Further nuance: the UK government also ruled out trying to regain some of that expenditure on energy subsidies by increasing taxes on relevant energy company profits.

And whilst the fiscal impact of the top rate tax cut (or indeed not introducing energy company windfall taxes) may not have been that huge relative to the energy subsidy, the signal sent by the the triumphal announcements that borrowing to cut taxes would solve problems was that the government wasn't just making emergency funds available to resolve a crisis, but has ceased to care about balancing their budget or inflation and doesn't really know what it's doing.