The past few weeks have been a liminal period in British politics; one in which we have been presented with real political choices for the first time in a long time. The great spectacle of the Royal funeral achieved what state funerals are expressly designed to do: reassert the unity of the British nation in a shared, sacral ritual of belonging, beyond sterile rationality, as the tribe interred its fallen chief with great pomp and ceremony. But more, the fundamental contours of British politics were exposed by the near-simultaneous accession of both the King and Liz Truss.
In King Charles, we have a post-liberal monarch who furiously rejects the marketisation of ever more aspects of human life. There are, in his writings, elements of the “Tietjens Toryism” of Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End, whereby the paternalistic concern of the central character, the “last surviving Tory”, for social harmony and widespread prosperity delineate the point at which “the High Toryism of Tietjens [meets] the extreme Radicalism of the extreme Left of the Left”.
Yet on the other, baleful side of the ledger, we have been foisted with a career politician who seems to view the laziest Left-wing caricatures of Toryism as a political roadmap: a pure zealot of unrestrained capital with no vision of the good beyond libertarian think tank pamphlets and a burning faith in the might and power of the market’s invisible hand. Alas, Truss’s faith in the markets is not rewarded by the markets’ faith in her: the invisible hand has already reached down to flick her from the history books.
Her plan for massive borrowing relied on the faith of international opinion that it would be amply repaid by her simultaneous tax cuts for Britain’s very richest, and an economic boom occasioned by vague promises of future reforms. To pay for her budget, and for its unintended consequences, the Government now looks set to slash spending on the infrastructure and research and development projects on which long-term prosperity depends. Unfortunately for Truss and for the country, the international markets, the IMF, the Bank of England, and those notorious Left-wing radicals the Financial Times and the Economist recoiled in horror. When even the Telegraph warns that the ”Peronist policies” of a “a careless, ideological government” set on “a course of sheer madness” put “this country in serious jeopardy”, we can be certain that we are in a new era. There are fashions in economics as in all things; outside the Conservative party, the rest of the world has firmly rejected the Seventies dogmas that brought Britain decades of stagnation and underinvestment — even in a far rosier international climate than the one we currently inhabit.
It is like the story of The Monkey’s Paw: after so long demanding a Conservative leader committed to bold and decisive action, the one the party chose was a suicide bomber. The only questions now, surely, are how much harm she can cause the country in the time remaining, and whether she will bring down the Conservative party with her. Because Truss forgot that the British public also has a vote. Dreading an economic winter harder than anyone has previously experienced, the voting public looks to have decisively rejected Trussonomics, and will deliver Labour the greatest parliamentary majority in British political history. The story of the past few years, from Brexit to the 2019 Conservative landslide, and now Labour’s coming victory, is of a British public desirous of radical change, and of a political class struggling to comprehend what this means, let alone how to deliver it. The Conservatives were elected on a simple mandate to reform Britain’s failing economic model and slash our current, record-high levels of immigration; instead, Truss is doubling down on both.
It is a matter of great, cosmic irony that in the same week Truss lost the Red Wall with a platform encapsulating everything the Brexit vote was against, Keir Starmer won it back with a postliberal message, centred on direct investment in state capacity, public services and home ownership through the simplest supply side reform, housebuilding. The libertarian think tanks who so gleefully rushed to take ownership of her budget when it was announced, must now take ownership of the results: they have destroyed the party they have hollowed out and stripped of any vestiges of Tory thinking.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeIt’s two years from an election and barely a week since the budget.
The pound has already recovered. The dollar continues to be up against all other currencies, not just the pound.
Am I overreacting by suggesting that the media has hugely overreacted?
Perhaps in a case of wishful thinking.
Overreacting? I don’t think so. The media are like the mad dog that barks at every passing car.
A truly dreadful teenage rant. The worst article I think I have ever read. Labour fit for power??? Did you listen to Starmer’s speech? We will be a neo GDR; Labour spit on wealth creation and enterprise. So why does the author have a tantrum over the Truss 60bn bailout and government spending? Did you rant at the true authors of the impending Great Depression?? 900bn QE? 400bn Lockdown?? No – we get the usual pant wetting over a now gone 2bn tax cut. Pathetic.
Truss flagship policy caused a run on the pound, 10-20% drop in polling numbers, a blooming backbench rebellion *and* sharp condemnation from both the IMF and The Economist. It had to be withdrawn within the week. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the underlying economics, surely that shows a disastrous incompetence.
I 100% agree that Kwazi was drunk with flee and made the most ill considered ill judged pol speech in decades! If he had waited until after the next int rate rise to cut income tax then they would have been saviours – helping us ALL on gas for 60bn and 80bn on tax. The Bank would have been blamed for mortgage hysteria! Inept. But this article lashes out the very idea of encouraging private enterprise and wealth creation!!! It sings the praises of a UK State and its elite which is 99% responsible for the impending and inevitable Reckoning. We have sat on a ticking A Bomb since 2008. To ignore the madness of the furlough/covid 400bn giveaway and QE 900bm & savage Truss for not presenting her full budget is just comedy central is risible journalism. But the MSM drink deep on declinism & are screaming with panic at end of their enrichment via property bubble. Go away and blub. Dont waste our time singing the praises of a party wedded only to a corrupt and failing State.
A lot of us are in favour of “encouraging private enterprise and wealth creation”. But cutting the top rate is unlikely to help much except, just maybe, a bit in the very long term. And whatever the timing, deciding to give to the richest and finance it by borrowing / welfare cuts, in this extremely difficult situation, is unlikely to be well received by anyone – except those who pay the top rate.
Yes. I agree that the 45p tax cut was a political mega gaffe. Again – it was just a symbol of a bigger broader philosophical belief – better expressed in the far more important income tax cut for all, IR45 refirm and the bonfire of the suffocating EU regulations . The 45er was an irrelevance economically. But a disaster politically. There is a desperate battle in our battered society to preserve the idea that the private sector, entrepreneurship, individual responsibility and wealth creation are the very source of public good. That idea has been utterly trashed by the London media and pro EU governing classes for 20 or more years. Lockdown was the moment when the hostility of their warped Statism was unmasked. They have gorged on a rigged property bubble – mass uncontrolled migration + no house building – so the Reckoning for their follies has been deferred. The State finances have been obliterated by not just the Four Horsemen biggies of Banks, QE, Lockdown & now Energy Bailouts. But bungs everywhere – from 60bn in housing and tax credits – have further made us more of a pre 1989 East European State than a free enterprise society. We are in a death rattle. Truss is making a tiny squeak in favour of the alternative. But it looks as if the die is cast. Lets reconvene when interest rates are at 5%. Then an irrelevant silly tax cut to 600000 richies will be long forgotten.
Free enterprise ? The Tories have only managed to create a Casino Economy based on Financial Services + Arts, Leisure & Entertainment (& a pitiful gig economy).
Very late-Roman ! – rather like the Tories.
And the process began c.1985, under the “Great Lady” herself.
Correct. Our economy is an odd and ugly mish mash with the global City and so many firms dependent on cheap labour from East Europe. But I look to the forgotten core – the entrepreurial SME sector which gives employment to more than most sectors. It was horribly squeezed by the unthinking uncaring Blob. And now – like the MMT State – is debt laden and hamstrung just as the madness of State- created energy hyper- inflation hits. I believe in the enterprise sector not the myth of a free market. And this sector will be thrown again to the wolves if the progressive ‘State First’ Labour fraudsters are ever let into power.
Industrial economies require vast amount of capital, infrastructure, property, plant and machinery, technology, and updating as well as maintainance and large labour forces which equal low returns on the employed, or rather , deployed capital. It is a most worrying post Luddite myth of delusion and denial amongst so many on this medium that the profitability and return on capital in service industries are somehow ” worth less”. AND it is these Luddite moaners whose pensions, investments and life insurance savings are deploying THEIR capital…. to deliberately choose lower returns?
Laffer curve, and the UK’s top rate is on the wrong side of it, with the highest top rate of tax in the G7.
Top rate in the G7 doesn’t make us a country to invest in. I think she was on the right track personally.
Pity the IMF and the markets disagree with you.
Less than 2% of earners pay 45% tax rate raising more than a third of income tax. If we could attract more high earners so that eg 2 1/2 % of earners were at this pay level we’d raise a lot more tax.
Obviously we can’t and never will.
Especially with the City in decline because of Brexit – a decline that this latest debacle will speed up noticeably.
https://twitter.com/georgeeaton/status/1576927537912954880?s=46&t=FLVcC9hSPVnjnriPhy20kQ
The UK’s top rate is not near the Laffer danger zone, and generally there’s more or less zero correlation between personal taxation rates and economic growth. (The things that determine growth are not under immediate government control.) There are ethical as well as self-serving bases on which to argue for a smaller state, but don’t pretend that higher growth is a convincing one of them.
Hear, hear!
The worst bit is the borrowing. Aren’t we still in debt for the enormous amounts Boris borrowed re: Covid? Apart from that I think her ideas are sound. She didn’t promise it would work quickly. It wasn’t a quick fix but a sensible long term plan. Instant miracles are always suspect and can just be election winners. There lies the weakness of democracy but it is better than a dictatorship which we were approaching in Covid with Boris. They haven’t even given her a chance to lead and have gone into the usual rut of turning on their leaders before she has hardly taken a breath.
And remember it was Starmer who insisted on even longer lockdowns. Surprised Truss didn’t repeal the personal tax allowance freezes. I think that would have gone down well. Reducing the state too would be a good idea, those 60,000 jobs in the civil service a start…. they still need baggage handlers at the Airports.
It would be extremely foolish for us to forget. We also have the present day example of Labour governance in Drakeford. No one should be allowed to forget how appalling Drakeford was during the pandemic hysteria. No matter how bad it was in England, the extreme absurdity of Drakeford – and SNP Sturgeon – made me feel a tinge of gratitude for spineles Boris and the Tory government. They were bad but could have been so much worse.
Yeah – but AFTER the markets trashed her policy !
Even Corbyn wouldn’t have walked into that one.
The state has certainly been both very corrupt, and alarmingly failing, under the Tories, this past 12 years.
The useless Tories have not commanded the UK State for any of its 12 years. The dreadful Lib Dems sabotaged the first years. Then Boris and May simply bowed to the more powerful para state and technocracy constructed by Blair/Brown. Power has been diffused from the Executive and handed to a supposedly neutralTechnocracy like the Bank or PHE. Did they sort illegal migration? Counter wokery within the State? Take on the Treasury Orthodoxy?? No. They failed totally. But blame for this systemic failure lies as much if not more with the vast dysfunctional Blob.
Thing Thatcher and the 364 economists.Who was right in the end ?
Thre are other things one could think of: Thatcher and the poll tax? Or Norman Lamont? Being stubborn and ignoring what other people think is only an advantage if you happen to be right.
I don’t know the IMF has drifted a lot in recent years and cannot be relied on. The Economist is on the left socially and in the middle economically. Maybe their left drift on social matters has effected their judgment on monetary things?
Hardly incompetence. It just that governments can’t do anything that conflicts with globalist ESG ideology. I was astonished how quickly the market reacted to the politics of the reduction of the 45% tax rate even though the economic impact would be insignificant. The power of the globalised markets scares me – governments whether right wing or left wing deviate from the ideology at their peril and are basically powerless. No wonder so many are thinking that their vote makes no difference.
I know the feeling. I have often felt like that about the EU. But governments are supposed to deal with reality and get the best they can out of that. Reality is not always nice, but coming from a small country you learn to appreciate governments who take the cards they have and play them well. Doing something disastrous and then complaining that reality was at odds with your desires is not a mark of competence.
How do you know what is approved by globalist ESG rules and why should you have to follow these rules ? Boris of course did nothing (so he didn’t break these rules) after his unforgiveable brexit.
For the same reason I obey the speed restrictions when driving. Some make sense and some are silly, but all of them will get you fined if you break them. That is reality, like it or not. If you can find a way of breaking the rules that is not harmful or unfair and that will not get you fined (as cyclists often can), then fine, but moaning about the unfairness of the rules is not a sensible reaction to a speeding ticket.
Mindless compliance, and that is the real enemy of our freedoms: speed does not kill, collisions kill, and if either party were travelling faster OR slower, the collision would be, as a matter of empirical facts of physics, impossible.
It the state told you that hopping on one leg in Tescos every second Friday of the month, whistling the Bulgarian national anthem , would reduce your car fuel consumption, would you comply?!!!
The organisations you quote are all part of the big Blob. Since when has it been the IMF’s right to comment on political issues? You’ll find they are the same bedfellows as the Bank of England. Just a shame the Tories can’t sack Andrew Bailey whose incompetence has no equal.
The only part of the flagship policy seems to be a temporary reinstating of the 45p tax
It will of course be re-visited … for the UK to prosper we must have low taxes and a small state giving the people the space for their innovation and entrepreneurism
@richardcalhoun
The Economist is a Leftist propaganda vehicle.
You forget that while the economic impact of the paltry £2,000,000,000* was small, the political impact was huge! KK’s champagne swilling party had zero economic impact but politically it was KamiKasi! After all the CP is a political party first: economics, although a major part is secondary.
* the paltry £2bn could have been given to the 20 million at the bottom: ie £1,000 each: in a family of 5 that’s £5,000! A drop in the swill bucket a millionaire but a Godsend to a poor family!
You’re advocating for communism. No surprise there.
..bit of a leap there I think? I certainly believe in localisation and subsidiarity: democratic socialism too.. but state ownership of all the means of production of hoods and services? Eh.. no!
The inescapable fact is that left to their own devices the rich/powerful will exploit the poor and ‘appropriate’ everything. And so redistribution is an absolute requirement of any democratic government. Why? Because 90% of the voters, whom they are supposed to represent need that to happen so they can live a decent life. It’s the system we live in.
you so love to quote from that famous philosopher Testiclese…
What you said.
Unfortunately Unherd seems to delight in feeding us with writers that challenge us. After a while though it gets a bit too much as there are hardly any good writers chosen in the last year or so who speak common sense. Maybe they are trying to shock and unsettle us foisting these writers onto us.
GDR ? What are you on about ?
Did Starmer propose the creation of a secret police force ?
As head of CPS he hinted that the police do nothing to stamp out child rape gangs in Rotherham, Oldham, Rochdale, Telford, Oxford etc etc.
yes! The GestaPlod and the Metropolitanazi Plod
Isn’t that overreacting?
The barking dog has forced the British Government into a humiliating U-turn, exposing Truss as a poseur posing as Thatcher.
As well. of course, as a Blunderer even worse than Cameron
BofE just moved in to save pension funds.
The BoE ‘saved’ them from the pension funds own incompetent risk management, which the BoE had been warned about 5 years ago – and they did nothing. As a former risk manager I’m stunned this wasn’t addressed years ago.
Can’t you be the Chancellor Ian?
Ian. It was hardly a secret! And an intervention of some £3 billion to date is totally insignificant. The lefty media and lefty organisations are jumping on everything they can.
The pound recovered fairly quickly – although whether it’s dead cat bounce remains to be seen – but the media is still talking as though it’s at the low point of the Monday morning after the budget.
All markets that I pay attention to have been crazy these past three years. If I knew what I was doing, I could have made some serious money out of them. Unfortunately I don’t but I wouldn’t be surprised if those in the know did some opportunistic speculating.
I would say the media being disingenuous is perhaps the least surprising event of the past week.
I’d suggest that Truss is probably done for in either case. You only get one chance to make a first impression.
First, during her leadership campaign, she let out a press release proposing to save a *lot* of money by cutting public sector salaries ourside London – only to withdraw in the face of criticism and complain that the people quoting her own press release were misrepresenting her. Now we have her proposing a cut to the top income tax rate, to be financed partly by borrowing, partly by extra austerity. Which has just been withdrawn in the face of criticism. All this at a time when government borrowing is at a record high, when the courts the NHS and other public agencies are creaking and faltering under the weight of increased workload and ten years of austerity. And when people worry about being able to afford heating and eating both, and unions are making major strikes to get compensation for inflation.
What does this say about her compassion, her sense of reality, or her political skills? I doubt people are going to forget this.
It beggars belief that an airhead like Truss who is incapable of stringing more than a couple of soundbite sentences together should end up as prime minister via the foreign office. She displayed ignorance of the Eastern Ukranian position when dealing with Lavrov , naieve stupidity when promulgating reductions in pay of those working in the Midlands and North and unparalled weakness in allowing the showboating chancellor to announce tax cuts which hadn’t been discussed in cabinet.
Dom called her crackers ;he was right she’s deranged. As for the present incumbant at No 11 words fail me;he should be packing as we speak,his reputation as a sound finance man is irretrievably broken.
“Dom called her crackers”
You actually typed and posted that. ‘Dom’ is the embodiment of crackers.
If we had had that genius Dom in charge we would still be wearing masks and on vaccine 9.
Fortunately he is now in the ‘pit of eternal stench’, as he so richly deserves.
A more sensible comment at last, keep it up Chas
Thanks Val, praise indeed!
Strange how they repeatedly compared to USD, as opposed to eg Euro. Its almost as if they wanted to make it seem worse than it actually was..
Yeah a lot of deception goes on in the media. An Englishman is as good as his word vanished long ago.
definition of irony : ” My word is my ( UK Government) bond”…..
Said recovery was of course a direct result of the BOE intervening to counter the antics of the govt
Correction. The BoE intervened because – unbeknownst to us – the ‘reformed’ post 2008 Crashed City and Bank – had encouraged the City to play the derivatives market..with our pensions! Simply unbelievable. Madly under reported. Kwazi was the foolish catalyst or trigger – but not the cause of the 45bn injection. We had better read up LINs and re watch The Big Short. Yet again the 30 year fundamentals of our system are exposed as deeply flawed. Casino City. Eco nuttery. Propertocracy. Authoritarian & murderous Public Health Bureaucracy. Zero interest Lalaland.
And the space-cadet loonies at the BoE were about to embark on quantitative *tightening*, at a time when it was obvious to a 5 year old that the UK would have to borrow more to finance the mitigation of high energy prices.
Yet the usual armchair finance ministers think the BoE is the good guy in all this. Delusional.
Spot on Walter. Frank is rather poorly informed. The pension funds and the BoE have been playing fast and loose on their risk management scenarios.
I suspect the reason for the over reaction is that the guilty party is the BOE
undercutting the Feds rise of 75 points the previous day meant the pound was certain to fall out of bed, the only question is why they did it
i hate to think it was deliberate by the blob
Yes.. you would then have to concede that the catastrophe that is CP Conference is itself an overreaction to the media overreaction! And where lies the market ‘overreaction’ in this quagmire?
And indeed has KK himself overreacted to the CPC in his U-turn and did Liz Truss overreact when she threw him under the bus yesterday? The logic would seem to be that if everyone is overreacting then no one is really overreacting ar all! It’s a conundrum is what it is!
I think the media are overreacting as usual also. I thought that the Chancellor’s ideas were good personally. We are fighting for our lives and they are trying to limit how much we have to spend on heating and have cut taxes to heat up the economy and to help the ordinary people.. That is more in our pockets. Cutting tax for the rich will help our economy and will attract investment into our nation. What has happened now is a huge scare for any new investors to set up in Britain as they need security not a too and frowing of leaders and the government attacking it’s leaders yet again. Have we forgotten that Starmer doesn’t even know what a woman is?
The same ideology is there when we remember Dennis Healey’s tax the rich until the pips squeak. His 86% tax rate created the Brain Drain to America. The Country never really recovered from that and went into terminal decline until the coming of Thatcher. What I find frightening is that behind Starmer’s centre left beliefs lies hard left activists hell bent on carrying out Healey’s mission again.
They don’t need to – if you want to destroy capitalism, leave it to the capitalists.
There is nothing wrong with capitalism, it makes money and brings it into the country. The problem we face is from globalist corporatism.
It doesn’t really matter much whether Truss is right or not.
The inescapable bottom line is that she has almost certainly lost the Red Wall.
Without it she will probably lose the next election, or at best scrape in with a tiny John Major -ish majority, which will leave her emasculated (or should that be efeminated?)
I hope the critique of the Economist and FT as left-wing was intended seriously not sarcastically. Those two publications are left-progressive to their very core.
The right of a government to govern as it pleases it being stripped away before our very eyes. Truss’s accelerationism will demonstrate to everyone that globalists – whose mouthpieces are the Economist and FT – now run the show, and elected governments can do nothing without their express permission.
Not to be pedantic but LT was elected by the Tory base not the country as PM. So, when you bang on about “globalist” be honest enough to point out the obvious.
And globalist will not vote in the next election and wipe out the Tory Party.
P.S. Truss can govern as she pleases – but why do you expect foreigners to pay for it?
What does one expect when one receives a PM from a group of people sitting on their settees in their ” leounge” sipping ” ‘ hearl grey” or at the ” 19th” of some intra M25 golf club? Selection by Pooter….
…one expects, dear boy there’ll be more Earl Gray for the deserving rich! And lo: it came to pass!
Duplication due to censorship.
Earl GREY, whose most famous and magnificent utterance was probably:-
“The sea is ours and we must maintain the doctrine that no nation, no fleet, no c*ck-boat shall sail upon it without our permission”.
no… Thick sweet dark tea in mugs, from green boxes or polished buckets date stamped ‘ 1912’ forever remembered, sanctified, remembered and used,….nicknamed by the Septem Juncta in Uno ” Depotea” …. and to which an addiction as an antidote to tough times remains for life!!!
My understanding is that, under our constitution, government does not ‘govern as it pleases’. It is subject to constraints imposed by the cabinet, by parliament and by the voters.
the prime minstrels belief that the government can do as it pleases is what got her into trouble.
It did during the Covid pandemic and look what happened then.That caused a lot of the financial chaos now
..indeed: and much of the current financial chaos was caused by the Truss virus as well!
It came out so quick that maybe it should have been thoroughly discussed by the cabinet first?
Seemed to work for Tony Blair
I couldn’t agree more. If any government does anything against the globalist ESG D-E-I narrative the brainwashed compliant media will do all they can to bring them down. ‘Western’ governments have no independent power any more.
..if you play on the international stage you must abide by the international rules! If you want to apply your own rules you need the former Albanian or North Korean playbook!
We do not need to be ruled by international rules. Our rules are influenced more by democratic systems not the EU or people like Gates and Schab.
Strange how globalists have taken over the main media. How much are they paying them?
Globalist ESG ‘woke’ group think has taken over education, the media, the institutions, the civil service, all large corporations and most MPs – spurred on by international organisations such as WEF and UN . I think ESG is perhaps the most significant as its difficult to get investment unless one is prepared to conform to woke ESG principles as out government has just found. We don’t want to be always ruled by international globalist rules but in practice we certainly are.
To support capitalism is to support globalism.
Well, they haven’t had any power in Britain since Thatcher and Howe sold the country to the markets.
And now the markets have bitten her successor and tribute-act.
What goes round….
“The right of a government to govern as it pleases” – what? Are you serious? Whatever happened to the notion of “Representation”? Surely it should be government.. for the people (ultimately) by the people?
And what happened to Freedom of the Press? You sound like all that must go in favour of tyrannical authoritarianism!
Not sure I’d welcome that??
You are right but that doesn’t mean we have to obey globalism as you infer in your previous piece.
We have had to ever since Mrs T abolished our exchange controls in 1979.
I went off the both the FT and The Economist and their take on things when I worked in capital markets. They both supported the ERM.
Yes they are not a patch on what they were. People still thing they are the experts though.
“Starmer just laid out a postliberal Brexit: controlled immigration, pride in community, democratic control, buying, making and selling more in Britain and the potential of active government….”
Talk is cheap. Does anyone actually believe that, once in power, Labour will/will be able to get any of this done? You must be kidding.
I do think what we will see is Labour sweeping aside the Tories at the next election but the voter turnout will be historically low. I think there will be a lot of people (like me) who wonder what the point of voting is, as your own democracy and political system has less and less power to determine what actually happens in the end. People want control, but there is very little control to be had.
Sure, what are you going to do about Blackpool? Make Spanish/Greek/Italian vacations illegal?!
What do you suggest?
You forgot to consider the word “controlled” in relation to Immigration. You appear to have read it as “eliminate”. If you have a labour shortage and immigrants are often fit, keen, resourceful young men then joining the dots on that one is surely easy?
If you’re problem is they are unskilled then hello! Ever hear of training? During WW2 with men at the front women were trained in jig time to do skilled work. Joining the dots there is also less than rocket science.
If your problem is xenophobia I can’t help you!
Ireland has accepted a very large number of immigrants in recent years (as % of population) and studies show they have greatly improved the country’s economy. It’s not all rosy for sure: we too have a housing crisis finally being addressed but not enough and very late. That does mot negate the argument however: it merely confuses the issue.
As the other day Liam you are completely wide of the mark. I did not mean “eliminate” at all. But – logically – if you can’t stop the dinghies coming then immigration can never be “controlled”. I was relying on the readers of my comment to at least “join the dots” enough that I didn’t have to expand on it.
Ireland, due to its geographical location, has a much smaller problem with this kind of uncontrolled immigration. Which is basically the luck of the draw and nothing really to do with high morals. And I was reading int eh Irisah media a few weeks ago how there were concerns about lots of illegals coming over the Irish Sea within the scope of the CTA because they were fearing deportation to Rwanda if they stayed in the UK. That they were now taking up all the resources in RoI which were needed for Ukrainian refugees also didn’t seem to go down too well so you can stop with the smug retorts on that front.
Finally – why on earth should you reward people for breaking the law? Why should illegal immigrants (which is, I assume, what you mean when you talk about “fit, resourceful young men” seeing as that is the right demographic) get the benefit of jobs and training when other people complied with the law and jumped over all the legal hurdles? Even if you need people to fill jobs, it is asking for trouble with voters to rely on illegal immigration for this. As a citizen I have to comply with the law, pay fines if I don’t get my tax right, park my car wrong etc. I don’t get a reward for breaking the law and I’ve been paying taxes and working for 20 years. Rewarding people that “just walked in” causes huge resentment which will spill over at some point. Now it’s your turn to join the dots! If jobs need filling, you want people with an appropriate skills set coming in which you can then give specific training – the host country should have control over the selection…not the immigrant. Surely this should be a matter of common sense?
And do not ever, EVER assume that just because I am against illegal immigration and for controlled immigration that I am xenophobic.
Sorry to say it but what you are presenting to me is a kind of “Irish Logic – Greatest Hits”. Again.
I wish that was always true but unfortunately it isn’t. I found Poles were particularly good workers. I do not have experience of others but I suspect they are a mixture like everyone else.
There’s a difference between 5 Million and 55 Million. Why is there 5.6 Million inactive people of working age in the UK? More jobs than applicants.
… not many in Dunn and Co bowler hats, terylene suits and orange sashes?
One kind of thinks they will be up to their socialist/marxist ticks if they get in.
What a pile of absolute twaddle. Aris has demonstrated in previous articles that his grasp of UK politics is at best “academic” but in this article he gets so much wrong its almost impossible to begin to unpick it.
At the very least, making presumptions about how the public will vote in (probably) two years time is a gaffe no self-respecting commentator should make. He’s also mightily confused about what constitutes Toryism. He refers to a “straw man” in his ramblings but fails to consider he’s set up a whole crowd of them in his haste to weigh in on the back of media reactions.
Truss has got work to do, that’s clear enough, but Aris has very little concept of her beyond a caricature. Citing “unrestrained immigration” as a policy plank makes him look like one! Her intention is to attract qualified and ambitious people to invest their skills in the UK where skill shortages are holding us back, not allowing the kind of free-for-all that Labour induced when last in office. How could Aris get something so simple and so obvious wrong? It’s just one example among a multitude of schoolboy rrrors.
What PM has ever rejected PhDs in Math/Physics from moving to UK?!
She has made it clear (you refuse to accept it) that she is going to increase migration for agriculture.
Supply side reforms means more migration – but I could be wrong as Truss seems quite delusional.
Aris has numerous times described what he means by Toryism, you’ve either missed or ignored it. To put it simply it’s the policies that looked after families, industry and the countries traditions, essentially to conserve things. It’s as the party was before the turbo charged economic liberalism of Thatcher changed it beyond all recognition.
Boris was elected on a platform of levelling up and much more financial distribution. The fact the Tories have now put a PM in place who believes in the exact opposite will no doubt see them heavily punished at the next election
Thatcher changed us from the sick man of Europe to a time of prosperity. I think you are reading the past with rose coloured spectacles. Go a lot further back and you may be right.
Prosperity for who? Seeing as my grandfather was able to buy a house and raise a family of 9 on a single bricklayers wage, whereas I have younger family members now who can’t even afford a family home (let alone children) despite both partners working full time seems to imply this prosperity hasn’t been forthcoming for a lot of people
Yes exactly. My understanding of Thatcher’s general economic impact is that she created soaring unemployment and hollowed out manufacturing (breaking communities in order to make us more dependent on cheap labour from abroad), while fritterng away all the money made from North Sea oil and state sell-offs on ineffective tax cuts. True, overall GDP rose, but in an unsustainable way that began the process of breaking Britain down into a state of stratospheric regional and generational inequality that breeds crime, disillusionment and alienation – very conservative!
I could harly understand what he was trying to say personally.
“the landslide victory the Conservatives chose to squander”.
Precisely because of their absolutely pathetic, even hysterical response to the great Covid Scamdemic
.
However would Labour have reacted any differently? No sadly, even worse! Of that we can be sure.
Thank you Cummings creature and buffoon Boris, you names will live in infamy forever.
Boris was elected by the Tory base as their leader. The same people (quite few comment here) that endlessly bang on about honesty in public life, personal responsibility, gravitas, integrity, dignity, competence…
Agreed, they made a terrible mistake.
Shall we just cut out the middle man (and the tantrums) and let the media run the country? Perhaps the BBC can fill all the cabinet posts, and select a Prime Minister from a shortlist of media folks approved by their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team?
It seems that is what they want. Having successfully dispatched with one Prime Minister, they’ve got a taste for blood and now they’re going to try it again. Which is not a defence of either Boris or Truss incidentally, but this frenzy is disturbing, and it reveals a lot about who is actually running the country …hint: not the people we elect to do so.
Yes: shoot the messenger! Then all will be well!
That seems like an obvious mischaracterisation of my point, no?
The role of the press is not to try to run the country over the heads of the citizenry, nor to collude with power (be it state or corporate) both of which they seem to do a lot of these days.
The role of journalism is to hold power to account. That means to seek out the truth, and to report to the people what the powerful are up to.
These days the press seem to think their role is to stand next to the powerful and shout their messages to us through a megaphone, like the clerisy of the establishment. And to make sure that if the people err in selecting someone that defies elite consensus (even in a small way) then to act as shock troops and wage war on them.
It’s bizarre to watch, and it’s completely destroying western nations. The press switched sides and joined the ‘elite’ against the people. Not all of them, but most of them, and certainly most of the “mainstream” corporate media. This became super obvious during Covid when they took vast amounts of money from either the government, or private entities like Gates’ foundation, and then busily did PR for them instead of doing their job.
Truss has managed to enrage this class of people by being insufficiently deferential to the agenda that has been governing this country for the past few decades (no matter which party we elect). In fact they seem to be trying to destroy her simply for standing in the way of the ‘chosen’ Davos candidate, Rishi Sunak.
Again, this is activism, not journalism. And the effect of it is to distort reality, hamper truth finding and civil discourse, and disenfranchise the people.
I think Truss has visited Davos as well but not as much as Prince Charles who actually spreads their views. I wonder if he will own nothing and be happy?
Yes, she definitely has.
I think they all want to be in that club, but the club prefers the Sunak and Osborne types to the Truss and Baker types.
I heard the exact same complaints from the left whenever the media ridiculed their latest useless pick for leader in the past.
It seems to be a common theme of both sides to blame the papers whenever they show up the incompetence of “their” side
The BBC a messenger? A messenger of what? Deception and bias no doubt.
They media gave New Labour a very long honeymoon period (pretty much until Blair resigned). They also liked Cameron for some unknown reason.
Yes, well that’s likely because in a bygone era the job of a journalist was a trade. It was considered a career, and approached as such. Newsrooms recruited from the working classes, and understood their role to be investigating and reporting. The income for this operation came from the public, so they ‘served’ the public.
Compare that to today… most media outlets are consolidated under major corporate umbrellas, with all the conflicts that arise from that managerial and advertising pressure. The employee type drifted from career ‘trade’ journalists to affluent recent graduates. This is in part because as the media consolidated and became a corporate entity (serving advertisers, not the public) they came to be run by affluent coastal liberal types …and unsurprisingly they wish to work and socialise with the same types …and so they hire more of ‘their kind’ who then fill up all the admin and HR posts too …and then hire more of ‘their kind’.
So essentially the western media was already beginning to coalesce around positions to the [social] left of the nations they served, due to changes in the profit and ownership models. What they have now is a kind of messaging hegemony as they were so efficient at colonising all the important media. A good example I think is the Guardian; formerly a truly pioneering paper, set up to be independent so they could do the really brave investigative work. Over time the paper got colonised by upper middle class liberals who began the “more like us” recruitment drive, and then today the Guardian is so radical and far from it’s consumer base that it can only stay in print due to the very lucky fact that they exist off a private endowment. So they went from using their financial independence to root out truth, and speak truth to power …to using their financial independence to remain in print, despite alienating most of the public due to shouting at them instead of power.
Surreal! …but no wonder they like Blair and Cameron. They’re all the same people. They’re all from the same social milieu.
A good treatise. So true. Well done.
I think you’re overthinking it personally. The demise of local newspapers (largely due to social media taking all their advertising funding) closed off an entry route into journalism for many working class youngsters. Now the only way is often through an unpaid internship at one if the major papers, which for obvious reasons is only available to kids from wealthier backgrounds.
Over time this has led to a generation of journalists who have had exactly the same upbringing, and as such have almost identical outlooks and opinions. Unfortunately the more this happens the less inclined those with differing views will be to join the profession.
They like woke people so it figures. Cameron did more damage than anyone in my view.
Boris did mention that he would cut the BBC’s priveleges but I think Covid overtook him. That’s all he had really after the first partial triumph of Brexit.
Boris only thought about one thing. His Wife was the thinker
Sorry I just see Labour as unelectable. Starmer is as blank as an empty sheet of paper. The real reasons we are where we are, are down to the Lockdowns & Net Zero. The single biggest Elephant in the room is the maniacal adoption of the notion that the climate is changing in a bad way. As the WEF boasts, ‘They own the science’. That should have everybody alarmed!! Alex Epstein’s ‘FOSSIL FUTURE’ is the only escape, along with the WEF being jailed for what they have wrought upon us!!
Sadly, Labour is not unelectable – anymore than Biden was.
A huge percentage of UK (and US, and worldwide) voters have been completely brainwashed by the Long March. They think anything not to the left of Castro is “ultra-extreme far right”.
Truss is considered far right because she honours the family and doesn’t believe in transgender and believes a woman is a woman unlike Starmer.
So the fact a majority would currently go for Labour rather than the Tories isn’t because the Tories have descended into a s***show and Labour look more stable by comparison, it’s because the voters are too stupid to vote the correct way and don’t know what’s good for them?
I’m guessing you voted Remain in the EU referendum, as that’s exactly the same excuses I heard for them losing as well
Go on my son…..
“If they achieve just this one aim, let alone their promises to deliver a Brexit that works for the entire country, or to return manufacturing capacity to British shores through state investment,”
I do not support the Tory Party, but this is not a Labout Party that I recognise. I will sit-out the next election.
Labours current policies are closer to what I’d vote for but I don’t believe Starmer would enact them.
Truss’ policies are a long way away from what I’d vote for and I believe she’ll pursue them with vigour.
She has done a U turn on lowering taxes for the rich but business in the UK pays the highest tax out of the G7 nations not really encouragement for investments.
I don’t think a few percentage points on the tax rates would sway too many large businesses. I’d wager the cost of premises, materials and staff, whilst an availability of skilled staff, good infrastructure, incentives for R & D and a wealthy market to sell products to would be of much higher importance
Agreed but Truss an KK were probably offered jobs by the hedge fund bosses like Osbourne et al were.
Labour are not a party for investment in private enterprise. What they mean by investment is probably nationalisation paid for out of our taxes. If you are old enough you will remember how the nationalised industries continually striked and held us to ransom. It was only Thatcher who broke the deadlock in the end.
Did he really say something about controlling immigration? I couldn’t see anything beyond this commentators tweet.
Very few on this forum are interested in what Starmer actually said. Much more fun to put words in his mouth, aspirations in his mind and forecast a disastrous future with Labour in government. You’re just trying to confuse the issue with real facts. They don’t want that! You’re spoiling the fun!
It would help if he knew what a woman was.
For twenty five years the focus of economic policy has been on buying middle class votes by artificially inflating house prices.
The media go along with this because the media class is middle class. Starmer will continue down the same road because his version of the Labour party depends on middle class votes. Liz Truss will go along with it – she’s already promising to pay the gas bills of people who are quite able to pay them themselves.
Therefore both parties will continue the money printing and immigration, pushing rents up and wages down.
So it doesn’t matter what Starmer says at a party conference or how radical Truss tries to be in other contexts. Until we have a politician willing to confront the need for radical housing market reform our economic decline will continue.
Precisely. We live in a Propertocracy in which the London governing class have for 20 years made the rigging of property & maintenance of a bubble their number one priority. Zero interest rates and 100k per annum in untaxed unearned wealth for their class. The dunce Baily has done his best to hold interest rates down but – tough cookies – the Reckoning us now here. The media hyenas are no doubt scrambling to re mortgage their 1.5m homes bought for 350k interest free and on 0.9 now. So of course they are screaming hatred at Kwazi for causing the End of Days. Well suck it up London. Propetocracy has caused massive regional intergenerational and social inequality. The very thing you pontificate about in your groupthink FB rants too. – but did everything to cause with your brick and mortar greed Twenty years is long enough. Now it is time for the Great Depression you conspired to engineer.
I see you are full of hope.
When are the Tories going to change the Police Service into the Police Force?
A month ago the papers were talking about how “Diverse” and historic the new UK government is.
Now they all write it’s a Disaster of historic proportions.
I understand “Go woke, Go broke” but this has to be some type of record.
Remarkably bad article, just a teenage rant with no thought, no originality, no analysis.
Please spare us this sort of filler. If you can’t say anything thoughtful, don’t say anything at all.
I had difficulty understanding it didn’t enjoy it all.
Ditto.
Might we give her– say– two months in office before declaring that everything she has done is a failure?
The level of journalistic (if that’s the word I want) hysteria over Liz Truss has convinced me that she must be on to something good.
Surely that’s the kind of logic that pervades fake news and misinformation sites? ie “do the opposite of what the experts recommend”!
Fake news, aka “anything I don’t understand”.
Some of the so called conspiracty theories are proving eerily true.
Yes: probably…
Your total faith in them might be your undoing one day. Things are not what they used to be.
What experts?
You could be right but don’t believe what the MSM say.
“The paper did not gain much traction, true: it was a poorly argued mishmash of philosophical sophistry against an amalgamated strawman version of very distinct political tendencies”
Much like this article then. Absolute hogwash.
Aris Roussinos should have stuck to war reporting. Perhaps he has not noticed, or forgotten, that the UK – never fully recovered from the 2008 Global Financial Crisis – has just blown £500b on a completely pointless, deranged attempt to “control” a mid-level respiratory virus? That we are under attack from a globalist far-left cabal of social justice warrior cultists who have completely invented a ‘climate emergency’ on which they have only just begun to blow hundreds of billions, perhaps a trillion, more? That vulnerable people could freeze to death this winter if the cost-of-energy crisis resulting from the insane response to the war in Ukraine is not mitigated?
Last week’s budget was ham-fisted, yes, but no amount of slick “communication” would have tempered the predictable reaction of the usual MSM idiots. The country is around £2.4 trillion in debt, over 100% of GDP, and the ‘cost’ of abolishing the 45p tax rate less than £3b – but, as Roussinos is no doubt disingenuously ignoring, there’s plenty of credible evidence to say there would actually be no cost, that tax revenues would actually increase in the mid to longer term.
And as for Starmer – anyone who advocates assigning the slightest credibility to anything that cardboard clown comes out with deserves nothing but ridicule. BLM? White Privilege? Trans Rights? Net Zero & Great British Energy? Nothing but wilfully disruptive neo-Marxism in action.
This is gutter ‘journalism’ which I believed was beneath this author. I was sadly mistaken.
Of the piece was one-sided you’d be critical of it and rightly so. Unfortunately your own comment is even more one-sided so now we have to be critical of you! It never ends…
The only thing that never ends is your puerile nonsense. “We”? Do you imagine yourself as some kind of royalty?
As ever, you fail to make a single point of substance.
“There will be no roaming squads of tweed-jacketed postliberals forcing otherwise happy singletons to marry, and frogmarching them into suburban semis.”
Don’t be so pessimistic!
One cannot force morality. We have freewill to choose.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Truss fan (notwithstanding she and Kwateng have reversed the latest bits of IR35 which I am very happy about), but this article is kinda missing the bigger picture.
The crisis that Truss and Kwateng face is only seemingly of their own making – all governors across the developed world, no matter who they are or of which political hue, are going keep facing, over and over, crises of this sort, over the coming years – with concomitant narratives built around each, which are in reality… nothing to do with reality.
The Lord God Himself (or Herself as the case may be) could turn up tomorrow as the UK PM or the US President, and they would’t be able to help, let alone make a ‘V’ shape recovery out of the current trajectory. A two decade global depression is now baked in. The chain reaction is already underway. There is nothing you can do.
And I stick by my guns, notwithstanding my opinions will come across as totally unhinged – as bonkers as that of any current fully paid up Labour member. I think there is one more ramp in economic activity coming which will reverse current economic narratives for a short period – before the mother of all depressions engulfs the globe. But that will save Truss’ bacon – she will comfortably win the next election. This is not anything to do with anything, certainly not governing competence, it’s just luck with timing.
I know we are a small country but we just had a give-away budget paid for out of tax surpluses in Ireland.. we consider ourselves to be among the ‘developed’ nations.. so not ALL developed countries are struggling as badly as is the UK. Then we are in the EU which may be a factor??
Or it could be that Ireland has the lowest Corporation Tax in Europe, and increased it’s take by 50% last year, thus providing a quarter of all tax receipts.
Meanwhile of course, it costs 60 Euro to see a GP and I don’t know how much if you turn up at A&E without a GP’s say-so.
I love Ireland, and would happily live there, but it’s essentially a tax haven.
Probably a disfactor in the long run.
You’re the EUs tax haven. The day that stops Ireland will be broke (again)
Load of nonsense
How exactly will Starmer increase housing supply, whilst undoubtedly sticking to high immigration numbers and opposing planning reform?
Every local election Labour promise to oppose any building in my area. It took ten years of battling through the planning process for there to be any new housing built at all.
I could see Truss and Starmer in ” Downton” Truss turning down beds and laying fire grates, and Starmer as an insolent under butler….
“Coercion by global market forces is, simply, no liberation” – there is no such thing as coercion by global market forces.
This entire screed from you is Marxist drivel.
If acceding to market forces means you win or lose an election I think we can legitimately use the term “coercion” don’t you?
No the best of rants on UnHerd. The comments are better. There’s an adult discussion to be had about how we create prosperous and fair society. What is the difference between post-liberal and neo-liberal and is there a difference when the country is broke, and nothing works properly. And the idea that Starmer offers anything new is absurd – green taxes, mass immigration, mass housebuilding – how does that serve the common good?
With all due respect, Aris Roussinos’ notion of “conservatism” is the same old failed Blue Blairite orthodoxy.
What on Earth would you know about conservatism, Aris?
The Conservatives are no longer conservatives – they’re extremists. They get away with this unhinged stuff because they hide behind the banner of “conservatism”.
Name something “extremist” about today’s Conservatives – other than their penchant for neo-Marxist globalist totalitarianism.
A bit under-edited; Paul Embery’s Spiked piece today on similar topic more concise. AR has been v interesting in the past abt the conservative uses of the state; here, the projection of what he’d like to see onto the Labour pty struck me as so wishful as to be adolescent. EDF, a state energy entity similar to that proposed by labour last week, is not working well. And as to immigration, internationalist parties can be trusted no more than neoliberals.
While there have been many valid angles in this article, the astonishingly simplified and selective understanding of British conservatism struck me as a huge disappointment.
I understand that the author, whose articles I have previously read and recommended, does not hold classical liberal arguments convincing. Still, his almost visceral hatred of free-market liberals made the otherwise valid point of disagreement collapse. Moreover, rejoicing the someone else’s failure (which I always find morally suspicious) and shallow portrayal of the whole intellectual tradition (liberal conservatism) have made this article so weak.
The author linked current market turmoils exclusively to Truss’s policy announcements and failed to mention a single (even recent) historical factors that brought the UK into this position, but there is more fundamental neglect. He simply failed to appreciate that the individualistic and free-market stream of the Conservative party has much deeper philosophical roots than is present throughout the text. No mention of Michael Oakeshott, his scepticism and the corresponding validation of market-friendly solutions as part of a broader, tradition-loving philosophy. No mention of Friedrich Hayek and his involvement with the IEA (which the author presented almost as an institution of no intellectual rigour or history).
Finally, there is an essential argument on the side of Conservatives that the author could have raised had he approached it more deeply:
It is not the market reforms that have possibly led to such turbulence in the market but the manner those reforms have been presented and introduced. A careful conservative would understand such subtleties; Truss has failed to appreciate the power of sequencing and properly developed communication strategy.
Had the author taken conservatism seriously, he would have at least observed that point of view.
I suspect that the writers political positioning of being centre left financially and more conservative culturally (apologies to him if I’ve got this wrong) is much more in keeping with the British population at large than most on this board, who seem to be much more of a market knows best persuasion.
Although strangely enough they’re rather critical of the markets currently after they made Truss look the fool
Hayek was a liberal not a tory. He even wrote that himself. And his philosophy has been destroying both the tory party and the country for the past 40 years.
Hayek argued that he is not *socially* conservative, but his political philosophy and economic theory are congruent with British *philosophical* conservatism (scepticism).
Yet, these two things are not the same. The former refers to individual stances on personal liberties, whereas the latter refers to epistemological issues (human cognitive capacities and use of knowledge in society).
For instance, I can be socially liberal but philosophically conservative, leading me toward small-state and free-market policies.
Someone else can be both socially and philosophically conservative and still affirm minimal government.
British conservatism is much more about philosophical scepticism and personal conservatism. Historically and practically.
I wish there was a way I could “opt out” of ever seeing this guys essays again. I’ve read about seven or eight of them now – since I subscribed to Unherd. And not one of them has ever given me even the tiniest kernel of an interesting idea, or piece of useful information, or even said much of anything I could agree with – and mind you I don’t like reading “choir articles” as a rule.
In this one I stopped about half way. I hadn’t noticed who wrote it when I started or I wouldn’t have. Isn’t this the wrong venue for this guy? I mean, his opinions are legion in mainstream publications everywhere. What’s he doing on Unherd?
I always enjoy Aris’ articles personally. Some of his foreign affairs ones have been extremely well written and informative, and I suspect your reason for disliking him is because you don’t agree with his politics domestically.
Rather than asking why he is on UnHerd, perhaps a better question to ask is why are you? If you are unable to finish reading articles you disagree with perhaps one of the many echo chambers on various other websites would be more preferable, whereby you only have to read people you already agree with?
In fairness to Jeff … it is a dire article … promoting in essence the State as our guide and mentor.
Primacy of the State only leads to one place … totalitarianism … just check out where the EU is heading
It isn’t proposing the state become an all powerful beast akin to communism, merely that leaving everything to “the market” isn’t having great outcomes either.
Why can’t the government step in and build houses? Or put up more funding towards research and development? Or offer state support to key industries such as energy? After all who has benefitted more from their North Sea oil, the Norwegians who kept the bulk under national control (and now have a $1 trillion slush fund) or Britain who sold their off to the highest bidder?
I was hoping to come up with some kind of witty comment in reply to the article. However, I think the simplest thing is to just say it’s pretty high up the list of incomprehensible, pretentious and laughable drivel I’ve read in a fair while. Although, I would like the author to explain more about the ‘time before capitalism existed’
I personally think you are misreading Trussonomics here Aris.
Essentially it is a dash for national growth to make Britain more competitive and lean on global markets with the recent repricing intending to facilitate exports and import substitution with the use of low tax enterprise zones.
The rhetoric is largely a pushback against the encumbent narrative entrenched by the remainer elite that the role of government is to resolve every problem including autumnal tomate blight.
Members of Truss’s Cabinet like John Redwood might be libertarian but they also hold national economic resilience dear and close to their hearts.
I think Aris you’ve been caught up in the cynical declinist groupthink of the remainer media who simply want the pretense of a Blue Labour government to win enough red wall support to rejoin the neoliberal EEA.
The old story of ‘Cry Wolf”. The villagers poured out with their pitchforks several times only to find no wolf and blamed the boy for wasting their time. Like many fables and parables perhaps it should be looked at differently. Perhaps the men of the village made so much noise the wolf made itself scarce. Now the wolf is back. It’s hungry. History blames the boy, not the noisy villagers.
Similarly now, the villagers, blissful in their noisy ignorance, reject the wolfish tax changes they perceive rather than the wolf itself. Starmer’s Labour.
The whole effing Tory party betrayed conservatism. They’re not brave enough to reject woke CRT and gender craziness in schools and across the public sector. They’re not intelligent enough to defend traditional family values, They don’t have the cunning or nous to follow through on the victories in the North and Midlands with a really new kind of political economy based on the maximum distribution of private property; libertarianism for families; a libertarianism of household livelihood. I say bollocks to all of them. If you can get taken in by Mermaids, and Stonewall and Pink News – you’re about as conservative as Robespierre.
It is always fascinating that the socialist left-wing always predicts the Universe’s demise without waiting but always creates its conditions without regret.
What goes round comes round !
The naivety of this ‘article’ astounds me … to believe the ‘State’ is to be our guide to prosperity after our experiences since WW2 is ignoring the malign results of the State’s interference in our lives.
The primacy of the ‘State’ as against the freedom of the individual leads to only one destination … socialism controlling our lives … just check out the EU and Germany this last 20 years and see where that has landed them.
A gigantic mercantilist state, for that is what this post liberalism is all about, would inevitably fail as it is failing now in Germany and the EU
Mercantilism has no moral compass … witness again Germany and the EU as fine examples.
@richardcalhoun
The fake conservatives are everywhere now — using theatre on tiny things to pretend, and selling out to big government on important things.
All very interesting but libertarians are going to be very upset at the notion Truss is one of them. And what on earth is a postliberal? We seem to be obsessed with these tags nowadays.
I think this article entirely misses the point. We spent two decades operating under ’emergency’ monetary intervention when governments and electorates got used to the idea that any hair-brained policy (net zero) or crisis intervention (lockdown) could be met with a blank cheque. The tide has gone out, crisis is upon us and we’re bickering about appropriate epithets. This Govt has a tough job and yes it needs to do a much better job at messaging.
In the past I have enjoyed some of Aris’s articles but this must rank not only as his worst but one of the worst I’ve read anywhere. I really can’t be bothered listing the reasons, the whole thing is just rubbish.
Nowhere do I read the mini budget between the lines admission that we can’t afford tax cuts yet without cutting government spending. No politician would dare not subsidising this winter’s fuel bills or not putting the triple lock back in place. The 19% basic rate next April? We tip waiters that much. A big rise in tax thresholds would have helped all. The NIC increase was a mistake but admitted that tax was needed to rise to help pay the ever hungry NHS.
Starmer’s first budget will hold up the overdraft letter and squeeze the middle class and business until the pips squeak. He’ll have the mandate to do it. For how long? Look what Biden has done to the USA in so short a time. No honest pundit can claim he’s an improvement.
It seems unhealthy to me for Labour to get in without lifting a finger. Like letting them get behind the wheel of a car when they haven’t got a clue how to drive it.
The opposite of the truth. Neoliberalism as practised since 1979 is not a betrayal of Conservatism, merely its inevitable apotheosis.
And Labour will not betray conservatism ???
Why Social and Economic Dimensions of Ideology Are Intertwined. Flavio Azevedo, John T. Jost, Tobias Rothmund, and Joanna Sterling.
Social conservatism combined with economic conservatism. It seems PM Elizabeth Truss’s views are well aligned to the views of the Right in most countries, including the views of the so-called populist Right.
While there might perhaps be some theoretical case for separating the economic aspect and the social aspects of policy (such as the much hyped political compass), the fact is that a positive attitude towards free markets (economic conservatism) is most often combined with social conservatism, whereas social progressivism is almost always associated with economic progressivism. That is, most economic conservatives are also social conservatives and most social progressives are economic progressives.
The obvious implication for practical conservative politics is that economic conservatives, most of whom are social conservatives anyway, must stop trying to appeal to almost-nonexistent socially progressive but economically conservative voters, embrace the social conservatism most believe in anyway, and find some mutually acceptable compromise on economic policy with more economically progressive voters who nontheless value social conservatism more than economic conservatism, all the while emphasizing the deleterious social consequences of the welfare state to win over new constitucencies. In other words, practical conservative politics must follow the course that it has successfully been following for many many years now and that has yielded so many electoral victories all over the world.
“…Go together like a horse and carriage /This I tell you brother /You can’t have one without the other…
…Try, try, try to separate them / It’s an illusion / Try, try, try, and you will only come / To this conclusion…”
There were many on the Left hoping that Jeremy Corbyn would overthrow British Capitalism, then were disappointed.
But wait… here came Trussky, infiltrator extraordinaire, to do the job !
A miracle, I call it.
The biggest mistake is being made by those (not least it seems by the PM herself) who think that Truss is Thatcher mark 2.Thatcher was a social conservative as well as an economic liberal, and these aspects of her ideology were often in tension, for example in her opposition to Sunday trading and the National Lottery.
I don’t understand a word of this. Is it me?
“ return manufacturing to British shores through Stare investment”
Which planet are you from?
As for “getting a Brexit deal for everyone “ – good luck with the Remoaners on that.
The very last thing this country needs is a Socialist prescription for our problems.
Truss = the Tories’ Corbyn. Except of course that the electorate ensured that Corbyn wouldn’t get in.
The author is trying, and failing, to be sarcastic. However, those institutions are solidly Remoaner leftard, just like the author.
The author extols the virtues of the saviour Sir Starmer, saying how his utterances have wrestled back the Red Wall. He fails to espouse any policy that Labour have put forward to save the country from the wicked Tories.
Maybe that is because Labour has no policies beyond preserving the status quo of the last 25 years that have led us to our current state.
The sheer venom of 99% of all media towards Truss shows that she should stay the course. Drive a stake through the heart of the permanently failed Left and bring a new dawn to British politics.
It was only just over 2 years ago that the Conservatives won a massive majority. With courage, communication and commitment there is no reason why hopeless Labour cannot be put to the sword again.
It’s very amusing that the people who cheered on Thatcher when she turned Britain into a globalist hell-hole, enslaved to the markets, are now enraged that the globalists and markets have scotched Truss.
Whilst I find it deeply uncomfortable that faceless money men have been able to so quickly derail the policies of the elected government (even though I disagree with the tax cuts proposed), it does bring a wry smile watching two people with an almost religious belief that “the market” will fix all our problems being hoist so publicly from their own petard
Has anyone considered the possibility that Liz Truss might still be a Lib Dem Remainer? ie a Trojan Horse in the Conservative Party with the sole aim of wrecking it? ..or is that a bit too conspiratorial? ..and what if she has done a deal with Starmer to do so in return for him bringing in PR which is the Lib Dem’s holy grail? Maybe I should stop listening to David Icke??
Get out the popcorn and enjoy the show!
If the polls are only half right the Tories will be wiped out and rightfully so.
Although I do hope Mark Francois remains MP, he is quite funny.
You sure know to bombard a forum. You have reminded me to ask Unherd to make provision for a blocking, or muting, facility.
Give him a chance, he has only recently returned from exile In Luxembourg.
Feel free not to read them.
Hi snowflake
Shoot the messenger and all will be well!
I have rewritten this to read:
” He is not a messenger. He is a waste of space. I am surprised that you cannot tell the difference, Liam.”
Those who upvoted my original version are entitled to remove their upvote.
I hope this is the end of the Tories for a generation. They have destroyed our public services and now they destroying the economy. We need sensible leadership not populists. We need to finally lance the boil of this Brexit Government.
Firstly Liz Truss voted to Remain.
Secondly, what has this got to do with the referendum?
To some people, Brexit is the cause of all the problems in the world.