A hat-trick of U turns – and this is the most awkward of the lot

Ministers argue their decision on setting up an investigation into the scale of child sexual abuse by men often of Pakistani heritage came about after they had commissioned a considered piece of work by Dame Louise Casey – and that was a pragmatic sequencing of decision making, albeit under considerable political pressure.

But the other two are more straight forward U-turns: decisions of the government’s own making they later concluded were deeply unpopular.

This latest one, on the welfare state, comes after Sir Keir Starmer has endured his bumpiest days yet in Downing Street.

He was publicly humiliated by coach-loads of his own MPs in a well-executed campaign while he was out of the country at the Nato summit in the Netherlands.

The scale of it, and its remorseless growth over the last 48…