If anything can sum up the headaches that Brexit has caused it is this article in The Observer (HERE). It claims Tories are in revolt over the 1% pay cap for the public sector, including both health and education. Mrs May has lost authority and ministers are lobbying open!y for more money. The problem for the Chancellor is that the kind of Brexit she and other ministers are pressing for is going to reduce revenue at least in the short to medium term and probably forever.
Michael Gove was on BBC yesterday morning calling for a review of the pay cap and Johnson (HERE) joined in this morning. This is all going to be very costly. If Hammond increases taxes, this is going to be hugely unpopular in his own party as well as among Conservative voters. He had already planned for increased borrowing and increasing it further will upset the markets which might begin to think about another downgrading of our credit rating. The Bank of England has hinted at interest rate rises coming down the line which will have the effect of raising mortgage and borrowing costs in a massively indebted country.
The people are being promised a "our bright new future outside the EU" (see Andrea Leadsom's article HERE) and greater prosperity. They will no doubt not be entirely happy to see it postponed let alone having to accept a poorer country altogether.
The chancellor is fond of saying that in last year's referendum people did not vote to become poorer but in truth that is precisely what they did do - they just didn't know it or they believed the idiots who told them it was all scaremongering.
