In a tetchy performance on The Andrew Neil Show, Tory party chair Jake Berry repeatedly insisted that everyone would have to wait until the Chancellor’s unveiling of his fiscal plan on 23 November to find out whether or not there would be spending cuts and when the government believes it will hit its 2.5 per cent growth target. Berry’s performance, which involved repeatedly trying to answer a different question to the one he was asked, made it even harder to believe that this line can hold. If every minister interviewed for the next six weeks sounded like Berry did just now, then it would be a disaster for the government.
The sensible thing for Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng to do would be to bring forward this fiscal event to this month. With the Bank of England ending its intervention on 14 October, the Treasury is going to have to provide more clarity on its thinking anyway. So, it might as well try and do it on its own terms. Instead, the information could be dragged out of it by parliament, by using a humble address to obtain the OBR forecast or some other device.
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