Kwarteng

Many institutions were left counting the cost of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous mini-Budget. And nowhere more so, it seems, than on Horse Guards Road, where those much-loathed guardians of Treasury orthodoxy were forced to work overtime to deal with the resulting market fallout.  Staff earned an extra £89,771 for their work. Kerching! New figures, released in response to a parliamentary question by Lib Dem MP Sarah Olney, reveal that Treasury staff overtime almost doubled after September’s ‘fiscal event’. As officials battled to cope with the resulting market chaos in the weeks that followed, they clocked up more than 1,500 extra hours in October than in the same month

Tory MPs were in an anxious mood as they returned to the Commons this afternoon after weeks of conference recess and government meltdown. Their first session in parliament was, appropriately enough, Treasury questions, where they had a chance to air some of their anxieties with the Chancellor and his team. It could have been a much worse session for Kwasi Kwarteng, given the way things have gone recently. But the number of MPs seeking reassurance won’t have left him feeling very relaxed. Kwarteng told the Commons that his mini-Budget had been ‘really strong’ Kwarteng told the Commons that his mini-Budget had been ‘really strong’ and that MPs constituents would have