Thread by @RussInCheshire

Second #TheWeekInTory in 4 days cos ... oh god you know why

1. KamiKwarzi Kwarteng supports crypto so much, he’s turned Sterling into a new one called Shitcoin

2. He fulfilled his promise to wipe out Stamp Duty by making it impossible for anyone to get a mortgage anyway

3. These exuberantly stupid inanities had named their policy "Operation Rolling Thunder" after the American offensive in the Vietnam War

4. Despite his History PhD, Kwarteng seemingly wasn't aware how that worked out for the USA, but he's learning fast

5. To help enlighten him, international markets began describing UK as being like a “developing country”

6. The £ dropped to the lowest level for 200 years

7. UK gilts fell 25%, the worst drop since WW2

8. Govt borrowing cost rose to the highest level for half a century

10. House prices are predicted to drop by as much as 20%

11. A record 40% of mortgage products were withdrawn

12. The IMF issued a rebuke and told the UK govt to reverse its budget

13. Moody’s rating agency said the budget could “permanently weaken the UK”

14. UBS Wealth Management said “investors regard the Tories as a doomsday cult”

15. And UK markets lost £500bn since Truss became PM

16. If you voted for a Tory Brexit to save £350 a week, please note that this works out at £350m every 21 minutes

17. Pause to remember this is the 10th working day of Liz Truss’s premiership

18. 82% oppose the tax cuts and bankers bonus policy, including 69% of Tory voters

19. And 54% of Tory MEMBERS have no confidence in Truss, who was elected by 57% of them less than a month ago

20. Despite this, Kwarteng said he was “sanguine” and described it as a “Budget for Growth”

21. His Budget for Growth made the value of the nation shrink by 4% in 24 hours

22. And a study found just the INTEREST on his new borrowing is £82bn, swamping the extra £6bn in GDP

23. In an indication how seriously the govt takes this, they urgently rushed to … cancel karaoke at their conference

24. This won’t affect Rishi Sunak, who you might remember as the chef from Ratatouille having a go at being a lifestyle coach after being abandoned by the rat

25. Sunak isn’t attending the party's gobshite jamboree so he can “give Truss all the space she needs to own the moment”, which – credit where it’s due – is EPIC shade

26. After doing their steaming fiscal event all over the carpet, Truss and Kwarteng vanished for 4 days

27. Unfortunately it was reported that instead of cooperating to fix things, they’d locked themselves in a room and had a “blazing row”

28. The only public comment Truss made during that time was to congratulate Italian fascists on their election victory

29. When she returned from whatever dimension she’d visited, Truss – the kind of PM you’d find on Gumtree – did 10 radio interviews in 2 hours, with her answers consisting almost entirely of flustered, desperate, clueless silences

30. In keeping with her promise to break with Johnson-era bullshit, Truss told the same blatant lie in each interview

31. It was so bad, Full Fact sent an official letter to Truss demanding she issue a correction

32. Elizabeth Truss is an anagram of Haziest Bluster

33. Opinion on the budget was divided: first, a sub-thread from people on Planet Zog

a. Brexit genius Dan Hannan said the pound crashed because of Keir Starmer

b. Brexit genius Andrew Bridgen claimed the pound hadn’t crashed at all

c. Brexit genius Lord Frost told Radio4 listeners “I don’t think anything’s gone wrong actually”

d. And Brexit-backing hedge fund genius Crispin Odey said the pound crashed because of Remainers (to be fair, this is technically correct – Liz Truss campaigned for Remain)

34. In stark contrast, here's a sub-thread of opinions from Tory MPs

a. “The party has been possessed by some sort of evangelical zeal. It defies all scientific and economic logic.”

b. “I thought Boris Johnson’s cabinet the worst in history. This one’s just beaten it”

c. “Kwasi and Liz will have to go. They are actually crashing the economy”

d. “We are just a protectionist racket right now - a gang of marauding ambition - not a serious party”

e. “This inept madness cannot go on”

f. “This government is dead on arrival”

g. “The UK central bank has had to step in to protect the UK from the actions of the UK's own govt! I mean, just think of that for a moment!”

h. “They have blown the bloody doors off the economy”

i. “Politically this is extinction level for us. Half of my colleagues realise it, the only question is how quickly will the other half catch up”

j. And most eloquently of all, one Tory MP simply tweeted: “Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…”

i. “Politically this is extinction level for us. Half of my colleagues realise it, the only question is how quickly will the other half catch up”

j. And most eloquently of all, one Tory MP simply tweeted: “Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…”

37. The response from the govt was to leap from the shores of sanity, shut its eyes, and swim like hell towards the horizon

38. After reports of Austerity 3.0, Liz Truss promised “no return to public spending reductions”

39. She hadn’t conferred with Chris Philp, who appears to be a baboon after a flash fire, and did the opposite, telling Whitehall to “find efficiency savings”

40. A Whitehall insider said “What efficiency savings are there given these levels of inflation??! Amazing bullshit”

41. Philp went on to say people criticising the govt for wrecking the economy were displaying “the politics of envy”

42. He’s not wrong: I am genuinely envious of people who are governed by people who aren't untethered from reality

43. Philp’s dept then claimed the budget could save you £11,250 a year, but only if you earn £30,000 and also have a mortgage that costs you £38,000 a year, a situation that applies to absolutely nobody on earth

44. These are the people in charge of our money

45. Kwarteng said the crisis is caused by international events

46. The BoE said it was “undoubtedly UK-specific”

47. Kwarteng said OBR hadn’t made a forecast cos there “wasn’t time”

48. OBR confirmed they made a forecast 9 days earlier, but Kwarteng refused to publish it

49. Then the govt agreed to publish the OBR forecast to, promising this would “stabilise sterling”

50. And then 2 hours later – presumably having read the forecasts by then – the govt said it wouldn’t publish them for another 6 weeks, and sterling tumbled once again

51. Things weren't batshit enough, so out lurched Jacob Rees-Mogg, the harrowing result of a bout of hate-sex between a Dalek and a pendulum, to claim the budget crisis was because we hadn’t done enough fracking 2 years ago

52. In other news: the health minister, a Little Britain character called Thérèse Coffey, scrapped her promised plan to fix health inequalities that lead to poorer people dying 19 years sooner, which is exactly what the Red Wall voted for, right?

53. Insiders said of the scrapped plan to keep you alive: “It’s dead. It’s never going to appear”, and “the reason they’ve pulled it is ideological”. Ideological early death. Nice.

54.The govt then also quietly U-turned on its promise to fast-track asylum seekers

55. Tories spent £130,000 of public money on legal advice to try to clear Horny Honey Monster Boris Johnson over Partygate AFTER he’d already been found guilty

56. The Financial Conduct Authority has been called on to investigate insider trading by Kwarteng’s hedge fund buddies

57. Two weeks ago Truss, a reverse King Midas, promised to protect Doncaster airport. This week it was announced it’s closing in October.

58. Eurostar cut passenger numbers by 30% cos post-Brexit checks mean UK stations can’t cope – the Eurostar said the firm “can’t go on”

59. In further delightful news for Global Britain, the UK and France were just about to sign a “ground-breaking” deal to stop illegal Channel crossings, and then Truss said the “jury is out” on whether France is a “friend or foe”, so the deal was scrapped

60. And finally, some hope: Labour are now 33% ahead in polls

61. At a General Election the Tories would be reduced to just 2 seats, the Conservative and Unionist Party would have turned the SNP into the official opposition, and I can stop doing this shit

My book covering a decade of this is out Oct 27. Here are 3 reviews

"Meticulous, brilliant, unstintingly splenetic... Our great-grandchildren will place it alongside Pepys, whose diary they will, correctly, judge much, much less funny"

– Howard Goodall

unbound.com/books/the-deca…

"There is a bleak comedy to the 'inventory of idiocy', and you can't help but laugh as he celebrates it....a bravura performance. Substantial, meticulous, incredible, hilarious, rude - and essential reading."

– Dominic Minghella

amazon.co.uk/Decade-Tory-in…

"Brilliant and eviscerating. Buy it for relatives who read the Daily Mail. It might work as an antidote. It made me want to slam my head in the door but I loved it nevertheless."

– Jemma Forte, broadcaster and writer
waterstones.com/book/the-decad…

Thanks everyone!! I hope you're coping.