Last night Team Rishi set out his plan for mass additional cost of living support in the winter, without many details. Slamming Liz Truss’s tax cut plan as one that “won’t touch the sides” for most people in need of support, Rishi says he will be “prepared to act”. 

“I’m very clear about what is required to help people, and as soon as we know how much bills will go up by, I will act.

And it’s important for people to know how this extra support will be paid for. In order to keep any one-off borrowing to an absolute minimum I will first seek efficiency savings across Whitehall to provide direct support for families to help with the unprecedented situation we face.”

On the promise of paying for much of his future fiscal support through efficiency savings, his team said that, as Chancellor, Rishi instructed all departments to find efficiency savings to help fund additional spending to support Ukraine.

As Chancellor, Rishi did indeed scrape together cash from departmental efficiency savings. Every department – including devolved administrations – was asked to identify 1.5% of capital departmental expenditure limit (CDEL) underspends. The process, which according to a Treasury source, did work well, raised £1 billion for arms for Ukraine a few weeks ago. However, said source raised three major concerns about the plan:

1. Given HMT has just performed this exercise, it lacks credibility to say there’s still “free” money sitting around in departments waiting to be repurposed
2. Departments only managed to cobble together £1 billion from this recent exercise, which is a good amount for arms for Ukraine, however will equally not touch the sides of the cost of living crisis facing Brits this winter. The total package cost so far already amounting to £37 billion…
3. On a purely inter-governmental relations level, some think repeating this process indefinitely across Whitehall, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland cannot be done without seriously fracturing relationships.

In response, Team Rishi say the OBR typically assumes that every year 8% of total government capital plans will typically go unspent and they’re merely saying that in a cost of living crisis that money should be put to immediate use support families, rather than simply returning to the Exchequer. Rishi says he wants his plan to involve as little “one-off borrowing” as possible. Clearly his opponents believe efficiency savings are not the answer to that objective…

Unfortunately Guido has upset the Red Guards of the Culture War over at the Treasury again. Following Guido’s story on Friday, revealing how civil servants were being encouraged into Maoist-style policing of each other’s woke-ness – by becoming “critical allies” of the department and making it “clear to everyone around you about where you stand” – a less than amused Executive Management Board (EMB) of the Treasury has today sent a round robin to all staff warning them against ever leaking again, and claiming whoever’s caught will face “disciplinary procedures”. On cue, here’s the statement in full, as leaked by brave civil servants:

“Last week an internal Redbox blog by a member of the Ethnic Diversity Network was leaked to the media. This leak was discussed at EMB, who wanted to remind all staff of our values and that leaking is unacceptable, constitutes misconduct and is subject to our disciplinary procedures.

Frank and open internal communications on the issues that matter to you can only be enabled by trust. Breaching that trust through leaks such as this inhibits debate and makes communication harder for all of us.”

One of Guido’s moles within the department claims there’s no such thing as “internal ‘debate’ or accountability”, and “external pressure is the only way” to resist the ideological groupthink throughout Whitehall. In any case, all this nonsense should be publicly available, not secret. Taxpayers are entitled to know. Any other mandarins who want to come forward should get in touch at team@order-order.com…

Rishi Sunak has blamed the Treasury’s outdated software for not allowing him to raise benefits in an interview with Bloomberg. It’s not the first time the excuse has come to light; a Times article last Thursday revealed officials had told the Chancellor he could only raise benefits once a year at a certain point, with a government source saying “the system was simply not built to be flexible.” Sunak’s now explained the problem on the record. If it is true it is unacceptably pathetic, it also makes him sound a lot like a certain Little Britain character…

Amidst a huge squeeze on living standards, a mini-budget that plunged him to the depths of unpopularity among Tory members, and awkward silence about his wife’s investments, Rishi’s dug deep, worked hard and come up with the policy announcement Britain’s been waiting for: an official HMT Non-Fungible Token. If you’re not already familiar the concept Guido doesn’t plan on explaining it here; keep an eye out for Guido’s own NFT coming soon…

The announcement comes as part of HMT’s strategy to “make the UK a global cryptoasset technology hub”, and comes alongside plans for “Stablecoins” to be recognised as a form of payment, an announcement of various measures to make the UK a global hub for cryptoasset investment, and measures legislating for a “financial market infrastructure sandbox”, which the Treasury says will be “an emblem of the forward-looking approach the UK is determined to take”. Good luck to whoever at the Royal Mint has to explain all this to Her Majesty…

Two SNP branches in Angus have been told they must return the £10,000 grants they each received in coronavirus support, after the local council finally enforced government rules that political parties should be ineligible for public funding. The Arbroath and Montrose branches successfully applied for cash back in July, with SNP councillor Alex King claiming ‘the rules at the outset did not state that the local branch offices of political parties were not entitled to receive business support grant‘. Considering the Scottish government’s guidelines always stated that “no part of the grant shall be used to fund any activity or material which […] appears to be designed to affect support for a political party”, Guido isn’t sure how any of this happened…

In any case, Guido suggests there’s a lesson to be learned here for the parties south of the border. New Freedom of Information documents have revealed that 22 local branches of English parties also claimed £10,000 grants by taking advantage of the looser application guidelines set by the Treasury. Conservative branches claimed by far the most cash, accepting a whopping £150,000 of taxpayers’ money across 15 Conservative Associations, with 7 Constituency Labour Parties taking in a total sum of £70,000. So far, only two Conservative branches and one Labour branch have returned their grants…