Every Sunday night, the chancellor, John Healey, slips next door to Andy Burnham’s Downing Street flat where they order a curry and chew over politics on the prime minister’s sofa. An Indian takeaway is one of the totemic issues in British politics, a “treat” fewer people can afford, like a pint at the football or soft play for the kids. Healey has promised to give Britain’s battered consumers “breathing space” in next week’s budget, but three months after taking on the job, the new chancellor also hopes to buy himself time.
Key decisions will be postponed until a spending review at some point next year – including when the UK will spend 3% of gross domestic product on defence: the issue that prompted Healey’s resignation as defence secretary in June, hastening Keir Starmer’s departure. The weekly curry summit is a chance, as some aides see it, to separate Healey from cautious Treasury officials, and get him to kick around the politics. With just a few days to go before the budget, every adviser and official remarks on how closely the prime minister is involved: not just in decision-making, but in the process and politics – unlike Starmer.
And that Sunday night is a bit of that – wrestling with some of Britain’s problems.” The budget on 28 October – and the public response – will set the course for what comes next. Much of the Burnham project depends on how it is received. That may not mean an imminent snap election, but few people believe Burnham will go longer than May 2028.
There will be another big presence in the budget – Rachel Reeves. More and more Labour strategists mention a growing gratitude to Healey’s Treasury predecessor, who had often been previously seen as a symbol of the party’s missteps. But from that point, now we can start to think about other priorities.” In Bangkok last week, where Healey attended the International Monetary Fund annual meetings, Reeves’s tax and spending plans meant the UK was praised as the only G7 country with a plan to tackle its budget deficit – and urged to “stay the course”.
The IMF also revised up its forecast for UK growth for 2026 – reflecting the economy’s better-than-expected performance, despite the effects of the Iran war. Healey’s presence in Thailand was brief. He eschewed the public discussions on the state of the global economy that Reeves enjoyed, leaving speechmaking to the foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, who took the opportunity of the global gathering to set out Britain’s plans for its presidency of the G20 next year.
Healey, who as ever travelled with a bottle of HP sauce in his luggage, managed to find time to film an excruciating social media video with Miliband, riding a tuk-tuk through the hectic night-time streets of the Thai capital while discussing their favourite snacks. Back in the UK, he has told Treasury staff that when he is drafting the budget he is thinking about people in the small towns and villages in his constituency in South Yorkshire. But there is a particular character to those smaller towns – home to small businesses and self-employed sole traders, rather than big industry or public services.
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