Rebecca Tidy knew she should have felt like her life had just been made a little easier. She had, in theory, just been given a tax break. But as the chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, finished giving his mini-budget in the Commons nine days ago, Tidy was left with a deep sense of unease. The single mother who earns £24,000 a year as a writer would be about £260 a year better off with the 1 percentage point cut to basic rate income tax and the 1.25 percentage point reduction in national insurance.
She would also benefit from the new price cap on energy, which means that bills for her three-bedroom cottage in St Mawes, Cornwall, will no longer double to £300 a month.
Any optimism dissipated
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