Liz Truss resigns: well, that was quick
As expected and predicted, British PM Liz Truss has resigned. Who will be replacing her?
There’s the guy who had come in second to Truss, Rishi Sunak, who also can say “I told you so” because he’d warned about problems with Truss’s tax plans. There’s a woman named Penny Mordaunt, whose Wiki page can be found here. Among the others, one of the more interesting is a British woman of Nigerian descent, Kemi Badenoch, who seems to be one of the more politically and socially conservative of the group.
And then there’s a familiar face – Boris Johnson. Has absence made the British hearts grow fonder, so soon?
She will go down in history as a great trivia question; “Who was the British PM when Queen Elizabeth II died?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr4mqQzvhIw
She lasted longer than John Paul I and William Henry Harrison
The guy who had come in second to Truss, Rishi Sunak is a Climate Change fanatic.
Her big mistake was the big tax cut for the wealthy. Instead of treating it as a mistake, she should have gone full Oprah, here’s a tax cut for you, and for you, and… everyone gets a tax cut!
At least Truss was able to resign rather than being assassinated. To date there has been only one British PM who suffered that fate: Spencer Perceval, PM from 1809 to 1812. Perceval (who was, incidentally, the last PM to wear the powdered wig and knee breeches of 18th-century style) was not shot by a terrorist or drug addict but by a man who thought that the government owed him monetary compensation for problems he had had with the Russian government. The assassin was tried at the Old Bailey three days after Perceval’s death and hanged three days after that.
“Although [Perceval is] not considered an inspirational leader, he is generally seen as a devout, industrious, principled man who at the head of a weak government steered the country through difficult times.” Difficult times indeed: Britain was still at war with Napoleon in 1812, and would be at war with the United States only a month after Perceval’s assassination.
The History Guy has a video about Perceval and the complicated historical and economic situation that led to his death:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqL8EolZMZU&ab_channel=TheHistoryGuy%3AHistoryDeservestoBeRemembered
PA+Cat, I did not know that. I studied a lot of British History but that never came up. It is interesting. And of course RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA
From what I hear, Boris needs to get a new girlfriend or a set of earplugs before he tries being a PM again… assuming the Brits would even to consider him! Seems to me he promised all the right things and then forgot about every one of them!
Nigel Farage says the Conservative Party is dead. It is now Labour-lite and serves no purpose.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/10/20/brexits-nigel-farage-hints-at-political-comeback-to-replace-conservative-party/
Andrew mart i. His prescient roman a clef predicted johnson would be a transitional figure there would a remainer whose backers would do anything ti stay in power in head of state
Nigel Farage says the Conservative Party is dead.
Kate:
Brendan O’Neill at Spiked says similar about British politics in general:
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So Liz Truss is out. After just 44 days her premiership is no more. ‘I’m a fighter, not a quitter’, she said in parliament yesterday, and now she’s quit.
Her premiership deserves to live in ignominy. Not necessarily because her blunders were so spectacular – though many of them were – but because of what this strangled-at-birth stint in Downing Street tells us about British politics more broadly.
Which is that it’s a wasteland. An ideological void. A dustbowl of ideas. The lack of even the faintest glimmer of leadership material anywhere in the Westminster circus is horrifying to me. Trussism is but a symptom of a wider malady afflicting our political class.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/10/20/britain-is-a-political-wasteland/f
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I’m astonished that the Labour Party is breathing new life through no accomplishments of their own, but how badly the Tories have played their hand.
huxley:
Many voters are fickle and emotional.
Also desperate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsYgJo_c-mc
That O’Neill column is great as an indictment not only of Britain but the West in general. The ideas that took hold politically and culturally after the Cold War have exhausted themselves but, and this is actually key, we have an entrenched, professionalized elite that are incapable of coming up with anything new and extraordinarily hard to get rid of.
Just remember, if Trump hadn’t won in 2016, the United States would have spent at least 24 out of 32 years trading the White House back and forth between two families. That is NOT the sign of a healthy democracy.
Mike
Just remember, if Trump hadn’t won in 2016, the United States would have spent at least 24 out of 32 years trading the White House back and forth between two families.
Two of Prescott Bush’s 16 surviving grandchildren have sought public office. Note that all 16 are over 50 and all but four are over 60, so I wouldn’t expect any to enter the fray in the future. George P. Bush is the only one of the 34 great-grandchildren who has taken up electoral politics thus far. He’s out of office at the end of the year and his uncle has helpfully trashed the brand. Chelsea Clinton has wandered through four or five protocareers, a dilettante at heart; she’s marginally more likely to run for public office than is Caroline Kennedy.
The Kennedys, btw, were far more political than the Bushes ever were. Six of Joseph Kennedy’s grandchildren entered electoral politics. One proved unsalable inventory and the others voluntarily departed office in middle age, only one keeping at it for more than a dozen years. The one Kennedy great-grandchild who entered politics was bounced in a Democratic primary a couple of years back. They’ve lost interest, for their own good and ours.
“An ideological void.”
Really?
What about Brexit?
What about firmly and unequivocably supporting Ukraine?
Moreover, I was under the impression that Truss fell precisely BECAUSE of her ideology—some calling it Libertarian (but I’m not sure on what basis, exactly)…which proved unsustainable in the face of reality.
Might one wonder who exactly ALLOWED her to be so self-destructive, to be so unrealistic in the first place?
Or was it a whim of hers. Something DRASTIC had to be done—the Brits, having stiff-uppper-lipped through WWII were today just as able??
What was her background and her experience in economics?
Or was her plan supposed to work in the rarified air of theory, devoid as it was in any real-world context?
Was she operating in that big of a bubble?
(And did the Queen, bless her, intuit the disaster when the hand was shook at Balmoral…causing her own system to shut down almost immediately?…)
Regarding the talented Mr. Johnson, it was his out-of-control, self-destructive stupidity that enable this whole mess.
Returning this initiator, this instigator—this architect—of the entire debacle to #10 would clearly be a desperate move.
Extraordinary vitriol regarding the debacle from a Tory MP:
https://twitter.com/i/status/1582831021460189185
+ this wickedly ironic explanation that, attempting to place the whole thing in wider context, essentially exonerates Truss:
https://youtu.be/URzLyyogSA0
H/T Zerohedge for both.
The Remainer cabal arranged for Boris’ exit. Now they’ve managed another populist choice to falter with Home Secretary Stella Braverman’s resignation – then tipping Truss. The latter opposed to immigration controls, while the former very much in favor. (Some 80% of UKs population growth is via new immigrants today.)
Alexander at the Duran called the timing and interests at stake
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiXsMKSXxWk
and recent ex-Left uni-grad Poppy Cockburn,, turned producer at GB New, scouts the immigration fiasco — 1 million immigration visas last year, exacerbated courtesy of Boris — that so riled the masses to rally to Brexit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CorcL8Us3c
And immigration worsens the tight housing.
Leadership and agenda sorting in the UK are now more clusterF’d up than they they were with Brexit or pre-Thatcher ‘70s, avers Alexander.
Thanks much for those two links.
The second link, on immigration—more precisely, the claim that following the successful Brexit vote, the Tory government did NOT limit illegal immigration to the UK, as it pledged to do—was fascinating.
The Duran link—the interview with Alexander Mercouris—contains much of extraordinary interest…but with this caveat:
if one feels, like me, a bit uncomfortable with the gist, and direction, of the comments Mercouris (and his host) made vis-a-vis Ukraine/Russia, particularly towards the end of the interview, this Wikipedia entry on “Sputnik” news agency may explain the reasons for such “discomfort”:
“…In August 2016, Sputnik opened offices in Edinburgh, Scotland,[74] its headquarters in the UK.[75] The agency established its radio studio and bureau in the city.[19] Alexander Mercouris, a British barrister debarred for falsely claiming to have been kidnapped and for attempting bribery, was described in Sputnik coverage as a “London-based expert on international affairs”.[76] In April 2021, The Times reported Russian sources had said Sputnik’s London and Edinburgh offices were closing with the outlet’s English language staff being concentrated in Washington DC and Moscow.[77][78]…” [Emphasis mine; Barry M.]
turned producer at GB New, scouts the immigration fiasco — 1 million immigration visas last year, exacerbated courtesy of Boris
I would check a claim like this very carefully.
All three announced candidates endorsed Brexit in 2016, so there’s that.
The Times has been caughf laindering qatari and other propaganda including pieces of the Russia hoax so often it cant be relied upon
It would seem that Liz failed to get or heed the advice that Bill Clinton got. “Don’t f__ with the bond market.” I don’t know the exact repercussions, but suspect that until the BoE interventions, big money investors began to question the solvency of the UK government.
I strongly recommend the YouTube video linked by Barry in his 5:18 am post for its entertainment value if nothing else – extra points for using “clusterfuck” and “shitshow”. But it is also very pointed and sobering about the forces behind Truss’ fall even if a bit over the top. Caveat: you need a strong tolerance for jump cuts.
so this was an abject lesson, don’t challenge schwab or esg holy writ, the ones who are crushing the european economies, with an assist from putin, because they economically disarmed themselves, I don’t see the urgency of forcing her out, under these circumstance, will we come to a third prime minister, susnak, or any of the other runner ups, in the deal, they probably wouldn’t ever turn to badoch,
remember the eu had it knives for both hungary and poland before this,
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/10/20/orban-they-tell-us-russian-gas-is-bad-but-not-how-to-replace-it/
I know nothing about Brit politics, but it appears from what I’ve read and what was in the video linked by Barry, that she was planning to frack for natural gas and cut taxes and regulations a bit. The globalist s ganged up and sicked the bankers on her. Unlike a Churchill or a Thatcher, she could not withstand the attacks. Great Britain will, like the EU, face a bleak, cold winter if they don’t change course and fast. The bulwark of Western Civ is faltering under the yoke of globalist policies. Unfortunately, we’re next.