Hung up

According to the Guardian, David Cameron has established a special unit to prepare for a hung parliament, amid growing fears among senior Tories that they will struggle to win an overall Commons majority.

A senior bod working for shadow chancellor George Osborne is taking charge of the post-election preparations. These will involve an emergency budget to be held within 50 days of the election – a move already heralded in the Telegraph – and which would form the springboard to a second poll if the Tories were the largest party in a hung parliament.

The Conservatives will be under pressure to disclose whether they will also abandon a planned National Insurance rise announced by Labour last year but they have apparently yet to work out how this could be funded. Presumably an answer will be available once the party has addressed its own borrowing problems.