Badenoch says 'double amputees run marathons' as she defends plan to slash disability benefits as part of £36bn welfare cuts

Good morning. It is quite easy for politicians to declare that they will cut the welfare bill by X amount – but much harder when they have to explain exactly who will lose out. This is summed up by a good anecdote about a former chancellor (Ken Clarke, according to some versions, but it could have been any of them), who gave this reply when asked for cuts that would save £1bn:

double quotation mark So, do you want one million people to lose £1,000 each, or 10 million people to lose £100 each?

Today Kemi Badenoch is giving a speech to launch a policy document, Welfare That Works, explaining how the Tories would cut welfare by £36bn. That’s 36 million people losing £1,000 each, according to the logic of our notional chancellor, although of course it is not quite as simple as that.…