There are two alternative lessons a government can take from a U-turn as humiliating as the abandonment of its plans to abolish the 45p tax rate. The first is: “We can’t have any more retreats like that, so we must dig in on everything else we have been thinking and show unyielding determination to get our way.”
The second, more realistic one, would be: “It turns out we are in a rather exposed situation, trying to bring about a policy revolution with half the talent in the party left out of the government, a global recession looming and an election coming up, so we will be more careful before we dig ourselves into any more holes.”
The survival of Liz Truss’s ministry will now depend