It’s Hammond vs May, as the Budget blame game intensifies

Throughout David Cameron and George Osborne’s six-year double act, we seldom heard of serious arguments between them. Both were keen to avoid a repeat of the Blair-Brown psychodrama and prided themselves on their indivisibility. Same with their respective teams. You would never pick up the Sunday papers and read the sort of No. 10 vs No. 11 insults that we see this morning.

The Sunday Telegraph splashes on ‘Cabinet war over Budget shambles’ and describes how even the Cabinet were not told that Philip Hammond was about to break their manifesto commitment not to raise National Insurance. Most of the Cabinet is hopping mad: one member last week told me that Hammond’s breaking a promise was bad enough but to do it for such a paltry sum was madness. A verdict that is quite mild compared to some of the other points being made in Whitehall.

Tim Shipman’s spread in the Sunday Times is worth reading in full, but here’s a sample of the ammunition.

• Theresa May’s aides are described as ‘economically illiterate’.
• Saying that the two-point National Insurance rise is a milder outcome than she had wanted.
• Saying ‘she wants a death tax. We don’t.’
• Accusing the PM of ‘stealing’ positive news announcements from his Budget.
• Saying ‘Theresa’s instincts are clearly to tax and spend’ and that no one in No. 10 ‘knows much about economics’.
• And (rightly) saying that No. 10 failed to support Hammond when it hit all the fan.

The allies of Theresa May have also been busy…

• Claiming that the PM didn’t want a National Insurance rise at all.
• Saying ‘Philip is very imperious. He thinks little people don’t matter. The worst thing is he’s scarificed our reputation for trustworthiness.’
• Saying ‘the public see Theresa as sensible. But this just looks like a sneaky accounting trick’.
• And ‘Hammond has no appeal to the public, but he won’t listen to anybody because he thinks he’s the cleverest person in the room’.

Tim Shipman’s last book, about Brexit, was called All Out War. It looks like he’ll soon have enough material for a sequel.