Like many I have been quietly hoping that the opinion polls were wrong and that Rishi Sunak would emerge as Tory leader and our next prime minister. His record as Chancellor was deeply flawed but he does at least look and sound respectable. M/s Truss has campaigned in slogans rather than policies, and, of the two policies with which she has hectored party members, one is nonsense and the other positively dangerous
The nonsense is that tax cuts will release entrepreneurial vigour and stimulate growth, (though not necessarily sustainable grown). But Britain is not a high tax country, (though the tax take could be more equitable distributed). So the problem must lie elsewhere.
The dangerous one is that our entrepreneurs are hampered by over-regulation.
The recent and continuing "sewage in the rivers " scandal illustrates the disaster which can ensue through light regulation and ineffective machinery to enforce what there is. Recently George Monbiot expressed more succinctly than I can precisely remember, something on the lines that : "Regulations exist to protect us from liars, chancers, and bullies."
The good news is that there is a precedent for what happens to a party whose leader is elected by the party members but who is not the choice of most of the party's MPs. That was the situation when Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader and led the party to two defeats.
M/s Truss is in that situation. In he first round of the election process only 64 Tory MPs voted for her. Rishi Sunak received 101. In the final round of MP voting Sunak received 137 votes, Truss 113, and Penny Mordant was eliminated with 105. Even after the "also-rans" were eliminated Truss has the support of less than a third of her parliamentary party.
Rightly or wrongly MPs probably have a better idea than do run-of-the mill party members of who makes a competent leader
So Truss should be the easier one to beat.
Let's hope history repeats itself.
It's unfortunate that our economy, repartition and quality of life are likely to go further down the pan, with many of our people suffering unnecessary, before the process takes effect.
The nonsense is that tax cuts will release entrepreneurial vigour and stimulate growth, (though not necessarily sustainable grown).
ReplyDeleteMaybe they will, maybe they won't. But at least she's trying something different, because what we've been doing for the past twenty years (and especially the last ten years of stupidly low interest rates allowing zombie companies to shamble on sucking up resources) sure hasn't been working.
What would your plan for releasing entrepreneurial vigour and stimulating growth be, then, if not lower taxes and less regulation?
But Britain is not a high tax country,
Excuse me? Did you miss the bit where the tax take went up to 39% of GDP? That puts us in the top ten of countries worldwide, which definitely means we are now a 'high-tax country'.
Before last year we were bumping along at about 33%, which made us a 'medium tax country'. But we should be aiming to be a low-tax country, so we really should stop going in the wrong direction, whatever else we do.
The good news is that there is a precedent for what happens to a party whose leader is elected by the party members but who is not the choice of most of the party's MPs
People keep saying this, but we really don't know who would have won in a head-to-head vote between Sunak and Truss, just among MPs. There were only 24 votes between them, after all, and Truss had been closing the gap with Sunak with each successive round. It's quite possible that had the final choice been down to MPs Truss might have won (thoguh it is also possible she wouldn't — we will never know).
So Truss should be the easier one to beat.
I doubt the Labour party will be able to stop themselves underestimating her, too — that's why she'll win the next election. That and the fact they keep gifting her amazingly strong attack lines like, 'Our leader's woman — your leader's so whipped by his extreme activist fringe that he's not allowed to say what a woman is.'
This article by William Davies in today's Guardian answers most of your points:
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/05/trussonomics-reckless-exercise-slashing-state-thatcherism
Well, it doesn’t answer the most important question, does it? I’ll repeat that here:
DeleteWhat would your plan for releasing entrepreneurial vigour and stimulating growth be, then, if not lower taxes and less regulation?
The article suggests that ‘a Labour government [ie, Blair’s] oversaw one of the UK’s most successful economic decades since 1945’
But even if we accept for the sake of argument that is true regarding 1997 -2007 clearly the years 2008 - present have been an abject economic failure, and the article gives no indication of understanding why that might be or might be done now to change failure into success.
Personally I suspect that the reason 1997-2007 was such a success was that the Thatcher reforms of the eighties were still working, and Blair (a) didn’t mess with them, at least initially, and 2. was lucky to be in power at a generally good economic time globally. But the article makes no arguments either for out against that view, and as a result it is utterly devoid of anything to offer as an alternative to the low-interest-rate, money-printing, QE-addicted policies which have so abjectly failed to deliver growth.
We simply can’t keep doing more of the same and expecting a different result. Truss at least has an alternative. Do you?
You claim we are a high tax country. This is not true. "The United Kingdom ranked 23rd out of 38 OECD countries in terms of the tax-to-GDP ratio in 2020. In 2020, the United Kingdom had a tax-to-GDP ratio of 32.8% compared with the OECD average of 33.5%. In 2019, the United Kingdom was also ranked 23rd out of the 38 OECD countries in terms of the tax-to-GDP ratio"
DeleteI don't know how to copy both the above and the URL at the same time, but I'm sure if you look on Google you'll find it.
In 2020, the United Kingdom had a tax-to-GDP ratio of 32.8% compared with the OECD average of 33.5%.
DeleteYeah, read what I wrote. You clearly missed that the 32.8% figure is out of date and our tax-to-GDP ratio is now closer to 40%, which definitely qualifies as ‘high tax’.
And 32.8% is ‘medium tax’ when we want to be ‘low tax’ so we’ve gone in the wrong direction and need to reverse course.
With the smaller margin of victory gained by Truss than most people (including political pundits and bookies) expected, my feeling is that she gained many early votes during the long voting process, but as the campaigning progressed the later voters preferred Sunak who might have won if the voting had been on a specific day at the end of those interminable hustings. (In the early stages I placed a £1 bet on Truss at 9/2, in the later stages she was 1/10.)
ReplyDeleteI agree. I think it was a curious decision to permit votes to be sent in at the very beginning of the campaign. A date when the campaign was over (as in General Elections) would probably have produced a different result. Now we must live with the consequences
ReplyDeleteA date when the campaign was over (as in General Elections) would probably have produced a different result.
DeleteNot workable for a postal ballot, though, as people will post their papers at different times (even for general elections there’s a window for receipt of postal ballots rather than a single day).
The windows didn’t have to be as long as it was, it could (and air possibly should) have could have been a couple of weeks rather than dragging on for months over the whole summer, but when it’s a postal ballot you can’t get away from the need to have a window rather than a single day.
it would be perfectly easy to delay the start of postal voting until near the end of the campaign, and then have a suitable time lag to enable the votes to be received. I think that's what was done in the General Election of 1945 to allow service personnels' votes to be counted.
Deleteit would be perfectly easy to delay the start of postal voting until near the end of the campaign, and then have a suitable time lag to enable the votes to be received
DeleteBut you have to leave, say, at minimum a couple of weeks during which ballots can be received. And some people will post their ballots even before that period so they are opened on the first day, and some people will leave it until the last post on the last possible day.
So you can reduce the window between early and late votes but you can never eliminate it entirely.