So the Final 2 - Liz and Rishi

Just to be sure, I looked on line to see where Rishi Sunak's wealth came from and see no reason to change my views. He has had many advantages, but they haven't stopped him from making his own money and becoming a rich man in his own right. He is the target for questions about his financial conduct from the opposition and journalists but. so far, nothing has stuck.
There is a choice between two politicians at the moment. I have gone with my head. ( Which I have now, for the first time, laid on the chopping block of a Gransnet political thread )

And the bank of mum and dad.

A charmed existence, one that most children can only dream of.

Lupin

I hope for Rishi. He is cool, calm and collected when speaking and interviewed. His thought processes seem clear - he is cool under pressure and has survived a baptism of fire since being made chancellor. To me, he has seemed like a candidate for higher office since he was made chancellor. I would hope that his financial success in his private life would translate into managing the country, not forgetting people who have not had his opportunities. I like the fact that his private family life seems stable and that there is no whiff of disloyalty about him. It needed someone of his prominence to oust Boris and he was courageous enough to do it.
I hope we are saved from Liz Truss who is inexperienced and comes across like another Theresa May. Not tough enough.

You mean being clever enough to marry a very rich woman? ( he says all of the wealth is his wife’s I believe).

Neither of them are good enough. Sunak because of the tax avoidance claim and Truss just hasn't got what it takes.

Lupin, you make a succinct case for Rishi over Fluffy Liz..hmm

I hope for Rishi. He is cool, calm and collected when speaking and interviewed. His thought processes seem clear - he is cool under pressure and has survived a baptism of fire since being made chancellor. To me, he has seemed like a candidate for higher office since he was made chancellor. I would hope that his financial success in his private life would translate into managing the country, not forgetting people who have not had his opportunities. I like the fact that his private family life seems stable and that there is no whiff of disloyalty about him. It needed someone of his prominence to oust Boris and he was courageous enough to do it.
I hope we are saved from Liz Truss who is inexperienced and comes across like another Theresa May. Not tough enough.

vegansrock

Neither candidate seems worried about the climate crisis, the death of species, or appalling state of the waterways in the U.K. just banging on about tax cuts. The planet will be frazzled in and many parts uninhabitable in the not too distance future. Yet these so called leaders don’t care.

Rishi did make some lame kind of comment about his two young girls being interested in the climate crisis and wanting to leave a better environment for grandkids. But he said nothing of any real substance.

MaizieD

growstuff

Maizie I've been reading about the Peel Group and DP World and it's truly frightening. I don't want to overreact, so am doing some more research. I read about Liverpool some months ago.

I'm very glad that someone else is frightened, growstuff.

However bad governments have been before they've never sold off enormous bits of the country to be entirely free of all our laws and regulations.

Do keep us up to date with your research..

It's already happening. Peel Group and DP World own billions of pounds of assets. The only mitigation would be to have regulations which ensure they treat employees fairly, stop them doing damage to the environment, make sure they pay taxes to benefit everybody, etc.

It's like a return to the 18th and 19th centuries, when the millowners were the main employers and owned the shops where people spent their money and the properties people rented to live in.

Whitewavemark2

I’ve been looking at Patrick Minford - the economist quoted by Truss as her guide?

We are in big trouble.

He advocates turning the UK into a Singapore-type economy. There would be no place for manufacturing or agriculture. So anybody who advocates "levelling up" or boosting the UK's manufacturing capacity is going to be very disappointed.

vegansrock

Neither candidate seems worried about the climate crisis, the death of species, or appalling state of the waterways in the U.K. just banging on about tax cuts. The planet will be frazzled in and many parts uninhabitable in the not too distance future. Yet these so called leaders don’t care.

Neither are they worried about the ongoing covid crisis and the effect it's having on the NHS and health of the population.

growstuff

Maizie I've been reading about the Peel Group and DP World and it's truly frightening. I don't want to overreact, so am doing some more research. I read about Liverpool some months ago.

I'm very glad that someone else is frightened, growstuff.

However bad governments have been before they've never sold off enormous bits of the country to be entirely free of all our laws and regulations.

Do keep us up to date with your research..

Neither candidate seems worried about the climate crisis, the death of species, or appalling state of the waterways in the U.K. just banging on about tax cuts. The planet will be frazzled in and many parts uninhabitable in the not too distance future. Yet these so called leaders don’t care.

My choice was Penny Mordaunt but she is gone now and we are likely to have low tax Liz or no tax Rishi, who is hoping to be the first Hindu P.M.

Charter Cities? dictatorship by company.

I’ve been looking at Patrick Minford - the economist quoted by Truss as her guide?

We are in big trouble.

Maizie I've been reading about the Peel Group and DP World and it's truly frightening. I don't want to overreact, so am doing some more research. I read about Liverpool some months ago.

^ Liz Truss will empty the coffers and leave the country in a mess for the next incumbents?^

That is the only thing we don't have to worry about. We have a sovereign currency and can issue as much as we please so long as there are resources available to be bought. The country does not have a finite amount of money.

The things we do have to worry about is an economic policy which makes the poor even more poor, destroys businesses by restricting people's income available for spending on goods and services, doing nothing about profiteering and cutting taxes for the wealthy who don't spend the extra money in the domestic economy, but use it to speculate in the financial markets or squirrel it away in tax havens.

We also have the threat of 'Enterprise zones (Freeports, Charter Cities)) which in effect, create large enclaves in which none of our laws apply. Private fiefdoms... Entire areas of the country sold to private owners (who gave the tories a mandate for that?) who are in complete control and outwith the reach of British laws and regulations.

medium.com/@cormack.lawson/charter-cities-the-real-reason-for-brexit-and-the-bigger-picture-4de80dbb69fb

This is what the far right wing of the tories want. They are the ones who will control either of the two contenders when they become PM.

GrannyGravy13

Whitewavemark2

This

“It's completely alienating, as a citizen in a so-called democracy, to stand by watching for weeks on end, as a tiny group of people decide who will take control of government, the whole rotten process cloaked in media-manufactured legitimacy.”
Michael Dougan.

This is what makes me feel so uncomfortable. It doesn’t feel very democratic to me, and I really don’t think that a prime minister chosen by a miniscule amount if people has any legitimacy whatsoever.

Did you feel the same when Tony Blair handed over to Gordon Brown?

The electorate didn’t get a say then either.

Yes I did feel the same. And the Tories said it was wrong at the time - did they make a mistake and it's actually right?

Will whoever wins, Truss or Sunak, carry out the manifesto on which the party was elected at the last election?

It is the conservative government, over all these years, that has brought the dire situation on us. I wouldn't trust Truss - she is the person who has sold farmers down the line bringing in cheap meat etc from abroad. She will promise anything but achieve nothing for us if she is elected. Depressing.

If the polls are to believed it will be Truss by a mile ?

Where is their sense?

Whoever gets in as PM will have 2 years to do their worse.
Is this what other parties and their supporters are maybe worried about? That, for example, Liz Truss will empty the coffers and leave the country in a mess for the next incumbents? I think that is a probable scenario, but at least then things can only get better.

It does all feel undemocratic - we finish up with another dodgy leader and no say in it.

Liz Truss is the sort of candidate who, as with Johnson, I am thinking surely to goodness no-one in their right mind could consider her as a PM.

Sunak at least has a bit of presence, even though he is a Tory.

What a mess this all is - we are about to get another duff PM.

Callistemon21

RichmondPark1

Why when it's so important that we have a PM is it not standard practice to have a second in command who is appointed carefully and thoughtfully during normal times rather than in a rush when a PM dies/leaves?. When the PM leaves this person steps seamlessly into place and the country is never without a leader.

We do and I think Johnson should have gone immediately and his Deputy should have taken over pro tem.

They are not electing a Prime Minister per se, they are electing a new Tory Party leader who will, de facto, become Prime Minister as leader of the party in office.

RichmondPark1

Why when it's so important that we have a PM is it not standard practice to have a second in command who is appointed carefully and thoughtfully during normal times rather than in a rush when a PM dies/leaves?. When the PM leaves this person steps seamlessly into place and the country is never without a leader.

We do and I think Johnson should have gone immediately and his Deputy should have taken over pro tem.