A budget is not just about the public finances. It is the annual economic set-piece where the government presents its broader aims and strategy. For a new administration especially, the first budget statement is a defining marker of its approach to running the country. It is where the promises hit the wall of financial reality.

In this respect, the first Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves budget in 2024 spotlighted their administration’s caution as well as its untrustworthiness. Ludicrously, the pair claimed to have been unaware of the abysmal state of Britain’s finances and sought to blame their predecessors for their own spending decisions. Reeves increased taxes by about £40 billion despite a manifesto that had tried to rid Labour of its reputation as a tax-raising party. Her budget announcements set taxes on a path to record highs, putting paid to her earlier pro-growth rhetoric.

Andy Burnham and John Healey have now had their opportunity. The overriding message in this week’s budget was ‘more of the same’. This was a continuity budget of more taxes, more spending and more borrowing. So much for Burnham’s promise on his first day in Downing Street to bring forward the biggest changes in politics and economics in the past 40 years. His first-day pledge was that this transition ‘starts now’. Well, not quite now. Nor in his first 100 days. Nor in his chancellor’s first budget.

Rather than overturning the post-1980s ‘failed consensus’ that they have been going on about, this budget demonstrated that the Burnham-Healey duo is pursuing exactly the same managerial orthodoxies as those of the past four decades – the form of managerial politics that evades solving problems and takes every opportunity to kick them down the road.

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