Philip Hammond digs deep as he explains his NICs U-turn

It had been absolutely right to raise contributions, the chancellor said, which was why he was no longer going to do it

The phone call had come through just after eight in the morning while Phil "The Undertaker" Hammond was eating breakfast. It was the prime minister ordering him to bury Class 4 NICs. He had tried telling her that doing a U-turn on your only real budget measure less than a week after it had been announced made him and the government look hopelessly incompetent, but Theresa wasn't having any of it. The Tory backbenchers were on her back. The Daily Mail was on her back. And now she was on his back.

Six hours later The Undertaker rather sheepishly arrived in the Commons to try to explain how it was that, though he still absolutely stood by his budget because it was his budget that was his, he now wanted to fundamentally change it because although he hadn't broken any promises in the Conservative party manifesto, as that's not the sort of thing he would ever dream of doing, he had in fact broken the promises he had made in the Conservative party manifesto.

Related: Philip Hammond defends scrapping national insurance rise for the self-employed