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British PM Boris Johnson and Now Liz Truss resigns

The entire cabinet in the UK has been a bit of a useless bunch for a while, and seems likely that will get appointed on their basis of loyalty vice competence. A few of them quit (likely before they get fired) but may be getting rewarded with peerages from BoJo on his way out. They are going to eclipse the level of not-competent set by the previous bunch, who did things like award transport contracts to companies with no transportation abilities.

It's a pretty crazy that even with the expected level of up-sucking and sycophancy in the current Government there it's too much for even a lot of them. They are still banging on about Brexit, which is hammering them, so in a way the pandemic was a bit of a political blessing for them as it camouflaged the damage done from no longer having unrestricted trade and movement as part of the EU.

They are now seriously considering breaking the Brexit treaty to skip a lot of the normal border control issues that they agreed to and were perfectly foreseeable when they made the agreement if you had even a passing familiarity with logistics and moving things between countries, which will cause the EU to start imposing a lot of sanctions.

Combined with their general cost of living crisis they are well and truly foxed.
So kinda like here in Canada? Did we copy the Brits again or did they take a page out of JTs playbook?
 
So kinda like here in Canada? Did we copy the Brits again or did they take a page out of JTs playbook?
We have some genuinely competent people; they are a right bunch of arseclowns who got put into cabinet because they are loyalists to the PM. They have a whole backbench group of lunatic Brexiteers and it's hard to tell if they are too stupid to tell if what they say is patently false or if they are just so used to lying they are just dead inside.

They may have some competent people in the backbenches (maybe) but none of them even want to touch the current cabinet. How bad are things when multiple people turn down cabinet positions because they don't want to get caught up in the imminent disaster? Even some of the useless MPs knew better than to get involved with the useless group.
 
Breixt was bound to be painful, but so was the way the EU was going. It's no longer a trade agreement, but Franco/German run Empire, with Belgium providing the smiley face. The Reality is that the UK market is to big for the EU to ignore, particularly with Russia out of the picture, Germany & France in fiscal trouble and possibly unable to prop up the other fiscal disasters that make up the EU. Somehow Switzerland survives as not part of the EU and the sky is not falling there either. The UK will get through this and by creating trade deals with countries outside of the EU, they can be a hub for goods that will make their way in and out of the EU.
 
We have some genuinely competent people; they are a right bunch of arseclowns who got put into cabinet because they are loyalists to the PM. They have a whole backbench group of lunatic Brexiteers and it's hard to tell if they are too stupid to tell if what they say is patently false or if they are just so used to lying they are just dead inside.

They may have some competent people in the backbenches (maybe) but none of them even want to touch the current cabinet. How bad are things when multiple people turn down cabinet positions because they don't want to get caught up in the imminent disaster? Even some of the useless MPs knew better than to get involved with the useless group.

Brexiteer here.
 
Brexit is on the European establishment that couldn't stop itself from pushing "ever closer union". A competently executed trade union would do. Their overbearing desire to rule Europe was bound to eventually piss off someone. They could still have a competently executed trade union, provided all the people who want to throw sand in the gears for spite are eliminated from negotiation and implementation.
 
Brexit is on the European establishment that couldn't stop itself from pushing "ever closer union". A competently executed trade union would do. Their overbearing desire to rule Europe was bound to eventually piss off someone. They could still have a competently executed trade union, provided all the people who want to throw sand in the gears for spite are eliminated from negotiation and implementation.
I don't disagree to a certain extent, but previously the UK at least had a say in the rules, and seemed to have an outsized influence on EU direction compared to their actual contributions.

Now if they want to trade in the EU, they have to have their products conform to EU standards, with zero input into what those are, and are basically in the same boat as us. It's not a big deal for us, as we follow the US closely and can do the paperwork to jump into their standards easily enough, but when you can see Europe mainland across the Channel and a massive proportion of the trade goes to Europe, this is a bit like NAFTA suddenly being voided and Canadian companies suddenly required to do a massive amount of paperwork to ship anything into the US (and vice versa). So the EU rules will still apply to a huge portion of their exports (particularly the really difficult stuff like food and livestock) but now they have to do inspections and customs forms, so it's put companies effectively out of business for EU trade.

For all their contributions, the EU was doing something like $5B a year in investment in the UK, which was a broad range of things like actual infrastructure projects, program grants etc, plus all the pooled STEM programs, and things like the ERASMUS uni exchange programs.

No idea why the UK went for a 'hard Brexit' but the Northern Ireland protocol of not having a border only works when they are in a trade union, so a border at either the Irish Sea or between Ireland and Northern Ireland are the only other options. They could have potentially stayed within the trade union, but decided not to. Now that COVID is stabilizing and the new normal, really exposing how absolutely crushing this has been to existing businesses, as well as the woefully inadequate 'new business opportunities that they've taken back control' really is.

Bit of a joke if they think they have any real barganing power; they are coming to everyone hat in hand and somehow thinking they'll get favourable free trade agreements. I don't think they've had any new free trade agreements since Brexit, and the ones they've agreed to have been fairly lopsided for the other countries to access the UK market.

Maybe some toffs have benefitted from ongoing money laundering and shell company activies, but it's been a slow disaster for the average Brit and only going to get worse.
 
The plus side is the current cabinet shuffle is pretty acrymonyous; the following tweet is hilarious but comes from the wife of a former soldier with 3 tours of Afg that was relieved as the minister of veteran affairs.

Edit to add: I don't get calling people Muppets as an insult, the actual Muppets are awesome and Beaker is my particular favourite, but that is a pretty funny photoshop.

 
I want to say they've been that way a bit longer than since JT's been PM.

The thing about the Brits is we don't expect anything better. The last thing that would ever get elected there is an intellectual. Especially one that proclaimed themself as such.
 
I don't disagree to a certain extent, but previously the UK at least had a say in the rules, and seemed to have an outsized influence on EU direction compared to their actual contributions.

Not actually. Latterly most votes were 1-26. Even their friends voted against them. The Northerners regularly relied on the Brits to negotiate changes that suited the Northern Club then baulked at supporting the Brits.

Now Britain is not negotiating 1 on 26. It is negotiating 1 on 1 with Brussels.

And undercutting Brussels, Paris and Berlin by negotiating 1 on 1 with Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, Warsaw, Prague, Bratislava, and Bucharest and making inroads with Ankara and Kyiv.

Off hand, in my opinion, Britain has a lot stronger hand now than it did before Brexit or, to be honest, before Putin's Speshul Operation.
 
The plus side is the current cabinet shuffle is pretty acrymonyous; the following tweet is hilarious but comes from the wife of a former soldier with 3 tours of Afg that was relieved as the minister of veteran affairs.

Edit to add: I don't get calling people Muppets as an insult, the actual Muppets are awesome and Beaker is my particular favourite, but that is a pretty funny photoshop.


And the entirety of the Cabinet and the majority of the Distinguished Members of the Parliamentary Party rebelling against the guy that got them their jobs and that had the support of the Party outside Parliament ... that wasn't acrimonious?

But, such is life. It happens. I expect to see Boris take another run at the job in an election or two. After his book is published.
 
What are the odds on another Brit PM before the coronation (May 6)?

Under fire, U.K. PM Liz Truss dumps finance minister and scraps tax plan​

PM runs risk of bringing government down if she can't get fiscal package passed

British Prime Minister Liz Truss fired her finance minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, on Friday and scrapped parts of their economic package in a desperate bid to stay in power and survive the market and political turmoil gripping the country.

Kwarteng said he had resigned at Truss's request after rushing back to London overnight from International Monetary Fund (IMF) meetings in Washington.

Truss, in power for only 37 days, then told a news conference she would now allow a key business levy to rise from next year, raising 18 billion pounds, as she accepted she had gone "further and faster" than markets had been expecting.

"We need to act now to reassure the markets of our fiscal discipline," she said.

Former foreign minister Jeremy Hunt has been made Kwarteng's replacement, Truss's office said Friday.
 
I find it ironic that the plan that the PM and her ex-chancellor sold as being the saviour of the free market is being scuppered by the free market doing a wild sell off of UK government bonds, that has cost something like $60B GBPs in real money for the central bank to stop the pound from plummeting even further. The only chancellor with a shorter career than Kwarteng died.

This is a fairly brutal kick to the UK public at large though, who were already taking a beating on inflation and cost of living; the GBP lost something like 25% of it's buying power, so all the imported things like food, parts etc will shoot up. More posh wankers ruining peoples lives.
 
I'm more intrigued by the Tory "rebels" supporting the City of London while twice scuppering the choices of the Party's Members. I can only assume they are more attracted by the prospects of a directorship than those of being re-elected. I can't see many Tory Party Members supporting the Party after this.

And besides Starmer, Cameron, Clegg and Blair have more in common with the City and Sadiq Khan.
 
One of the British papers has a live camera on a head of lettuce and a picture of Truss, with the question "which will expire first?"


I'm not surprised that the lettuce is trouncing the PM in the polls, but what astounds me is ". . . just like our 60p Tesco lettuce battling Liz Truss to see who will last the longest . . ." 60p for a head of lettuce! The head of iceberg* that I bought Saturday had a sale price of $2.49. At today's exchange rate that's £1.60.


* No, I was not doing a resilience test against any Canadian politicians. I was making tacos.
 
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