The message that your vote doesn't count was shown with Truss too. It was well known she was preferred by the members at large while the parliamentary members wanted Sunak. Lo and behold, the suburban members picked her, and the parliamentary members set about undermining her. I don't claim to understand the economics of her policies, but I can see that they didn't give her any chance to try.
In short, she was planning a Thatcherite release of tax burden to theoretically make entrepreneurialism and private investment flourish. It would have required huge pain for many, in the medium term, as it did under Thatcher. The difference now is that the huge Tory electoral majority came from people who absolutely didn't vote for that.
Tory MPs didn't support her because they feared for their jobs, not because they didn't agree with her approach. That's why they didn't give her a chance, even though most of them would have given full-throated support if the bond markets hadn't reacted.
Hard to say, but my intuition is that it would. She was borrowing to give money away, which was ludicrous in the current environment. The Bank of England doesn't have to step instantly in to prevent pension funds collapsing very often and I doubt that Twitter or Sky News caused that. Politics seems massively influenced by social media but don't the markets do what the markets do, regardless of public opinion?
The message that your vote doesn't count was shown with Truss too. It was well known she was preferred by the members at large while the parliamentary members wanted Sunak. Lo and behold, the suburban members picked her, and the parliamentary members set about undermining her. I don't claim to understand the economics of her policies, but I can see that they didn't give her any chance to try.
In short, she was planning a Thatcherite release of tax burden to theoretically make entrepreneurialism and private investment flourish. It would have required huge pain for many, in the medium term, as it did under Thatcher. The difference now is that the huge Tory electoral majority came from people who absolutely didn't vote for that.
Tory MPs didn't support her because they feared for their jobs, not because they didn't agree with her approach. That's why they didn't give her a chance, even though most of them would have given full-throated support if the bond markets hadn't reacted.
And would it all have happened at such speed in the days before social media and the 24 hour news cycle?
Hard to say, but my intuition is that it would. She was borrowing to give money away, which was ludicrous in the current environment. The Bank of England doesn't have to step instantly in to prevent pension funds collapsing very often and I doubt that Twitter or Sky News caused that. Politics seems massively influenced by social media but don't the markets do what the markets do, regardless of public opinion?