Chris Mason: The Budget is imminent as tricky things pile up for Burnham
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Chris Mason: The Budget is imminent as tricky things pile up for Burnham
By Chris Mason
Political editor
Published 1 hour ago
This feels like the week where the rubber hits the road for the prime minister's new government. It is now 100 days since Andy Burnham arrived in Downing Street from Buckingham Palace and began to assemble his cabinet. Three months later, Labour MPs are more chipper, the party's poll ratings have notched up, and the tone and style of government feels very different from when Sir Keir Starmer was in charge.
Coming next, though, there are a whole series of crunchy decisions and trade offs – economic and political – some of which are inevitable and some of which Burnham has decided to lean into.
First up, the Budget
You would be forgiven for only just clocking there is a Budget this week. There are three reasons for this year's feeling like a comparatively low key affair: it is happening a month earlier than a year ago, squeezing the space available for briefings, leaks and speculation. It is considerably smaller in big picture terms – in other words the scale of tax rises – so limiting the noisy talk in advance about who might get clobbered. And the new chancellor John Healey and his team have sought to make a virtue out of not saying very much beforehand.
But woe betide suggesting to anyone involved in assembling this Budget that it is a steady-as-she-goes, nothing-to-see-here thing. Every Budget is a big deal, goes the argument run past me by some. They don't all have to be visible from space in the way some recent ones have been – think Kwasi Kwarteng in one direction followed by Jeremy Hunt in the other four years ago, or Rachel Reeves in the last two years.
Cost of living support for some, help for entrepreneurs, more financial clout for mayors in England and an economy now recuperating will be themes for Healey on Wednesday.
You will be the judge of this Budget's scale – its value, or the lack of it to you – before long.
Next, Brexit – and our relationship with the EU
In recent years, many but not all politicians have approached the issue of Brexit like you or I might approach an electric fence. Avoid getting too close and, if needs must, climb over it gingerly. Burnham has no such reservations: he has repeatedly said in the last few weeks, let's talk about Brexit. He reckons the current deal between the UK and European Union isn't good enough.
Over the weekend he went further, suggesting he wanted an honest discussion about freedom of movement. Countries in the EU's single market have to sign up to freedom of movement, which lets people live and work in all the countries that are part of it. Given how big a deal immigration was for many in the EU referendum in 2016, even reopening the question of freedom of movement feels like a big deal.
On Monday morning, the prime minister appeared to add more detail, suggesting freedom of movement would only return in the UK having been sanctioned in a referendum. Later, though, his team wouldn't repeat that, instead emphasizing that Burnham wants to start a broad based conversation – without at this point committing to any possible outcome.
Some of his MPs felt this was a self-inflicted tangle he could have done without. Others see merit in Burnham's penchant for narrating his thoughts and possible direction publicly, thereby using his position to seek to shape the political narrative.