With a wearying inevitability, Liz Truss has gone from one row to another. One of her own cabinet ministers, Leader of the Commons Penny Mordaunt, has warned her against cutting benefits. She told Times Radio:
‘I’ve always supported – whether it’s pensions, whether it’s our welfare system – keeping pace with inflation. It makes sense to do so. That’s what I voted for before.’
In the parties and bars in Birmingham last night, the 45p reversal hadn’t really calmed Tory nerves
This is the kind of cabinet indiscipline that you’d expect in the weakest and latter days of a premiership, not the first few weeks.
Mordaunt joins a growing list of Tories who have broken cover to insist benefits must be uprated in line with inflation. As I wrote yesterday, even the Work and Pensions Secretary Chloe Smith made clear on the conference stage that she wasn’t keen to make these kinds of cuts, saying ‘protecting the most vulnerable is a big priority for me’.
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