One of the consequences of Theresa May’s disastrous election campaign is that the balance of power has swung firmly away from the PM towards her Cabinet. This change of fortunes means that ministers can now speak their minds freely in a way that would have been foolhardy just a few weeks ago. Boris Johnson is the latest to make the most of this new found freedom, saying it is time to end the cap on public sector pay. The Foreign Secretary is said to support a pay rise for such workers, and thinks this could be done in a ‘a responsible way’ without raising taxes.
Philip Hammond does not agree, with the Daily Telegraph reporting the Chancellor telling his cabinet colleagues that such a move could only be made at the expense of a number of unpopular tax hikes (including a tax hit on the self-employed, which went down badly when the Chancellor last tried it at his Budget).
Theres’s nothing unusual about cabinet ministers taking different approaches, but what is worrying for the Tories is the way in which this is all now blowing up in public.
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