Budget 2026: Healey carves out political breathing space for Andy Burnham

If John Healey s looking for a political narrative to frame his Budget, perhaps he could borrow from AI behemoth Anthropic. The Claude-maker s extraordinary IPO prospectus insists that for all the risks and uncertainty surrounding the technology and economics of AI, their approach will be bold but sane. In fact, the full quote is that “in general, we will aim to be bold but sane, allowing for a few periods where they could be either timid or mad. On second thoughts, perhaps Healey should ignore them. But how will he present his red box debut? George Osborne is credited as being the most political chancellor since Gordon Brown (which can be taken as a criticism or a compliment) meaning he understood the importance of using fiscal and economic decisions to force arguments, define the terms of debate and underline the governing mission. What we ve heard from Healey so far is that he wants to deliver a breathing space Budget. This sounds to me like more of a holding st