Chris Mason: Life under the 'don't know yet' government

Right now, we person a don't cognize yet government.

When Prime Minister Rishi Sunak oregon his squad are asked astir their plans, their views, their policies, the reply to astir immoderate enquiry amounts to them saying they are not definite yet.

Those promises made connected that sunny hurtle astir the municipality halls and accumulation centres of the UK successful August, arsenic helium fought a losing enactment run against Liz Truss, present person a alternatively looser status.

Not needfully vanished forever, but they are not being committed to, either.

Downing Street is seeking to marque the lawsuit its outlook present is simply a pragmatic one.

They person unexpectedly inherited precocious bureau successful the blink of an oculus and the teeth of economical calamity and they're pausing to enactment retired what connected world to bash next.

After Liz Truss's "shock and awe" blitz of argumentation announcements rapidly became the awe and daze for her of them imploding, the caller PM and furniture are seeking to marque a virtuousness of stepping alternatively tentatively, alternatively gingerly.

But that means, close present astatine least, we cognize precise small successful concrete, circumstantial presumption astir what the authorities wants to do, fto unsocial volition do.

Anything with the merest hint of economics, oregon budgets (ie astir everything) is stonewalled with a plea to hold for the Autumn Statement.

That is simply a fortnight away.

There is governmental and economical logic to this: determination are large and hard decisions to marque beforehand, and they instrumentality time.

But successful the meantime, tons of non-answers.

As for those summertime promises, the premier minister's property caput told america the authorities was "considering each of them" and asking "what is deliverable and what is possible".

"We are committed to the sentiment of them," she added.

Inevitably, we reporters asked what is the constituent of making a committedness if it isn't deliverable?

In response, we were told they were promises made "a fewer months ago" and that "the context, particularly economically, had changed importantly since that time."

We can't bash what we wanted to bash due to the fact that of Liz Truss, they seemed to mean, adjacent if they didn't say.

And yes, the economical circumstances person changed and Mr Sunak is hopeless to beryllium seen to beryllium measured, cautious, patient, and thinking.

Everything her critics said Liz Truss was not.

So what of the 2019 Conservative predetermination manifesto, truthful often referred to by the premier minister?

It is, aft all, that papers that underpinned the argumentation prospectus of the winning Tory run astatine the past wide election.

The premier curate is committed to the "promise of the manifesto".

Which is not rather the aforesaid happening arsenic the idiosyncratic promises wrong it.

Again, the authorities tin constituent to however overmuch the satellite has changed successful the past 3 years - not slightest the pandemic.

And for the adjacent week oregon 2 they'll proceed to thin connected variations of "we don't cognize yet".

But that enactment volition lone past truthful long.