Is Britain having a collective nervous breakdown? While almost two-thirds of voters say the country is heading in the wrong direction, the government has gone into a tailspin.

An embattled prime minister and his allies have been rushing around to put out a fire they recklessly lit by briefing against one of their best ministers. And a chancellor who’d already delayed her Budget, supposedly to allow for sober reflection on what she laughably continues to call “pro-growth” policies, has just U-turned at the last minute on her own previous U-turn on income tax.

It is very unusual for a chancellor to make such a big change to a Budget so late, but it’s unprecedented to do so in the full public glare. In 2012 the Conservatives quietly hatched plans to cut the top rate of tax from 50 per cent to 40 per cent.