Chancellor Rishi Sunak is having one ear bent by red Tory backbenchers and the other by true-blue Tories. The former, many of them in previously Labour seats, want lots of public money spent in those 50 ‘red wall’ constituencies that enabled Boris to win a landslide election. The latter believe in small state Conservatism and balancing the books. The price of getting it wrong is losing the next election if the newly-won constituencies revert back to Labour having decided promises by Boris are hot air.

It is not an enviable situation for a new chancellor. Despite years of cuts, the public finances are still delicate, debt is too high and although the headroom in 2022 is £10bn, this is eye-wateringly low. As an example, this is a third of the average revision to borrowing forecasts by the Office for Budget Responsibility; so, in other words, very little headroom at all. Think-tank the Resolution Foundation (RF) proposes tax rises – or at least not reducing them – as a means of funding spending promises but this is not the traditional Tory way. Former Treasury chief secretary David Gauke told a RF seminar this week that cutting spending was always politically easier than raising taxes.