Oct 21, 2026 · 13 min · 5 segments
On this week's Macrodose, James Meadway looks at what treasury sources have begun trailing of next week’s budget (0:38), Microsoft pulling out of a data centre project in Essex (5:47), and how falling…
Our first story this week picks up on some of the scant number of leaks before the budget offered by the inevitable Treasury sources.
The contents of the budget are supposed to be secret, supposedly to avoid information coming out that could move markets, although in reality the secrecy is also there to stoke up the maximum possible media impact on the day, whatever the Chancellor says has more cut through if it's genuinely not already known.
But the temptation for chancellors, or in reality their little helpers, to drip-feed information despite the rules has always been there, for similar media management reasons, in the main, killing off speculation in one direction or trying to set up a friendly framing for the budget in the other.
Under Rachel Reeves, this process tended to go somewhat haywire, with pre-budget speculation about the enormous size of plans, tax rates or whatever, mixing in with the drip-feeding of specific information about budget plans to create something of an unstable mixture in the weeks leading up to the actual event.
If nothing else, Chancellor John Healey has taken a very different approach with the Treasury, unusually tight-lipped about the budget's contents over the last month or so.
Whatever the differences in presentation, however, this is all set to be very familiar from Reeves' last budget, a process of trying to do the barest minimum that could be got away with to keep one's own supporters happy, while simultaneously attempting to minimise upset from the blessed financial markets.
The Times led on Tuesday morning with the news that, I quote, John Healey has rejected calls to increase capital gains tax in his first budget amid concerns that doing so would damage economic growth and hinder investment.
Senior allies of Andy Burnham, including several cabinet ministers, have been pressing for a rise in capital gains tax on the sale of second homes, shares and other assets to help repair the public finances.
However, the Chancellor has ruled this out after warnings that it could ultimately cost the government money if wealthy individuals left the UK or deferred selling assets.
This follows the earlier killing, via a briefing, of the more radical idea of equalising capital gains and income taxes.
The idea of some form of bank profit tax, with banks making record profits on the back of nothing more than interest rate rises, is still alive, at least if leaks over the last weekend are to be believed.
However, even here, the proposals for a few billions here and there fall a long way short of the £19bn windfall tax proposed by Positive Money, modelled on the existing North Sea windfall tax.
A decade ago, George Osborne did exactly the same thing with subsidies to solar panel producers here, meaning a decade later this country has precisely no capacity to produce the things on any scale.
It's absolutely standard Treasury brain thinking, and that's why there's such a clear continuity between two obviously opposed chancellors.
Rhetorically, Andy Burnham identifies some of this when he talks about 40 years of neoliberal failure, but nothing his government has done so far suggests that policy will match the rhetoric.
The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter once purportedly commented that the budget is the skeleton of the state, stripped of all ideologies.
Take away the Andy Burnham feel-good fluff, and what we're currently looking at is the very skeleton of the British state, a process of endless muddling and compromises that somehow always land to the narrow benefit of the wealthiest against the wider public interest.
This isn't going to end neoliberalism, or at least not on the terms that Burnham has defined it.
But it's not even going to deal with the succession of very immediate crises now bearing down on the government.
The sharp rise in the off-gem household energy price cap due in January to potentially over £2,000.
The significant rising dangers of an AI bubble bursting, with its consequences most obvious for the US economy, but therefore also the wider world.
Our first story this week picks up on some of the scant number of leaks before the budget offered by the inevitable Treasury sources.
The contents of the budget are supposed to be secret, supposedly to avoid information coming out that could move markets, although in reality the secrecy is also there to stoke up the maximum possible media impact on the day, whatever the Chancellor says has more cut through if it's genuinely not already known.
But the temptation for chancellors, or in reality their little helpers, to drip-feed information despite the rules has always been there, for similar media management reasons, in the main, killing off speculation in one direction or trying to set up a friendly framing for the budget in the other.
Under Rachel Reeves, this process tended to go somewhat haywire, with pre-budget speculation about the enormous size of plans, tax rates or whatever, mixing in with the drip-feeding of specific information about budget plans to create something of an unstable mixture in the weeks leading up to the actual event.
If nothing else, Chancellor John Healey has taken a very different approach with the Treasury, unusually tight-lipped about the budget's contents over the last month or so.
Whatever the differences in presentation, however, this is all set to be very familiar from Reeves' last budget, a process of trying to do the barest minimum that could be got away with to keep one's own supporters happy, while simultaneously attempting to minimise upset from the blessed financial markets.
The Times led on Tuesday morning with the news that, I quote, John Healey has rejected calls to increase capital gains tax in his first budget amid concerns that doing so would damage economic growth and hinder investment.
Senior allies of Andy Burnham, including several cabinet ministers, have been pressing for a rise in capital gains tax on the sale of second homes, shares and other assets to help repair the public finances.
However, the Chancellor has ruled this out after warnings that it could ultimately cost the government money if wealthy individuals left the UK or deferred selling assets.
This follows the earlier killing, via a briefing, of the more radical idea of equalising capital gains and income taxes.
The idea of some form of bank profit tax, with banks making record profits on the back of nothing more than interest rate rises, is still alive, at least if leaks over the last weekend are to be believed.
However, even here, the proposals for a few billions here and there fall a long way short of the £19bn windfall tax proposed by Positive Money, modelled on the existing North Sea windfall tax.
A decade ago, George Osborne did exactly the same thing with subsidies to solar panel producers here, meaning a decade later this country has precisely no capacity to produce the things on any scale.
It's absolutely standard Treasury brain thinking, and that's why there's such a clear continuity between two obviously opposed chancellors.
Rhetorically, Andy Burnham identifies some of this when he talks about 40 years of neoliberal failure, but nothing his government has done so far suggests that policy will match the rhetoric.
The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter once purportedly commented that the budget is the skeleton of the state, stripped of all ideologies.
Take away the Andy Burnham feel-good fluff, and what we're currently looking at is the very skeleton of the British state, a process of endless muddling and compromises that somehow always land to the narrow benefit of the wealthiest against the wider public interest.
This isn't going to end neoliberalism, or at least not on the terms that Burnham has defined it.
But it's not even going to deal with the succession of very immediate crises now bearing down on the government.
The sharp rise in the off-gem household energy price cap due in January to potentially over £2,000.
The significant rising dangers of an AI bubble bursting, with its consequences most obvious for the US economy, but therefore also the wider world.
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