When is the October price cap announced?

Ultrasonic

I'd much rather have an actual Lib Dem government...

For the sake of the public finances I'm hoping Rishi Sunak wins the Conservative leadership contest.

brewerdave

Ultrasonic said:

For the sake of the public finances I'm hoping Rishi Sunak wins the Conservative leadership contest.

The latest poll of a sample of the Tory party faithful shows Truss way ahead !!

QrizB

brewerdave said:

Ultrasonic said:

For the sake of the public finances I'm hoping Rishi Sunak wins the Conservative leadership contest.

The latest poll of a sample of the Tory party faithful shows Truss way ahead !!

Which tells you quite a lot about the Party membership.

wittynamegoeshere

Makes me wonder if the Lib Dems have pulled a mass membership infiltration!

I don't have any political affiliation, but it makes me concerned when someone switches from one lot to the other, apparently throwing away all their principles.  The Lib Dems are more left-wing than labour in lots of respects, this was a pretty major switch for her.  Presumably she just worked out they had no chance of election and switched to the winning team so she could actually get somewhere.  Lots of politicians have done similar in the past, but I don't think they've ever become PM before.

Kind of proves that whoever you vote for, the same bunch end up in power.

Looking forward to her getting rid of the royals though, that's one policy I'm right behind.  But sadly that isn't going to happen any time soon.

What_time_is_it

wittynamegoeshere said:

Makes me wonder if the Lib Dems have pulled a mass membership infiltration!

I don't have any political affiliation, but it makes me concerned when someone switches from one lot to the other, apparently throwing away all their principles.  The Lib Dems are more left-wing than labour in lots of respects, this was a pretty major switch for her.  Presumably she just worked out they had no chance of election and switched to the winning team so she could actually get somewhere.  Lots of politicians have done similar in the past, but I don't think they've ever become PM before.

Kind of proves that whoever you vote for, the same bunch end up in power.

Looking forward to her getting rid of the royals though, that's one policy I'm right behind.  But sadly that isn't going to happen any time soon.

If you see Liz Truss as even remotely left wing then I'd suggest that your political compass may well be upside down!

(also, that fat fella with the cigar during WW2 was fond of switching parties every so often)

StartledJesus

Stalin? 🤔 

MattMattMattUK

brewerdave said:

Ultrasonic said:

For the sake of the public finances I'm hoping Rishi Sunak wins the Conservative leadership contest.

The latest poll of a sample of the Tory party faithful shows Truss way ahead !!

It would, but normally when faced with the reality of maintaining power, or losing the Conservatives choose the leader who can win elections. Current polling shows the Conservatives under Truss would lose around 150 seats at the next election, where as Sunak would lose 30-50, I hope suspect for the sake of the country that the polling makes the Conservatives choose Sunak, not because I want continued Conservative rule, but because the damage Truss would do in the next two years would likely pale in comparison to the damage Johnson has done.

If I can find the poll later I will, I know one was published in The Times and there have been others. 

MattMattMattUK

wittynamegoeshere said:

I wonder... if the govt subsidised electricity bills by ordering the suppliers to reduce their prices and gave them a cheque each to cover this discount, then would this reduced price go into the inflation calculation, directly reducing the inflation figure immediately?

Yes, no, it is complicated. It would have an impact on the headline inflation figure because of the way that is calculated, using a calculated energy cost which goes into the figure, however direct subsidy almost always tend to boost inflation as it artificially deflates the cost of one product/service (or several if that product/service is an input cost for others). It would also require increased taxation or borrowing to fund, which has a has wider impacts which also impact inflation. Increased borrowing would also increase the interest rate on government debt, which would further devalue Sterling and so may actually cause equal or greater inflation to the rising energy costs. Increased taxation reduces demand in the economy and we are already only just managing to stay out of recession, so any further increases beyond those already in the pipeline would likely tip us into recession, which would likely trigger further inflation in a depressionary cycle. 

wittynamegoeshere said:

What Rishi has been doing is lobbing money at consumers, and some will inevitably blow it on tat instead of bills, increasing inflation, while the higher bills also contribute to inflation too.  This was definitely inflationary, I don't think he knows what he's doing.

There are multiple sides to the situation, the social, political and fiscal. Fiscally the best policy is that we just need to ride out the inflation, it will settle down within the next year or two, politically and socially that is not viable so something had to be done. What he chose to do was enough to remove the worst of the impact, but keeping that low enough to not cause too much of a push on inflation. People spend on tat regardless, part of our economy relies on people buying tat. The BoE raising interest rates should hopefully have some impact on borrowing on credit which will remove some of the inflationary pressure, people are less likely to buy non-essentials on credit (cars, new shiny etc.) so that will likely balance out the inflationary pressure from the free money.

wittynamegoeshere said:

But it's likely that the Lib Dems will have their first stealth prime minister rather than Rishi, so we have no benchmark for what that's likely to result in...

Truss is not a Conservative or a Lib Dem, she is power hungry and a populist. Her political ideas have always changed with the wind, she rarely has a coherent position on anything and the positions she takes tend to change reasonably regularly. She is a populist, just like Johnson, she will say whatever she things is mostly likely to lead her to power. 

[Deleted User]

wittynamegoeshere said:

I don't have any political affiliation, but it makes me concerned when someone switches from one lot to the other, apparently throwing away all their principles.  

I know when I was a student many many years ago I felt totally different about Politics and I suspect Truss was no different to many that have gone through the same system.

I'm not sure whether anyone's present views (or policies they support, rightly or wrongly) must be set in concrete from their university days (circa 25-28 years in Truss's case although we can quible about the exact time).

Not even sure though how many 'principled' politicians there are these days.  But I digress.  Apologies to the OP of the thread.  I believe the answer has already been posted.

[Deleted User]

MattMattMattUK said:

I hope suspect for the sake of the country that the polling makes the Conservatives choose Sunak, not because I want continued Conservative rule, but because the damage Truss would do in the next two years would likely pale in comparison to the damage Johnson has done.

Perhaps - but we will never know for sure.  Perhaps a Sunak PM might be the same.  Again though we will never know for sure which is why we have elections every 5 years (or less).

Best thing would therefore be a formal alliance between Starmer, Davey and Sturgeon at the next election and I'm confidant that the present fiscal, environmental and inflationary issues will end up being a horrible nightmare from the past.  That would be nice