Who’s to blame for rising mortgage costs?

Mortgage costs have reached a 15-year high today, with the average two-year fixed deal hitting 6.66 per cent – the highest level since the summer of the 2008 financial crash. But today’s mortgage news is being pegged to far more recent history, as average deals just topped their peak from last autumn, when Liz Truss’s mini-Budget sent interest rate expectations soaring, and mortgage offers along with them.

Truss’s premiership came to an end because so many numbers were spiralling upward, including the cost of government borrowing, mortgage repayments, and the number of Tory MPs who – amid all the chaos – were simply not going to take instructions from her government. Rishi Sunak’s promise when entering No.10 was not just to restore credibility, but to calm the markets and get these costs under control. It seemed to work at the start, as borrowing costs fell – as did mortgage deals – and MPs (broadly) fell in line.