Avoiding a review of her tax plans by the Office of Budget responsibility. Telling King Charles not to go to the COP climate change meeting and not planning to attend herself. Leading on the environment issue was a major Conservative policy. So all eyes in the party conference which starts today. We may see a lot of policy changes that are controversial.
Apparently Truss is making decisions without consulting her cabinet….
She is trying to steer the ship by herself like some kind of executive president with a small clique of advisors.
Her own party is not going to like this. They will support her if they think she could win an election like Boris Johnson. That seems unlikely, she has no charisma. But really, they don’t have much choice.
Will she carry the Conservative party with her by rousing speeches and the launch of some inspired policies? A Thatcher moment that carries on to win a general election?
I may be wrong, but technically I think it’s up to Parliament if they decide to dissolve the current government and call an election. It happens in this case (As PaulParkhead says above) that the Tories have a large majority in Parliament, so it’s unlikely that they would call for an election that they would obviously lose.
Unless of course, they voted in the interests of the country, instead of their own self-interest. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Good one, eh?
This has Dunning-Kruger written all over it. Every economist telling her it is madness, but she goes ahead anyway.
She feared others and bypassed any possibility of discussion or scutiny, notably her own cabinet and the Office for Budget Responsibility, which implies she knew people woukd resist the changes, yet she still thought herself better than them.
But what of all the politicians and journalists who supported her budget? Now they look foolish. They either have to say they were wrong to agree with her.
She will try to have rousing speeches at the party conference and may succeed, but unless she changes her ways, just like Johnson, she will lurch from crisis to crisis, but this time she cannot blame covid and brexit.
I’ve heard snippets from a few interviews she’s done. She seems utterly incapable of thinking on her feet.
And that’s why she will disappear from public view.
She’s a ‘fake-it-til-you-make-it’ person. She doesn’t have the skills to lea the country. She;'s cincentrated on her image rather than her knowledge and skills.
In the past it was entirely in the hands of the Prime Minister to set the date if the next General Election. But they often tried to create small economic booms to increase their chances if re-election.
Cameron changed that and passed a law to create fixed 5 year terms. This led to lame duck adminstrations such as that of May where the country was stuck with a weak adminstration that could not be changed.
That has since changed so now, at least, the PM can call an election within the 5 year maximum term.
Truss, I guess, is hoping for a period of economic growth that makes her look good before the term is up in two years.
When Thatcher did this, she was backed up by North Sea Oil revenues. But there is no such money spinner available for Truss to tap into and borrowing is about to become much more expsensive.
Isn’t it the case that if there is a vote of non-confidence in Parliament, then the government falls, and there must be an election (fixed term or no?) Or has this changed?
No. Boris lost a no-confidence vote and resigned. This was not followed by a general election — it was followed by a sort-of election, more of a selection process, entirely internal to the Tory party, from which Liz Truss emerged.
I understand this is how it works when a PM resigns - there is no election and a new party leader is chosen who then becomes the PM.
However, my understanding is that if Parliament itself votes non-confidence, then the government dissolves at this point, and there must be a new election - fixed dates or not.
The PM can certainly whip the votes if they have a majority, and it would be unlikely that a majority party would vote non confidence in their own government - but it seems in this case it COULD happen.
There are two kinds if no confidence vote here. One is an entirely internal party matter when the party votes that they have no confidence in its own leadership. Each political party had its own process for arranging this and for the Conservatives it is run by the 1922 Committee of non cabinet MPs. The process is triggered by letters being written to the committee by MPs asking for a no confidence vote. If a PM loses a no confidence vote, there is an election of a new leader of the party who will become the bew PM.
The other no confidence vote is a Parliamentary process whereby MPs of all parties vote whether they have confidence in the current Parliament. This is the one of the ways in which a General Election could be triggered. This is quite rare, it would only happen in a Parliament where the largest party has a slim majority. Or worse, relies on another party agreeing to vote in their support to ensure they have a majority with which to pass legislation.
The May relied on support from the Northern Irish Unionist party. Cameron relied on a deal with the small Liberal Democrats party. The threat of withdrawing support and maybe losing a Parliamentary no confidence vote if there are dissenters within the ruling party is always there. The smaller party usually extracts some kind of favour for this support. This kind of thing is business as usual in the proportional representation voting of political systems found in Europe. Normally the UK first past the post voting system delivers an absolute majority to the winning party in a General Election. However, the UK has been through a decade or so where the system has produced slender majorities and consequently weakened governments. The whole Brexit business was a result of the weakness of the Cameron administration and his fears of insurrection from within his party when he had only a slim majority.
There are mutterings within the Conservative party that letters are being written to the 1922 committee already. With her large majority her administration is safe from a Parliamentary vote of no confidence. But maybe her own party will turn on her, just they did with Johnson. Not much chance of that, at this early stage.
The UK political system is not really working very well at the moment. It has not delivered governments that are strong enough to deliver a political program or they chose to waste time on some nonsense like Brexit.
The Labour party discussed maybe changing the voting system to some kind of PR, which is interesting. But it would be difficult for any winning party to change system to one that may be to their disadvantage. So it seems doubtful that might happen.
The UK Parliament holds supreme executive power. The monarchy was tamed long ago. King Charles I lost his head over the issue. King Charles III may not like it, but he will be mindful. He can always wait until Truss simply goes away. He will be around a lot longer than her.
So yes, the King must act on the advice of Parliament led by the PM.
Just on political matters. King Charles has always championed environmentalism. Clearly Truss has something to say on this subject….or not, since she does not intend to attend the COP meeting either.
This is quite a departure from Boris Johnson’s policy, so we might see the unravelling of the Green agenda as far as the Conservatives are concerned. That will be a gift to Labour.
Where have you been the last several years? Did you miss all the speeches by Boris, Liz and other leavers who explained that Brexit would unshackle British industry and lead to a massive economic boon?
