When Philip Hammond was transport secretary, the bicycling photo opportunities favoured by David Cameron were not his style: his favourite way to get about, he admitted, was at the wheel of his own Jag.
So perhaps it should have been no surprise that Hammond, who must now steer Britain’s economy through the most uncertain period since Lehman Brothers collapsed in the autumn of 2008, chose a motoring metaphor to explain why he has no intention of going on a spending splurge.
With the government preparing to trigger article 50, the formal process for leaving the European Union, in mid-March, Hammond said he was determined to ensure there was enough “gas in the tank” for the journey ahead.
This language – and another metaphor, about not going on a spending spree just because the bank’s increased your credit card limit – was aimed as much at his own backbenchers as the great British public.
The Treasury has been pleasantly surprised at the resilience of the economy since the referendum result last year; but there are amber warning signs flashing all over the dashboard: slowing consumer spending, spluttering business investment, and rapidly rising inflation as a result of the depreciation of the pound, that will eat into living standards.
Hammond deliberately created some headroom for himself in the autumn statement by abandoning the most rigid aspects of George Osborne’s spending rules – and pledged to spend more on a series of productivity-boosting projects to ensure the economy is in a better shape to weather the storms ahead.
But some Conservative backbenchers have taken Hammond’s less doctrinaire attachment to austerity as a green light to protest about some aspects of the ongoing cuts.
Some of the rebels are familiar faces to veterans of the battles against George Osborne’s most draconian welfare cuts – South Cambridgeshire MP Heidi Allen, for example, about whom some in Westminster mutter that, like the vocal europhile Anna Soubry, she has accidentally ended up in the wrong party.
But others are usually loyal backbenchers, who are fully signed up to the project of balancing the government’s books, but concerned about the way the burden of austerity is shared.
Chris Philp, the Croydon South MP, is no closet lefty, but was one of the MPs who confronted the chancellor about swingeing business rate rises, helping to prompt a pledge of extra help from Sajid Javid.
Plymouth MP Johnny Mercer is regarded as a rising star on the Tory side of the house; but has campaigned vocally about the lack of funding for social care, including as part of a cross-party committee calling for the government to look again at the issue.
These restive backbenchers are indicative of Theresa May’s more fraught relationship with some parts of her own party. Brexiteers are delighted with her tough approach to the upcoming negotiations; but centrists are more anxious – particularly those who hold remain-voting seats where the Liberal Democrats are strong.
But concerns about austerity are also being voiced more noisily because, almost seven years into the cuts programme and with no end in sight, the cumulative effect on some public services, particularly where demand is rising rapidly, is beginning to be felt severely.
And after backbench rebels, with help from the Lords, saw off elements of George Osborne’s tax credit cuts, and forced the government not to look for fresh savings from the welfare bill, it has become politically possible to question aspects of the austerity plans, without appearing to be undermining the entire project.
Meanwhile, the dire standing of the Labour party in the polls means rebels feel emboldened to make their voices heard without undermining the sense that the Conservatives are very firmly in charge.
Hammond is expected to make a series of concessions to these voices on Wednesday – finding extra short-term cash for social care and to smooth the business rate rises, for example.
He will also lay the groundwork for tackling the longer-term challenge of funding the care for the elderly in a rapidly ageing society; and addressing the fact that the changing nature of the workforce, with a growing number of self-employed workers, is undermining the tax base.
On social care and a number of other challenges, the range of solutions available will depend on whether May’s concern for the “just about managing” extends to a willingness to make the “doing very nicely, thanks” pay a bit more.
With two budgets in what the Treasury is calling a “transition” year, a classic manoeuvre would be to set up a series of reviews and ask them to report by autumn, exerting the Treasury’s power to bang heads together across Whitehall.
But the main task at hand is Brexit. Hammond’s was one of the strongest voices arguing for the economic risks, and counselling a cautious approach; but May, who is much less intellectually reliant on him than Cameron on Osborne, or Tony Blair on Gordon Brown, chose to take the direct route, out of the single market and the customs union, rather than leave those options open.
That’s a cleaner approach; but it may mean the economic impact of the decision to leave will be felt sooner. The chancellor knows his biggest task in the next 12 months and beyond will be steering carefully through Brexit, and dissenting voices calling for fresh spending will die away if the economy starts to slide.
The clear message to his party he is likely to send on Wednesday is that he’s determined to ignore the squabbling in the back seats – and keep his eyes on the road ahead.
