Britain is going to be Tory for at least 10 years.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Personally, I'd like to see Rees-Mogg at the helm.

Because you think he'd be competent, or because you think he'd hurt the Tories even worse than May has?

[Rum]

I'm not sure there'll be a challenge any time soon. It is a bit of a poison chalice after all. The incumbent will have the same set of issues - mostly BREXIT related to deal with - and there are going to be few winners around that one.

[PsychoSerenity]

I'm not sure there'll be a challenge any time soon. It is a bit of a poison chalice after all. The incumbent will have the same set of issues - mostly BREXIT related to deal with - and there are going to be few winners around that one.

If I thought they were all that sensible I'd agree with you. But Boris is arrogant enough to think people will love him no mater what, and David Davis has convinced himself that his Brexit negotiations are going well.

May's new sound-bite is "calm leadership with the full support of the cabinet".

[Brian Peacock]

Personally, I'd like to see Rees-Mogg at the helm.

Because you think he'd be competent, or because you think he'd hurt the Tories even worse than May has?

Because it would mean they're not pretending about who they really are.

[Brian Peacock]

Theresa May must sack Boris Johnson and shake up her cabinet if she is to reassert her authority and silence talk of a leadership plot in the wake of this week’s calamitous party conference, Conservative MPs will tell her.

Few backbenchers were willing to give their public backing on Friday to Grant Shapps, the former party chairman who emerged as the prime mover behind a bid to gather enough MPs to convince the prime minister to step down.

But many remain furious about the foreign secretary’s recent behaviour and want May to show that she is willing to exert discipline. Younger backbenchers are also anxious to see a new generation of talent brought into government.

The issue is set to be raised at next Wednesday’s meeting of the executive of the party’s powerful 1922 Committee....

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... _clipboard

If she strikes him down now he'll become more powerful than she can possibly imagine...

[L'Emmerdeur]

Because you think he'd be competent, or because you think he'd hurt the Tories even worse than May has?

Because it would mean they're not pretending about who they really are.

Good answer.

Re: Your other post--ha!

[Brian Peacock]

Ken Clarke: Tories had deal with Rupert Murdoch for 2010 election

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... _clipboard

One of Rupert Murdoch’s key lieutenants demanded Britain buy prison ships after the mogul made “some sort of a deal” to back David Cameron into office instead of Labour, Ken Clarke has said. The former Tory justice secretary said Rebekah Brooks, who was chief executive of News International, “described herself as running the government now in partnership with David Cameron”. Clarke told a hearing of the competition authority that if Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox was allowed to buy Sky it would become more partisan, like Fox News – one of the “ultimate examples of savagely political American television”. Anyone who believed otherwise would “believe anything”, Clarke said.

[pErvinalia]

On Thursday Brodkin caught May’s eye in the middle of her speech. She carried on speaking as he handed her the letter and told her: “Prime minister, Boris told me to give you this.” May stumbling over a word, and took the letter and had to bend to put it on the floor. Brodkin then approached the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, and gave him a thumbs up, saying: “Boris, job done.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... e-security

A lot of ground is being covered today by OUTRAGED Tories who are calling the P45 skit a 'gross lapse in security' - with apparently one unnamed Minister asking, "What if it hadn't been a piece of paper? What if it had been a bottle of acid, or a knife, or a gun?"

I would suggest that this cowardly unnamed minister gets a grip and applies a bit of context. I'm pretty sure someone with acid, a knife or a gun, or even a pair of nail-clippers wouldn't have got withing 10 feet of the doors of the conference centre, let alone into the hall. It was just a piece of paper - the only danger, the only threat, is to the PMs credibility, not her person.

He could have given her a nasty paper cut!

[Brian Peacock]

UK faces two decades of no earnings growth and more austerity, says IFS

Britain’s leading financial thinktank has warned workers to expect an unprecedented two lost decades of earnings growth and many more years of austerity as a result of the marked slowdown in the economy announced in Philip Hammond’s budget.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies said in its traditional post-budget analysis that forecasts slashing productivity, earnings and growth in every year until 2022 made “pretty grim reading”, and predicted that even by the middle of the next decade, Britain’s public finances would still be in the red.

The Treasury said the reforms and investment announced by the chancellor were designed to build a country “fit for the future”, but opposition parties said the gloomy IFS report undermined the chancellor’s claims.

In its analysis of the budget and the report from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, the IFS said:

• GDP per person will be 3.5% smaller in 2021 than forecast in March 2016. The loss of growth will mean the economy is £65bn smaller in 2021 than previously thought.
• Average earnings are on course to be £1,400 a year lower in 2021 than forecast in 2016. That means the recovery in wages will have failed to materialise and average earnings will be below their 2008 level adjusted for inflation.
• Borrowing will be £12bn higher in 2021 than was forecast in March.
• Despite a spending increase over the next five years, the NHS is facing its tightest funding constraints since the 1980s. Annual spending growth of 4% a year after inflation before the financial crisis has fallen to 1% a year at a time when the NHS is being stretched by an expanding and ageing population.

Paul Johnson, the IFS director, said the OBR’s decision to reduce its growth forecasts by one-quarter over the next five years would delay deficit reduction, limit Hammond’s ability to ease pressure on welfare and public services and harm living standards.

“We are in danger of losing not just one but getting on for two decades of earnings growth,” he said. “We will all have to get used to the idea that steadily rising living standards may be a thing of the increasingly distant past.”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... tivity-ifs

The Austerity isn't a force of nature, it's a management decision. One based in a particular ideology that has little to do with economic realities.

[Scot Dutchy]

Put it simply; the UK will be a third world tax haven.

[Rum]

Sadly you seem to rub your hands with glee. whereas most of us who had the sense to vote remain just whisper a sad 'I told you so'.

[Brian Peacock]

An estimated £1.3tr will have been qualitatively eased into the financial sector by 2027.

[Rum]

An estimated £1.3tr will have been qualitatively eased into the financial sector by 2027.

But there'll be tears at the end of it all.

All that fuss a couple of years ago about the country's 'credit rating' and deficit hysteria. I wonder who whipped that up...oh - I forgot - the Tory press.

[pErvinalia]

An estimated £1.3tr will have been qualitatively eased into the financial sector by 2027.

Misspelling, or is qualitatively easing an actual thing?

[Hermit]

The IFS's attempt to tell us what the economy will be like two decades from now is absurd. Economists make weather forecasters look good.