Liz Truss vs. Bank of England

 New British Prime Minister Liz Truss is doing a good job so far, unlike the Bank of England.

A truly conservative British Prime Minister and a populist Italian leader now too?  We live in interersting times.

Also while you weren't looking: trying to foil Brexit

British establishment is trying to sign a deal so bad for Britain to leave the European Union, that it destroys the Brexit movement.  Why else would this deal, destined to fail in parliament, be proposed for ratification?  OMG it's so bad:

I’ve said some hard things on this page about the 45th president, but credit where it’s due: He’d never have come back with the miserable deal that Prime Minister Theresa May is trying to sell to an incredulous British public. The famous dealmaker saw right away what had happened. “It sounds like a good deal — for the European Union,” he told reporters as details emerged.

For once, Donald Trump was guilty of understatement. This is the sort of deal that a country signs when it has lost a war. Under its terms, Britain will remain subject to all the costs and obligations of EU membership, but will give up its vote, its voice and its veto. In Brussels, they crow that the sole change, for at least two and probably four years, will be that the U.K. loses its Commissioner, its Members of the European Parliament and its vote when the EU makes decisions. If the remaining 27 members now pass a measure deliberately designed to harm British interests — to shift business from London to Frankfurt, say — the U.K. will have to apply it.

And at the end of that “implementation period”? The original idea, as the name “implementation period” suggests, was that the U.K. and the EU would use it implement a comprehensive trade relationship. In practice, they haven’t begun work on such a relationship, and the EU now has no incentive even to start.

Why? Because of the so-called “Northern Ireland backstop.” Unbelievably, British negotiators have agreed that they will remain within the EU’s tariff walls, and contract out their trade policy to Brussels, unless and until the EU side is satisfied that there don’t need to be physical checks at the Irish border.

The thing is, this is not going to turn out to be Brexit supporters turning on the idea. This deal is so blatantly bad for Great Britain, that it is actually the British establishment shooting itself in the foot. Nobody is buying that this is a good deal. No one is falling for it. So to put this to a vote, not only will it fail, it might actually topple the conservative majority in parliament. That's a bad thing. But with Theresa May on board with this deal, perhaps the party really needs a shake-up and a return to a Thatcher-like leader, just as the Republican establishment in America is undergoing a shake-up.

Pay Attention America, Corbyn's a Problem

Britain's Labour Party has selected his champion and he's a hard core leftist.

The Corbynistas want to renationalize the railways; increase public spending and tax the rich to pay for it; pull the U.K. out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and maybe the European Union as well; and command the Bank of England (which is independent, for now) to print money to pay for public investment. Anti-Americanism is a prominent part of the mix. Corbyn once called the killing of Osama bin Laden a "tragedy" and has called Hamas and Hezbollah "friends."

In short, it's prehistoric leftism. As you'd expect, the ruling Tories are struggling to contain their joy. They now face an opposition in the mold of Labour before Tony Blair -- an outfit so out of touch with the broader electorate, it kept the Conservatives in power for the better part of two decades.

Alright but in America, conservatives thought that about Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and are licking their chops similarly at the prospect of facing Bernie Sanders, another socialist.  But in the first two cases, conservatives lost - twice to each.

But maybe there's good news for conservatives in this.

...like Bernie Sanders in the U.S., he is a straightforward man who tends to say what he means. People like that, and his seeming lack of guile will appeal to voters beyond his political base. The problem is, his policies won't.

Corbyn is a winning personality with a losing program. But if he softens his line to reach out to wavering Tories -- as he surely must, to win a general election -- he'll be committing the very offense his supporters most despise. Perhaps, like them, he'll prefer to lose honorably than win through compromise (or betrayal, as many activists would see it).

That's a great thing to wish for, but it's been proven that it's not something you can count on.  Socialism is on the wrong side of history, but that doesn't mean it can't win victories from time to time, and perhaps even often.