Monday 26th September 2022

[refitman]

Morning all.

[RogerOThornhill]

Good morning.

Oh dear...

[RogerOThornhill]

All going well on the currency markets I see.

[gilsey]

ICYMI last night, from sky

Ah finally found an un-paywalled version of that Times article and it's a doozy.

‘Biscotti mini-budget’ exposes gulf between Liz Truss and Keir Starmer — and more tax cuts are on the cards

https://archive.ph/2022.09.24-183734/ht ... -j2mj5zncs
Within minutes of Kwarteng retaking his seat in the Commons, the pound was tanking as the City reacted with alarm. Tory MPs, shocked at the decision to play into Labour’s caricature of the Tories as only there to help the rich, were openly describing it as a “kamiKwasi budget”. A former minister said: “Everyone who isn’t mad hates it.”

Late on Friday evening, the chancellor and his team walked from No 11 to the Two Chairmen pub in Westminster, the traditional watering hole for officials after a fiscal event, to thank the Treasury team in person. About 50 Treasury staff were there, including Matthew Sinclair, the prime minister’s chief economist. The pub’s landlady was seen asking for a selfie with the chancellor and overheard thanking him for his decision to freeze alcohol duty and reverse the employers’ national insurance rise.

By then Kwarteng probably needed a stiff drink. The pound had slumped to $1.09, its lowest for decades. “The gulf between the free-marketeers and what the free market actually thinks of the free-marketeers is hilarious,” said a former Downing Street aide who now advises City bosses. “The City boys don’t have any confidence they know what they are doing in Downing Street.”

A source who was present at a dinner attended by hedge-fund managers a week ago revealed: “They were all supporters of Truss and every one of them was shorting the pound.” Several made small fortunes on Friday betting against the currency.

[gilsey]

[frog222]

@gilsey -- I'd already posted from the Times, before @Sky, as I profited from their cheap offer , £1 pm for a year ! It's a bit of a drag copying but available .

" On the same day it was released, a contract notice, with a value of between £112,700 and £129,700, was published for the legal services of Peter & Peters, who had instructed Lord Pannick to produce the Opinion. Reports – not denied by Johnson or the Cabinet Office – also suggest the whole value of the contract was spent obtaining the Opinion, a staggering amount of money. Neither Johnson nor the Cabinet Office has denied this, as far as we’re aware.

Good Law Project believes the decision to obtain Lord Pannick’s Legal Opinion using public money was unlawful. We don’t think the Government should use public money to rescue its former prime minister from an investigation ordered by the House. The Commons Privileges Committee inquiry is about Johnson’s alleged misconduct as an MP. He should pay for it himself.

We have sent a Pre-action letter to the Cabinet Office. It asks the Cabinet Office to seek reimbursement from the disgraced former prime minister of the public monies spent on the Opinion."

https://goodlawproject.org/news/the-pub ... -the-hook/

[frog222]

Bloodbath !

KamiKwasi — ” You think this is a gamble ? Well I’m going to do more of it ! ”

Pound’s plummet underlines schoolboy error by Kwasi Kwarteng


https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... i-kwarteng

[AnatolyKasparov]

Labour seem to be taking this opportunity to propose some worthwhile stuff, which is heartening.

[notnowsonny]

Pleased to see that Chloe Smith has improved since her mauling by Paxman all those years ago.

The patronising behaviour at 3:59 from a minister whose government hasn't allowed the OBR to prepare an assessment of the effect of their "fiscal event" or whatever, caused a sharp intake of breath. She matched it several times during the interview.

[RogerOThornhill]

Hardly a surprise.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Louise Haigh says that Labour will bring the railways back into public ownership.

[frog222]

Pleased to see that Chloe Smith has improved since her mauling by Paxman all those years ago.
The patronising behaviour at 3:59 from a minister whose government hasn't allowed the OBR to prepare an assessment of the effect of their "fiscal event" or whatever, caused a sharp intake of breath. She matched it several times during the interview.

around 5.50, after she'd claimed that City traders will be encouraged back to London she then moves seamlessly to say that UC claimants are going into new well-paid jobs .
In the City ?

Agreed on the competent performance, of the True Believer, now wondering how many UC claimants et al she will kill .

[gilsey]

Cleaning the offices. Burley could have said that.

[gilsey]

Quite.

[frog222]

Novara did a long one on the criminal weakness of the media at the alternative conference thing this weekend . From twittery against Rivkah Brown it seems that they also joined in the median pile-on over JC's supposed antisemitism (I wasn't following them at the time) .
May check the youtube of it some time to see if they admit their mistakes .

I watched the first hour of the Al Jazeera exposé of the LP's Dirty Tricks campaign against JC and supporters . Chilling stuff of forged document and lying testimony to 100% imagined events, worthy of the Stasi or CIA at their best .

Canary comes out of it well --

[gilsey]

[notnowsonny]

From the G Politics:

'And in a blunt warning to the Truss government [Analysts at bank Nomura] write:

"Hope is not a strategy, and markets are reflecting that." '

How true, how true!

PS Fortunately it doesn't seem to be an Oxford comma in the quote from Nomura, so Therese (excuse lack of accents) needn't get too upset.

[refitman]

[gilsey]

The Indy do know she's already dead?

[AnatolyKasparov]

From the G Politics:

'And in a blunt warning to the Truss government [Analysts at bank Nomura] write:

"Hope is not a strategy, and markets are reflecting that." '

How true, how true!

PS Fortunately it doesn't seem to be an Oxford comma in the quote from Nomura, so Therese (excuse lack of accents) needn't get too upset.

Dead cat bounce for Sterling currently, so the usual suspects are proclaiming its all over.

[notnowsonny]

@AnatolyKasparov

'Hope springs eternal', as I believe the old saw goes?

[RogerOThornhill]

Not sure this bodes well for anyone in Italy...how soon should we be expecting attacks against immigrants or LGBT people?

I notice there was some "But she was quoting GK Chesterton!" this morning - the same one who was plagued with claims of anti-semitism?

[frog222]

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Apparently Truss and Kwarteng are crashing the pound on purpose to force the Bank of England's hand. There's no need to worry, it's all part of a carefully laid plan and they know exactly what they're doing. Honest.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Meloni is terrible, but its too simplistic to say she's simply "fascist".

For a start she isn't pro-Russia in the way her bedfellows Salvini and Berlusconi are.

[RogerOThornhill]

Thick as a plank or client journalism?

You decide...

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Ian Murray at the conference ruling out any deal with the SNP...

And don’t forget, at the last election Nicola Sturgeon encouraged people in England to vote Green, not Labour.

Hmm...I seem to recall someone urging Scottish voters to vote Tory rather than Labour to keep the SNP out. Who was that again? Oh yeah, it was Kezia Dugdale who just happened to be leader of the Scottish Labour party at the time.

[RogerOThornhill]

BoE decides not to take action. Markets not impressed and £ slips again. And this...

British lenders Virgin Money and Skipton Building Society temporarily withdrew their mortgage ranges for new customers on Monday because of the volatility in sterling funding markets, according to emails sent to brokers.

“Following a number of changes in the market, we have made the decision to temporarily withdraw all our products for new customers at 8pm tonight,” Virgin Money said in its email to brokers, seen by Reuters.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Labour conference votes by a clear margin in favour of electoral reform, another reason why giving up on them regarding this may be unwise.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Starmer's already said he's going to ignore it.

The party can vote however it likes but with a leadership hell-bent on imposing their own position then all we have is a reflection of the party mood and absolutely nothing in a manifesto. It's not good enough.

[AnatolyKasparov]

My point all along has been that what Starmer says now doesn't really matter.

[refitman]

Some sad news. I’ve just found out that MsChin, who posted on CiF and Andrew Sparrow’s blog, has passed away.

[frog222]

Some sad news. I’ve just found out that MsChin, who posted on CiF and Andrew Sparrow’s blog, has passed away.

Old friend and ally . XX

[Sky'sGoneOut]

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Biggest Labour lead in Yougov history.

I mean I thought Truss was going to be a disaster for the Tories but this far exceeds my expectations. Have we ever had a new Prime Minister who not only failed to get a poll boost but gifted 5 points to the opposition?