October 21, 2022

Truss

Truss had the shortest tenure ever as head of the Conservative Party while it was the majority party in government at just 44 days. (A long way of saying that the PM is not a president and is elected by the strange undemocratic processes in that party).

There are some lessons to be learned from the Truss days. Mainly, do not elect conservatives into office if you want a functional anything.

The second lesson is not going to be as easily learned. We elect people these days (maybe previous days too) based almost entirely on rhetoric.

Most people believe that those in power have some understanding or grasp of what they are talking about and doing. The tacit understanding is that those running for the control of a state are not living a delusion. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

It is hard to say that the UK Tories did not have a warning about what Truss and Kwarteng stood for. They wrote a book outlining their ridiculous notions about how the economy works. You may know this, but did you know Priti Patel (Home Secretary under Boris), Dominic Raab (deputy PM under Boris), and Chris Skidmore (vice-chair of the Tories) were also authors?

Do not believe the rewriting of history that Truss was some anomaly. Tories voted for them because of what they believed. Most of the Conservative Party in the UK believe in the same things.

What did they believe? They believed in the rhetoric and revisionist history of the neoliberal era instead of what actually happened. The Tories will try to blame Truss, but they continue to be a party beholden to an economic fantasy that has never survived an interaction with reality.

The people who make money from the current system (let's call them capitalists) understand that the rhetoric is not reality. They understand that their profits are a combination of public theft, imperialist theft, and state regulatory wage repression. But, Tories would never win if they ran on that. The weird thing is that the Tories seem to have forgotten they are supposed to cover for the crimes of capital, not believe the ad.

While it is fun to make fun of the Tories for such blind faith in their own bad ideas (and we should), we all need to remember that it is almost every political organization that has these blinders about liberalism and free-markets. Even those who supposedly oppose free markets over democracy.

Depending on how you read the tea leaves of the market, you can see that reality either drives policy reversals or responds to bad decisions:

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Who will win?

The big questions are who will be head of the Tories, who will choose that head, and what about Boris?

Those seeking to be PM must get the support of at least 100 MPs to stand.

Nominations open on Thursday evening and close on Monday October 24 at 2pm.

As of this morning, "a running tally of MPs’ support for potential contenders by Sky News put Sunak at 42, Johnson at 37 and Mordaunt at 16."

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Canada's climate policy embarrassment

If only the governments of Canada found it actually embarrassing.

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The provinces of Ontario and Alberta dominate the emissions picture in Canada, and their diverging emissions underscore the country’s struggles to make climate progress. Between 2005 and 2019, Ontario’s emissions dropped 21%, according to an analysis by the Canadian charity Pembina Institute, thanks largely to its move away from coal-fired power plants. By contrast, Alberta’s emissions rose 17% over that same time period. Home to oil sands, which is among the dirtiest fossil fuels, Alberta is one of the few provinces that doesn’t have either a 2030 or 2050 climate target.

Under Trudeau’s leadership, Canada’s oil production has increased about 25% and gas production has increased 7%, according to BP Plc.

(BN)

And, let's be clear. There is no policy plan that will allow Canada to reduce emissions from any party. They all rely on rhetoric over reality when it comes to emissions. Unfortunately for the next generation and very much unlike the Truss administration in the UK, there is no "redo".