Tag: the british way

The Brexit vote was 8 years ago.

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This showed up in my feed today.

From a report published a the start of the year:

The UK has 1.8m fewer jobs now that it would have been had Brexit not happened – a drop of 4.8 per cent. The average Briton is nearly £2,000 worse off as a result of Brexit. The UK real Gross Value Added (GVA) – a measure of the size of the economy – is approximately £140bn less in 2023 than it would have been had the UK opted to remain in the Customs Union and Single Market – a drop of six per cent. Brexit has also made the cost-of-living crisis more severe in the UK. Analysis shows that 30% of the increase in food prices between December 2019 and March 2023 could be attributed to the effects of Brexit.

It made me think of all that happened in 8 years. Cameron, May, Boris, Lettucehead (Truss), and Rish!. The Duke and the Queen died. Covid. Trump. Ukraine. Gaza. It’s been a rough decade.

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Lettuce outlasts Liz Truss

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Coup, assassination, abdication, suicide and illness – all have contributed to history’s shortest serving leaderships though none, in the literal sense at least, can be said to apply to Liz Truss.

But at just 45 days, she faces the ignominy of being the UK’s shortest-serving prime minister by some degree. The announcement of fer resination, made by Truss outside Downing Street, follows the near-complete evaporation of her political authority which has seen her crash the markets, get publicly rebuked by the IMF, lose two key ministers and shed the confidence of almost all her own MPs. Truss’s resignation will set another unwanted record, by making her the first prime minister in recent history not to call the UK’s devolved leaders at any point while in office.

Keir Starmer said: “After 12 years of Tory failure, the British people deserve so much better than this revolving door of chaos. In the last few years, the Tories have set record-high taxation, trashed our institutions and created a cost-of-living crisis. […] The damage they have done will take years to fix.”

Purchased at a Tesco grocery store for 60 pence, the lettuce became a caricature of the Conservative leader’s flailing hold on power, pitted against the prime minister by The Daily Star. “Will Liz Truss outlast this lettuce?” the newspaper asked in a live video that has been running since Oct. 14, attracting bounds of viewers and comments on social media. The lettuce gag was inspired by The Economist, which noted on Oct. 11 that between a near-immediate political implosion at the beginning of her tenure and the 10 days of mourning after Queen Elizabeth II died, her grip on power amounted to seven days, or “roughly the shelf-life of a lettuce.” In the end, the lettuce emerged victorious after Truss resigned.

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The UK’s continuing downward spiral…

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From the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/28/rebuke-from-imf-is-a-global-embarrassment-for-truss-and-kwarteng

Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng have taken on the economic orthodoxy. They have announced extra borrowing to pay for tax cuts. They have sacked the Treasury’s top mandarin. They have insisted they will press on with their dash for growth despite a hostile reaction in the markets. Now the economic orthodoxy has struck back – and in the most high-profile way possible: a public and stinging rebuke from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

It is hard to overstate just how severe an embarrassment the dressing down from the IMF is for the government, which has been told to rethink last week’s mini-budget. The blunt language used by the IMF spokesperson was the sort normally reserved for a struggling emerging market economy seeking financial support.

The UK is not in that position. There is no immediate prospect of Kwarteng needing a bailout but the IMF’s intervention highlights just how quickly the chancellor’s strategy has unravelled. It also illustrates the IMF’s concern that a full-on financial crisis in the UK could have ripple effects through an already vulnerable global economy. The IMF has two main concerns. First, it is worried that what the Treasury is doing with tax and spending (fiscal policy) is at odds with what the Bank of England is doing with interest rates (monetary policy).

[…]

The IMF is itself taking a risk because by issuing such a public rebuke it might further undermine confidence in the UK. Kwarteng and the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, have been trying to reassure markets and put a floor under the pound. The IMF’s intervention is not helpful to their cause, and could conceivably be the catalyst for a fresh run on the pound that would prompt emergency action from the Bank’s monetary policy committee.

Truss and Kwarteng now have a big decision to make. They can ignore the IMF’s advice, which is what they would prefer to do. Or they can bow to the mounting pressure – which is coming not only from the IMF but also from the US and German governments – and have a rapid rethink.

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Troll level: librarian

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The prime minister’s address to the nation’s children as they prepare to return to classrooms was upstaged by Twitter tongues wagging over a school librarian with a sense of humour. As Boris Johnson told children at Castle Rock school in Coalville, Leicestershire, that exam results had almost been derailed by “a mutant algorithm”, eyes turned to the bookshelves behind him.

Lining the shelf just behind his head were titles with rather unflattering associations for any political leader, including “The Twits”, “The Subtle Knife”, “The Resistance”, and “Betrayed”.

And sticking out like a sore thumb was “Fahrenheit 451”, a dystopian novel about a society where books are banned.

If you look closely, “Guards! Guards!”, a Terry Pratchett novel, whose plot centers around a secret brotherhood to overthrow a corrupt patrician and install a puppet king.

Then comes “Hero.Com: Crisis Point” – part of an Andy Briggs series where “super powers carry super responsibilities”?

Did you spot “Glass Houses”? Granted, this one is a vampire novel. But could the famous proverb – “those who live in glass houses should not throw stones” – be a comment on Boris’ harsh criticism directed at the exam regulator?

And could Dickens’ “Oliver Twist”, famous for its heartbreaking line: “Please, sir, I want some more”, be tactically placed on Boris’ left to remind us of the government’s free school meals U-turn?

Somebody, perhaps, felt they had a story to tell the nation today. And all behind the PM’s back.

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