However, the Labour party seems pretty capable at shooting itself in the foot too -

and never take anything for granted .....

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/14/huge-swing-tories-local-byelection-leicester-area-unrest-north-evington

indiana wrote:

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Could King Charlie be involved in an early constitutional crisis?

I mean quite how often can the Tories expect to keep changing their leader between elections and expect that person to be routinely endorsed by the sovereign as the new PM?

Surely there comes a time for it to be put to the country.

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 There was a funny meme a few weeks back of one foreign leader shaking Truss' hand and saying 'is it really worth me trying to remember your name?' 

Not really constitutional, of course, but you'd have some sympathy with Charles if he turned round and said 'come back when you've really sorted yourselves out, I've got things to do'.

archive.ph/WirCy

When even The Telegraph sees the light, about Project Fear, Brexit, and the utter shambles of the Tory Party .....

JonH comes home wrote:

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Putting aside the rights and wrongs of the measures etc, today's revised mini budget process feels a lot like the adults have come back home whilst the teenagers partied for a few weeks whilst they were on their holidays. They found that French Polisher, unlike the advert from years ago, for Yellow Pages, it was the adults who rang the French Polisher who "could have just saved my life" and not the partying kid!

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This highlights a fundamental flaw in our representative democracy. We elect MPs - one per constituency - based on (essentially) personality and party propaganda (with maybe a smidgin of local popularity). Nothing to do with competence or qualification of the representative to perform tasks in government. Then once a bunch of disparate civilians are elected, they put them in charge of things about which they have almost no knowledge, expertise or experience. They often have opinions, and more often have dreams, but qualifications are non-essential.

Hence we can have a Prime Minister that knows nothing about anything, and their only useful or relevant experience was gained in late night drunken discussion sessions with a bunch of equally useless fellow undergraduates. Similarly for chancellor of the exchequer, defence minister, etc., etc., etc.

Democracy is a really stupid way of running anything: popularity and competence are often mutually exclusive.

paulisi wrote:

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At least Sterling has strengthened.
Very important that the pound stays strong as oil and energy prices will benefit via exchange rates and thus inflation should come down quicker.
The other impact is that the cost of borrowing for the energy price cap should reduce.

If inflation drops quicker then less need for interest rates to go up steeply and the housing/ mortgage rate issue may not be as bad.

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 Yes, but unfortunately it's only really a little blip

In Jan 2022, the GBP/USD was at about 1.37

We're currently at 1.14

It's a huge drop so, although admittedly off the bottom, all the fundamental problems remain.

The difference isn't so marked with the Euro but it's still there - the average exchange rate for the year is about 1.18 and we're currently at approx 1.15