The FT notes this morning that:
Chancellor John Healey will help first-time homebuyers, tackle high energy costs and announce a series of “everyday fixes” in Wednesday's Budget, amid warnings that family incomes could fall by between £440 and £770 over this parliament.
They added:
Healey is expected to focus limited Budget giveaways on easing the cost of living and helping small businesses. Allies say his overriding objective is to maintain fiscal discipline and to foster a fledgling economic recovery.
And as they also noted, leaving defence aside, the big Budget idea is to shift power and money from Westminster to the regions and nations of the UK. This is, apparently, key to Burnham's “theory of growth”.
This suggestion will apparently include the grant of new tax powers for mayors, with some business-rate retention for all mayors from next April and retained income tax from a year later.
What will happen as a result? Regional inequality will be embedded in the UK unless serious compensating financial measures are taken. Not all tax capacities are equal, of course. Unless that is allowed for, this measure is deeply dangerous.
And the interests of all those areas without mayors, of which there are a great many, will be profoundly prejudiced by this idea, which is, as this demonstrates, something very much less than a theory, and rather more a cobbled-together view lacking any serious intellectual foundations, let alone any inbuilt comprehension of social or economic justice.
The FT may be wrong, of course, but I suspect they are not. My sense that tomorrow's offering might represent a fiasco grows by the day.
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I feel that Mr Burnham and Mr Healey have sat in a pub and chatted about what they could do in the budget and the economy generally and lacking any understanding of how things work and without a credible policy framework have scrabbled around for ideas. “Lets give Mayors a share of income tax.” “Oh thats a good idea.”. “What about freezing fuel duty again.” “Oh yes that will help.” Neither of them seem to understand the implications. Cornwall (does not have a mayor), would have a low income tax take compared to Hertfordshire. As for the fuel duty freeze, that generally helps the affluent who travel more so is not a good idea. Great for someone with a second home in Cornwall who drives down from Sussex to their second home.
But we should not be surprised by these policies, thats what you get with 5th rate politicians.
Much to agree with
This is of course, exactly what regional mayors are FOR, devolving responsibility but not power or resources.
As for recent Burnham/Healey announcements about the “small stuff”, I agree with your analysis – it’s tinkering with the good but small stuff – deckchairs on Titanic – eg: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/oct/26/carers-allowance-cliff-edge-abolished-in-the-budget
Aparently Healey calls them “everyday fixes” – fixing small injustices but not the big ones like his fiscal rules, tax injustice and the household analogy.
>400 MPs could change this, but they choose not to.
Much to agree with
If I was to suggest something radical to help first – and second or third time house buyers, what about setting some targets for house price inflation and the Government getting the tools to make those targets happen?
The evidence suggests that if we had kept the Fuel Duty Escalator – a Conservative invention we would be driving more fuel efficient vehicles so would not be hit as hard by the current hike in oil prices.
The other suggestion following on from this would be that increased fuel duty could then be used as a ‘fuel price stabiliser’ so going up as fuel prices went down as happened recently then down as prices rise.
Not all mayors are created equal….
Here in Hull/East Yorkshire we have a complete political ingenue who is influenced by …. who knows…?
Certainly not fit to fill this new role by himself.
I view Burnham as the “Northern Starmer”. He accepts the market-based consensus, despite his nostalgic throwback to the 1970s. That’s the problem with the self-styled “King of the North”. I never watched Game of Thrones, but apparently there was a character in it called Robb Stark. He was the “King in the North”. Apparently it didn’t work out too well for him.