In the mighty triumvirate of Boris , Liz and Donald, the first and last have or had charisma and a fair dose of eat cunning. Room where I sit some distancw away Truss seemed to lack any meritorious qualities.
Now I read that her lawyers have issued a cease and desist letter to Starmer for saying she crashed the British economy. April 1 is too far away. I can now only conclude that she is a fucking idiot.
Maybe we should send politicians “cease and desist” letters. And Roger Waters. There’s quite a few people I’d like to not hear any more for a while.
You’re right. She IS a fucking idiot.
Brace yourself for a cease & desist.
What a great champion of free speech
Surely all he has to say is during Truss’ tenure as PM the economy crashed. Frankly the woman is an embarrassment.
Here’s a legal analysis of Liz’s latest attempt to amplify her status as a laughing stock:
https://davidallengreen.com/2025/01/a-close-look-at-trusss-legal-threat-to-starmer-a-glorious-but-seemingly-hopeless-cease-and-desist-letter/
If there were a surviving McWhirter twin, no doubt they’d be looking at their notes to see if she qualifies for the Guinness Book Of Records in any way.
As founders of the Freedom Association, they’d probably be cheering her, Musk and Honest Bob to the rafters.
I got that in my email this morning and thoroughly enjoyed it over coffee
When an idiot hires a lawyer, the idiot thinks that this will sort everything out in an official way.
Only a complete idiot would spend money drafting such a meaningless “cease and desist” letter.
The thing that really beggars belief is that this tactic is usually used to put the shits up small businesses – for example a local cafe next to a cinema called itself “Oscar’s” and had an academy award as its logo. They received a cease and desist letter from the Academy. I know this because they framed it and put it in the men’s toilet on the wall above the urinal.
To send such a thing to probably the most senior and experienced legal figure in the whole of the UK is jaw-dropping.
Which reminded me of Singhsburys, later Morrisinghs
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-40416049
There are tons of legitimate reasons to send a C&D, many of them having nothing to do with impending litigation.
This one has very clearly been sent for political purposes, probably connected to the negative press Rachel Reeves is receiving this week.
Ah but wait. Have we heard Musk’s angle on this yet?
If not yet, then surely we will.
Don’t tell me he is having relations with Truss?
That needs a cease and desist letter for his own sanity.
Hopefully Starmer’s response referred to Arkell v. Pressdram (1971).
There’s a lot I don’t understand about Truss, but the main one is why she doesn’t simply shut up and go away.
Clearly she has become the butt of many jokes, memes, etc., and presumably always will be. Why would you not simply live a quiet life out of the public eye, rather than endure fresh ridicule every time you speak or, say, send a C&D letter? As an ex-PM she must have amassed enough money to live well for years, and a pension that most people could only dream of. Why not just settle for that, and maybe top it up with the occasional speech about politics in general, leadership, etc., to gullible non-Brits who know nothing about you?
Obviously she feels hard done by, but surely there must come a time when anybody else would put it all behind them and get on with life. Please, Liz, leave us all alone!
Strictly or I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here must surely be on the cards
Truss and anything makes me think of this :
Perhaps she’s a member of the school
“Any attention is better than no attention”
If she hadn’t kept on making all these silly comments, by now the majority of the public would have forgotten who she was.
As it is, even Elon Musk doesn’t seem interested.
Truss last summer on Twitter
“I am appalled by the attacks on free speech in Britain and Europe. We can’t be truly free without free speech.”
Truss today – not that kind of free speech
Also Liz Truss previously: Gordon Brown crashed the economy
Truss was my parents’ MP until her ejection at the last GE, losing a massive majority in a constituency where (as the saying goes) a wheelie bin wearing a blue rosette could have been elected under normal circumstances. .. she was, by all accounts, a dreadful MP, yet sheer tribalism kept her and her Tory predecessors in work for decades (it had been solidly blue since 1964…)
She was one of those opportunistic politicians (lest we forget, formerly Lib-Dem and anti-Brexit) who goes where the wind blows with no thought towards public service beyond “what’s in it for me?” Exactly the type of malleable, principle-free types who shadowy figures and organisations are always looking for, and willing to fund when the political climate is right…
All of which is to say that without some kind of political machine powering her, she effectively ceases to exist (hey, that rhymes with “cease & desist!”), and while there’s still £££ to be made from being “Liz Truss”, she’ll keep the wheels turning…
PS I’d cautiously recommend Isabel Hardman’s “Why We Get The Wrong Politicians”, which is a good primer on how well-meaning people entering politics find themselves painted into a succession of endless corners by a system which rewards indecision and party loyalty over good legislative practice, leading them to feel effectively useless while in the House Of Commons, and like glorified social workers when in their constituencies.
I like Isabel Hardman. Her book on the NHS was excellent and she suffered abuse which drove her to a minor breakdown which is disgusting whatever her politics (which no one knows anyway).
Jeremy Paxman’s book on parliament is good too, in a typically disdainful way.
Paxman’s parliament book is very good indeed, if now very dated. The chapter on Michael “Flabbycunt” Fabricant stems from the days when he was a decent constituency MP, before his ideas of grandeur and hunger for publicity drove him to becoming more barking than havering.
I have to disagree with you there in saying that we don’t know Isabel Hardman’s politics, given she is assistant editor of The Spectator and from the views she expresses on her appearances on programmes like Newsnight.
I do not for a moment suggest knowing her political position in any way whatsoever justifies abuse.
Well said Mickey
Apologies if I’ve mentioned this before, but Truss was my stepmother’s late brother’s MP. Nick loathed her, not least because he’d regularly see her at the local railway station bar, asking for a receipt for her coffee before she caught her train to London.
Was this in order to claim it on expenses?
That is what expenses are for, to be fair.
For a cup of coffee? On an MP’s salary?
Give me strength 🙄
I agree, train ticket: necessary expenditure.
Coffee: unnecessary expenditure.
Precisely!
And with the rate she gets through coffees, no wonder she expenses them.
“In extracts serialised in The Sunday Times, former aide Kirsty Buchanan said Ms Truss drank ‘about 42,000 espressos a day or she used to when I worked for her’.”
She surrounded herself with people that have a forensic eye for detail, then.
With that grasp of numbers she must have been an advisor to kwarteng too.
She’s now reduced to a part time job working eight days a week for Dianne Abbott
I used to see our old MP Theresa May on the platform at Maidenhead station long long before the long long 14 years of Conservative government.
She wasn’t travelling, she was representing for a rail user group, handing out leaflets and all that jazz. I spoke to her a few times. I say spoke, rather along the lines of ‘Hello’ and ‘yes please’ or ‘ no thank you’ if she offered me a leaflet.
She seemed nice and by all accounts she was and remained an effective and liked constituent MP. Not the Brexit-vote-abiding robot she turned into. Pleasantness aside she never had my vote.
Up !
Rare pic of Rachel Reeves flying off to Beijing
For all her failings, as the Financial Times has pointed out, Truss ultimately did not crash the economy or send the country spiralling into recession. Perhaps that would have happened if policies hadn’t been reversed, but they were qnd it didn’t. Any harm was fleeting, to use the FTs word.
The reality is that,if their approach doesn’t work, the current government’s policy might well do some really lasting damage, hence the criticism from both Richard Murphy’s MMT brigade on the left and the free marketeers and low spending/taxation clan on the right.
So, to be correct, Liz Truss was crashing the economy but she was stopped before final impact?
Who knows.? The initial issues were largely centerecd on the reactions of the financial markets rather than actual outcomes. Had Jeremy Corbyn been elected and enacted MMT theories I daresay the market response would have been even more severe. Whether or not either approach would have been ultimately been successful, irrespective of short term market sentiment, who knows.
None of her budget was ever actually enacted but in the 20 days it lasted before she ditched Kwarteng there was every indication that its impact would be catastrophic and bankrupt the UK economy.
Markets moved in anticipation of what they thought would happen if she went ahead with an unfunded £70bn jump in borrowing. That’s what got the IMF going public with their concerns, and the collapse of pound and gilt sell off was the market pricing in what they saw coming – an economy crashing.
Truss was given her cards before she could do any long term damage but it wasn’t for the lack of trying.
And there is no indication yet that she thinks it was her fault.
And there are still people in the party who would return to her agenda like a shot, given half a chance.
Indeed the opposite is true – she is adamant that she is the blameless victim of “bond vigilantes” and the Bank of England. In her self serving denial she completely blanks the impact that sacking the head of the Treasury the day she started had, or her refusal to share her numbers with the OBR or indeed to BoE and or else.
Anthony Seldon’s book argues that she and Kwarteng were full of ideological vigor but utterly naive and ignorant as to how markets would react and the impact on things like the pensions market. By excluding or just sacking anyone that did know, she set in motion a sequence of events that would – literally – have crashed the UK economy.
As the FT has since commented, it’s one thing to light a match (under the economy) , but it’s wise to check if you’re surrounded by gunpower before you do.
Starmer’s joke at PMQs today was pretty good but boy he needs to work on his comedy timing. He crashes every line. You’ve got to give it the beats, Keir!
Delivery is ok on that. I’m not sure any of the previous 5 PMs since 2016 would have done much better. None of them are comedy heavyweights (although Boris was a very good comedic character actor).
He has some good writers it seems.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
To avoid falling into the UK£22 billion hole in public finches left behind after 14 years of Tory incompetence!
My dog has no nose!
How does he smell I hear you ask?
Not nearly as bad as the UK£22 billion…