks.

They might have been interested in tax cuts in principle, of course, but there was still money to be made in selling pounds.

[Raphael]

That you, Linguoboy and Ares Land, that helped me understand it.

[Raphael]

So they made Kwarteng the fall guy. Figures.

[evmdbm]

It's the year of the four chancellors, but will it be the year of the three prime ministers? You couldn't make it up...

[Raphael]

According to the BBC, while the shortest-serving UK Chancellor was some guy who died of a heart attack in 1970 after 30 days on the job, the second-, third-, and fourth shortest serving UK Chancellors after World War 2 all served under Johnson or Truss.

Meanwhile, reports are that "senior Tories" want Truss out - but how could they make her leave if she doesn't want to?

[Raphael]

Hunt.

Edit: Has it been confirmed that he accepts the job? Not sure if I'd do that if I were him.

[Raphael]

Ok, so the House of Commons isn't meeting today. Too bad. Might have been fun if it had.

But there'll be a "general debate", officially about a petition to have an early election, on Monday.

[Raphael]

Oh man, if you had told me a month ago that a conservative head of government would end up in a position where they might be forced out of office as a result of the blowback triggered by trying to enact bog standard fantasy world right-wing economic policies...