Oct 28, 2026 · 49 min · 11 segments
This week we're bringing you a special episode of Macrodose. We’ll be reacting to Chancellor John Healey’s first Autumn Budget, delivered this afternoon in his speech to parliament. To help break it…
Hannah PeakerGuestJames MeadwayHostChris HayesGuest
It is quite remarkable to think that they only came into power, what was it, the 20th of July, and they've had to get their teams in place, prepare a budget, and they managed to pull off what the previous administration couldn't, which is a fairly quiet run-up and to control the narrative.
There was also a very shallow observation, but quite a tonal difference, right? The kind of high energy and sort of anxiety around the previous budgets.
And I think they have managed to kind of... deal with expectations around energy, lower expectations around energy, and then actually pull something bigger out, which will improve the feeling around the cost of living.
But let's have a discussion about whether it will actually meaningfully change people's lives.
This is the £100 sort of winter payment that you're talking about? Yeah, exactly.
I think it's interesting to think of Healy, the job that he has to do by sort of making possible and like not completely too obviously untenable the level of ambition that Burnham has already laid out for him because, you know, Burnham has kind of two things going for him.
One is his, you know, down to earth, in touch with the regular person kind of persona, where he understands the frustrations that people have every day, just life in the UK generally.
So he's rolling back 40 years of neoliberalism, undoing Thatcherism, and that stuff is a lot
It is quite remarkable to think that they only came into power, what was it, the 20th of July, and they've had to get their teams in place, prepare a budget, and they managed to pull off what the previous administration couldn't, which is a fairly quiet run-up and to control the narrative.
There was also a very shallow observation, but quite a tonal difference, right? The kind of high energy and sort of anxiety around the previous budgets.
And I think they have managed to kind of... deal with expectations around energy, lower expectations around energy, and then actually pull something bigger out, which will improve the feeling around the cost of living.
But let's have a discussion about whether it will actually meaningfully change people's lives.
This is the £100 sort of winter payment that you're talking about? Yeah, exactly.
I think it's interesting to think of Healy, the job that he has to do by sort of making possible and like not completely too obviously untenable the level of ambition that Burnham has already laid out for him because, you know, Burnham has kind of two things going for him.
One is his, you know, down to earth, in touch with the regular person kind of persona, where he understands the frustrations that people have every day, just life in the UK generally.
So he's rolling back 40 years of neoliberalism, undoing Thatcherism, and that stuff is a lot
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