I was just a kid when I started going to England. It would cost me $2.80 to buy a pound. Today it costs less than half that to buy a pound— $1.16 this morning! At one time I had an office in London and would go there frequently. Even in the early 1980’s and in the early 1990s and late 2000s, it could cost about $2.00 to buy a pound. The Conservative party has destroyed the British economy. And it’s about to get much worse— although it’s absolutely a great time to go over there with dollars.
Liz Truss will take over as Prime Minister of the U.K. tomorrow. The only good part of that is the end of Boris Johnson’s premiership, although there’s no reason to think she’ll be any better. And she didn’t win an election— unless you call 200,000 members of the Conservative party picking her, an election. She’s from a left-wing family, was an active Liberal Democrat (facing abolishing the monarchy) and didn’t join the Conservative party until 1996. She was elected to the House of Commons in 2010. She was named Environment Secretary in 2014 and is best known for cutting subsidies for solar panel on agricultural land and for being pro-tobacco. Boris Johnson appointed her Secretary of State for International Trade and then, last year, Foreign Secretary. She’s is widely considered a fool and a failure as Foreign Secretary.
She pledged to Conservatives that she will cut taxes on her first day in office and reverse the planned increase in corporate taxes. Members of Parliament rejected her for ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak (113-137) but the Conservatives in general are just too racist to elect someone of Indian descent so she won with 81,326 votes (57.4%) to 60,399 (42.6%) making her the new party leader and therefor the new Prime Minister. If you haven’t watched the Jonathan Pie video up top, please do so now. It’s the perfect explanation of what Truss is facing.
A YouGov poll last week shows he extremely unpopular among most Brits. “Only 12% of Britons,” wrote Matthew Smith, “expect that Truss will be a great or good prime minister, with half (52%) expecting her to be poor or terrible. As Boris Johnson packs his bags in anticipation of Monday’s results, he leaves a legacy only 22% of Britons consider good or great, with 55% assessing his time in charge as poor or terrible.
“Conservative voters more obviously consider Truss to be a downgrade from Johnson: 43% think she will be worse, more than twice the number who think she will be better (20%). Compared to other recent prime ministers, Truss is seen as likely to do worse than all of them (a list going as far back as Margaret Thatcher, whom Truss has tried to imitate but is seen as inferior to by 45% of Britons and 60% of Conservative voters). When it comes to handling specific issues facing the UK, few Britons expect Truss to manage the nations’ travails well. Across 11 issues we asked about, between 16% and 24% expressed any form of trust in Truss, with most (53-65%) lacking confidence in the likely next prime minister.”
