It is true that abandoning plans to raise national insurance contributions (NICs) for some self-employed workers means the numbers no longer add up, so Philip Hammond has an arithmetical problem on his hands, which will become a revenue-raising problem. And it is the ever-increasing difficulty in finding ways to take money from people without whipping up a political storm that has landed the government in this mess in the first place. For all that, the problem extends beyond the finances.
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