What's new
The Brexit And Political discussion Forum

Brexit may have begun but it is not over, indeed it may never be finished.

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Tories work hard on tanking the UK economy

Brexiter

Active member
Guardian:

‘A budget for the 1%’: government accused of huge tax cut for super-wealthy


Kwasi Kwarteng’s measures benefit the rich at expense of struggling families, say critics

The government stands accused of introducing a “simply staggering, huge tax cut for richer households” that will leave “the super-wealthy laughing all the way to the actual bank”, while allowing hundreds of thousands of already-struggling families to fall deeper into poverty.


I wonder if the success of the Brexiteers in obscuring the economic damage that they’ve done to the country by blaming Covid, the EU or just waving the flag to avoid responsibility, made them feel immune from normal politics? Might explain why they’ve made such terrible moves.

— Phillips P. OBrien (@PhillipsPOBrien) September 23, 2022
Former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers tells Bloomberg: “It makes me very sorry to say, but I think the UK is behaving a bit like an emerging market turning itself into a submerging market.” pic.twitter.com/PtvLsg9iom

— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) September 23, 2022


I’ve been following U.K. budgets for 20 years or so. I have often profoundly disagreed with the decisions made. But I’ve always at least - sort of - understood the logic behind them. Today is a new for me. I genuinely don’t understand the decision making process.

— Duncan Weldon (@DuncanWeldon) September 23, 2022

Financial Times (paywall):

Pound tumbles below $1.09 after Kwarteng’s £45bn tax cut package

Kwarteng axes top rate of income tax and reduces basic rate but gilt yields surge on government borrowing fears The Institute for Fiscal Studies think-tank forecast public borrowing would top £190bn this year, the third-highest peak since the second world war.Kwarteng, in an interview with the Financial Times, vowed to produce a medium-term fiscal plan “in the new year”, as he seeks to reassure markets he has a strategy for cutting debt as a share of gross domestic product.But he insisted the “big gamble” would have been to stay on a path of high taxes and low growth. “The danger is in choking growth. That’s the danger. The only way we deal with that is by growing the economy.”Responding to the financial turmoil that followed his statement, he said: “Markets move all the time. It’s very important to keep calm and focus on the longer-term strategy.”


Muted response to Kwarteng statement from Tory backbenches. Only the odd half-hearted cheer. Lots of glum faces. One Tory MP told me this morning: “I have never known the party so divided so soon after a leadership election”.

— Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) September 23, 2022


You can hear the relief in Labour's voice. It's not just the fact that they've been handed the next election, although I suspect they have. It's the return to the classic Tory archetype, which they know how to fight.

— Ian Dunt (@IanDunt) September 23, 2022


Isaac Chotiner/New Yorker:

What Putin’s Mobilization Means for the War in Ukraine

The Kremlin announced a draft to dramatically increase its fighting force. Will the Russian public fight back?
To talk about what the mobilization could mean, I spoke by phone with Sam Greene, a professor of Russian politics at King’s College London and the director for democratic resilience at the Center for European Policy Analysis. He is the co-author, with Graeme B. Robertson, of Putin v. the People: The Perilous Politics of a Divided Russia. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed what Putin’s announcement signals about his view of the war, how much Putin fears right-wing Russian nationalism, and how to gauge the views of the Russian people.


The only real voting going on in Russia is the thousands of Russians voting with their feet trying to escape their country (all flights sold out), googling how to leave Russia or how to break your arm (so they don’t have to serve in Russia’s illegal/evil war in Ukraine). https://t.co/GjZLZTANgX

— John Spencer (@SpencerGuard) September 23, 2022

Anne Applebaum/Atlantic:

The Kremlin Must Be in Crisis


Putin’s erratic actions are not those of a secure leader.

In part, the crisis stems from Putin’s fears that he will lose whatever counts as his international support. No ideology holds together the global autocrats’ club, and no sentiment does either. As long as they believed Russia really had the second largest army in the world, as long as Putin seemed destined to stay in power indefinitely, then the leaders of China, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, along with the strongmen running India and Turkey, were happy to tolerate his company.

But Putin’s supposedly inevitable military victory is in jeopardy. His army looks weak. Western sanctions make problems not just for him but his trading partners, and their tolerance is receding. At a summit in Uzbekistan last week, he was snubbed by a series of Central Asian leaders. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told him that “today’s era is not an era of war,” and Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed his “concerns” as well. On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told PBS that he had urged Putin to end the war: “The lands which were invaded will be returned to Ukraine.” And those lands, he made clear, should include Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, following a sham referendum much like the ones it now plans to stage in other parts of occupied Ukraine.

But while losing support abroad is bad, losing support at home is worse, and there are some signs of that too.


This is the kind of thing you say when you're way behind and just start tossing up Hail Marys. https://t.co/MjwWe071W1

— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) September 23, 2022

Anchorage Daily News:

Judge rules Wasilla lawmaker likely ineligible for office due to Oath Keepers membership, delaying election certification until trial concludes

An Anchorage judge said Thursday that based on the limited evidence presented, Wasilla Republican Rep. David Eastman is likely ineligible to hold public office, but his name will stay on the general election ballot and the vote certification will be delayed until a trial scheduled for December can be held.

Former Mat-Su Assembly member Randall Kowalke, who filed the lawsuit, has argued Eastman’s membership in the Oath Keepers runs afoul of the Alaska Constitution’s disloyalty clause, which bars a person from holding public office in Alaska who advocates for the overthrow by force of the U.S. or state government. The leader of the Oath Keepers and several affiliates have been charged or indicted related to their participation in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Judge Jack McKenna granted the preliminary injunction Thursday afternoon and said based on the evidence presented, Kowalke would likely succeed in arguing that Eastman is a member of the Oath Keepers, that the group is active and that it is presently seeking to overthrow the U.S. government.


47 days before Election Day, Tudor Dixon maintains that abortion is not an issue in the governor's race despite polling repeatedly indicating for many Michigan voters it is one of the top issues on their minds. https://t.co/5MXIOzAnIQ

— Craig Mauger (@CraigDMauger) September 22, 2022

Walter Shapiro/TNR:

What Joe Biden Could Learn From Harry Truman

He could take some lessons from the last Democratic president who relished picking fights with Republicans.


Picture the scene in Dexter, Iowa, in mid-September 1948. Truman, trailing by double digits in the polls, had arranged to appear during the National Plowing Match, which was then a major farm belt event. Speaking to a skeptical crowd of 80,000, Truman declared in give-them-hell style, “The Wall Street reactionaries are not satisfied with being rich. They want to increase their power and their privileges, regardless of what happens to the other fellow. They are gluttons of privilege. These gluttons of privilege are now putting up fabulous sums of money to elect a Republican administration.”

I don’t expect Biden to ever feel comfortable with lines about “the gluttons of privilege,” no matter how accurate a description it is of the American economy in 2022…


Class warfare does not come naturally to modern Democratic presidents, especially when speaking to the party’s donor class. As a result, Biden’s style is far less confrontational. “We understand something Republicans don’t,” he said at a September 9 DNC fundraiser. “Wall Street did not build this country. Working people, the middle class built this nation. And I got news for you: Unions built the middle class.”


Update: Republican Jeff Bartos went to the fundraiser for Dem governor candidate Josh Shapiro yesterday, a source tells me. A person familiar with Bartos’ thinking says “he was proud to support his wife and was there at her request to accompany her.” https://t.co/4ySb2fw88x https://t.co/Ok4TNT0JyE

— Holly Otterbein (@hollyotterbein) September 22, 2022

Religion News Service:

Southern governors sending migrants north face a crisis of faith

It’s getting harder for a politician to adhere to Christian morals and get elected president.

No one will deny that America’s immigration system is overburdened and in need of serious reform. And Southern states are carrying more of the burden of that broken system by the mere fact of geography. But misleading migrants and sending them where resources to help them are both in shorter supply and less readily obtained is impossible to reconcile with the basic tenets of the Christian faith, which demand that all humans be treated with respect and compassion regardless of their nationality or citizenship.

In a statement in response to DeSantis’ stunt, the Catholic archbishop of Miami said, “Immigration is not just a political issue, but a fundamental human and moral issue. For the immigrants are not faceless numbers — but human persons. They are our brothers and sisters; Justice and prudence demand that we treat them with dignity and find a reasonable way for their contributions and presence to be recognized within the law.”


The coalition of restoration: “Repeatedly speakers framed the ongoing fight against the American left in biblical terms — a “religious battle” in which Republicans must be unafraid to use state power to thwart progressive goals not just in government, but the private sphere, too” https://t.co/trakS5XjBv

— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) September 24, 2022
 
Back
Top