Predictions for Truss Cabinet
JRM - Levelling up 
Kwarteng - Chancellor 
Coffrey - chief whip 
Education - (not)Cleverley 
Culture - Badenoch 
And, most unbelievable of all
Home Sec - Braverman
Yes, me too Geoff. The railway progs are superb.
gawd help the UK 
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The only hope is that we have now hit rock bottom and things will fall apart quickly - but I have a feeling this will make 1979’s Winter of Discontent look like a walk in the park.
Probably another lie!
Rory Stewart regularly suggests the UK is on course for another decade of recession, on the Rest Is Politics podcast
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plenty of that in UK and most of it overpriced 
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Ha Ha.
“h” restored to original post.
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Phil Moorhouse:
Things not looking too good for the Tories just now:
Thank goodness we live in France, but what will happen t the pound and our pensions?
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I guess the best you can hope for is that any tax you may need to pay on UK pension income in France is considerably reduced
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The Tories must be close to their core support right now, unfortunately I suspect that support has drifted rightwards with the influx of a lot of ex 'kippers so Tory policy will continue to consist of throwing red meat to fascist dogs.
Fortunately, unlike the Nazis in the 1930’s the UK government doesn’t have the option of invading the rest of Europe as a distraction from general government incompetence and infighting - they are doing pretty well with the culture war thing but I think people are going to stop worrying so much about the “woke left” when they can’t pay the gas OR food bill and all of the shops on the high street have gone bust.
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Just when you thought that it couldn’t get worse… dear old Nigel pops up again from the mire and says he wants a “proper brexit” done and that Dizzy Lizzy and sunny Sunak won’t deliver…
Just got round to viewing the video you linked earlier Graham on Truss’ attack on ‘lazy’ British workers.
There are of course lots of factors affecting the UK’s poor productivity - but I doubt if any laziness inherent in British workers is among them - my impression, indeed ,is just the opposite - that Brits are hard workers…
The key explanations I would look to are:
- the unbalanced economy - heavy on services (it’s much easier to improve productivity in manufacturing, by investing in mechanisation, than it is in services)
- weakened organised labour - in economies like France, Germany, Scandinavia, etc, strong organisation makes labour more expensive, which obviously drives investment in labour-saving
- management short-termism - UK business governance structures and ‘shareholder value’ ideology also favour expansion via casual employment over long-term investment
- broken housing market - in the UK people typically live far from work, because of the cost of housing, which has all kinds of negative effects on productivity (eg. traffic jams slowing everything down, people arriving at work already tired).
Note all of these factors originate in Thatcherism…
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indeed… and the shame of it is that so many have to hold down multiple jobs to make ends meet.
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It is the dichotomy that Chris Grey talks about a lot - no real, actual, implementation of Brexit will ever satisfy the purist diehards (conveniently placing them in the role of perpetual victim which they seem to enjoy so much) and anything which would cannot be implemented.
Survey O/P in today’s Times that majority of Tory voters have buyers remorse and regret the ousting of Johnson!
Really hope Truss wins as she will by all accounts run a right wing gov which will then allow Stammer to put clear and winable water between him as center left, none Corbyn, alternative.
Now back to French “going ons” and more relative things in today’s Le Monde
Nothing centre left about Starmer. Even worse he doesn’t have anything to offer…
It’s a shame people are so blind they can’t appreciate all the things Corbyn offered. Even if you didn’t personally like him (and wow what a concerted character assassination the man endured) he offered many policies that resonated with people.
Starmer seems to have ditched all of those policies.
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