Top voted comment

[John52]

from the FT;

 

in article titled

“Investors recoil from UK policy vacuum.”

 

If they are, then the market should rally after Truss is appointed, and her policies are implemented.

 

But in reality, they are probably more concerned with what the ‘vacuum’ will be filled with.

 

As much as anything it feels as though people have just given up hope, and can you blame them. At its core, the UK is a heavily taxed country, where the public services used to actually resemble somewhat of a service. We now have:

 

- 10 million on waiting lists for healthcare

- rubbish piling up and rotting in the streets

- transport services on strike/reduced services

- failing internet infrastructure

- failed energy policy that was completely avoidable, with or without hindsight.

- failure to manage unskilled immigration

- too many civil servants

- weak regulators

- a political class that holds the electorate in complete contempt

- a deluge of privatised zombie companies that actively detract value and productivity from the nation (see: almost all privatised companies, with particular emphasis on BT and the train networks)

- public services that consume tax revenue and yet don’t function to any satisfactory standard (driving tests, planning office, the police, ambulance response times, etc.)

- blatant abuse of the spirit and letter of the freedom of information act by civil servants. Why bother behave in government when accountability is optional?

- overreach of state surveillance apparatus

- a big spend state that treats people as entities to extract money from - see fees to process medical records, congestion charges, emissions charges, speeding penalties, charges to avoid the penalties from speeding, councils nickel and diming people for high street parking, and so on.

- a treasury/tax agency that does not care about economic losses at a macro level, as long as they get their share at a micro level - see IR35, change to vat at point of supply, freezing of thresholds, dismal state of the tax system in general.

- no policy stability or clarity, domestic or international. A bloated policy framework where no one knows what is going on. See: all of UK border control/trading requirements, and levelling up - whatever that means

- huge sums of money being inexplicably thrown around at random entities/projects with no clear assessment of criteria/outcomes/consequences (see HS2, test & trace, furlough, furlough exclusions for certain individuals, SME grants/loans, criteria for SME grants/loans or lack thereof, etc)

- terrible policy making from the institutions running the country (see: all Brexit and pandemic policy, criminalisation of protesting, removal of section 21, failing to severely cut back planning restrictions, raising corporation tax rate, failing to raise interest rates, etc.)

- state benefits and food banks are widespread. Whilst one can argue the merits of state benefits on individuals, when they are deployed en masse it says more about the failure of policy/expectations than it does about the intrinsic value of said benefits. Ditto food banks.

 

None of these individual entries are enough to be a big problem, but in aggregate they create a sense of hopelessness, distrust, fiscal weariness, and falling productivity. In anticipation of future hardship and seeing others behaving similarly, it is no wonder that people and businesses raise their prices, causing record inflation - it is merely an attempt to build a buffer to cushion against continued hardship of living in a country where the public sector and the political class have failed.

 

There is no scenario now where things do not continue to get worse in the UK for several years to come.

sterling slide.avif

[John52]

second from top voted comment;

 

Brexit working it’s magic. Whatever one might think about the economic outcomes, politically it has been a complete car crash for the U.K., enabling the reign of the mendacious narcissist and causing six years of not actually governing the country while trying to figure out how to put a square peg into a round hole. It has also destroyed any talent that the Tory party undoubtedly had, by forcing it out of the party over failure of the litmus test of whether you believe in Brexit or not, enabling people who aren’t fit to be cashiers at a charity event to become Secretaries of State, such as Nadine Dorries or Dominic Raab, two people who between them don’t have two brain cells to rub together.

[John52]

This one says it well;

 

(Johnson's) role was to look as if he was on the side of the people, but discreetly work for their overlords to whom the rules did not apply. Then he was caught partying during lockdown and that illusion was shattered.

 

This, exactly. His crime was not his policies, as those policies will still be carried out by his successors, as indeed thy were by an large by his predecessors, and which are still supported by the vast majority of the media. His crime was that he was caught showing everybody the contempt for which he really showed us.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/06/boris-johnson-reckless-dishonest-leadership