Chancellor Rachel Reeves is due to unveil the crucial three-year settlements for departments in just over a week, amid mounting pressure on the public finances.
The Deputy Prime Minister used a TV interview to suggest pensioners should be told within weeks whether and when they would see their payments restored.
Friends of Angela Rayner - who demanded soak-the-rich economic policies - say she believes that there is a misogynistic, anti-Northern streak in senior figures in Downing Street .
Senior Labour figures said friends of the Deputy Prime Minister invited them to help create a 'think-tank' which would 'promote a more confident centre-Left programme within government'.
In a series of increasingly heated meetings, the Deputy Prime Minister is said to have complained 'forcibly' about proposals to squeeze spending on housing.