One way to judge the viciousness of the backroom fights over a policy is by how much its announcement gets dragged out. On March 18th Liz Kendall, the welfare secretary, set out reforms to health-related benefits, designed to save £5bn ($6.5bn, 0.2% of GDP) a year and tackle a rise in worklessness. That was about as late as she could leave it, just a week before the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the fiscal watchdog, updates its forecasts. Without those cuts, the government would have strayed close to the edge of its own fiscal rules.