The U-turn of March

Today is the Ides of March - the anniversary of Caesar's assassination. What got stabbed today was the government's proposals to reduce the differentials between NICs for employed and self-employed people, a policy which was dropped.

I feel rather sorry for Rory Stewart MP who was defending the policy on live TV when he was told on air about the U-turn.

A certain number of government U-turns when they realise that they cannot get a policy through are an almost inevitable consequence of a the party in power only having a small majority.

In fact, if a government has a very small majority and does not occasionally have to U-turn on things it's a bad sign, because it indicates they either have a parliamentary party consisting of robots who never argue or question, or else they are not making any attempt to deal with any really difficult issues.

If Britain had an opposition leader capable of knocking the skin off the proverbial rice pudding the PM would probably have had a difficult time at Prime Minister's questions today.

Needless to say Jeremy Corbyn let the Theresa May off the hook.

You wonder how long even the Labour party can let this go on.

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