Thread by @Angry_Voice

Tory propagandists have now settled on a narrative to explain away Kwarteng's disastrous mini-budget

"The Pound Has Recovered"

This misleading, over-simplistic, and downright inaccurate claim is now spreading like wildfire on social media with hashtags like #ScumMedia

THREAD

After floundering for several days, Tory MPs and right-wing hacks are now trying to explain away Kwarteng's disastrous mini-budget with claim that the Pound has rallied back to where it was before ...

Meaning that all of the criticism can be dismissed as mere "press hysteria"

This narrative is being pushed hard by Tory MPs like Brendan Clarke-Smith and John Redwood, plus radical-right propaganda hacks like Mike Graham, Darren Grimes and Emily Hewertson

It's also being amplified on social media by Tory accounts using Trumpian slogans like #ScumMedia

According to the narrative they're trying to create, Kwarteng's budget was actually good and sensible, and all the criticism was just some shady 'fake news' conspiracy by the media to unfairly malign their beloved and faultless Tory lords and masters as bad!

But their story doesn't just deceptively ignore the massive £65 billion emergency bailout from the Bank of England, it's a downright lie, because the pound is still well below where it was before Kwarteng tanked the economy.

Here are three of the main reasons these people are wrong:

Inaccuracy: The Pound simply hasn't recovered to where it was before Kwarteng's bonkers mini-budget collapsed it. Anyone can check this. It's not like Pound/Dollar exchange rates are kept secret.

Deceptiveness: The Pound only started rebounding after the Bank of England provided a vast £65bn bailout to prevent UK pensions from collapsing into insolvency

That's the equivalent of almost a grand for every man, woman, and child in the entire country!
thenationalnews.com/world/uk-news/…

The £65 billion BoE bailout provided market reassurance by demonstrating that the central bank will step in with emergency measures, in the midst of an economic storm caused by the government's crackpot economic agenda!

If your recovery narrative simply skips over the part where the country's central bank had to step in with emergency measures to offset what the government had done, it doesn't matter if the Pound is $1.12 or $1.50, you're peddling a shockingly incomplete version of events.

Over-simplicity: Focusing on the value of the £ solely in relation to the US Dollar as the sole arbiter of economic health is absurdly over-simplistic.

What about the fact that even after a £65bn bailout, the £ is still down against almost every other currency on earth too?

What about the fact that Kwarteng's bonkers mini-budget nearly bankrupted Britain's pension industry?

What about the fact that Kwarteng's borrowing £150bn+ for handouts to the mega-rich & private energy companies, after 12 years of Tory governments telling us we can't afford wage rises, infrastructure investment, or decent public services because "government borrowing is bad"?

And what about the fact that mortgage lenders have already removed almost half of their products as a result of Kwarteng's economy-tanking mini-budget?

theguardian.com/business/live/…

Even if the Pound had fully recovered (which it hasn't) that wouldn't mitigate any of the other disastrous consequences or ideological inconsistencies with Kwarteng's bonkers mini-budget, would it?

The problem is that the Tory politicians and right-wing hacks spreading these deceptions are now so comfortable and experienced in post-truth politics that they know that their claim doesn't even have to be remotely true ...

, it just needs to fulfil a desired narrative ("Tories are good actually" / "don't trust the experts"), then the kind of low-information voters they target will just lap it up, rather than corroborating that it's actually true, or considering the claim within the wider context.

The successes of politicians like Trump and Johnson make it absolutely clear that this kind of post-truth politics works an absolute treat, especially because there are no real consequences for politicians and journalists when they get caught lying and deceiving like this

And it's really hard to counter, because the truth is usually vastly more complicated and nuanced than the simplistic and misleading narratives peddled by these agenda-pushing Tory propagandists

The Tories and their radical-right cheerleaders have been repeatedly shown that they can get away with lying with absolute impunity, whenever they like, so why wouldn't they try it again this time?

END

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Thanks, Tom (AAV)

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