Hammond’s humiliation

After Philip Hammond delivered his Budget last week, he went to speak to a meeting of Conservative backbench MPs. Several were deeply alarmed about his tearing up of their manifesto pledge not to raise National Insurance. One asked him how sure he was about all this. Would they find themselves going out to defend this tax rise to their constituents, only to find him abandoning the policy later? No, the Chancellor replied, he would not change his mind. This tax rise was the centrepiece of his Budget, and it could not be scrapped. He was not for turning.

For a Chancellor to abandon his main Budget policy within a week is nothing less than extraordinary. It suggests a staggering lack of communication, forethought and basic political competence. Mr Hammond spent days claiming — bizarrely — that he had not broken the manifesto pledge. He sought to hide behind a law, passed after the election, that pledged not to raise Class 1 National Insurance contributions but said nothing about Class 4 contributions, which he raised from 9 per cent to 11 per cent.