2022 CPC Leadership Discussion: Et tu Redeux

[QV]

Thanks to Lumber, we have spent 4 pages arguing PP’s use of quotation marks in a tweet.

Instead, the real issue is that the PM effective brushed off another ally (Japan) in their quest for energy supply security, which does have geo-political ramifications that do favour Russia. And have further negative national unity effects in Canada.

But, hey, as long as climate activists in the Danforth are onboard, what the hell. Am I right?

Small but important adjustment.

 

[Halifax Tar]

Thanks to Lumber, we have spent 4 pages arguing PP’s use of quotation marks in a tweet.

Instead, the real issue is that the PM effective brushed off an Ally (Japan) in their quest for energy supply security, which does have geo-political ramifications that do favour Russia. And have further negative national unity effects in Canada.

But, hey, as long as climate activists in the Danforth are onboard, what the hell. Am I right?

Maybe @Lumber is a Liberal 5th columnist sent to disrupt us ?

 

[dimsum]

Maybe @Lumber is a Liberal 5th columnist sent to disrupt us ?

 

[ArmyRick]

Gotta love the man

 

[Blackadder1916]

Gotta love the man

No, you don't. . . . You don't have to love any of them, or even like them, you just have to tolerate them.

 

[Good2Golf]

Looking much more leader-like than times past. Pull the trigger, Justin!

https://old.ipolitics.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Canada_Dec_Mag_2022-2.pdf

 

[RangerRay]

No, you don't. . . . You don't have to love any of them, or even like them, you just have to tolerate them.

Politicians will always disappoint. It’s in the nature of politics. It’s often a matter of whose disappointments you can tolerate the most.

 

[Quirky]

Looking much more leader-like than times past. Pull the trigger, Justin!

https://old.ipolitics.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Canada_Dec_Mag_2022-2.pdf

Amazing how many people still support the socialists. Mental health is a serious issue in the country…

 

[dimsum]

Amazing how many people still support the socialists. Mental health is a serious issue in the country…

Well there are some (not me, but some) who would cross out Socialists and put "CPC" in its place.

People vote where they believe is closest to their personal viewpoints.

 

[Kirkhill]

The Daily Telegraph - once owned by Lord Black - is reliably Tory, and generally Thatcherite in its impulses.

Its editorial on Liz Truss's essay which I posted yesterday is sound reading for Pierre Poilievre.

Orthodoxy is Social Democracy throughout the G7. - See the foot of this page

Liz Truss has kickstarted a crucial debate about the future of the Tory party​

If her analysis is correct, the implications are hugely significant for the future of free-market economics and conservatism in Britain
TELEGRAPH VIEW4 February 2023 • 10:00pm

Writing exclusively for this newspaper, Liz Truss gives us an invaluable, insider account of her time in office, and it makes for extraordinary reading.

Ms Truss entered the Tory leadership race last summer on a platform to radically reshape the country and its economy. She received a clear mandate from members and MPs to reverse Rishi Sunak’s tax rises, help consumers through the cost of living crisis, and to pursue transformative supply-side reforms. Just 49 days later, she resigned. Not only did the Tories drop the pilot but almost her entire programme.
Ms Truss has not changed her mind about any of her core beliefs, or about the desirability of urgent change. But she has, she says, learnt crucial lessons. The economy was extremely delicately balanced, in ways that she did not fully realise. Global markets were already febrile because interest rates were rising after years of being kept artificially low. Crucially, however, the pensions market was dangerously overexposed to falling bond prices – something she says the Treasury never warned her about.

At the same time, Ms Truss says that she underestimated the extent to which Whitehall was opposed to tax cuts and reform, with big government orthodoxy hardwired into the system thanks to an overreliance on the Office for Budget Responsibility, which essentially tells chancellors what they can and cannot do. She also faced international pressure from politicians and organisations keen to impose a high-tax international cartel. And her arguments struggled to gain traction because of the Left-wards shift in the UK political debate. She laments that Conservatives have failed over many years to advance the alternative point of view. They might have been in power but they had surrendered in the battle of ideas.



Mr Sunak should read this essay closely. Ms Truss is careful not to single the Prime Minister out directly for criticism, but it is apparent that she believes his policies to be disastrously wrong: that is why she stood against him in the first place, and spoke out against his tax rises when she was in the Cabinet. As she argues, raising the corporate tax rate to the same level as France from April is a terrible mistake, “hurting investment in the UK and people’s wages, all of which is taxable”. It is precisely the sort of misjudgment that can be forced onto governments by excessive belief in the gospel of the OBR.

Fortunately, a debate among Conservatives about the best way out of this low-growth death spiral has been started – and Ms Truss has made a critical, essential intervention. The statist Tory establishment has had its turn, and the party is cratering in the polls; the free-marketeers must now speak up. Indeed, if Ms Truss’s analysis is correct, the implications are hugely significant for the future of free-market economics and conservatism in Britain.

The first challenge is the Conservative Party itself: as currently constituted, it is now a Left-Right coalition that is incapable of pushing through free-market reforms that too many of its MPs no longer believe in. Much of the modern party is stuffed with people whose instincts better suit Edward Heath than Margaret Thatcher. It is not just about ideology, but also about attitude. They have been captured by short-term vested interests, and have lost the discipline and courage necessary to see through controversial changes. Poll ratings can yo-yo up and down; the one poll that matters is the general election, when voters will judge whether the party has made a material difference to their lives. The Tories will need to be reconstructed after the next election, and new candidates signed up to a coherent programme.

A second critical lesson is that philosophical conservatives cannot simply enter office and act at speed and without persuasion. They must lay the groundwork first. New ideas and policies will have to be sold to the public for years prior to the next election, building a grassroots coalition and support for change. The concept that lower taxes boost prosperity is now alien to many voters; new messaging will be required for an extended period of time. These ideas have to be articulated intelligently and in a comprehensible fashion to make it clear that they would improve ordinary people’s lives.

The third implication is that reforms need to be planned extremely carefully: simply winning an election and gaining the keys to No 10 is not enough to change a country at a time when elite opinion is so Left-wing and the blob so powerful. A series of profound institutional reforms will be required, including to the OBR and Civil Service. With good personnel scarce, a reforming Tory government will need to recruit a vast and talented team prior to winning an election, and to plot in great detail a series of legislative and regulatory changes to push through almost on day one. Any lack of organisation would guarantee failure, as Thatcher and Blair both understood. Tragically, as Ms Truss acknowledges, she was caught by surprise and was not able to assemble an alternative infrastructure in the desperately limited time she had.

Ms Truss insists that she still has hope for the UK, particularly now that we are a sovereign country post-Brexit. Reading her damning judgment, however, one is left wondering if any future Tory prime minister would ever be able turn the tide on high-tax social democracy, given that it appears to be built into our institutions. It should be possible, but only if the Conservatives learn from Ms Truss’s experience.

Liz Truss has kickstarted a crucial debate about the future of the Tory party

If her analysis is correct, the implications are hugely significant for the future of free-market economics and conservatism in Britain

www.telegraph.co.uk

The former prime minister says it was not only domestic economic orthodoxy she was up against when she tried to challenge "high-spend, high-tax" policies, but that she was also "swimming against the international tide".

"There was a concerted effort by international actors to challenge our Plan for Growth," she says, citing US president Joe Biden’s remarks as well as comments by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

"The IMF commented on distributional aspects rather than market stability, which is hard to conclude was anything but politically motivated.

"Then there was the intervention from President Biden, who publicly voiced his disagreement with our economic policy, stating: ‘I wasn’t the only one that thought it was a mistake.’"

Liz Truss: I was brought down by the left-wing economic establishment

Exclusive: In an essay for The Telegraph, former PM stands by her policies and criticises Rishi Sunak’s corporation tax increase

www.telegraph.co.uk

 

[Good2Golf]

The Daily Telegraph - once owned by Lord Black - is reliably Tory, and generally Thatcherite in its impulses.

Its editorial on Liz Truss's essay which I posted yesterday is sound reading for Pierre Poilievre.

Orthodoxy is Social Democracy throughout the G7. - See the foot of this page

Liz Truss has kickstarted a crucial debate about the future of the Tory party

If her analysis is correct, the implications are hugely significant for the future of free-market economics and conservatism in Britain

www.telegraph.co.uk

Liz Truss: I was brought down by the left-wing economic establishment

Exclusive: In an essay for The Telegraph, former PM stands by her policies and criticises Rishi Sunak’s corporation tax increase

www.telegraph.co.uk

Are you saying that Pierre Poilièvre need to consider Kim Campbell Liz Truss’s experience in dealing with Trudeau?

 

[Kirkhill]

Are you saying that Pierre Poilièvre need to consider Kim Campbell Liz Truss’s experience in dealing with Trudeau?

Perhaps more Stephen Harper's original comments about not needing a Parliamentary opposition because he would be opposed by the bureaucracy, the media, the courts and the academics.

What did I just see recently?

Festina Lente - or make haste slowly. ( I think some have re-organized that to : Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast)

He can't afford to be aggravating, no matter how good that may feel.

 

[Good2Golf]

He can't afford to be aggravating, no matter how good that may feel.

So truthfully/reasonable aggravating is wrong, but moistly-spoken vapid aggravating has to be listened to?

 

[Kirkhill]

So truthfully/reasonable aggravating is wrong, but moistly-spoken vapid aggravating has to be listened to?

Don't like it. But as aggravating as I can be I have to ask how many minds I change. Pierre needs to do better.

At very least he has to find a road to power - at very least he needs to get the lobsters into the pot.

 

[Navy_Pete]

So truthfully/reasonable aggravating is wrong, but moistly-spoken vapid aggravating has to be listened to?

He's pretty frequently loose and lazy with the truth (as are all politicians) and generally also fairly vapid in his own way. A lot of his big pronouncemounts are empty and don't stand up to scrutiny.

He has a nasally voice and a resting smug face, so yes, he needs to be careful on how he presents himself. I'd vote for someone that I thought had a punchable face if I thought they were legitimately different but he continues to come across as just a different pile of the same, who cozies up to a different group of elite rich folks under a different polulist flag.I'm not sure how many decades of 'trickle down economic' we need to go through without it working before tax cuts to the ultra rich and multinationals stop getting sold as improving outcomes for the 'middle class'.

 

[Good2Golf]

He's pretty frequently loose and lazy with the truth (as are all politicians) and generally also fairly vapid in his own way. A lot of his big pronouncemounts are empty and don't stand up to scrutiny.

He has a nasally voice and a resting smug face, so yes, he needs to be careful on how he presents himself. I'd vote for someone that I thought had a punchable face if I thought they were legitimately different but he continues to come across as just a different pile of the same, who cozies up to a different group of elite rich folks under a different polulist flag.I'm not sure how many decades of 'trickle down economic' we need to go through without it working before tax cuts to the ultra rich and multinationals stop getting sold as improving outcomes for the 'middle class'.

Good point. We’re better off with what we have now.

 

[Halifax Tar]

According to the linked website, something is working for him.

It might be more anti Trudeau than pro PP. Who knows ? Either way, I would rather hold my nose for PP than endure more JT.

Welcome to 338Canada

338canada.com

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Don't know where you came upon the expression Festina Lente, but (anecdote here) in the 1980's, it was the name of the annual Naval Control of Shipping Organization training CPX's that were used as work ups for the bi-annual real time CPX's - usually ran at the same time as the Ocean Safari convoy exercises.

Just being pedant her, nothing to do with PP.

 

[Remius]

Pierre Poilievre denounces Conservative MPs' meeting with far-right German politician

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is denouncing a far-right German politician after three of his MPs met with her during her Canadian tour in support of the 'Freedom Convoy' movement.

www.ctvnews.ca

This will be the first serious test for PP as far as dealing with internal party missteps. I’m sure he isn’t too pleased with this.

 

[ModlrMike]

This is exactly the sort of thing that will support the Liberal's narrative.