Only two more before Christmas

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One of the wonders of the internet is that it is easy to find out whether some of the most familiar quotes were ever actually said by the person to whom they are most often attributed, by simply tapping into publicly-available research done by others. It has turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, though; many (perhaps most) of the pithy quotations about whose origin I have been so certain for years turn out never to have been uttered by the alleged author. It shouldn’t really affect the validity or usefulness of the words or phrase themselves, but it’s still something of a disappointment to find that something has been misattributed for decades.

And on the subject of usefulness, it turns out that there is, apparently, no trace of Lenin ever having referred to ‘useful idiots’. It doesn’t mean that useful idiots don’t exist, however, and that brings me to the newly-appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. The outgoing post-holder certainly discovered that he was little more than a useful idiot to the shortly-to-be-former PM. He had thought that he was being appointed because of his outstanding ability, intellect, and understanding of economics. It’s the sort of exaggerated and arrogant self-worth which is drummed into students at Eton, and which never thereafter leaves them. Events have shown, however, that he was little more than a human shield for an economic experiment which his boss was determined to conduct, and has now been sacked for following her orders too enthusiastically.

Whether his successor will be as useful is now an open question, but there can be little doubt about the extent of his idiocy. Having a chancellor committed to a different economic approach may turn out to be of some use in the short term – and not just to the PM. Kwarteng himself will also benefit from the idiocy of the new incumbent, as he finds himself bumped down the leader board from the second shortest-serving chancellor to the third within a week or two. Only an idiot’s idiot would hitch his wagon to a doomed PM whom most of her own MPs now believe is destined to be turfed out herself within days. Step forward Jeremy Hunt (and isn’t it reassuring to get back to the days when at least one member of the cabinet admitted that he was a Hunt). Perhaps he believes that his soon-to-fail attempt to rescue that which cannot be rescued will place him in pole position to replace her; perhaps he even believes that his own ability is so all-encompassing that he can actually achieve the impossible (even if Charterhouse isn’t quite as well known as Eton for instilling that particular type of arrogance). We won’t have long to find out – only two more chancellors before Christmas.

Never is a very long time

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The First Minister, Mark Drakeford, has been reported today as saying that he will never support independence, but believes that “decisions that affect only people in Wales [should be] taken only by people in Wales”. At first sight, it’s a neat turn of phrase which sounds like a commitment to a lot more devolution of powers to Wales. On closer analysis, however, it's far from being as clear as that, because there are few decisions currently taken by the Welsh government which meet a strict interpretation of his rule. Some health services, for instance, are accessed on a cross-border basis – decisions taken in Wales will affect some people in England, just as decisions taken in England will affect some people in Wales. In the field of education, many Welsh students choose to study at English universities, just as many English students choose to study in Wales – decisions taken in Wales won’t just affect people living in Wales. We could go through a whole host of devolved areas and find that there are few decisions which can be said to have ‘no’ impact on people living outside Wales: a statement by Drakeford which sounds like a call for more devolution could be interpreted as a justification for rolling back what has already been devolved.

Anyone seeking to use it that way would be well advised to exercise a little caution, however, because the same could be said for many decisions taken by the UK Government. Foreign policy, defence and overseas aid are obvious examples, but trade policy, immigration policy and many other areas of government also lead to decision-taking which does not ‘only’ affect people in the UK. Does that mean that UK independence is an impossibility? In a sense, yes it does. What Drakeford has touched on, perhaps inadvertently, is that we live in a world which is increasingly interdependent, and where any government which ever takes any decisions is likely to be impacting others outside its jurisdiction. It’s why, for many years, many independentistas preferred the term interdependence or ‘full national status’ to the word independence; either are a better description of the status any country seeking to be a good member of the international community would seek.

It turns out, though, that taking some decisions individually, some co-operatively through negotiation, and some by pooling sovereignty with others is precisely what ‘independence’ actually means to most states in the modern world; the issue is deciding which decisions are taken where. The UK, as a state trying to assert its own unique right to decide everything and to take back both pooled and devolved powers to itself, is very much an outlier, and the consequences are becoming clearer daily. If the First Minister was trying to say something along those lines, he may find that he is not as far away from many independentistas as his assertion that he will ‘never’ support independence suggests. It’s more a difference of opinion about the detail of what should be decided where and how Wales’ input is made. The biggest difference of perspective is probably about whether we start with the UK as a given and argue about why any powers should not remain at that level, which should be devolved and which should be pooled (with, for instance, the EU), or whether we start from the tabula rasa perspective that the continued existence of the UK and its exercise of power in particular areas needs to be justified on a case by case business. That’s no small difference in perspective, of course, but neither is it necessarily as great as Drakeford’s words suggest. And ‘never’ is a very long time – is he really telling us that in the event of Irish reunification and Scottish independence, his mind would remain closed to any suggestion that Wales should seek any status other than that of being subservient to Westminster, relying on powers which can only ever be ‘loaned’ to Wales?

Four negative numbers can become one positive number - with enough faith

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The UK Government continue to insist that they have a ‘plan for growth’. They do not: they have a plan for tax cuts, half a plan for spending cuts, and a half-baked plan for deregulation, the sense of which the head chef, Jake, is having difficulty convincing even his fellow cultists about. Their ‘plan’ for growth consists of little more than an unshakeable faith that growth will inevitably follow the implementation of those three ‘plans’ despite a complete lack of corroborating evidence.

Leaving aside the question of whether growth is always desirable or even attainable anyway (infinite growth in the context of a finite quantity of resources, for instance, is at the very least questionable), and assuming that what the PM means (although she hasn’t actually spelled it out in so many words) is an increase in overall GDP, how likely is it that growth will actually happen? There are a number of different ways of calculating GDP (all of which should ultimately produce the same answer, although the presence of estimated numbers in all of them means that there can be some variation). One of the most common is the simple equation:

GDP = C + G + I + (X-M)

By the same token, any increase in GDP can be measured by the increase in the total of the four factors, which are: C = consumption, G = government spending, I = investment, and (X-M) = the difference between exports and imports. (Prof Richard Murphy has more here). For GDP to increase, simple arithmetic tells us that at least one of those four terms must increase. The problem is that the increasing gap between prices and income will reduce C, the government is due to reveal on 23 November (assuming that the markets and restive backbencher allow it to wait that long) by how much it will reduce G, I is outside the control of the government to a large extent, but investment in new plant, equipment etc looks like a risky assumption in a time of economic uncertainty, and we know that (X-M) is impacted directly by Brexit. A government which was serious about growth would want to ensure that household consumption could at least remain static rather than fall, it would ensure that government spending – particularly on infrastructure – rose, it would do its best to create the sort of stability which reduces the risk to businesses of making large investments, and it would seek a closer trading arrangement with the UK’s closest and biggest markets. In reality, a government which claims to be committed to growth is actively taking decisions in relation to all four of those factors which will either suppress growth or, even worse, ensure a recession. No amount of blind faith can make four negative numbers add up to a single positive one.

There is, though, another possibility, and that is that the PM is not referring to growth in GDP at all. She wouldn’t be the first to confuse ‘making people wealthier’ with ‘economic growth’, and leaping from there to an assumption that an increase in the concentration of wealth amounts to economic growth. It would make rather more sense of her statements, to the extent that making sense of them is a realistic possibility. If the wealthiest in society have more money in the bank, the inescapable corollary is that they will be wealthier as a result, and if all the people with whom you mix are in that ‘wealthiest’ category, it can be easy enough to believe that ‘people in general’ are getting wealthier. The salary of a back-bench MP puts MPs in the 95^th percentile of employed people in the UK, and many of those with whom they socialise (and from whom they seek donations) will be in an even higher percentile. The numbers, to say nothing of the everyday experiences of the rest of the population, might tell a different story; but who needs numbers when you have faith? That would be almost like asking an expert.

Lexicographical crime

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Yesterday, the new empathy-challenged Home Secretary, chosen for the job on the basis that her predecessor, Priti Patel, was simply not nasty enough, claimed that those Tory MPs who had ‘forced’ the government to abandon part of its proposed largesse towards the richest, had staged some sort of ‘coup’ against the elected government of the UK. Her definition of a ‘coup’, which is that MPs had threatened not to vote for a policy which they did not support and which formed no part of their manifesto at the last election probably constitutes some sort of crime against lexicography, but using a different dictionary than the rest of us, and defining words to mean exactly what they want them to mean (well, perhaps not exactly; exactitude is another missing attribute amongst the current government) is far from being the biggest problem with her statement. Within the normal meaning of the word coup, the overthrow of one government and its replacement by another, there has indeed been a coup, but it’s the one which took place a few months ago under which the Tory Party deposed one clueless leader in order to give itself free rein to find someone even more clueless, which is, I suppose, at least one task they’ve managed to complete successfully.

The bigger problem is that, under the UK’s unwritten constitution, and despite the way the media cover and present elections, we do not elect (and never have elected) governments, parties, or Prime Ministers. The only thing we are allowed to elect is a member of parliament for the constituency in which we live; once elected, he or she is free to support whatever policies, parties, or leaders he or she might choose, regardless of any pledges which might have mistakenly appeared on his or her election material. The result is that we now have a government whose leader was chosen by a vanishingly small proportion of the electorate as a whole which is following a programme which is significantly different from what the same people promised in 2019. And it’s all entirely legal and above board. There may be a few deranged members of the governing party who inexplicably consider that they might have some sort of duty to stand by what they said only three years ago – the ones who Braverman accuses of being coupists – but seen from the bunker in Downing Street, these people are little better than traitors, reneging on the only responsibility they have, which is to do as they are told.

What the rest of us need to remember is that this ability to replace a government with a wholly different one, committed to a completely different political direction, isn’t a bug in the UK’s constitution, it’s a feature of it. There has been an entirely legal coup; this is the way things are supposed to work. The PM is appointed by the monarch, not elected by the people, and once appointed is free to do almost anything he or she wishes, subject only to having a sufficiently servile bunch of MPs for those changes which require legislation, which is far from being all of them. The ‘solution’ is not just to hold a new election. That might defer the problem until halfway through the next parliament, or the one after that, but it doesn’t solve it. And since the only solution for the UK as a whole involves persuading turkeys to vote for Christmas, the only way out is to escape from the turkey farm and ensure that independent states in Wales and Scotland start life with proper written constitutions, fair electoral systems, and a recognition that sovereignty belongs to the people not the monarch. We could call it something novel and exciting, like perhaps ‘democracy’.

Killer arguments and estimated numbers

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It’s not at all clear that the report on the ‘fiscal deficit’ for Wales by Professor John Doyle (available here) is quite the game-changer as which Plaid have tried to present it. It no more ‘proves’ that an independent Wales would be financially viable than any figures quoted previously have ‘proved’ that it would not be. The Tory leader, a man who has never knowingly issued a press release that doesn’t ‘slam’ somebody or other for something or other, has ‘slammed’ the report and all associated with it. That was entirely predictable which means that it can be easily discounted, but that would be premature for reasons to which we will return shortly. The chief sins for which the report has been duly ‘slammed’ seem to be the fact that the report’s author has dared to assume that an independent Wales might actually do anything different rather than simply replicate UK policy, and that there is more than one way to prepare a guesstimate. A country of 3 million behaving as though it were a country of 3 million is a truly horrific crime against economics, apparently. Imagining a different future is something with which his limited imagination just can’t cope.

The report does tell us a number of things:

·        The numbers prepared previously by the Office of National Statistics setting out the fiscal position of Wales within the UK are unfit for the purposes of assessing the financial situation of an independent Wales;

·        Those numbers are based on some assumptions and estimates which may not be entirely correct; and

·        Preparing estimates on the basis of different assumptions gives different answers.

It’s all useful stuff, but anyone who’s been paying attention knew all that anyway, even without a learned professor putting his name to it. The obvious conclusion – that the financial position of an independent Wales would probably be broadly comparable with the financial position of any similarly-sized country – is so blindingly obvious that it shouldn’t even need to be stated. When it comes to the economics, there is nothing special or unique about Wales; nothing which condemns us to be poorer than any similar country and nothing which makes us an unviable basket case, and any suggestion that there is has been based on a set of estimates and assumptions specifically designed to demonstrate precisely that.

That does, though, brings us back to why it would be premature to dismiss the Tories’ response, just because it is economic nonsense. There are, of course, some people who aspire to see an independent Wales but are worried about the finances, and who may therefore be swayed by this sort of report. However, I suspect that group is actually quite small. No matter what any ‘game-changing’ report might say, no matter how strong the evidence, no matter how well the case is put, those with closed minds cannot and will not engage in debate around the true economics of independence, and will prefer to double down on a claim that ‘my expert estimates trump your expert estimates’, no matter how utterly discredited (or rather, in this case, irrelevant to the context) they may be. People who don’t want Wales to be independent cannot imagine how it ever could be, and that subset of the population isn’t limited to members and supporters of the Conservative and Unionist Party. They may hide behind their precious numbers and exaggerated deficits, but the idea that their objections are simply financial is nothing more than a pretence to avoid debating why Wales should not become an independent country. Trying to persuade them to accept a different set of numbers implies that there is a willingness to debate the issue if only the financial objections can be removed. It’s a fool’s errand: there is no such willingness.

In truth, none of us knows what the detailed financial implications of independence would be – but then what the unionists never admit is that neither do we know the detailed financial implications of continuing in the union. The future is shaped by events which have yet to happen and decisions which have yet to be taken and is essentially unknowable. In the absence of any credible reason why Wales, uniquely in the world, should be incapable of running its own affairs (and opponents of independence have yet to come up with such a credible reason), the logical and rational assumption to make is that Wales is as capable as any other similar country. We can do it if we want to. The real question is whether or not we want to – and carefully worked out sums can never answer that question.

Letting them know who's boss

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When George Osborne set up the ‘independent’ Office for Budget Responsibility 12 years ago, he surely intended it as a way of locking in orthodox thinking and making it harder for any future government to follow a significantly different path. That was in the days when the Conservative Party was the upholder of financial orthodoxy, but had only a slim grip on power in coalition with the Lib Dems. The possibility of a Labour government looked realistic and constraining the freedom of movement of that party would have looked, to a Tory, like a really cunning plan. Although Osborne admitted that having an outside body conduct an independent review of his budgets placed limits on him as well, it’s doubtful that it really worried him a great deal (it was, after all, his own fiscal orthodoxy that he was attempting to set in concrete); and it is certain that he never expected that his OBR would find itself in direct conflict with his own party’s government. But fortune-telling has always been a dodgy business at the best of times, and it’s easy to believe that he didn’t expect the fiscal fetishism of the Conservative Party of 2012 to turn into the doomsday cult of 2022.

In any event the ‘independence’ is more illusion than reality, when push comes to shove. The members of the Budget Responsibility Committee are appointed by none other than the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and it’s an iron rule of any power relationship that he who appoints can always find a way of unappointing if he needs to. But recent events have shown the limits of the ‘independence’ in another way as well: it turns out that the OBR can only produce a forecast if the government asks for one, and are expressly forbidden from publishing one if the government does not. And whilst the underpinning legislation requires the government to request that a forecast be produced for any budget, that which might look like a budget is not a budget within the terms of the legislation if the government simply decides to call it something else.

Various apologists for the government have come out with all sorts of excuses as to why the OBR couldn’t have produced a reliable forecast (as though such a thing actually exists in the first place) for this particular package, despite having managed it for previous budgets. The excuses have varying levels of credibility ranging from infinitesimal to zero but the inverse ratio between credibility and the absolute certainty with which some Tories present them is a wonder to behold. Not Truss herself, of course, for whom words are simply words, devoid of any meaning or expression. The OBR itself says it could have produced an analysis – indeed, that it even had one more or less ready for issue which it was not allowed to publish. Whether the government was aware of the content, or could even be bothered to look, is a currently unanswered question; the general assumption is that it wouldn’t have liked what it saw. The Boris Johnson approach to bad news from advisors (hands over ears and hum the English national anthem) is alive and well in Downing Street.

Today’s meeting between the members of the Budget Responsibility Committee and the Chancellor – to which the PM has invited herself as well – has been billed as an attempt to calm the markets by reassuring the OBR that the government is planning to set out how the apparent hole in the government’s finances will be filled. Perhaps. But given the arrogance and the absolute confidence that Truss and Kwarteng have that they know better than anyone else, it’s surely equally possible that their intention is to remind the OBR who’s in charge, and explain to them what they think so that they can go away and write it up as an 'independent' report. Given the way that they’ve reiterated time and time again over the past few days that their plans are the brilliantist ever, it’s hard to believe that there will be any contrition on display. Truss and Kwarteng are still wielding their spades with gusto – the enthusiastic hole-digging seems unlikely to suddenly stop today.

Seizing the opportunity

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Traders in the financial markets have coined a new abbreviation this week, MRP. It stands for ‘Moron Risk Premium’, and is the technical term for a situation where holding assets underwritten by a government of morons requires an additional premium to be paid in the form of a reduction in the value of the currency and an increase in interest rates. Apparently, those traders – no, let’s not underestimate the numbers involved – apparently, most of the world outside the ranks of the English Conservative and Unionist Party and the editorial desks of the Mail and the Express thinks that putting morons in charge of the economy is a really, really bad idea. Interestingly, there’s a high level of correlation between the subset of the population which coined the new term and the subset which finances the Tory Party. It turns out that having morons in charge may be bad for most of us, but creates a mega opportunity for a tiny few. And they’re grabbing it with both hands.

Missing an opportunity

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One of the ‘successes’ of the Tories over the past four decades has been implanting the idea that the government’s finances are like those of a household; spending should mostly be limited by income and any borrowing should be as short term as possible and repaid as rapidly as possible. It’s always been utter nonsense, and it’s not a paradigm that they’ve ever stuck to themselves, but they’ve succeeded in making it the starting point for all political discussion of economics under which all parties (except the Tories themselves, of course) are obliged to answer the question ‘how will you pay for it?’ in relation to each and every spending commitment, and then ridiculed for any failure to provide an 'acceptable' response. It’s an ideology which last week’s budget completely abandoned, with the results that we’ve seen on the financial markets, and whilst allowing itself to be seduced by the argument was not exactly a brilliant move by the Labour Party, being seen to be the upholders of what is essentially a Thatcherite position which the government have abandoned in favour of a trip to fantasy island will probably do Labour no harm in the short term. Appearing to be the adults in the room is not exactly a bad position to be in.

And yet… Their continued adherence to the Thatcherite view of the economy does them no favours in the longer term, and helps to sustain the household comparison. At a minor level, it leaves them open to a charge of inconsistency. For example, from the ‘household’ perspective, Labour's promise to reverse the unfunded abolition of the 45% rate of income tax and then use the ‘extra’ money for increasing expenditure in the NHS looks an awful lot like spending the same money twice. The open abandonment by the Tories of the position which they have imposed on everyone else for decades could – and should – be a real opportunity to have a serious discussion with the electorate about the way the economy really works. They could instead be spelling out that the problem isn’t the extent of Kwarteng’s borrowing per se, it’s that he’s using the borrowed money to reduce taxes on the rich: a move which few respectable economists believe will generate anything like the assumed level of growth which is required to make the numbers add up. Had he instead announced that he would be borrowing consistently more for some years to come in order to invest in infrastructure (which most economists would agree does contribute to growth), we would probably not have seen the panic which set in in the financial markets. Failure to even broach the argument that it’s not about borrowing, but how it’s used, is a serious constraint on Labour’s freedom to promise the investment which we need.

It's a failure which is understandable in a sense; in an environment where politics has been reduced to simple slogans, preferably no longer then three words long, and against a backdrop where the household analogy has become established ‘truth’, it’s a very difficult argument to make. And to paraphrase Bonaparte somewhat, “never divert attention from your enemy when he’s making a mistake”. They don’t need to win the argument about the ‘right kind of borrowing’ to win an election which the Tories seem determined to lose, so why get bogged down in a debate which many may not understand? It’s short term thinking, though: after they win an election, how radical can they be in economic terms if the ground hasn’t been prepared in advance? Most worrying of all is the suspicion that they don’t really want to be radical; they’ll be happy just to be ‘in power’ and carry on with the sort of economic policies which (Truss and Kwarteng might be asking some of the right questions here, even if they’ve come up with the wrong answers) have led us to where we are.

Giving with one hand and giving with the other

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The theoretical basis for reducing taxes on the highest paid is that they will invest the money saved in ways which boost economic growth. It’s a sweeping assumption. There is no doubt that ‘some’ of the money will be invested like that, but no-one knows how much, and it isn’t the only option. Some will simply be spent, which is another way in which the economy might be boosted a bit. But some will be saved, and no doubt a significant amount will find its way into secretive offshore tax havens. One of the big unknowns at the heart of the gamble is how the money ends up being split between those four options. That in turn depends on the calculations that those in receipt of the unexpected windfall make before deciding what is in their own best interests. And one of the factors in those calculations will be expectations about the future, which make it unlikely that much of the money will end up being used as the government might wish.

Investing in new businesses and innovation is a long term decision, so one obvious question is whether those making the decisions really believe that this is a good time to be taking long term decisions. With a government which looks as though it might, just about, limp through to an election in two years time, but which has an obvious potential for collapse a lot sooner than that if things go horribly wrong; with a major war raging in Europe, whose progress and outcome, to say nothing of its effect on energy availability and prices, remains highly unpredictable; and a pandemic which is far from being over with the potential for large new waves, many are likely to conclude that ‘certainty’ is a little lacking at present. Major investments look to be riskier than they have been in the past, and the rate of return on savings may be a better bet for many.

We know that interest rates on both borrowing and saving are likely to be rising, a trend which the not-a-budget-at-all will only accelerate, whilst the volatility of the pound adds to uncertainty. All that also has a negative impact on a willingness to take investment risk, and provides a positive incentive to find a safe haven for cash, whether overseas or in the UK itself. And one of the safest havens of all in the UK is government bonds, the interest rate on which rose sharply in the aftermath of the ‘fiscal event’. There is a common belief that when the UK government borrows money, it borrows it from other countries or overseas investors; but in reality, most borrowing is on the domestic market. Most is, effectively, borrowed from UK citizens; sometimes directly, but more often through financial institutions, such as pension funds, investment funds, banks and insurance companies. In a sense, therefore, most of us (through our pension funds etc.) are actually lending money to the government, even if we don’t realise it. This is, on the whole, something which benefits most of us. It’s worth noting, though, that the wealthier people are, the more money they are likely to have in their pension pots (as well as insurance, investment funds, banks etc.), and the more, therefore, that they lend the government. The interest on those loans, however, is paid by all taxpayers, even those who have loaned precisely nothing, either directly or indirectly, to the government. It’s one of the hidden ways in which wealth is transferred from those who have little to those who already have a lot, and that transfer is far more significant than the intergenerational transfer as which it’s sometimes inaccurately painted (the nonsense about future generations paying for today’s borrowing), because future generations, collectively, will inherit not only the liability but also the asset. The issue is that the people inheriting the asset aren’t the same ones who inherit the liability; it’s an inequality issue, not a generational one.

There is another effect here. Those traders who have been betting so substantially against the pound in expectation that the budget would lead to a crash have not only made small fortunes for their banks, they have also made it certain that interest rates will go up – maybe this week, and possibly even as soon as today. The traders can now receive bumper bonuses for their efforts, pay less tax than they previously would have done, lend the difference to the government, and be paid for the privilege at the higher rates of interest which they themselves have done so much to bring about. Verily, this is a government which giveth with one hand and then giveth a bit more, just to be certain, with the other. To the select few.

Half a cheer for the Lib Dems

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In political circles, the things for which the Lib Dems are most famous, and not necessarily in a good way, are dodgy bar charts and an astounding ability to promote completely contradictory policies in neighbouring areas – or even as they move from one house to the next in a street. To give them their due, they’re also quite good at mobilising large numbers of people to deliver a deluge of leaflets to flood voters’ homes in target areas, particularly during by-elections. Long term plans carefully and consistently executed have not, however, generally been seen as a strong point.

Perhaps we’ve all misjudged them. Liz Truss’s ability to pivot from one deeply-held policy position to deeply holding the complete reverse view makes her a classic Lib Dem. No surprise that was her initial choice of party. Infiltrating such an obvious Lib Dem into the Conservative Party with the sole aim of destroying that party from within is something of a master stroke, which shows clear signs of long term planning and organisation. After spending twelve years as a minister supporting the policies of three successive Prime Ministers, it turns out she never agreed with anything they (or she herself) did or said, another giveaway about her true allegiance. From upholding the idea that there is no magic money tree to claiming that she controls a complete enchanted forest, without even pausing for breath, is a manoeuvre which must have taken the breath away from even the most experienced Lib Dem candidate. A party which has spent 40 years telling us that they believe that spending must always be balanced by income suddenly decides to trash the very basis of its reputation by arguing that the bigger the gap the better; that’s on a completely different order of magnitude to merely overturning policy on student fees.

So, why only half a cheer for such an astounding achievement? Whilst the success of the cunning plot has almost certainly exceeded the wildest expectations of the plotters, they really don’t seem to have anticipated quite how much collateral damage would be caused for the rest of us when the bomb exploded. Perhaps they thought that she might get to a senior position but assumed that the Tories would never be stupid enough to make her leader. It’s an easy enough mistake to make (who wouldn’t have made a similar assumption?) but catastrophic for many of the least well-off in society. Next time, stick to dodgy bar charts. Please.