The Westminster pack in hunting mode (apologies to the real hounds!)

 

Oh dear. Oh dearie me. The Westminster pack is in full cry after the sack of Kwarteng yesterday afternoon. The top headlines in this morning’s papers, online and in print (link), are unanimous: Truss must be next! The only questions for yon pack are: when will she go, and: who’ll replace her. 

The question not asked is: why did the sacred markets not react positively after Kwarteng had been sacked to pacify their blood lust? After all, didn’t ‘Teh Market’ crash gilts and made the ££ tumble because of his mini-budget? Weren’t we told that, from the IMF downwards, all this tax reduction was bad? So why are “Billions wiped out in hours as Kwarteng sacking struggles to convince City” (link, paywalled)? The Times reports this morning that:

“Government bond prices plunged and the pound fell after Liz Truss’s press conference, reflecting City concerns that the prime minister and her new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, still have everything to prove in restoring Britain’s credibility in the financial markets.” (link, paywalled)

This is the admission, now out in the open, that the first duty of the government is to please ‘Teh Markets’, not us plebs. Odd though that the sacking and the tax U-turn by Truss didn’t seem to have mattered. Perhaps those fabulous ‘market algorithms’ which govern international trading nowadays amplified the Westminster cabal’s desire to get rid of Truss and the Tories in order to get Starmer? 

Next, here’s the newsletter emailed late yesterday evening by Fraser Myers, deputy editor of spikedonline. It’s coruscating but a bit of a curate’s egg. I’ll quote it in full, for the record:

“Kwasi Kwarteng is out. And so is the cut in corporation tax at the heart of Liz Truss’s economic agenda. The PM has been forced to wear yet another humiliating u-turn. In the space of just a few weeks, she has shredded her authority. And as the going gets tougher, and the calls for her head get louder, she has no democratic mandate to fall back on. The Tory majority she inherited was won on a wholly different vision. Yet Truss carried on like she had a divine right to rule. The budget she wrote with Kwarteng was mostly drawn up in secret. She has still not really bothered to explain why she thinks her policies are needed. She has done next to nothing to win over the public to her way of thinking. And she is now paying a high price for it. Truss’s turmoil is a warning to politicians everywhere: never take the demos for granted.”

The ‘demos’ had nothing to do with getting Truss into No 10, unless Myers believes that the members of the Tory Party are ‘the demos’.  Perhaps he forgot that the MSM were gleefully reporting on her ‘successful’ campaign, supporting her against Sunak? I’ve pointed out numerous times that she ran her campaign as if she were on a GE trail, enhanced by those Westminster MSM which now demand her head.

Next, again for the record, here’s Katy Balls for the Speccie, reporting on  the Truss presser yesterday afternoon. She hints at why the sacred markets might have reacted in the way they did – no apologies for the lengthy quote, my emphasis added:

“Liz Truss has just confirmed that she is U-turning on another part of her government’s not-so-mini Budget. After sacking her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng this morning, the Prime Minister used a Downing Street press conference to say that she will now keep the increase in corporation tax, despite promising to ditch it. This ought to raise £18 billion in tax. Explaining her decision, Truss said that while she still stuck to her vision for the country of a pro-growth government, it had become clear that her government’s fiscal event – which saw a range of unfunded tax cuts announced – ‘went further and faster than the markets were expecting’. As a result, she said, ‘I have decided to keep the increase in corporation task as agreed by the previous Government.’ Given reversing the corporation tax increase was a flagship policy of Truss’s leadership campaign, this is an incredibly embarrassing climbdown. It raises questions about the credibility of her government.” (paywalled link)

So were all those U-turns the thing which made the City jitter? Perhaps all those City bankers read the next article in the Speccie, by Isabel Hardman, published a good hour after Katy Balls’:

“Liz Truss’s Downing Street press conference has made everything worse, as far as Tory MPs are concerned. As soon as it was over, a number of backbenchers who had supported Truss for leader were locked into a call with Thérèse Coffey, the PM’s closest friend in Parliament and the Deputy Prime Minister. Those on the call said it was ‘like a wake,’ with even Coffey sounding ‘broken.’ ‘You could see the loss in her eyes,’ said one.” (paywalled link)

Oh dear. How sad … So are the City types perhaps anxious about the turmoil in the Tory Parliamentary Party, uncertain if those U-turn ‘financial gifts’ would materialise? Perhaps they were reacting to Andrew Lilico’s outcry in the DT, also published yesterday afternoon, under the headlines:

“With the Prime Minister’s latest U-turn, there is nothing left. She might as well leave now – Tory MPs have sabotaged Liz Truss’s sensible economic plans. The Conservatives don’t deserve to be in power. They may never come back” (paywalled link)

At least Lilico does point his finger at Tory MPs. We recall Gove’s and Shapps’ attempts to undermine Truss at the Tory AMG. We don’t recall one single word of blame for the MPs ‘electing’ to present Truss and Sunak to their party members, even though internal polls had shown that Party members preferred Ms Badenoch as Johnson replacement. 

Mr Finkelstein in The Times is however quite certain that the Truss debacle is the fault of the Tory Party members who voted for her, writing: “There were many people who criticised Truss for having a mandate only from a handful of Tory members.” (link, paywalled). This is how the Westminster game is played: blame not just the scapegoat. I.e. Truss, but the ‘demos’.

All those Westminster ‘experts’ who use the Truss debacle as evidence for not trusting ‘the demos’, i.e. us plebs, seem to disregard that this ‘demos’ were only Tory Party members. These Westminster ‘experts’ ought to explain why we must trust the Tory MPs instead who voted to allow only Truss and Sunak onto the Party ballot. They must also explain why this procedure was fine when it resulted in giving us Mrs T.May and then Mr B.Johnson as PMs. 

Here’s one last item which shows that perhaps we plebs aren’t as thick as the Westminster swamp makes out. The DT published a nice little graph based on ‘oddchecker’, showing the odds of who could be the next PM. It is astonishing. Starmer suddenly dropped from over 40% to 20%, and the winner is … Sunak (paywalled link). Yes, really. 

Let me give you my ‘spin’ on this unspeakable spectacle, manufactured by the Westminster cabal. I believe we’re seeing the ‘revenge of the mandarins’. Remember: as soon as they were ‘in’, Kwarteng and thus Truss sacked the chief mandarin of the Treasury. You can’t be chiefer than this mandarin. Therefore, I surmise, the usual warnings from mandarins weren’t given. 

Thus also the leaks – overt as ‘anonymous sources’ to the MSM and covert to various top people in the Westminster cabal and the City, influencing ‘Teh Markets’, providing the cover for the mandarins now able to wash their hands in innocence. The swamp can do as they like, toppling PMs while tearfully pointing out that it’s all because we peasants don’t know what’s good for us.

I leave you with news that ought to’ve produced just a little report here or there in our MSM. instead we have to pick it up from Reuters (link) or TASS: 

“Germany, Sweden and Denmark gave up plans to jointly investigate the sabotage at the Nord Stream pipelines and will go it alone, Germany’s ARD television channel reported on Friday, citing sources in the German government. The report said Sweden was the first to leave the joint investigation team, as it allegedly was wary of potential leaks. Denmark followed suit. “Now each country is conducting its own investigation,” ARD said.” (link)

Oooh – I wonder why that happened … Did they find something which Sweden couldn’t possibly allow to ‘leak’? How intriguing …

Apologies again for the long blockquotes – they’re ‘for the record’ because we cannot trust our MSM to report objectively, without bias. The MSM ‘experts’ and talking heads will have a field day this weekend. Since there’s nothing we can do about any of this, better shun them altogether.

Let’s enjoy this autumn weekend as best we can. The sunrise was ominously red in my neck of the woods …



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