A big win for the National Union of Ministers: Osborne is demanding £2.5 billion of extra cuts but is protecting May, Hammond and Pickles. The rest of the unprotected Cabinet will have to deal with a 1% cut in resource budgets. The money will be spent on capital spending. Criticise George in public and your department gets ringfenced, everyone else must suffer in silence…

UPDATE: A Whitehall wonk gets in touch to insist Hammond is merely being allowed to roll-over his budget underspend for this year, and while May and Pickles’s grants is protected they will still have to find 1% savings from the rest of their budgets. Their entire budgets will be unprotected in 2014-15.