Ambition greater than ability’: Liz Truss’s rise from teen Lib Dem to would-be PM

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! :rofl:
“ She’s an attention seeker, that’s what she is,” -
I’m talking about you, Truss!
Remember all those cringeworthy publicity photos trying to make herself look like a “Prime Minister” - that official Christmas Card which looked like she was after the Queen’s job!

As this leadership contest continues, the performances of Truss in interviews, her incessant bragging, bigging herself up, claiming credit for everything and the insults she and her campaign supporters are flinging around is reminding me more and more of Donald Trump.

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The Truss team have now said there will be “no proposal taken forward on regional pay boards for civil servants or public sector workers”. A spokesperson for the leadership hopeful said there had been “a wilful misrepresentation of our campaign”. They said: “Current levels of public sector pay will absolutely be maintained. Anything to suggest otherwise is simply wrong.”

A source in the Rishi Sunak campaign said Ms Truss had shown a “catastrophic error of judgment”.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said: “U-turning on a multi-billion-pound policy five weeks before even taking office must be a new record.”

Quite … :rofl:

Liz Truss policy guide (updated)

  1. Says she will reverse the recent rise in National Insurance, which came into effect in April
  2. Pledges to scrap a planned rise in corporation tax - set to increase from 19% to 25% in 2023
  3. Would suspend what is known as the “green levy” - part of your energy bill that pays for social and green projects
  4. Says she will pay for the cuts by spreading the UK’s “Covid debt” over a longer period
  5. Promises to change taxes to make it easier for people to stay at home to care for children or elderly relatives
  6. Wants to create new “low-tax and low-regulation zones” across the country to create hubs for innovation and enterprise
  7. Says she won’t cut public spending unless there is a way to do so that won’t lead to future problems
  8. Would bring target of spending 2.5% of GDP on defence forward to 2026 and introduce a new target of 3% by 2030
  9. Pledged to deliver the Northern Powerhouse Rail scheme in full during the first official hustings of the Tory leadership campaign
  10. Has released a six-point plan targeting reform in the education sector, widening access to Oxford, Cambridge and other top universities, expanding existing academy schools that are high performing, and replace failing establishments with free schools - she also indicated she would end a ban on new grammar schools in England
  11. Has promised to introduce a national domestic abuse register and a new offence of street harassment
  12. Has pledged to help millions of renters buy their first home by making it easier to prove they are ready to take on a mortgage, but said she plans to scrap national house-building targets
  13. Has promised to build stronger economic and trade ties with Commonwealth nations to counter China’s “growing malign influence” by expediting bilateral trade agreements with Commonwealth partners
  14. Has proposed sweeping reforms to UK trade union laws that would guarantee minimum services during strikes and raise the threshold on the number of workers needing to take part in ballots on industrial action.
  15. Has promised to scrap all remaining European Union laws that still apply in Britain by 2023
  16. Has vowed to ‘unleash’ British farming to shore up food security with a pledge to slash red tape and extend a seasonal workers scheme
  17. Has said there will be no Scottish referendum ‘on my watch’ and she’d ‘ignore’ Scotland’s First Minister as she brands Nicola Sturgeon an ‘attention seeker’
  18. Has promised far-reaching reforms to the civil service, claiming she could save almost £11bn a year from Britain’s bureaucracy, with proposals such as lower pay for officials who work in poorer parts of the UK, cutting civil service holidays and axing 326 diversity officers working across government departments (U-Turn - scrapped)
  19. Is considering splitting the Treasury, which she claims is leading Britain into recession by pursuing failed policies, including raising taxes to try to cut the deficit, into separate finance and economic ministries
  20. Rules out any more lockdowns shutting down UK PLC if another pandemic ever sweeps the country saying that despite backing them in Government ‘I was on the side of doing less’
  21. Vows to halt Nanny State ban on BOGOF deals - pledges no new taxes on food that’s high in fat, salt or sugar

This list is not yet complete

:laughing:

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This is what worries me about Truss - she is churning out new “policies” without thinking them through as if she is attending a blue-sky thinking session.

Johnson was a bit like this too but Truss is taking it new levels.
When I saw the new policy she’d added about regional pay boards so civil service get less pay in poorer areas, I couldn’t see how that related to her “levelling up” policies - the two seem to clash.
In fact, so much of what she has come out with seems contradictory.

All this de-regulation she talks about worries me - has she thought through all possible unintended consequences.
We’ve had some pretty catastrophic unintended consequences due to de-regulation in the past.
She has promised to relax planning rules and regulations on these new commercial zones - are we going to be so much focused on growth that we are going to forget about the unintended consequences on our environment?

Most of her plans worry me - how many of them were mentioned in the original election manifesto?
If only we had an opposition that stood a chance of getting this increasingly right wing government out of office, I would be clamouring for all these ideas to be put to the full electorate in a General Election, once the new Con Party Leader had been selected.

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Another U turn on all the work her own Government have been doing.
How does this fit in with the Government’s own research and their own Plan in 2018
Childhood obesity: a plan for action
And their follow up Research and Report in 2020 and subsequent legislation in 2021
Tackling obesity: empowering adults and children to live healthier lives

Has she considered all this - and considered the recent Reports which show how much Type 2 diabetes is costing the NHS on an ever increasing scale?

I’m afraid these “no nanny state” sound bites and populist promises are designed to curry favour with the few traditional Tory Party members who will be selecting the new PM - but has she really thought it through?
Is she letting down our children and the NHS in order to grab votes for herself?

Do they ever think policy promises through.
If one of these would be PM candidates promised the implement the last lot of broken / forgotten election promises that would be a great start…. I can’t remember what they were but nothing financially good has happened .

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https://www.conservatives.com/our-plan/conservative-party-manifesto-2019
Conservative Party Manifesto 2019 (Full)

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Thanks Omah

At a glance The NHS ,Social Care and the Police …have worsened.
Getting Brexit done for better or worse …imo for worse !

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Utterly shocking.
She would lose my vote on this alone
Ridiculous short sighted useless woman

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The £8.8bn figure appears to come from a report from Taxpayers’ Alliance - a campaign group which supports cuts in taxes and spending.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance says its £8.8bn was worked out by taking an estimated saving of £6.3bn from a report by Policy Exchange in 2012 and increasing it to account for “growth in the public sector pay bill” since then.

That 2012 report found that equalising pay between the public sector and the private sector could save the government £4.2bn from reducing the pay of people in the public sector being paid more than their counterparts in the private sector.

But it said it would also cost the government £8bn to increase the pay of those in the public sector paid less than their private sector counterparts. So that would mean an overall cost to the government of £3.8bn a year.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance bases the need for change on a claim that pay was 14.1% higher “for public sector staff compared to their private sector equivalents in 2021”.

That’s not quite right - the 14.1% figure is for all public sector employees compared with all private sector employees (it’s table 25.7a here), but it’s not comparing people with their equivalents.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies published an analysis that did compare workers with their “equivalents” - they adjusted for the sorts of qualifications and experience people had.

They found that on the eve of the pandemic the gap between public and private sector pay once the characteristics of the workers had been taken into account was only 0.9%.

“This is a very Treasury idea, it comes around every few years - what it is, is really complicated and quite controversial,” said Alex Thomas from the Institute for Government. “I think the reason why chancellors and prime ministers have tended to abandon it is the benefits are pretty marginal both in terms of the costs you can save and the benefits to the local economy.”

So, a crackpot idea picked up by silly Ms Truss … :roll_eyes:

https://www.itv.com/news/2022-08-02/liz-truss-abandons-88-billion-policy-to-slash-public-sector-pay-amid-backlash

Liz Truss abandons £8.8 billion policy to slash public sector pay amid backlash

A spokeswoman for the Foreign Secretary’s campaign claimed there had been “wilful misrepresentation” of the proposal amid growing blue-on-blue attacks, but made clear they would be dropping it and instead maintaining current levels of pay for nurses, police officers and teachers.

Ms Truss said her policy had been “misinterpreted” and she had “no intention to affect teachers and nurses”.

“I don’t want people to be concerned, so I’m being very clear, we will not be going ahead with the regional pay board…I’m being honest that there were concerns expressed,” she added.

“I believe my policy was being misinterpreted, I want to be clear with the public, that I will not be going ahead with the regional pay boards. I’m somebody who is honest and up front and I do what I say I will do and I’m being clear I will not be doing that.”

So, let’s be clear, other people are to blame - it’s a witch-hunt, a conspiracy and a stitch-up:roll_eyes:

Angela Rayner :rose:
@AngelaRayner

Liz Truss wilfully misrepresented her own pay proposals and then tried to cover her tracks. She’s a lightweight and a liability.

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She isn’t even in the Job yet, and making U-Turns already…!!!

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“Clueless” Truss … :woman_shrugging:

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-62447823

On a visit to Solihull, she said lowering taxes would help ease the cost of living crisis.

Foreign Secretary Ms Truss has pledged to scrap April’s National Insurance rise, cancel a planned corporation tax rise and temporarily suspend green levies on energy bills.

Asked by the Financial Times about how she would help households faced with fuel bills due to rise again in October, she said: “Of course I will look at what more can be done. But the way I would do things is in a Conservative way of lowering the tax burden, not giving out handouts.”

Questioned later about these comments, she said: “What I’m about as a Conservative is people keeping more of their own money, growing the economy so we avoid a recession and the best way to do that is lower taxes, but also unleashing investment into our economy.”

I look forward to “unleashing investment” - it sounds spectacular, like “letting slip the dogs of war” … :081:

Meanwhile:

Bumper profits of nearly £50bn shared by the world’s five biggest oil companies prompted a chorus of calls for higher taxes on the sector as UK households were told to brace for average annual energy bills of more than £3,600 this winter.

The UK firm BP was accused of “unfettered profiteering” after it said on Tuesday underlying profits had tripled to $8.5bn (£6.9bn) between April and June, thanks to high oil prices. It was its biggest quarterly profit in 14 years and BP said it would hand out nearly £4bn to shareholders as a result.

Another misunderstanding. Strewth - that woman - she can turn on a sixpence.

Liz Truss ‘misinterpreted’ over ‘no handouts’ remark, her supporters say (msn.com)

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I see Liz Truss’s Tagline on her promotional leaflets is Delivery Vision Trust. So is she referring to herself as a DVT now?

She is certainly a clot, and a dangerous one at that :astonished:

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Is DVT life-threatening … :scream_cat:

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Yes, very much so. It can cause heart attacks.

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I get the heebie-jeebies whenever I see Ms Truss - is that a warning of approaching DVT … :question:

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I would strongly advise you to avoid such a negative impact on your mental health and sit down for a while. Do not cross and uncross your legs in agitation because this makes it worse. However, remaining seated is also bad for DVT so I would suggest some gentle exercise. Hand gestures work well as a warm up.

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