Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt are holding crunch talks today as they look at delaying a Halloween wave of austerity.
Disgraced Liz Truss had set October 31 - this coming Monday - for a “medium term fiscal plan” that would unleash billions in cuts to fill a £30-40bn black hole.
New Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has so far stuck to the date and was due to meet Cabinet ministers one by one - even in Health - to draw up cuts last week.
But the government was hurled into turmoil on Thursday when Ms Truss resigned, and allies are now not ruling out a delay.
Mr Sunak is now considering postponing the statement into November and could even turn it into a full Budget, which had only been due next year, The Times revealed.
The Mirror understands he will hold talks with Mr Hunt today, as well as hosting a 9.30am meeting of his Cabinet and facing Prime Minister’s Questions at 12pm.
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly told BBC Breakfast: “He will want some time with his Chancellor to make sure the fiscal statement matches his priorities.
“Now I don’t know whether that means that date is going to slip. But the current date is only a couple of days away.
“The Prime Minister and Chancellor know they need to work quickly on this, but they also want to get it right. So we’ll see what happens to that date.”
Mr Sunak warned there will be “difficult decisions to come” in his first speech on the steps of No10 but faces an avalanche of warnings and potential Cabinet clashes.
He has appointed Mel Stride, who warned against cutting benefits, to lead the welfare department and Andrew Mitchell, who has slammed foreign aid cuts, as Development Minister.
And last night he did what Liz Truss never bothered to and rang Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon - who waned him not to cut public services. Ms Sturgeon said she voiced “my fear that further austerity will do real damage to people and public services.”
Iain Porter of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation urged Mr Sunak to “move quickly” and pledge benefits will rise by 10.1% inflation in April - as he had promised when he was Chancellor.
“Families on low incomes desperately need stability and certainty, as they try to afford the essentials, pay their rent, and keep food on the table,” Mr Porter said.
Calls are growing for a general election after Mr Sunak claimed he would “deliver on the promise” of the 2019 manifesto - but didn’t say he would actually carry out its pledges.
Last night Mr Sunak doubled down in an email to Tory members, vowing: “The mandate the Conservative party earned in 2019 is a mandate that belongs to, and unites, all of us.”
Yet hours later, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly appeared to suggest elements of the 2019 manifesto would be junked.
That would provoke fury among campaigners and Labour who say the Tories have no mandate from the country after changing their leader twice without an election.
Mr Cleverly told Sky News: “You always have to make dynamic decisions in government.
“You can’t set out a manifesto and assume nothing significant is going to happen in the four or five years of a parliament… there was no global pandemic in the 2019 manifesto.
“There was no invasion of Ukraine in the 2019 manifesto. We have got to respond to the world as we find it, not the one we wish it to be.”
Mr Sunak will face his first Commons appearance as Prime Minister at Noon today, as he begins the gruelling task of uniting his party and restoring the UK's economic credibility.
The new Prime Minister will square off against Sir Keir Starmer, fresh from appointing a new Cabinet that he hopes will bring a measure of political stability to the country.
It comes after another momentous day in British politics that saw Mr Sunak cull nearly a dozen of Ms Truss's top-tier ministers, such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, while reviving the careers of a host of big names, including Suella Braverman, Dominic Raab and Michael Gove.
Volodymyr Zelensky and Joe Biden were among the first world leaders Mr Sunak spoke to on Tuesday evening, as he told the Ukrainian president that the UK's support for the war-torn country would be as "strong as ever under his premiership".
