What the commentators said

For the first time, Theresa May has found herself “on the wrong side of right-wing papers that previously adored her”, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. And her climbdown tells us much about her tricky relationship with her Chancellor. Rather than stand shoulder to shoulder with him, her team immediately tried to shift responsibility for the Budget shambles onto the Treasury. There were whispers that “Spreadsheet Phil” lacked the “political antennae” needed for the Chancellor’s job. In vain did Hammond’s supporters explain that he’d been put under pressure by No. 10 to find extra cash to buy off trouble in areas such as social care. And now he faces a hole in his Budget amounting to £2bn over four years, said James Forsyth in The Spectator. What makes it all the more humiliating is that he’d made a great show of telling Tory backbenchers they could defend his NI increase “secure in the knowledge that the Government wouldn’t change tack”. His credibility as Chancellor has taken a major hit, said James Kirkup in The Daily Telegraph. “Authority will drain from him like blood from a wound.”

It’s what we’re learning about the PM that worries me, said Rachel Sylvester in The Times. So far, Labour’s implosion “has disguised her flaws”, but this run-in with No. 11 confirms the impression of a woman dangerously low on social skills. She has needlessly antagonised SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon with a patronising put-down – “politics is not a game”; she has failed to build relationships with EU leaders. For the coming battles in Edinburgh and Brussels, she’ll need to find a lot more “emotional intelligence”. No, what this really tells us about May, said Stephen Bush in New Statesman, is that she has only a small Commons majority, and “very few die-hard allies who will go to bat for her when the going gets tough”. That her government has had to retreat on an issue that was broadly popular, and backed by experts across the political spectrum “doesn’t bode well for its freedom to strike a Brexit deal that works”.