'is there an alternative (that the markets will tolerate)'
ask the news reporters.
this is of course the real immediate issue (seeing as the 'all-knowing ' market; has slapped down its own tory fanboys (and girl) for being ideological).
there are bad decisions (horsemouth has made a few of them) and then there are expensive bad decisions (horsemouth has not had the honour- or maybe he has but he doesn't realise it yet).
here the markets are doing the work of a 'socialist' criticism of unfunded tax cuts for the rich. this time (at least) it will not stick.
the country has effectively been mugged (in the way greece was mugged) for billions by the financial markets but because it suits our political direction (criticising tory stupidity) nobody is pointing this out. we will nonetheless be paying for it for a very long time to come.
people are not making a criticism of letting financial markets decide the .direction of the country. the great british people (in their lack of wisdom) elected this government (an earlier version of perhaps) - what we are now being offered is a third round of austerity (it may be more than that, horsemouth has lost count).
of course you can't run a 'prosperous' economy with lots of austerity because it produces too many poor people who are incapable of buying things beyond the bare necessities - what you (the runners of a smooth social democratic capitalist society) want are hordes of solvent consumers living their best life (even if this means whacking in subsidies, in-work benefits and racking out credit).
in a sovereign country terrible state debt can be dealt with by inflating it away - this raids the value tied up in people's wages and their savings (unless wages and interest rates rise), it makes people in real terms poorer, but what the hell, needs must right? there are sectors of the working class who can defend themselves against this onslaught, and there are sectors that can't.
the tories have fucked with their electoral base - the people doing well enough to get by (or think they are doing well enough to get by and that this makes them virtuous). people now face a long cold winter where they have to work harder to pay their mortgages or lose their homes (and go back to square one in snakes and ladders). the tories face a wipe out at the polls and can only hope that it is going to get better, something is going to come along, or something else may happen. if the tory MPs mount a coup against liz truss (wednesday) they are mounting a coup against the tory party membership who chose her.
zugswang - there are no good moves.
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horsemouth has finished off pereira maintains (an excellent wish fulfillment novel for liberals). it is fiction and yet the writers mentioned are real, pessoa crops up (and is accused of having 'strange friends' - the recent NLR article on him said as much). pereira does the right thing but he never has to commit to an ideology to do that right thing. it's a pleasant read but it doesn't have the depth of saramago because the moral dilemmas aren't real. .
later he watched a little of the 1998 version of our mutual friend (london live 9pm) and then a little of the 76 version. it is the 76 version he remembers (blood in the bottom of the boat) - it has the necessary gruesomeness (but it also has a russian voice over that rather spoils things).
today a bright cold morning. horsemouth doesn't know what to do with himself. he has written the start of a review of the housing conference. he has drunk his coffee. he has found his diary again (for a while he thought he'd left it behind).
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