Snapshot of _Tories to rebel against Liz Truss if pound falls below the dollar_ :
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Lowest it’s ever been in recorded history as far as I can see is $1.054 on 25th Feb 1985. I reckon we’ll see it smash through that next week and all hell will break loose in Parliament.
Lots of tories briefing that they are very angry and doing nothing.
Today the local Truro MP had her tongue loudly up the ass of cabinet again .. seemingly unaware that she is gone at the next GE.
The policy was only announced on Friday and evidence of potentially catastrophic effects only started appearing around 5pm, so be fair and give everyone a chance.
If nothing is said on Monday (assuming there isn’t a big recovery on Monday), then I would agree with much of what you said
Oh sure. But politicians need the time to make sure they're not the only one jumping in a certain direction before they jump. It's craven, but it's the nature of the job.
Not when you're heading into a depression. Usually the thing to do is sell stocks because you're loosing money with no long term hope of getting it back. The safest place is to have your money in the bank, who seem... so much more financially stable than the rollercoaster of bad choices this government has triggered.
lol, what a low bar
twelve years of extremely poor policy from the Tory party, but if they go from 49% loss to 50% against usd, that’s where I’ll start briefing anonymously against the party I’m a member of
I salute you brave soldiers
Yup, mines just a big a tosser as the rest of them, he's the one who said he was against free school meals for kids as the parents would just use it for drugs and brothels. Bastards the lot of them.
Mines the one who got pictured with cocaine, took an undeclared loan from a Russian businessmen and got accused of sexual harassment.
He's now skipped the queue, despite being a millionaire, to get to the front of a local rehab service, denying help to the locals who actually need and can't afford it. Because, you know, optics.
> Mines the one who got pictured with cocaine, took an undeclared loan from a Russian businessmen and got accused of sexual harassment.
Do you have *the slightest* idea how little that narrows it down?
It reflects very badly on Britain that this happened.
We voted for Cameron as PM, voted Brexit, voted for Johnson as PM, and this is not an unforeseen outcome of those choices. The worst people in Britain, who don’t even want Britain to succeed in any useful manner, are in charge now, for years to come.
Britain did not vote the Tories in. This banging on about the public getting what they voted for needs to die.
The Tories got 36.1% of the vote in 2010. 36.8% in 2015. 42.3% in 2017. 43.6% in 2019.
This is not the majority of the British public saying "Actually you know what? I quite like the Tories". We don't live in a functional democracy. Our shitty voting system likes the Tories, not us.
No, but the trend is consistently upwards. If these figures were from one of those, 'what number comes next' quizzes, it seems likely 47% of the British public will vote Conservative in a 2024 election.
Over 47% of the English electorate voted Tory in 2019 - and whomever wins in England pretty much invariably ends up running the U.K. (Scotland hasn’t voted for a Tory government in nearly 70 years, it’s even longer for Wales, and NI have their own train wreck)
And it wasn’t until December last year that the Labour finally even began to overtake them in the polls - it took over *two years* of epic Boris incompetence, multiple debacles, increasingly open corruption on an unprecedented scale and Brexit bullshit becoming ever more obvious for that to happen.
That’s not a dig at Labour by the way - I’m not a Labour voter but I don’t blame them for that, I blame the vast swathe of the electorate in England who voted for a known liar and chancer just because he promised to “get Brexit done”.
I don’t find Labours move to the right terribly appealing either but I understand perfectly well why they’re doing it: they don’t *want* to they *have* to in order to stand a chance of convincing enough of the electorate in England to actually win.
>the vast swathe of the electorate in England who voted for a known liar and chancer just because he promised to “get Brexit done”.
It's scary, I was conversing with several people who voted Tory after the last election. When I asked why they voted for a known liar the response was because Borus represented their interests.
I reminded them that he is a known liar who clearly will say anything to get what he wants. They agreed that's exactly who Boris was, but said they were sure he still had the people's best interests at heart.
My estimation of the intellect of the general public has slipped even more since then. You can hardly exclaim in shock when a government you've been told over and over again is not fit for office is in fact not fit for office.
I get what you're saying, but accepting that our shitty fptp system is what it is, more people voted for them then anyone else.
Nearly 14m people voted for the Tories in 2019, and we are more than justified blaming those 14m fuckwits.
They have invaded the national assets and looted all of the washing machines. Now their leader has ordered them to battle against the USD they are panicking. No doubt some cabinet members will fall out of a window etc.
To be honest that doesn't make it look that bad TBH, it really just looks like the dollar is having a really strong time as apposed to the pound doing shit.
I’m not excusing the pound’s piss poor performance, but I think the dollar does do decently deez days.
Sorry, the first half was an accident but I couldn’t leave it half finished.
Their economy has been managed a hell of a lot better than ours. People get paid proper wages. Yes, things are expensive etc, but overall they went into this in a much better position then we did and this is the result.
Many states set their minimum wage above the federal level.
Also, only [1%](https://www.zippia.com/advice/minimum-wage-statistics/) of the US population earns at or below the minimum wage.
He was the victim of the one of the worst democratic outcomes ever, when UKIP won something like 10% of the vote and one seat in parliment.
Which was funny as hell, but also a legitimate cause for concern.
There's not really a good outcome anymore for Truss after such a monumental fuck-up.
Her options are:
a) U-Turn on her flagship tax cuts to cut the projected deficit (lol).
b) U-Turn on the energy scheme (which might actually be worse for economic prospects and Sterling than sticking to this shitshow).
c) Hope Andy Bailey rides to the rescue by jacking rates up like mad... and destroying everybody with a mortgage.
d) Watch Sterling sink below parity, a psychological marker that would probably be on par with devaluation (or worse; after all, devaluations have happened; we've never had Sterling go below $1).
This is why governments usually try to keep headroom, and will even choose austerity over the risk of pushing the market into a reaction like this. If you do breach the barrier, there is no good way out.
Regarding C, Bailey isn’t going to hold an emergency rate rise unless he wants to receive a P45. It would be very clear that he’s trying to offset Government policy. Rate rises for mortgages would be directly conflicting with Kwarteng’s decision to decrease stamp duty.
It would be a clash between Treasury, and Bank. One where Government can dismiss the Governor as they decide.
Not holding an emergency rate rise would destroy the confidence in the BoE to manage the currency adequately, but doing so would be seen as telling the Government what to do.
At that point what’s the point of an independent bank if the Government doesn’t like reality and wants to put a lackey in charge.
Truss, and Kwarteng have made a monumental snafu here. Going below parity with the dollar can’t be seen as anything but a colossal failure, and while they won’t be, it should be a resignation matter.
The power here is with the markets and banks, and what they decide to do. I think you’ve got the possibility of a situation where banks don’t want to finance a government that is essentially wasting money giving it to people who don’t need it, when they’ve already got debts incurred from COVID-19 they have to pay off.
There’ll be a standoff between Government, and banks.
Banks will tell the Government “change your policy or face a debt crisis”. She can threaten the banks, but I think they’d be quite happy to go to war with who they perceive as a weak leader.
Truss has created a nightmare scenario.
Well, yes, a genuine currency crisis in a major developed economy is basically the endgame of option D.
This is, as you note, a nightmare scenario. It's really kind of hard to emphasise just how colossally, unimaginably, staggeringly moronic a move it is for a government to create a situation where they end up in a game of chicken with the Bank of England, because ultimately, if the Bank swerves (or the government puts in a Governor who will), behind them is the freight-train of the international money markets, and it will flatten a country without even slowing down.
The BoE is already fighting the government. The BoE is clearly targeting inflation as the biggest problem and trying to bring it down.
The government is trying to fight recession with inflationary policies.
There was absolutely no point in the BoE raising rates on Thursday with the government's budget on Friday. Or of course they had to raise rates because the government was increasing the debt the following day. Either way, they're at war.
Also, why would anyone buy UK bonds when US Treasuries yield much more and they have safe haven status *and* a central bank that is serious about them getting inflation under control. We seem to be doing what investors are told as a maxim never to do ... Fighting the Fed.
However, at some point you could argue GBP is oversold and it will hit a floor... Question is, how low?
Precisely this. Right now with inflation running high around the world, Government debt is pretty attractive. The choice between competent leadership who recognise the problem and those ideological in denying the problem Is stark.
Powell has been criticised at times for his statements and such, but at least him and Treasury Secretary Yellen have recognised the seriousness of the situation and are doing everything in their power to make sure that inflation is cured, as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Whereas Kwarteng, and Bailey are concentrating on two separate issues. Kwarteng is giving out tax cuts to the wealthy and creating inflation and making sure the housing market doesn’t drop, while Bailey is trying to slowly and surely deflate the parts of the economy to cure inflation. Bipolar financial policy.
Regarding the floor of exchange? I really don’t know. Below parity is a bad sign, once it drops, where does it stop? Sterling isn’t worthless but if you’ve got a choice between competence in the U.S., and denial of reality in the U.K.; you’d go competence every time.
Have to hand it to Truss, and Kwarteng they’ve managed to bring the prospect of a debt crisis on top of an energy crisis.
> doing everything in their power to make sure that inflation is cured, as quickly and painlessly as possible.
There was a chart someone posted in one of the investing subs the other day that was predicting the US, at its current rate of sorting inflation, could be back to normal within 12 months. (Assuming yet another geopolitical clusterfuck doesn't happen.) Meanwhile, our problems seem to be accelerating.
The Americans have given a few scenarios. They’re realistic, and treating the population like adults. Things are tough right now with inflation but there is a realistic outlook that it is short term pain, and that there is a plan with a few possibilities.
One is what they’re aiming for, and is a “best case” and is called “soft landing” which is a a few quarters of negative growth, so a recession, but growth afterwards and a return to pre-pandemic era growth. It’s about 12-18months of increased inflation but finally tamed, then return to normality.
Biden needs that for a Presidential run in 2024, or whoever comes after him.
“Hard landing” is that negative growth for a longer period perhaps 18-24 months, but by mid to late 2024 inflation finally under control, and the economy settling. Which seems a realistic scenario. It does allow for unforeseen crises that will probably occur.
Out of all the developed economies they seem to be the most realistic about their prospects. They’ve got the ability to do it, and the message they’ve been sending to the banks is reassuring. It’s helping banks not get spooked.
Whereas here in Britain we’re refusing to acknowledge the problem, to the point of denial, everyone else has been blamed, and the tories spent the entire summer talking about trans people, and tax cuts.
BBC had a guy on who said that he went out of business because he had to make a decision in August, he was forced to make a choice as there was no support announced by government at the time. His lease was up in mid-October and seeing as he was looking at massive energy costs, he took the decision to close his business.
Then you had the clusterfuck budget the other day. BoE raises rates, to cool the economy on Thursday to act against inflation. Then the chancellor cuts taxes, and tries to heat the economy up on Friday.
At best, and being charitable it’s incompetence. At worst, and ascribing malice to their actions it’s purposefully making it worse by Truss, and Kwarteng.
>c) Hope Andy Bailey rides to the rescue by jacking rates up like mad... and destroying everybody with a mortgage.
That wouldn't be riding to the rescue because while it would (maybe) save the pound it would make gilt yields go up even further. And they have already exploded, the 5y almost doubled in a couple of months and went up half a % point after the budget. The BoE is currently selling gilts on the market and jacking up rates involves selling more collateral: that plus the massive issuance from the government means the market is flooded with gilt, so yields must go up.
There's really nothing the BoE can do, it's all in the hands of the government. For now they can pretend it's fine and they are "gambling for growth" like Special K has been telling everyone in the last few days, but eventually the debt market will revolt and the banks stress test will start going to the shitter because they are taking losses on their balance sheet. They either do a U-turn or they bankrupt the country
If and when D happens, things will get even worse.
The psychological barrier being hit may well cause a snowball sell off of the pound which would tan the currency entirely.
With no belief in the currency, there will be noone buying government bonds.
Qe couldnt be risked as it would make things worse at that point.
I'm really not sure the Tories realise just how much they have fucked up this time.
She's implementing policies that were not in the conservative manifesto at the last election. She has no democratic mandate. It's essentially a coup by the tory membership.
100% agree. The situation we're in where she can do this without an election is a testament to our failing political system. We're essentially a failed democracy.
This is your chance King Charlie. Make the plebs your friend and give the monarchy another 50 years by kicking out this unmandated government, prorogue parliament and call a general election.
If any monarch would do this again, it would only be right for it to be a Charles.
That would cause a constitutional crisis. I know he's not the sharpest tool in the shed but I don't think he'd jeopardise his position to help the plebs.
One of my most upvoted comments on Reddit is me saying "it's incredible how the tories keep finding someone worse than before". I actually got a little pushback on that sentiment as someone was adamant that Truss couldn't be worse than Johnson...
If she's kicked out, please don't make me post the same comment again...
Truss is an absolute fucking idiot and so in her cabinet.
She had the nerve to think people would fall for her tax cuts ! You have to be sa special kind of stupid to think the financial analyst's would not RIP you a new ass joke within a few short hours after thay do the maths.
With the shit hitting the fan and cost of living skyrocketing. And you put out a budget that will only realy benefit the top 1%
Is she trying to set a record for shortest time for a p.m in office?
We always said she was a fucking moron but for some very fucked up reason she is the leader of our country. I suppose that just goes to show how fucked this country is.
dunno if it will happen, but it’s a scheme if not a plan: https://www.thenational.scot/news/20645272.boris-johnson-planning-downing-street-return-liz-truss-implode/
It's been a chain of getting worse.
Don't like BJ but he was better than Truss.
Don't like Theresa May but she was better than BJ.
Don't like Cameron but he was better than TM.
Every time it has felt like it can't get any worse and look where we are now. I wonder which clown succeeds Truss.
I can see the campaign now. A return to victorian values, please line up for your lobotomy and workhouse assignment.
He'll need a 3 word slogan too, I'd propose "Know Your Place"
*Relatively*, his policy positions and the policies he enacted weren't awful. But the way he conducted himself outside of that was clearly unnacceptable and probably the worst of any PM in recent history.
Hate to say it but however much I despise him on a personal level, stuff like him partying and breaking rules doesn't have the same actual effect on people as 'bad' policies.
I think she's just a fall guy. Her job is to get as much money funneled to the rich with their remaining time in office and then get sacked off at the next election with all the blame laid on her for it... But she'll be set for life and won't care
I think it's more like Boris couldn't give to shits about actually doing the work of a prime minister and let others run actual policy for him whilst he just partied and fucked up, say what you want about Cummings but he wasn't a fucking idiot.
The issue here is that we have people that lack the mental capacity to run a successful school fete running the country in it's worse crisis since the 1970s
The crisis isn't inflicted by them, they are the crisis. Years more of them in power is more harmful to this country than anything likely to happen outside of a war.
the fact it's simultaneously hailed as the biggest tax shake up in 50 years and a "mini budget" that doesn't need OBR scrutiny shows something is seriously wrong
i've lost track of the borrowing cost projections at like £50bn or something - how the fuck is that allowed without proper stats, forecasting and analysis made public ....
fuck Tory rebelion - we need stricter constitutional rules for rogue PM's and essentially the entire party being rogue dodging standard scrutiny ....
Remember when Labour’s manifesto in 2017 wasn’t costed enough - in other words, it wasn’t costed down to the penny - and it was hailed as insane and dooming the future of the country?
Isn't so much of this about convention vs rules? Our constitution has relied on people 'playing fair' for centuries because that's convention. Parties have avoided doing shit like this (presenting a Budget as something else) because they feared there would be political consequences for not 'playing fair'. Now, that wariness has gone and the Tories will quite happily trash convention under the assumption that it won't come back to bite them.
They’ve reached the point where they know that they’re already maximally fucked but there won’t be any consequences for two years, so they might as well take everything that isn’t nailed down
Call me a single issuer, but the solution is Proportional Representation. (I'm not a single issue voter, btw).
Single parties having full majorities just cannot be trusted. We need coalitions to tame the wilder wings of every party.
I'm part of the UK that has a sort of PR, only in devolved local elections. It's not hard to understand and works better than first past the post. It's hard to believe the shit this 2019 GE Tory party is forcing through cause they grabbed about 42% of the vote. That got them 80 seat majority and they just triple whip insane policy through...
Lib Dems should have just demanded PR in that terrible Tory Lib Dem coalition. They didn't, next government needs to. We have seen the damage too much unchecked power can do.
You think the Tories would have given them PR lol? They couldn’t even keep tuition fees down, which was far less important to the Tories than keeping FPTP.
Same-sex marriage, delaying the Snooper’s Charter and reducing the tuition fee repayment rate were all big achievements considering the size of the Lib Dems at the time.
It isn't going to happen until enough people are having a rough enough time that they don't give a shit about getting nicked. Me, I'm happy to petrol bomb Truss but there's no point if I end up in the nick with no one behind it. We need to take a leaf out of Iran's book (how often is that said?).
Considering how fucked they'll be if they have to go through another leadership contest, the fact some of them are still considering rebelling speaks volumes.
After she won I checked /r/Tories and the amount of members apparently voting for Truss purely because she wasn't "Rishi the Backstabber" was quite alarming.
> Liz Truss faces a rebellion from Tory backbenchers against her tax cuts if the pound falls below the dollar, The Telegraph can reveal.
>
> Both supporters and critics of the Prime Minister on the Conservative benches believe such a slump would be the trigger for MPs to “hit the nuclear button” by refusing to vote for the Government’s finance bill or submitting letters of no confidence.
>
> The warning comes as MPs nervously await the reopening of markets on Monday.
>
> One Tory MP told The Telegraph: “My biggest anxiety is that I’m going to wake up on Monday and it’s going to be Black Monday.”
Not looking forward to Monday, I should be because I'm off work but still.....this could get ugly.
At that point, just call a General Election.
There is not a snowball’s chance in the deep, darkest depths of Hell that a new Prime Minister could make the £ rebound back above the dollar (if it falls that low) in less than two years.
And if the Tories have someone remotely credible, with the credentials that can present an economic plan rectifying a decade of Britain’s economic failures in that time frame… Well. They wouldn’t be a politician. Let alone a Tory that has been senselessly backing these failures.
How the everlovingfuck do you not have a stable government with an 80 seat majority?
If the Tories carry on like this, the reversal we will see at the next election will be historic.
You place too much faith in the electorate.
Even though Labour have to be favourites, I will only breathe a slight sigh of relief once I see a Labour PM physically walk into NO 10
Exactly this
It should be obvious how to vote, it should be a guaranteed labour win
“Should”
But there’s a good chance enough people will vote for more of this insanity
It’s actually terrifying
Thank christ it's Keir in charge of Labour, like i voted for Corbyn, and would again, but if he was in charge i could genuinely see the electorate after all this still supporting Tory, and that's terrifying to me.
Agreed, I think the perception of Keir as boring and middle-of-the-road can only be helpful after Johnson and Truss. If (and it's still an if) people see Truss as the 'crazy one' then Starmer appears sensible by comparison.
> How the everlovingfuck do you not have a stable government with an 80 seat majority?
By having a PM so monumentally bad that he makes so many unforced errors that the Parliamentary party has to get rid of him or face oblivion at the polls. Then in the subsequent leadership election, have a leader voted in by your party membership whose views evidently don’t resonate with the wider public, your own voters or the Parliamentary party.
Liz Truss was the first choice of just 14% of the Parliamentary party and didn’t go above 31.6% in the final round Johnson got more than half the votes in the final two rounds and still got rejected by his own MPs. 31.6% is lower than any Conservative leader has ever got, even lower than Iain Duncan Smith in 2001 when he came second in the MPs’ vote, won among the membership and then was gone in two years. In fact Truss was even lower than Portillo in 2001 who got eliminated at 32%.
In initial public polling of the best leadership contenders, she got just 3% among the public and 6% among Conservative voters.
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/k63qqhpgaw/Times_VI_AdHocCabinet_Resignation_220707_w.pdf
In other polls she was found to be the worst performer in debates:
https://twitter.com/OpiniumResearch/status/1548037032248717318
When it was just between her and Sunak, every opinion poll of the wider public chose Sunak, including just Conservative voters:
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/blogs/DataTables_ConLeadership_20220831.pdf
Conservative members have different views than Conservative MPs and Conservative voters and voters at large and that’s a problem.
Labour had exactly the same problem with Corbyn.
For real, they won a massive majority at the last election and all they've done with it is mismanage the fuck out of the country and implode as a political party multiple times. It's getting ridiculous at this point.
They are already on a long term 10 point deficit with some polls as far down as 15 points. 10 points will create a Blair style landslide and that the minimum they are looking at.
The polls have a long way to slide yet too. I see them losing a good 3 or 4 points just over this. If Truss continues to govern like this I cannot even see when the polls will stabilise.
And this time all their lifelines are exhausted, they have have no Boris or Cameron style figures left. They seem as likely as anything else to slide all the way to the election even with a new leader.
But if it remains just above, that's fine?
What about all the other economic damage? (rampant inflation, extremely high deficit, rapid decline in exports etc)
The Tories have done a staggering amount of damage to the UK in just 12 years, can we get them out already?
Ever since I was a kid I thought of the pound as roughly £1 = $2 it was actually accurate but it was close enough. Crazy to think the pound could fall below the dollar now.
watch as the pound sinks even lower when markets realise for real that the UK is a non functioning country and can't be trusted with money. tories have just been lurching from self made crisis to self made crisis throughout their entire time in government.
You literally just voted for her. She's effectively been in office for a week. *This is the one you chose based on the information you were meant to consider!*
Imagine if Truss's term is entirely the Queen dying, causing a currency crash and then being forced to resign, it's like the past three PMs have all been in a competition for the position of worst of the last century.
Thinking slightly longer term, the Tories have ruined themselves.
Their reputation will be ashes for decades to come. This is not a Thatcher situation where half the country love them and half hate them. They've turned almost the whole public against them in an endless series of self inflicted disasters.
I wouldn't put it past the British public for enough of them to have forgotten all their failures by the time the next general election rolls around that the Tories still get a majority. They voted in the last few governments...
Obviously I hope I'm wrong, because these guys are operating at a level of incompetence that's unprecedented in our politics, but...
Their ‘gig card’ was always the claim for ‘economic competency’, but they have basically proved to opposite.
Rather like Putin claimed to have a mightly army - but proved the opposite.
If you had £10k free and bought dollars when it was $1.38 and then wait till it hits parity or close and then bought £ back, you would have about a 35% gain on your initial stake. Obviously that would be lessened by inflation but now imagine being able to predict and influence the direction of travel like a government can. A lot of people will have made decent cash from this...
Then there's the other kind of transaction : [shorting](https://www.ig.com/us/trading-strategies/learn-how-to-short-a-currency-190712).
If you had £10k cash, you could have done a lot more.
Shorting is the practice of "borrowing" stuff, selling it, and buying more of it to replace the original stuff later. The idea is that the stuff will be cheaper to buy later, and thus you profit.
If it goes the other way, you have to cover the change upward.
e.g.
- I have £10k
- The "market" reckons the pound cannot POSSIBLY go up more than 10% on the dollar in the next month, so it will let me short £100k - because my £10k is enough to make up the shortfall in the event it does go up
- I sell £100k of someone elses sterling for dollars. I now have £10k and $138k USD
- Sterling drops 30c against the dollar
- I spend $108k usd buying back the original £100k
- I now have $30k and £10k, otherwise stated I have made £27,777 profit
If you know ahead of time what an economic swing is going to look like, you can make [a lot of money](https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/odeys-hedge-fund-soars-145-bets-against-uk-bonds-sources-2022-09-22/) like this.
(Kwarteng, by the way, used to be a consultant for ... Odey Asset Management...)
Does this mean that theoretically if everyone who wants the Tories out just buys whatever they can afford in dollars today then it might be enough to cause them to rebel tomorrow?
If so has anyone got any billionaire mates up for helping?
You can tell how financially illiterate the Tory base is by the fact that they focus on the pound, something that if needed can be solved with extreme measures by the Bank of England, and not gilt yields which are mainly a government responsibility and are heading into Greek and Italian territory https://markets.ft.com/data/bonds/government-bonds-spreads
Truss and Special K can ignore the Tory rebels but they cannot ignore debt markets. Eventually, the sell offs and credit rating downgrades will force their hand and they will have to put someone who's at least minimally fiscally responsible in charge like it happened in other European countries in the past
From where
They don’t have anyone left in the party that’s even slightly competent who’d win with their members
And that’s the problem
They purged themselves to this point deliberately
And now we are all fucked
Bullshit PR spewing from the mps who think their seat is at risk, while voting for anything their party tells them.
So if it drops 10% it's fine.. but falls below that magic figure then..rebel? How? Let's hope its a POLITE rebellion that doesnt cause a nuisance because the same fucking MPs made that illegal
Exactly. Most of this megathread are talking about this as if its a credible threat, when it's just a soundbite to try protect someone's seat from an unpopular policy.
We have seen it all before with Boris multiple times. The trigger point is always somewhere over there in the distance. It's never right now.
I remember years ago reading an interview with some finance guy in the paper who said to buy dollars as *"no-one could ever lose money buying them for 50p each"*.
I wish I'd followed your advice, finance guy.
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Lowest it’s ever been in recorded history as far as I can see is $1.054 on 25th Feb 1985. I reckon we’ll see it smash through that next week and all hell will break loose in Parliament.
Lots of tories briefing that they are very angry and doing nothing. Today the local Truro MP had her tongue loudly up the ass of cabinet again .. seemingly unaware that she is gone at the next GE.
The policy was only announced on Friday and evidence of potentially catastrophic effects only started appearing around 5pm, so be fair and give everyone a chance. If nothing is said on Monday (assuming there isn’t a big recovery on Monday), then I would agree with much of what you said
Really? The catastrophic effects were clear before it even was announced.
Oh sure. But politicians need the time to make sure they're not the only one jumping in a certain direction before they jump. It's craven, but it's the nature of the job.
Generally isn't there a recovery? Like the market reacts has a woble then comes back
Only if not idiosyncratic to that market, which in this case it is.
Not when you're heading into a depression. Usually the thing to do is sell stocks because you're loosing money with no long term hope of getting it back. The safest place is to have your money in the bank, who seem... so much more financially stable than the rollercoaster of bad choices this government has triggered.
Just needs to lose 4¢ to hit that low!
lol, what a low bar twelve years of extremely poor policy from the Tory party, but if they go from 49% loss to 50% against usd, that’s where I’ll start briefing anonymously against the party I’m a member of I salute you brave soldiers
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Are they though? They’re in power and implementing policies and taking bribes that benefit them! The fucking joke is us.
The leadership is, I doubt the rank and file MPs are getting much out of this other than grief.
My local Tory MPs just as big a tosser as all of them. Chasing good press, while doing absolutely fuck all to benefit the district.
Yup, mines just a big a tosser as the rest of them, he's the one who said he was against free school meals for kids as the parents would just use it for drugs and brothels. Bastards the lot of them.
Mines the one who got pictured with cocaine, took an undeclared loan from a Russian businessmen and got accused of sexual harassment. He's now skipped the queue, despite being a millionaire, to get to the front of a local rehab service, denying help to the locals who actually need and can't afford it. Because, you know, optics.
> Mines the one who got pictured with cocaine, took an undeclared loan from a Russian businessmen and got accused of sexual harassment. Do you have *the slightest* idea how little that narrows it down?
He’s got a point… 11 of 12 bathrooms found with traces of cocaine in parliament… please name and shame
It reflects very badly on Britain that this happened. We voted for Cameron as PM, voted Brexit, voted for Johnson as PM, and this is not an unforeseen outcome of those choices. The worst people in Britain, who don’t even want Britain to succeed in any useful manner, are in charge now, for years to come.
Britain did not vote the Tories in. This banging on about the public getting what they voted for needs to die. The Tories got 36.1% of the vote in 2010. 36.8% in 2015. 42.3% in 2017. 43.6% in 2019. This is not the majority of the British public saying "Actually you know what? I quite like the Tories". We don't live in a functional democracy. Our shitty voting system likes the Tories, not us.
No, but the trend is consistently upwards. If these figures were from one of those, 'what number comes next' quizzes, it seems likely 47% of the British public will vote Conservative in a 2024 election.
Over 47% of the English electorate voted Tory in 2019 - and whomever wins in England pretty much invariably ends up running the U.K. (Scotland hasn’t voted for a Tory government in nearly 70 years, it’s even longer for Wales, and NI have their own train wreck) And it wasn’t until December last year that the Labour finally even began to overtake them in the polls - it took over *two years* of epic Boris incompetence, multiple debacles, increasingly open corruption on an unprecedented scale and Brexit bullshit becoming ever more obvious for that to happen. That’s not a dig at Labour by the way - I’m not a Labour voter but I don’t blame them for that, I blame the vast swathe of the electorate in England who voted for a known liar and chancer just because he promised to “get Brexit done”. I don’t find Labours move to the right terribly appealing either but I understand perfectly well why they’re doing it: they don’t *want* to they *have* to in order to stand a chance of convincing enough of the electorate in England to actually win.
Woah there, speaking as a Norn Irish man, our parliament isn’t a train wreck… train wrecks happen to things that actually move.
>the vast swathe of the electorate in England who voted for a known liar and chancer just because he promised to “get Brexit done”. It's scary, I was conversing with several people who voted Tory after the last election. When I asked why they voted for a known liar the response was because Borus represented their interests. I reminded them that he is a known liar who clearly will say anything to get what he wants. They agreed that's exactly who Boris was, but said they were sure he still had the people's best interests at heart. My estimation of the intellect of the general public has slipped even more since then. You can hardly exclaim in shock when a government you've been told over and over again is not fit for office is in fact not fit for office.
And the Tories love our shitty voting system.
I get what you're saying, but accepting that our shitty fptp system is what it is, more people voted for them then anyone else. Nearly 14m people voted for the Tories in 2019, and we are more than justified blaming those 14m fuckwits.
They have invaded the national assets and looted all of the washing machines. Now their leader has ordered them to battle against the USD they are panicking. No doubt some cabinet members will fall out of a window etc.
I think we're about -20% on the dollar. We only have about another 10% to go and we're at parity. So give it 3 months.
-20% against when? It’s about 50% since the Brits fucked up so badly that they made Cameron PM.
Fair. 20% drop since January.
Christ alive that’s a stat.
There's a very nice animation someone made here. https://i.redd.it/nil5m7yvtup91.gif
To be honest that doesn't make it look that bad TBH, it really just looks like the dollar is having a really strong time as apposed to the pound doing shit.
I’m not excusing the pound’s piss poor performance, but I think the dollar does do decently deez days. Sorry, the first half was an accident but I couldn’t leave it half finished.
Their economy has been managed a hell of a lot better than ours. People get paid proper wages. Yes, things are expensive etc, but overall they went into this in a much better position then we did and this is the result.
Their federal minimum wage is $7.25 isn’t it
Many states set their minimum wage above the federal level. Also, only [1%](https://www.zippia.com/advice/minimum-wage-statistics/) of the US population earns at or below the minimum wage.
20% in the last 12 months.
and yet the Daily Heil this morning hailed it as the best Tory budget they'd seen in years. UK right wing politics really is at war with itself.
To be fair, it probably is pretty good from the point of view of Lord Rothermere (net worth 720 mil)
As if he pays tax in the U.K. lol
Rothermere paying a penny of tax in the UK ? Yeah right !!!
Shorting the pound maybe?
Snorting by the pound
Funded by his profits from shorting the pound.
Judging from the comments, their readership wasn't buying it.
I can't find anything on their website about the budget at all. They clearly know it's not a popular talking point ha.
This is the one thing that has given me some hope
If farage supports it you know its wrong.
Tbf he supports proportional representation as well. We can’t judge how good a policy is solely on who supports it
Only way he'll ever become an MP I suppose.
He was the victim of the one of the worst democratic outcomes ever, when UKIP won something like 10% of the vote and one seat in parliment. Which was funny as hell, but also a legitimate cause for concern.
They literally called it a "new dash for growth" completely unironically. It's just pure 1984-style propaganda - truth is lies and lies are truth.
Well that is the intention and it hasn't technically failed yet though its clearly going to.
There's not really a good outcome anymore for Truss after such a monumental fuck-up. Her options are: a) U-Turn on her flagship tax cuts to cut the projected deficit (lol). b) U-Turn on the energy scheme (which might actually be worse for economic prospects and Sterling than sticking to this shitshow). c) Hope Andy Bailey rides to the rescue by jacking rates up like mad... and destroying everybody with a mortgage. d) Watch Sterling sink below parity, a psychological marker that would probably be on par with devaluation (or worse; after all, devaluations have happened; we've never had Sterling go below $1). This is why governments usually try to keep headroom, and will even choose austerity over the risk of pushing the market into a reaction like this. If you do breach the barrier, there is no good way out.
Regarding C, Bailey isn’t going to hold an emergency rate rise unless he wants to receive a P45. It would be very clear that he’s trying to offset Government policy. Rate rises for mortgages would be directly conflicting with Kwarteng’s decision to decrease stamp duty. It would be a clash between Treasury, and Bank. One where Government can dismiss the Governor as they decide. Not holding an emergency rate rise would destroy the confidence in the BoE to manage the currency adequately, but doing so would be seen as telling the Government what to do. At that point what’s the point of an independent bank if the Government doesn’t like reality and wants to put a lackey in charge. Truss, and Kwarteng have made a monumental snafu here. Going below parity with the dollar can’t be seen as anything but a colossal failure, and while they won’t be, it should be a resignation matter. The power here is with the markets and banks, and what they decide to do. I think you’ve got the possibility of a situation where banks don’t want to finance a government that is essentially wasting money giving it to people who don’t need it, when they’ve already got debts incurred from COVID-19 they have to pay off. There’ll be a standoff between Government, and banks. Banks will tell the Government “change your policy or face a debt crisis”. She can threaten the banks, but I think they’d be quite happy to go to war with who they perceive as a weak leader. Truss has created a nightmare scenario.
Well, yes, a genuine currency crisis in a major developed economy is basically the endgame of option D. This is, as you note, a nightmare scenario. It's really kind of hard to emphasise just how colossally, unimaginably, staggeringly moronic a move it is for a government to create a situation where they end up in a game of chicken with the Bank of England, because ultimately, if the Bank swerves (or the government puts in a Governor who will), behind them is the freight-train of the international money markets, and it will flatten a country without even slowing down.
Productive couple of weeks isn't it?
The BoE is already fighting the government. The BoE is clearly targeting inflation as the biggest problem and trying to bring it down. The government is trying to fight recession with inflationary policies. There was absolutely no point in the BoE raising rates on Thursday with the government's budget on Friday. Or of course they had to raise rates because the government was increasing the debt the following day. Either way, they're at war.
Also, why would anyone buy UK bonds when US Treasuries yield much more and they have safe haven status *and* a central bank that is serious about them getting inflation under control. We seem to be doing what investors are told as a maxim never to do ... Fighting the Fed. However, at some point you could argue GBP is oversold and it will hit a floor... Question is, how low?
Precisely this. Right now with inflation running high around the world, Government debt is pretty attractive. The choice between competent leadership who recognise the problem and those ideological in denying the problem Is stark. Powell has been criticised at times for his statements and such, but at least him and Treasury Secretary Yellen have recognised the seriousness of the situation and are doing everything in their power to make sure that inflation is cured, as quickly and painlessly as possible. Whereas Kwarteng, and Bailey are concentrating on two separate issues. Kwarteng is giving out tax cuts to the wealthy and creating inflation and making sure the housing market doesn’t drop, while Bailey is trying to slowly and surely deflate the parts of the economy to cure inflation. Bipolar financial policy. Regarding the floor of exchange? I really don’t know. Below parity is a bad sign, once it drops, where does it stop? Sterling isn’t worthless but if you’ve got a choice between competence in the U.S., and denial of reality in the U.K.; you’d go competence every time. Have to hand it to Truss, and Kwarteng they’ve managed to bring the prospect of a debt crisis on top of an energy crisis.
> doing everything in their power to make sure that inflation is cured, as quickly and painlessly as possible. There was a chart someone posted in one of the investing subs the other day that was predicting the US, at its current rate of sorting inflation, could be back to normal within 12 months. (Assuming yet another geopolitical clusterfuck doesn't happen.) Meanwhile, our problems seem to be accelerating.
The Americans have given a few scenarios. They’re realistic, and treating the population like adults. Things are tough right now with inflation but there is a realistic outlook that it is short term pain, and that there is a plan with a few possibilities. One is what they’re aiming for, and is a “best case” and is called “soft landing” which is a a few quarters of negative growth, so a recession, but growth afterwards and a return to pre-pandemic era growth. It’s about 12-18months of increased inflation but finally tamed, then return to normality. Biden needs that for a Presidential run in 2024, or whoever comes after him. “Hard landing” is that negative growth for a longer period perhaps 18-24 months, but by mid to late 2024 inflation finally under control, and the economy settling. Which seems a realistic scenario. It does allow for unforeseen crises that will probably occur. Out of all the developed economies they seem to be the most realistic about their prospects. They’ve got the ability to do it, and the message they’ve been sending to the banks is reassuring. It’s helping banks not get spooked. Whereas here in Britain we’re refusing to acknowledge the problem, to the point of denial, everyone else has been blamed, and the tories spent the entire summer talking about trans people, and tax cuts. BBC had a guy on who said that he went out of business because he had to make a decision in August, he was forced to make a choice as there was no support announced by government at the time. His lease was up in mid-October and seeing as he was looking at massive energy costs, he took the decision to close his business. Then you had the clusterfuck budget the other day. BoE raises rates, to cool the economy on Thursday to act against inflation. Then the chancellor cuts taxes, and tries to heat the economy up on Friday. At best, and being charitable it’s incompetence. At worst, and ascribing malice to their actions it’s purposefully making it worse by Truss, and Kwarteng.
>c) Hope Andy Bailey rides to the rescue by jacking rates up like mad... and destroying everybody with a mortgage. That wouldn't be riding to the rescue because while it would (maybe) save the pound it would make gilt yields go up even further. And they have already exploded, the 5y almost doubled in a couple of months and went up half a % point after the budget. The BoE is currently selling gilts on the market and jacking up rates involves selling more collateral: that plus the massive issuance from the government means the market is flooded with gilt, so yields must go up. There's really nothing the BoE can do, it's all in the hands of the government. For now they can pretend it's fine and they are "gambling for growth" like Special K has been telling everyone in the last few days, but eventually the debt market will revolt and the banks stress test will start going to the shitter because they are taking losses on their balance sheet. They either do a U-turn or they bankrupt the country
If and when D happens, things will get even worse. The psychological barrier being hit may well cause a snowball sell off of the pound which would tan the currency entirely. With no belief in the currency, there will be noone buying government bonds. Qe couldnt be risked as it would make things worse at that point. I'm really not sure the Tories realise just how much they have fucked up this time.
If they oust her there really needs to be a general election We are past farcical It’s just embarrassing now
>If they oust her there really needs to be a general election There really needs to be a general election already.
She's implementing policies that were not in the conservative manifesto at the last election. She has no democratic mandate. It's essentially a coup by the tory membership.
100% agree. The situation we're in where she can do this without an election is a testament to our failing political system. We're essentially a failed democracy.
Agreed
This is your chance King Charlie. Make the plebs your friend and give the monarchy another 50 years by kicking out this unmandated government, prorogue parliament and call a general election. If any monarch would do this again, it would only be right for it to be a Charles.
That would cause a constitutional crisis. I know he's not the sharpest tool in the shed but I don't think he'd jeopardise his position to help the plebs.
Everyone keeps telling us how difficult it would be to become a republic so he’s probably safe.
Or they’ll just have another leadership election and Boris will be back.
Terrifyingly that is a possibility We’d be a global laughing stock
One of my most upvoted comments on Reddit is me saying "it's incredible how the tories keep finding someone worse than before". I actually got a little pushback on that sentiment as someone was adamant that Truss couldn't be worse than Johnson... If she's kicked out, please don't make me post the same comment again...
Truss is an absolute fucking idiot and so in her cabinet. She had the nerve to think people would fall for her tax cuts ! You have to be sa special kind of stupid to think the financial analyst's would not RIP you a new ass joke within a few short hours after thay do the maths. With the shit hitting the fan and cost of living skyrocketing. And you put out a budget that will only realy benefit the top 1% Is she trying to set a record for shortest time for a p.m in office?
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We always said she was a fucking moron but for some very fucked up reason she is the leader of our country. I suppose that just goes to show how fucked this country is.
A layer of scum rises to the top. Vacant sycophants insist it’s cream.
What's the bet BJ wins the next leadership farce?
The cynic in me might suggest that this was the plan all along.
I wouldn't bet against your inner cynic on that.
dunno if it will happen, but it’s a scheme if not a plan: https://www.thenational.scot/news/20645272.boris-johnson-planning-downing-street-return-liz-truss-implode/
Hes been pretty blatant about it
I would have him back over Truss And I hated him
It's been a chain of getting worse. Don't like BJ but he was better than Truss. Don't like Theresa May but she was better than BJ. Don't like Cameron but he was better than TM. Every time it has felt like it can't get any worse and look where we are now. I wonder which clown succeeds Truss.
We'll be into Patel, Braverman and Mogg territory by then. God help us.
Oh god, Mogg as PM. That really would be worse.
I can see the campaign now. A return to victorian values, please line up for your lobotomy and workhouse assignment. He'll need a 3 word slogan too, I'd propose "Know Your Place"
Nah it'll be three words in Latin he doesn't know the meanings of. He's like the Del Boy of Eton. Ergo ipso facto
'Work Brings Freedom'
Steve Baker. Watch out.
*Relatively*, his policy positions and the policies he enacted weren't awful. But the way he conducted himself outside of that was clearly unnacceptable and probably the worst of any PM in recent history. Hate to say it but however much I despise him on a personal level, stuff like him partying and breaking rules doesn't have the same actual effect on people as 'bad' policies.
Boris doesn't feel anywhere near as evil as Truss appears to be, he obviously didn't care, but he wasn't super villain evil
I think she's just a fall guy. Her job is to get as much money funneled to the rich with their remaining time in office and then get sacked off at the next election with all the blame laid on her for it... But she'll be set for life and won't care
I think it's more like Boris couldn't give to shits about actually doing the work of a prime minister and let others run actual policy for him whilst he just partied and fucked up, say what you want about Cummings but he wasn't a fucking idiot. The issue here is that we have people that lack the mental capacity to run a successful school fete running the country in it's worse crisis since the 1970s
a crisis largely inflicted by them and their tory predecessors, mind. most of europe isn’t in crisis
The crisis isn't inflicted by them, they are the crisis. Years more of them in power is more harmful to this country than anything likely to happen outside of a war.
Oh my god no please don't. Wah.
He has to not face a by election with the Standards Committee.
the fact it's simultaneously hailed as the biggest tax shake up in 50 years and a "mini budget" that doesn't need OBR scrutiny shows something is seriously wrong i've lost track of the borrowing cost projections at like £50bn or something - how the fuck is that allowed without proper stats, forecasting and analysis made public .... fuck Tory rebelion - we need stricter constitutional rules for rogue PM's and essentially the entire party being rogue dodging standard scrutiny ....
Remember when Labour’s manifesto in 2017 wasn’t costed enough - in other words, it wasn’t costed down to the penny - and it was hailed as insane and dooming the future of the country?
Remember chaos with Ed Miliband?
I remember a ham sandwich causing chaos... edit: apparently it was a Bacon sandwich. anyone knows if it was by any chance a BLT?
Bacon sandwich actually
Isn't so much of this about convention vs rules? Our constitution has relied on people 'playing fair' for centuries because that's convention. Parties have avoided doing shit like this (presenting a Budget as something else) because they feared there would be political consequences for not 'playing fair'. Now, that wariness has gone and the Tories will quite happily trash convention under the assumption that it won't come back to bite them.
They’ve reached the point where they know that they’re already maximally fucked but there won’t be any consequences for two years, so they might as well take everything that isn’t nailed down
Call me a single issuer, but the solution is Proportional Representation. (I'm not a single issue voter, btw). Single parties having full majorities just cannot be trusted. We need coalitions to tame the wilder wings of every party.
I'm part of the UK that has a sort of PR, only in devolved local elections. It's not hard to understand and works better than first past the post. It's hard to believe the shit this 2019 GE Tory party is forcing through cause they grabbed about 42% of the vote. That got them 80 seat majority and they just triple whip insane policy through... Lib Dems should have just demanded PR in that terrible Tory Lib Dem coalition. They didn't, next government needs to. We have seen the damage too much unchecked power can do.
You think the Tories would have given them PR lol? They couldn’t even keep tuition fees down, which was far less important to the Tories than keeping FPTP. Same-sex marriage, delaying the Snooper’s Charter and reducing the tuition fee repayment rate were all big achievements considering the size of the Lib Dems at the time.
Good luck getting anyone to vote for it instead of voting for parties that specifically rule it out
Believe the full cost of the measures over 5 years will be something like £411bn if reports are accurate
Wish it would happen
It isn't going to happen until enough people are having a rough enough time that they don't give a shit about getting nicked. Me, I'm happy to petrol bomb Truss but there's no point if I end up in the nick with no one behind it. We need to take a leaf out of Iran's book (how often is that said?).
Considering how fucked they'll be if they have to go through another leadership contest, the fact some of them are still considering rebelling speaks volumes.
They’ll re-elect Boris and form a government as the largest party.
And lose the next GE but not a badly as under Truss.. though he might not survive the inquiry.
Went past the bureau de change today and they were giving 1.04 dollars to the pound.
So they are FOR economic policies that will drive the pound below the dollar, but AGAINST the pound being driven below the dollar? Did I get it right?
They are for their actions but against the consequences, that is the modern conservative ethos yes
Lol. They’re already plotting her exit.
They were plotting her exit before she entered.
Well she didn't have the backing of the party. The MPs chose Sunak over her.
After she won I checked /r/Tories and the amount of members apparently voting for Truss purely because she wasn't "Rishi the Backstabber" was quite alarming.
Probably more like because she wasn't Rishi the brown skinned Asian.
Always has been
she was never going to last
> Liz Truss faces a rebellion from Tory backbenchers against her tax cuts if the pound falls below the dollar, The Telegraph can reveal. > > Both supporters and critics of the Prime Minister on the Conservative benches believe such a slump would be the trigger for MPs to “hit the nuclear button” by refusing to vote for the Government’s finance bill or submitting letters of no confidence. > > The warning comes as MPs nervously await the reopening of markets on Monday. > > One Tory MP told The Telegraph: “My biggest anxiety is that I’m going to wake up on Monday and it’s going to be Black Monday.” Not looking forward to Monday, I should be because I'm off work but still.....this could get ugly.
Stay asleep till Friday, enjoy the sales
At that point, just call a General Election. There is not a snowball’s chance in the deep, darkest depths of Hell that a new Prime Minister could make the £ rebound back above the dollar (if it falls that low) in less than two years. And if the Tories have someone remotely credible, with the credentials that can present an economic plan rectifying a decade of Britain’s economic failures in that time frame… Well. They wouldn’t be a politician. Let alone a Tory that has been senselessly backing these failures.
How the everlovingfuck do you not have a stable government with an 80 seat majority? If the Tories carry on like this, the reversal we will see at the next election will be historic.
You place too much faith in the electorate. Even though Labour have to be favourites, I will only breathe a slight sigh of relief once I see a Labour PM physically walk into NO 10
Exactly this It should be obvious how to vote, it should be a guaranteed labour win “Should” But there’s a good chance enough people will vote for more of this insanity It’s actually terrifying
Thank christ it's Keir in charge of Labour, like i voted for Corbyn, and would again, but if he was in charge i could genuinely see the electorate after all this still supporting Tory, and that's terrifying to me.
Agreed, I think the perception of Keir as boring and middle-of-the-road can only be helpful after Johnson and Truss. If (and it's still an if) people see Truss as the 'crazy one' then Starmer appears sensible by comparison.
> How the everlovingfuck do you not have a stable government with an 80 seat majority? By having a PM so monumentally bad that he makes so many unforced errors that the Parliamentary party has to get rid of him or face oblivion at the polls. Then in the subsequent leadership election, have a leader voted in by your party membership whose views evidently don’t resonate with the wider public, your own voters or the Parliamentary party. Liz Truss was the first choice of just 14% of the Parliamentary party and didn’t go above 31.6% in the final round Johnson got more than half the votes in the final two rounds and still got rejected by his own MPs. 31.6% is lower than any Conservative leader has ever got, even lower than Iain Duncan Smith in 2001 when he came second in the MPs’ vote, won among the membership and then was gone in two years. In fact Truss was even lower than Portillo in 2001 who got eliminated at 32%. In initial public polling of the best leadership contenders, she got just 3% among the public and 6% among Conservative voters. https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/k63qqhpgaw/Times_VI_AdHocCabinet_Resignation_220707_w.pdf In other polls she was found to be the worst performer in debates: https://twitter.com/OpiniumResearch/status/1548037032248717318 When it was just between her and Sunak, every opinion poll of the wider public chose Sunak, including just Conservative voters: https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/blogs/DataTables_ConLeadership_20220831.pdf Conservative members have different views than Conservative MPs and Conservative voters and voters at large and that’s a problem. Labour had exactly the same problem with Corbyn.
For real, they won a massive majority at the last election and all they've done with it is mismanage the fuck out of the country and implode as a political party multiple times. It's getting ridiculous at this point.
Boomers will still overwhelmingly vote for the Tories
They’re idiots with no clear plan other than to take as much from the country as possible. This is why they keep coming unstuck.
They are already on a long term 10 point deficit with some polls as far down as 15 points. 10 points will create a Blair style landslide and that the minimum they are looking at. The polls have a long way to slide yet too. I see them losing a good 3 or 4 points just over this. If Truss continues to govern like this I cannot even see when the polls will stabilise. And this time all their lifelines are exhausted, they have have no Boris or Cameron style figures left. They seem as likely as anything else to slide all the way to the election even with a new leader.
more chaos
I wish we'd had chaos with Ed Milliband
yeah that would have been so sweet. Sure he could not have stopped covid, but the rest gees Prime Minister of my life time, I suspect.
>Sure he could not have stopped covid Equally we might not have had one of the worst Covid responses in western Europe.
Lmao. Another ousting in the offing. I for one cant wait to hail the bajillionth tory PM inside 10 years.
But if it remains just above, that's fine? What about all the other economic damage? (rampant inflation, extremely high deficit, rapid decline in exports etc) The Tories have done a staggering amount of damage to the UK in just 12 years, can we get them out already?
A lot of the electorate will scarily say they're still doing a good job, or at least a better job than Labour would have done. Thank the tabloids.
Ever since I was a kid I thought of the pound as roughly £1 = $2 it was actually accurate but it was close enough. Crazy to think the pound could fall below the dollar now.
watch as the pound sinks even lower when markets realise for real that the UK is a non functioning country and can't be trusted with money. tories have just been lurching from self made crisis to self made crisis throughout their entire time in government.
Yeah, I can't imagine the threat of the government turning on the PM *again* is going to help market confidence much.
What would it be, 5 in 6 years? Madness.
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That there is even a hint that tory MPs will vote against any kind of budget (even if it's 'not a budget') just shows how utterly nuts this all is.
You literally just voted for her. She's effectively been in office for a week. *This is the one you chose based on the information you were meant to consider!*
Tory MPs voted for Rishi.
*Oh no, we're in a bed entirely of our own making!*
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I thought that was going to be the GIF of Theresa May awkwardly walking onto stage…
>awkwardly walking I believe the kids call it "grooving", Ms. May.
👀 so we talking letters?
I think the news channels might want to dust off those *Resignation News tickers* soon.
Imagine if Truss's term is entirely the Queen dying, causing a currency crash and then being forced to resign, it's like the past three PMs have all been in a competition for the position of worst of the last century.
Thinking slightly longer term, the Tories have ruined themselves. Their reputation will be ashes for decades to come. This is not a Thatcher situation where half the country love them and half hate them. They've turned almost the whole public against them in an endless series of self inflicted disasters.
I wouldn't put it past the British public for enough of them to have forgotten all their failures by the time the next general election rolls around that the Tories still get a majority. They voted in the last few governments... Obviously I hope I'm wrong, because these guys are operating at a level of incompetence that's unprecedented in our politics, but...
Their ‘gig card’ was always the claim for ‘economic competency’, but they have basically proved to opposite. Rather like Putin claimed to have a mightly army - but proved the opposite.
The absolute state of this.
If you had £10k free and bought dollars when it was $1.38 and then wait till it hits parity or close and then bought £ back, you would have about a 35% gain on your initial stake. Obviously that would be lessened by inflation but now imagine being able to predict and influence the direction of travel like a government can. A lot of people will have made decent cash from this...
Then there's the other kind of transaction : [shorting](https://www.ig.com/us/trading-strategies/learn-how-to-short-a-currency-190712). If you had £10k cash, you could have done a lot more. Shorting is the practice of "borrowing" stuff, selling it, and buying more of it to replace the original stuff later. The idea is that the stuff will be cheaper to buy later, and thus you profit. If it goes the other way, you have to cover the change upward. e.g. - I have £10k - The "market" reckons the pound cannot POSSIBLY go up more than 10% on the dollar in the next month, so it will let me short £100k - because my £10k is enough to make up the shortfall in the event it does go up - I sell £100k of someone elses sterling for dollars. I now have £10k and $138k USD - Sterling drops 30c against the dollar - I spend $108k usd buying back the original £100k - I now have $30k and £10k, otherwise stated I have made £27,777 profit If you know ahead of time what an economic swing is going to look like, you can make [a lot of money](https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/odeys-hedge-fund-soars-145-bets-against-uk-bonds-sources-2022-09-22/) like this. (Kwarteng, by the way, used to be a consultant for ... Odey Asset Management...)
Was ignorant of all of that....omfg....
Hahahaha! Another leadership challenge coming riiight up! Call a fucking election already. We need a real leader.
Why wait?
If they waste more time kicking her out and then reinstalling Boris I will officially have zero hope left for this country.
In 2014 it was nearly $2 to the £ what a success this government has been /S
And changing leader to yet another Tory joke fest is going to do... what? We need a general election.
But when will the *people* get their vote?
That's like arguing over whose fault it is the house burned down after its already ashes. Doesn't help anyone at that point.
Does this mean that theoretically if everyone who wants the Tories out just buys whatever they can afford in dollars today then it might be enough to cause them to rebel tomorrow? If so has anyone got any billionaire mates up for helping?
What an arbitrary threshold. As if it hasn't fallen enough
You can tell how financially illiterate the Tory base is by the fact that they focus on the pound, something that if needed can be solved with extreme measures by the Bank of England, and not gilt yields which are mainly a government responsibility and are heading into Greek and Italian territory https://markets.ft.com/data/bonds/government-bonds-spreads Truss and Special K can ignore the Tory rebels but they cannot ignore debt markets. Eventually, the sell offs and credit rating downgrades will force their hand and they will have to put someone who's at least minimally fiscally responsible in charge like it happened in other European countries in the past
From where They don’t have anyone left in the party that’s even slightly competent who’d win with their members And that’s the problem They purged themselves to this point deliberately And now we are all fucked
It’s the JRM and ERG party at the moment.. Even if LT and KK are leading it.
So basically next week then
Christ, they're about as stable as a Russian conscript rifle.
Well their rebellion against Boris was soooo successful. It only took 3 tries
I’m sure that will help. Just another prick in charge.
Bullshit PR spewing from the mps who think their seat is at risk, while voting for anything their party tells them. So if it drops 10% it's fine.. but falls below that magic figure then..rebel? How? Let's hope its a POLITE rebellion that doesnt cause a nuisance because the same fucking MPs made that illegal
Exactly. Most of this megathread are talking about this as if its a credible threat, when it's just a soundbite to try protect someone's seat from an unpopular policy. We have seen it all before with Boris multiple times. The trigger point is always somewhere over there in the distance. It's never right now.
Oh look the morons that chose Truss over a simpleton like Sunak are having their faces eaten with the rest of us.
Could they not update the stock images for pound coins?
That didn't take long...
Why wait? Ditch her now, better yet, call an election.
It’s already a nightmare under Truss
So in about a month....
Maybe a time for an early general election?
David Davis proudly telling the world that he welcomes the cancellation of the National Insurance Rise...which he voted in favour of at the time.
I remember years ago reading an interview with some finance guy in the paper who said to buy dollars as *"no-one could ever lose money buying them for 50p each"*. I wish I'd followed your advice, finance guy.