The Mail on Sunday

Phil calls in the murder squad

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I’M TOLD one of the reasons Philip Hammond managed to avoid any major Budget missteps was because he was subjected to an old-fashioned military-style ‘murder board’. According to a Minister who formerly served in the Armed Forces: ‘The idea came from some of us ex-Army guys. When you’re planning a major operation, you stress-test it by running a murder board. You get a group of junior officers to go over the plan and try to tear it to pieces. Then if it still looks viable after all that, you’re good to go.’ Earlier this year the Chancellor was forced into a humiliatin­g U-turn over a hike in National Insurance for the selfemploy­ed. ‘No one wanted to go through that again,’ my source explains, ‘so Phil was happy to sit down with a few backbenche­rs, run them through some of the ideas, and let them try to pick holes in them.’

Apparently we can expect this Blue Murder strategy to be used for other major announceme­nts.

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