Mini-budget

Friday

Steerpike

Treasury counts the cost of Truss’s mini-Budget

Many institutions were left counting the cost of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous mini-Budget. And nowhere more so, it seems, than on Horse Guards Road, where those much-loathed guardians of Treasury orthodoxy were forced to work overtime to deal with the resulting market fallout.  Staff earned an extra £89,771 for their work. Kerching! New figures, released in response to a parliamentary question by Lib Dem MP Sarah Olney, reveal that Treasury staff overtime almost doubled after September’s ‘fiscal event’. As officials battled to cope with the resulting market chaos in the weeks that followed, they clocked up more than 1,500 extra hours in October than in the same month

Tuesday

Kate Andrews

Will Rishi Sunak stick to his ‘golden rule’?

Here’s the Rishi Sunak paradox: he proudly defines himself as a low-tax Tory but under his watch taxes are reaching a 71-year high. There are plenty of Tories who want to ditch next month’s National Insurance increase but Sunak is firmly opposed – mainly because he wants to link up in people’s minds that more money for the NHS and social care doesn’t manifest out of thin air. But pressure is on at tomorrow’s spring statement to make clear what kind of Chancellor he really is. Does he come from the long line of Tories who like tax cuts in theory but not in practice – or does he have