Liz Truss seems to have learnt nothing from her humiliation

The prime minister vows to press ahead with a benefits cut opposed by many of her MPs, including in her cabinet, writes John Rentoul

I think Truss is heading for defeat on this, one way or another (EPA)

The hung parliament analogy is essential to understanding what will happen next. Liz Truss is in effect leading a minority government, in a House of Commons in which the Rishi Sunak Party holds the balance of power.

She had to abandon the cut in the top tax rate because she didn’t have the votes in parliament to legislate for it. She is hoping to press ahead with a cut in the real value of some benefits because that is a decision the government can make without risking defeat in a vote of MPs.

Some disability benefits are required by law to go up in line with inflation, so those increases will go ahead because the government would have to change the law to reduce them. She would not be able to do that.

We will find out on 19 October what the inflation rate was in September, which will decide how much these benefits will rise by in April. The increase will be about 10 per cent, so it will make a big difference. All the more so because the last increase, in April this year, was much lower than the rate of inflation by then.

The uprating of other benefits, however, is decided by the government every year. These include most universal credit (and the earlier means-tested benefits and tax credits that it is replacing) and child benefit. The statutory instrument making these changes has to be approved by parliament, but the way it is done means that the choice facing MPs is either the government’s increase or no increase at all.

That is why the Daily Mail reports that Truss “remains determined to press ahead with uprating benefits in line with earnings”, rather than prices. She is reported to argue that it would be unfair for most claimants to receive a bigger uplift than the workers whose taxes fund their payments.

It is not an argument that convinces the Rishi Sunak Party. It doesn’t even convince Penny Mordaunt and Robert Buckland in her own cabinet. Other cabinet ministers, including Chloe Smith, who is in charge of benefits, and Jacob Rees-Mogg, who is one of Truss’s strongest supporters, are said to be queasy about it.

As well they might be. Because the real reason for wanting to make the cut is that Truss is desperate to make up some ground for her disastrous mistake in cutting taxes by even more than she promised during her leadership campaign. She needs the £4bn or so that could be saved by this cut to make a small start in filling the huge hole in the public finances that she and Kwasi Kwarteng have opened up.

It is not obvious yet how opponents of the benefit cut might stop it, but if we have learnt anything about parliamentary procedure over the past three years, it is that, if there is a majority in the Commons that feels strongly enough about something, a way will be found. I think Truss is heading for defeat on this, one way or another.

An anonymous insider told the Daily Mail: “We’ve got to win this because our opponents are playing whack-a-mole. If we give way they will just move on to the next thing.”

To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment sign up to our free weekly Voices Dispatches newsletter by clicking here

Well, they will probably give way anyway, and their opponents will move on to the next thing. Or they might even do the next thing first, which will be to force the government to publish the Office for Budget Responsibility’s interim report, which will be delivered to the Treasury tomorrow.

If that report says that the government is unlikely to meet its target of getting debt falling as a share of national income, that will be a problem. The markets reacted badly enough to being taken by surprise by the mini-Budget; once they see their instinctive fear that the tax cuts make the public finances unsustainable written down in cold, independently estimated numbers, they may react badly again.

Truss is going to be “playing whack-a-mole” as long as she tries to stick with her tax cuts in the face of a parliament that won’t allow her to make spending cuts. She does not seem to realise that the only way she can ever move forward is by further retreat.