Chancellor of the Exchequer

Not exactly the amount of money you find at the back of your sofa unless you're a Russian oligarch.

And let's stay with the economic world now for more details on the British budget yesterday and support for Ukraine announced by the Chancellor.

So, welcome back on the airwaves, Lilian Fawcett, Senior Producer on Ukraine The Latest.

In your past life, Lillian, you used to work on The Daily Tea here at Telegraph.

Pretty impressive time, I have to say.

And it's...

this particular kind of beer called the Chancellor's Choice, which is John Healy's own beer.

I have read the reviews were not glowing about Chancellor's Choice, but he seemed to enjoy it.

Steady as she goes were the Chancellor's watchwords in yesterday's budget, with few big surprises and only modest commitments on tax and spending.

But is that what the country needs right now? Hello and welcome to this FT Live episode of the Political Fix podcast with me, Lucy Fisher.

For weeks, John Healey guarded his budget like a military secret, with only the odd leak along the way.

So it was socialised in the market.

The markets were ready for it.

And as a result, as someone I said in our coverage today, the Chancellor bought the markets into submission.

Yes.

That was a nice line.

Statesman.

John Healey has delivered his first budget as Chancellor, promising breathing space for households and businesses as the war in the Middle East drives up energy and borrowing costs.

There's an £100 energy payment for 20 million households, a temporary doubling of the bank's surcharge, higher gambling taxes and business rates relief for the high street.

Fiscal headroom has fallen to £15 billion and the big decisions on defence and welfare have been pushed back to next year.

Was it a cautious budget for a difficult moment or a missed opportunity for a government that promised radical change? I'm Anoush Shakelian, and this is The Politics Show from The New Statesman.

I'm joined first today by journalist and economist Duncan Weldon to discuss the economics, and later by our political editor Alva Ray to discuss the politics.

So let's go through the main things that the Chancellor actually announced.

These are the headline measures.

Mariana Mazzucato, professor of economics at UCL, who influenced the Keir Starmer government.

How do you react to Chancellor John Healey downing that pint?

I don't think it's important.

Fair enough.

Delivered to the British people by this Labour Government.

I commend this statement to the House.

During an entire afternoon of commentary, I didn't hear anyone, except the Chancellor, that is, acknowledge just how much of a bin fire the global environment is right now.

Everyone appears to think they should be taxed less and helped more.

But first, Labour MPs cheered John Healey's maiden budget on Wednesday afternoon.

But barely 24 hours later, the Chancellor had to defend his plans in the face of criticism that he hadn't done enough to tackle the cost of living or deal with the two big issues of welfare and defence.

After John Healy told the BBC he wanted to spend less on benefits, Downing Street said the government was not setting a target or timetable for when the welfare bill would fall.

Opening the second day of the budget debate, the Conservative's shadow Chancellor, Andrew Griffith, said the budget hadn't addressed the big challenges facing the country.

Britain has a debt problem.

Britain has a defence problem.

Britain has a growth problem.

And apparently, we learnt yesterday, there is nothing the Chancellor can do.

That meant the government is facing higher borrowing.

The Chancellor took the reasonable choice to accept that higher borrowing, basically to absorb the effect of that shock.

That is reasonable, but not costless.

That higher borrowing will cost us money.

The Chancellor also has a cost of living package, the most notable part of that being £100 going to households living in council tax band A to D properties.

But since we are seeing projections for energy prices that look like they're going up by a lot in winter, it will still be very tough for many households.

Having seen the numbers, I can't stop thinking of Game of Thrones and the winter is coming slogan.

Broadly, we should think the OBR in the short term thinks that real GDP growth is going to be less than it previously expected, though will recover back in the medium term, higher inflation, higher interest rates, and so on.

We should probably start preparing to deal with that.

That was not on the cards from John Healey, the Chancellor, yesterday in his maiden budget.

Well, we're going to be talking about that throughout the show.

I want to hear from you here at Talk, the Home of Common Sense, whether you're listening on DB Plus Radio or watching on YouTube, what you make of it all.

I want to know particularly about the fact that stealth taxes, yet again, those income tax thresholds being frozen pretty much for the next decade, biggest stealth tax rise in history.

We are going to have taxes going up on working people, despite what the 2024 Labour manifesto said.

And again, once again, abject failure to deal with welfare and abject failure to fund defence of the realm, even though the Chancellor is the very man who resigned as Defence Secretary only a saying that on the present government spending plans, we could not keep the country safe.

Right, Philip Ingram.