Javid, Sunak, Zahawi, Kwarteng, Hunt… that’s a list of chancellors who’ve been ground up and squeezed out of the political mincing machine since 2019 – the last four of them in just four months.
And with each change, a posse of junior ministers gets dragged out of the Treasury behind them. Chris Philp: gone as chief secretary. Simon Clarke, his predecessor and Steve Barclay before him: both scattered to lesser offices of state. As for the two chief secretaries before them? One was Sunak, the other Liz Truss herself.
So what we’re seeing in this crisis is not just the collapse of UK fiscal credibility. It’s the evisceration of a cadre of Tories capable of doing the job.
And there’s an existential reason why. Each of these politicians has tried to make Brexit work and it will not work. Theresa May tried soft Brexit plus austerity. Boris Johnson tried hard Brexit plus fiscal expansion. Truss tried hard Brexit plus fiscal expansion. As I write this, with the helicopters buzzing over a frenzied Whitehall, only the austerity part is certain. Being chancellor is hard.
Being chief secretary is even harder, because you’re the enforcer with your own side: the person whose hand actually signs off public spending, and whose spreadsheets keep the state pension system solvent. So the Tory debacle is systematically scouring out the talent from Britain’s political class.
You can wing it as an amateur at Defra. You can Tweet, like home secretary Suella Braverman, sarky comments against police officers trying to do their jobs. Or, like Boris Johnson while PM, you can simply lie. But in monetary and fiscal policy, command of detail and communicative restraint matter, because you are dealing with immovable reality.
To restore Britain’s fiscal credibility, the Tories will now be required to do the very thing they don’t believe in: raise taxes and most probably cut spending massively – including on policing and defence.
Even as Hunt delivered his total U-turn, the masthead on the Conservative Party Twitter account said “cutting taxes is the right thing to do morally and economically” – a direct quote from Truss herself. Conservatism ended up in this moral and economic space because all its other options for making Brexit work were tried.
Less than four weeks ago the Tufton Street gurus of free-market economics were being hailed as visionaries for designing this “laboratory experiment” in neo-Thatcherism. Now it’s over, how will Tory finance ministers justify to themselves, their advisers, their civil servants, a programme they do not believe in?
The magnitude of the Tory debacle, therefore, does not lie simply in the damage it has done to the public finances, or the damage it will bequeath to a Labour government. It lies in the ideological dead end the party has reached.
The moment has been a long time coming. David Cameron and George Osborne inflicted austerity on a scale that, in its first two years, plunged the economy into stagnation. Only the Bank of England issuing money to the tune of hundreds of billions limited the damage.
Johnson and May, each grappling with the post-Brexit reality of falling trade, flatlining investment, and then Covid-19, ended up borrowing on a massive scale – secure in the knowledge that a country with a sovereign currency cannot go bust, and that all other countries were being forced to borrow.
Rishi Sunak, like the proverbial dieter bingeing on doughnuts, pledged that once the cravings were over, he too would deliver lower taxes and a smaller state – even as he borrowed more in a year than John McDonnell had promised to over five years.
Now the small state is proven a chimera, the Conservatives face a moment of ideological reckoning.
Out of the wreckage of conservatism must now crawl a new cadre of politicians who believe in fiscal realism.
Brexit has created an economy that cannot pay its way. As trade falls on all measures, the current account deficit has ballooned above 8% of GDP. That leaves UK government borrowing reliant – as former Bank governor Mark Carney put it – on “the kindness of strangers”. Growth is stagnant because investment has stagnated since 2016. And though the pound has lost nearly a third of its value since Brexit, the etiolated structure of the economy means there is no upside in terms of exports.
So the strategic choice facing those who will pick up the pieces is not small state/big state. It is the reversal of Brexit – at least to the extent that we begin to attract long-term business investment; and that our current account deficit reverses; and the government’s cost of borrowing comes down to sustainable levels.
What’s striking, as we watch the Tories flounder, is how un-conservative they became. The philosopher Michael Oakeshott once defined the conservative ethos as the ability to “keep afloat on an even keel… seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional manner of behaviour in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion.”
The traditional manner of behaviour – drilled into every junior official at the Treasury, every economics undergraduate, every nerd in a bow-tie at the Oxford Union – is to balance the country’s books and instil confidence.
Instead – to switch metaphors – a whole generation of Tories in early middle age have leapt over the parapet of the trench to get mown down by the markets. Hopefully we will not see their like again.
At this point, anyone who still thinks we’re better off is deluding themselves. We now need a government that can accept reality and make the best of it. That’s not going to happen with this constant conservative chaos.
I genuinely believe The Tories believed The EU needed us more than we needed them. That they would bend over backwards to give us the best deal ever. That was never going to happen.
The Tories/leavers will never admit they were wrong. The latter would have to admit they were mugged off by the former. No one would admit that.
>So the Tory debacle is systematically scouring out the talent from Britain’s political class.
hahaha. there has been no talent in the political class for decades. and even at that, there was maybe one bright spark a century for the last 400 years. the only change is they have run out of poors to replace the poors they already burned out.
The UK was world renowned for being a trading nation.
….. Then along came the trickle downers….
The term “political class” needs to be consigned to the rubbish bin. It’s use creates a barrier for ordinary people to get involved in politics.
well it’s not like we can turn back time and get all the same concessions
Fact is, and I say this as an avid ‘remainer’, the reason to ‘keep trying’ is that the public voted for it, six years ago now. I have hoped from day one (and still do) that a second referendum is on the cards at some point. But it’s too early to do that with any political legitimacy, without undermining the concept of a referendum entirely. I think ten years (2026) would be a good gap and a chance to ask for a second opinion. In the meantime I hope the Scots get their independence referendum.
Of course it fucks up tory economic policy – because it fucks up the economy. But the English voted for this. Just like they get the stupid government they deserve, they get the economy they deserve too.
We’ve proved that we can’t govern ourselves, perhaps we shouldn’t.
There’s just plenty of hate and racism in the British public to feed the far right machine. Annoying part is even foreigners vote for it thinking they can give themselves a better chance or something
The Conservatives have nothing to offer working people, and never did.
I hope the guillable fools who fell for Brexit, immigration scaremongering, trickle down economics and whatever other divide and conquer nonsense deluded them into voting against their own best interests are proud of themselves for ruining this country. You’ve turned a world superpower into an isolated banana republic and an international joke in less than 10 years with your small-minded nationalism, xenophobia and selfishness.
Don’t whine when all the educated young professionals leave the shithole you’ve created on a [digital nomad visa](https://www.businessinsider.com/portugal-launches-digital-nomad-visa-2700-month-income-requirement-2022-10?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB&r=US&IR=T) and there aren’t enough of us to pay for your state pension and other end-of-life benefits. For those of us working remotely and earning more than around 30k a year, it’s an easy way to get around Brexit immigration restrictions or dodge sky-high energy bills and rent through the winter months. We’ve had enough of being abused by this government and paying for your mistakes. We repeatedly warned you. You did this to yourselves.
But they are making it work….. For themselves and their chums.
Bankers bonuses uncapped, employers breaking employment law with impunity, wages reducing in real terms and “red tape” ….er…. protections thrown out of the window.
The Tories are to the 1% as what Sunn Fein were to the IRA. It’s going to work for the 1% very nicely. For us, not so much.
Well done, Tory voters – the enablers of an early Christmas for turkeys.
I’m surprised trading standards still allow the British government to call itself a democracy. It should surely be “democracy flavoured” or “may contain traces of democracy” by now.
Asking the public to decide our national destiny is the dumbest mistake ever perpetrated by a British Prime Minister (David Cameron)
I came to the UK in 2009 looking for a better life. I spent 8 years working low-end jobs and went to uni to get an even better life for myself – the Scottish government has been helping me by paying my university (EU student). I was planning to remain but I’m voting leave… I’ll go to the EU the moment I finish university. The UK is too unstable.
Unless Scotland votes leave and becomes independent. Then I might stay here.
A lot of lies were told. There should be a judicial enquiry.
All parties are scared of being destroyed by our scumbag right wing media. The only route I can see out of Brexit is if Labour command a big enough majority – knocking the Tories into 3rd or 4th biggest parliamentary party – and becoming big enough to not give a shit about what Murdoch and the like think.
I think we should do a new vote to rejoin- what was promised about leaving was clearly bullshit
In short? IMF. A failing economy of that scale is prime loot for plundering by the 1%.
They will drive the economy to the ground, push the country into a big recession by cutting social spending and allowing properties and rent skyrocket, drive off the companies of the country and let unemployment skyrocket.
Then when calling I’m the IMF is unavoidable, like every failing country, they will seize control of the legislature, force the Americanization of the country, sell everything like the NHS and anything that’s still public to American corporations, remove all environmental safeguards, any employment protection laws, and so on. All while being in opposition and screaming out loud at Labour for ruining the country while making billions by their shares in those corporations.
UK is the new Greece .
England is like the majestic Titanic, and Brexit is the Iceberg. The ship is sinking now and only the wealthy have access to a life raft. The rest of us are doomed to drown or freeze to death.
brexit is working perfectly for the conservatives, they dont give a toss about the working class, they are the rich snobs from private schools who have never had to work a hard day in their spoiled lives.
this was there plan.
I’m gutted and hope I’m just being pessimistic but I just can’t see this coming to the fore any time soon. Brexit has been SUCH a disaster and remainers have been so demonised by them that for a lot of leavers, I think acknowledging failure at this point would be admitting culpability for really damaging the country and/or being a gullible victim of con artists. I think that’s just too unpalatable for a lot of them that wilful ignorance will prevail for quite a long time still.
I think Westminster had a collective stroke. Maybe something in the building just collapsed and released a load of lead or something into the tap water idk.
We’re fucked, sorry for my pessimism I just can’t see how we will ever get back to the same status or position. As a business owner, I’ve lost 25% of my sales (EU customers), now my manufacturing costs are through the roof with weak pound. It’s destroyed my business. Brexit bastards.
Also why are we picking up the bill so big oil can make record profits this winter? The think tanks (lobbied by oil) controlling Liz and the Tories shielding them from a windfall tax, disgusting! We should not be paying these energy bills, we should be rioting until energy profits are taxed!! 🤬
Because it was “The Will of The People” , ” The Biggest Democratic Exercise in The History of This Country” and “Brexit Means Brexit” – or some stupid shit like that 😵💫
While I am very much anti-Brexit, I feel like this is missing the wood for the trees. I don’t think Brexit is the cause of our political problems, or even *a* cause of them (though it is a cause of economic problems).
I think Brexit is another symptom of our underlying political problems. Reversing it isn’t going to solve much – we’ll still have the same idiots running the country, sleepwalking us into the 1930s.
*”And though the pound has lost nearly a third of its value since Brexit, the etiolated structure of the economy means there is no upside in terms of exports.”*
etiolated
*adjective*
1. (of a plant) pale and drawn out due to a lack of light.
“etiolated leaf segments”
2. having lost vigour or substance; feeble.
“a tone of etiolated nostalgia”
No PM wants to be the one to go back with their tail between their legs to ask to rejoin, and then have to accept less privileges than we had before we left.
My predictions are:
Phase 1
– boris put back in charge
– sudden ‘fix’ of the issues
– call General Election > tories get in because England voted for them
Phase 2
– build these new jails, make it easier to jail people for smaller crimes like drug use (borrowing that technique from the USA)
– say the NHS needs ‘overhauled’ due to waiting lists > then proceed to introduce a small insurance style model > put into place the start full privatisation which could take 10 years.
– general keep fucking folk over a barrel
I don’t live in the UK anymore. Have just returned from a visit. The saddest thing I saw was a Jaguar car with a sticker on the number plate replacing the EU symbol with GB. Instead it had the Union Jack flag with UK. The sticker was peeling off. I bet he voted Brexit.
I don’t think “reversing Brexit” is a useful area of discussion. We don’t have the power to reverse Brexit. Even if we held a referendum on rejoining and it passed by a huge majority, the EU is unlikely to have the UK back. We were a bad influence throughout and they’re better off without us.
It’s reasonable to suggest, in my view, that unless the United Kingdom rejoins the European Union most of its current economic troubles will never be fully resolved.
Brexit was a massive, entirely Conservative manufactured, self-inflicted injury and blunder. Made all the worse, because it was sold with lies, disinformation, falsehoods, fear, bigotry, and social discord.
All the warnings from the Remainers have become true or are coming true. All the false promises of the Leavers have not come true and never will.
32 comments
Javid, Sunak, Zahawi, Kwarteng, Hunt… that’s a list of chancellors who’ve been ground up and squeezed out of the political mincing machine since 2019 – the last four of them in just four months.
And with each change, a posse of junior ministers gets dragged out of the Treasury behind them. Chris Philp: gone as chief secretary. Simon Clarke, his predecessor and Steve Barclay before him: both scattered to lesser offices of state. As for the two chief secretaries before them? One was Sunak, the other Liz Truss herself.
So what we’re seeing in this crisis is not just the collapse of UK fiscal credibility. It’s the evisceration of a cadre of Tories capable of doing the job.
And there’s an existential reason why. Each of these politicians has tried to make Brexit work and it will not work. Theresa May tried soft Brexit plus austerity. Boris Johnson tried hard Brexit plus fiscal expansion. Truss tried hard Brexit plus fiscal expansion. As I write this, with the helicopters buzzing over a frenzied Whitehall, only the austerity part is certain. Being chancellor is hard.
Being chief secretary is even harder, because you’re the enforcer with your own side: the person whose hand actually signs off public spending, and whose spreadsheets keep the state pension system solvent. So the Tory debacle is systematically scouring out the talent from Britain’s political class.
You can wing it as an amateur at Defra. You can Tweet, like home secretary Suella Braverman, sarky comments against police officers trying to do their jobs. Or, like Boris Johnson while PM, you can simply lie. But in monetary and fiscal policy, command of detail and communicative restraint matter, because you are dealing with immovable reality.
To restore Britain’s fiscal credibility, the Tories will now be required to do the very thing they don’t believe in: raise taxes and most probably cut spending massively – including on policing and defence.
Even as Hunt delivered his total U-turn, the masthead on the Conservative Party Twitter account said “cutting taxes is the right thing to do morally and economically” – a direct quote from Truss herself. Conservatism ended up in this moral and economic space because all its other options for making Brexit work were tried.
Less than four weeks ago the Tufton Street gurus of free-market economics were being hailed as visionaries for designing this “laboratory experiment” in neo-Thatcherism. Now it’s over, how will Tory finance ministers justify to themselves, their advisers, their civil servants, a programme they do not believe in?
The magnitude of the Tory debacle, therefore, does not lie simply in the damage it has done to the public finances, or the damage it will bequeath to a Labour government. It lies in the ideological dead end the party has reached.
The moment has been a long time coming. David Cameron and George Osborne inflicted austerity on a scale that, in its first two years, plunged the economy into stagnation. Only the Bank of England issuing money to the tune of hundreds of billions limited the damage.
Johnson and May, each grappling with the post-Brexit reality of falling trade, flatlining investment, and then Covid-19, ended up borrowing on a massive scale – secure in the knowledge that a country with a sovereign currency cannot go bust, and that all other countries were being forced to borrow.
Rishi Sunak, like the proverbial dieter bingeing on doughnuts, pledged that once the cravings were over, he too would deliver lower taxes and a smaller state – even as he borrowed more in a year than John McDonnell had promised to over five years.
Now the small state is proven a chimera, the Conservatives face a moment of ideological reckoning.
Out of the wreckage of conservatism must now crawl a new cadre of politicians who believe in fiscal realism.
Brexit has created an economy that cannot pay its way. As trade falls on all measures, the current account deficit has ballooned above 8% of GDP. That leaves UK government borrowing reliant – as former Bank governor Mark Carney put it – on “the kindness of strangers”. Growth is stagnant because investment has stagnated since 2016. And though the pound has lost nearly a third of its value since Brexit, the etiolated structure of the economy means there is no upside in terms of exports.
So the strategic choice facing those who will pick up the pieces is not small state/big state. It is the reversal of Brexit – at least to the extent that we begin to attract long-term business investment; and that our current account deficit reverses; and the government’s cost of borrowing comes down to sustainable levels.
What’s striking, as we watch the Tories flounder, is how un-conservative they became. The philosopher Michael Oakeshott once defined the conservative ethos as the ability to “keep afloat on an even keel… seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional manner of behaviour in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion.”
The traditional manner of behaviour – drilled into every junior official at the Treasury, every economics undergraduate, every nerd in a bow-tie at the Oxford Union – is to balance the country’s books and instil confidence.
Instead – to switch metaphors – a whole generation of Tories in early middle age have leapt over the parapet of the trench to get mown down by the markets. Hopefully we will not see their like again.
At this point, anyone who still thinks we’re better off is deluding themselves. We now need a government that can accept reality and make the best of it. That’s not going to happen with this constant conservative chaos.
I genuinely believe The Tories believed The EU needed us more than we needed them. That they would bend over backwards to give us the best deal ever. That was never going to happen.
The Tories/leavers will never admit they were wrong. The latter would have to admit they were mugged off by the former. No one would admit that.
>So the Tory debacle is systematically scouring out the talent from Britain’s political class.
hahaha. there has been no talent in the political class for decades. and even at that, there was maybe one bright spark a century for the last 400 years. the only change is they have run out of poors to replace the poors they already burned out.
The UK was world renowned for being a trading nation.
….. Then along came the trickle downers….
The term “political class” needs to be consigned to the rubbish bin. It’s use creates a barrier for ordinary people to get involved in politics.
well it’s not like we can turn back time and get all the same concessions
Fact is, and I say this as an avid ‘remainer’, the reason to ‘keep trying’ is that the public voted for it, six years ago now. I have hoped from day one (and still do) that a second referendum is on the cards at some point. But it’s too early to do that with any political legitimacy, without undermining the concept of a referendum entirely. I think ten years (2026) would be a good gap and a chance to ask for a second opinion. In the meantime I hope the Scots get their independence referendum.
Of course it fucks up tory economic policy – because it fucks up the economy. But the English voted for this. Just like they get the stupid government they deserve, they get the economy they deserve too.
We’ve proved that we can’t govern ourselves, perhaps we shouldn’t.
There’s just plenty of hate and racism in the British public to feed the far right machine. Annoying part is even foreigners vote for it thinking they can give themselves a better chance or something
The Conservatives have nothing to offer working people, and never did.
I hope the guillable fools who fell for Brexit, immigration scaremongering, trickle down economics and whatever other divide and conquer nonsense deluded them into voting against their own best interests are proud of themselves for ruining this country. You’ve turned a world superpower into an isolated banana republic and an international joke in less than 10 years with your small-minded nationalism, xenophobia and selfishness.
Don’t whine when all the educated young professionals leave the shithole you’ve created on a [digital nomad visa](https://www.businessinsider.com/portugal-launches-digital-nomad-visa-2700-month-income-requirement-2022-10?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB&r=US&IR=T) and there aren’t enough of us to pay for your state pension and other end-of-life benefits. For those of us working remotely and earning more than around 30k a year, it’s an easy way to get around Brexit immigration restrictions or dodge sky-high energy bills and rent through the winter months. We’ve had enough of being abused by this government and paying for your mistakes. We repeatedly warned you. You did this to yourselves.
But they are making it work….. For themselves and their chums.
Bankers bonuses uncapped, employers breaking employment law with impunity, wages reducing in real terms and “red tape” ….er…. protections thrown out of the window.
The Tories are to the 1% as what Sunn Fein were to the IRA. It’s going to work for the 1% very nicely. For us, not so much.
Well done, Tory voters – the enablers of an early Christmas for turkeys.
I’m surprised trading standards still allow the British government to call itself a democracy. It should surely be “democracy flavoured” or “may contain traces of democracy” by now.
Asking the public to decide our national destiny is the dumbest mistake ever perpetrated by a British Prime Minister (David Cameron)
I came to the UK in 2009 looking for a better life. I spent 8 years working low-end jobs and went to uni to get an even better life for myself – the Scottish government has been helping me by paying my university (EU student). I was planning to remain but I’m voting leave… I’ll go to the EU the moment I finish university. The UK is too unstable.
Unless Scotland votes leave and becomes independent. Then I might stay here.
A lot of lies were told. There should be a judicial enquiry.
All parties are scared of being destroyed by our scumbag right wing media. The only route I can see out of Brexit is if Labour command a big enough majority – knocking the Tories into 3rd or 4th biggest parliamentary party – and becoming big enough to not give a shit about what Murdoch and the like think.
I think we should do a new vote to rejoin- what was promised about leaving was clearly bullshit
In short? IMF. A failing economy of that scale is prime loot for plundering by the 1%.
They will drive the economy to the ground, push the country into a big recession by cutting social spending and allowing properties and rent skyrocket, drive off the companies of the country and let unemployment skyrocket.
Then when calling I’m the IMF is unavoidable, like every failing country, they will seize control of the legislature, force the Americanization of the country, sell everything like the NHS and anything that’s still public to American corporations, remove all environmental safeguards, any employment protection laws, and so on. All while being in opposition and screaming out loud at Labour for ruining the country while making billions by their shares in those corporations.
UK is the new Greece .
England is like the majestic Titanic, and Brexit is the Iceberg. The ship is sinking now and only the wealthy have access to a life raft. The rest of us are doomed to drown or freeze to death.
brexit is working perfectly for the conservatives, they dont give a toss about the working class, they are the rich snobs from private schools who have never had to work a hard day in their spoiled lives.
this was there plan.
I’m gutted and hope I’m just being pessimistic but I just can’t see this coming to the fore any time soon. Brexit has been SUCH a disaster and remainers have been so demonised by them that for a lot of leavers, I think acknowledging failure at this point would be admitting culpability for really damaging the country and/or being a gullible victim of con artists. I think that’s just too unpalatable for a lot of them that wilful ignorance will prevail for quite a long time still.
I think Westminster had a collective stroke. Maybe something in the building just collapsed and released a load of lead or something into the tap water idk.
We’re fucked, sorry for my pessimism I just can’t see how we will ever get back to the same status or position. As a business owner, I’ve lost 25% of my sales (EU customers), now my manufacturing costs are through the roof with weak pound. It’s destroyed my business. Brexit bastards.
Also why are we picking up the bill so big oil can make record profits this winter? The think tanks (lobbied by oil) controlling Liz and the Tories shielding them from a windfall tax, disgusting! We should not be paying these energy bills, we should be rioting until energy profits are taxed!! 🤬
Because it was “The Will of The People” , ” The Biggest Democratic Exercise in The History of This Country” and “Brexit Means Brexit” – or some stupid shit like that 😵💫
While I am very much anti-Brexit, I feel like this is missing the wood for the trees. I don’t think Brexit is the cause of our political problems, or even *a* cause of them (though it is a cause of economic problems).
I think Brexit is another symptom of our underlying political problems. Reversing it isn’t going to solve much – we’ll still have the same idiots running the country, sleepwalking us into the 1930s.
*”And though the pound has lost nearly a third of its value since Brexit, the etiolated structure of the economy means there is no upside in terms of exports.”*
etiolated
*adjective*
1. (of a plant) pale and drawn out due to a lack of light.
“etiolated leaf segments”
2. having lost vigour or substance; feeble.
“a tone of etiolated nostalgia”
No PM wants to be the one to go back with their tail between their legs to ask to rejoin, and then have to accept less privileges than we had before we left.
My predictions are:
Phase 1
– boris put back in charge
– sudden ‘fix’ of the issues
– call General Election > tories get in because England voted for them
Phase 2
– build these new jails, make it easier to jail people for smaller crimes like drug use (borrowing that technique from the USA)
– say the NHS needs ‘overhauled’ due to waiting lists > then proceed to introduce a small insurance style model > put into place the start full privatisation which could take 10 years.
– general keep fucking folk over a barrel
I don’t live in the UK anymore. Have just returned from a visit. The saddest thing I saw was a Jaguar car with a sticker on the number plate replacing the EU symbol with GB. Instead it had the Union Jack flag with UK. The sticker was peeling off. I bet he voted Brexit.
I don’t think “reversing Brexit” is a useful area of discussion. We don’t have the power to reverse Brexit. Even if we held a referendum on rejoining and it passed by a huge majority, the EU is unlikely to have the UK back. We were a bad influence throughout and they’re better off without us.
It’s reasonable to suggest, in my view, that unless the United Kingdom rejoins the European Union most of its current economic troubles will never be fully resolved.
Brexit was a massive, entirely Conservative manufactured, self-inflicted injury and blunder. Made all the worse, because it was sold with lies, disinformation, falsehoods, fear, bigotry, and social discord.
All the warnings from the Remainers have become true or are coming true. All the false promises of the Leavers have not come true and never will.