The chancellor’s mini-budget has spooked the markets, stoked a rise in interest rates, and now caused a full-blown and very public cabinet row over whether to cut benefits for millions of working-age families. Some ministers are urging the prime minister to press ahead with the cut and end Britain’s “Benefit Street culture”, while others have spoken out against it. The former Brexit minister David Frost argued that people already feel “insecure going into the autumn”; the Wales secretary, Robert Buckland, argued that a “safety net is an important part of what a one-nation Conservative is about”.
How has it come to this? The row has been sparked by the chancellor’s need to show that he is committed to keeping the public finances on a sustainable path, after announcing £45bn of unfunded tax cuts last month. Achieving this without further U-turns on tax cuts will require Kwasi Kwarteng to announce major spending cuts on a scale we last saw when George Osborne announced an emergency budget in the wake of the financial crisis.
