There are two ways of looking at it. A pathetic little fail, or the beginnings of the Burnham revolution. For sure there was nothing much to see here. But on one level that’s not to be wondered at, given the violent headwinds that the imminent midterm elections in America are widely expected to whip up. As our Political Correspondent Peter Spencer reports, when it comes to messing us Brits around, the US of A has form.
Chancellor John Healey’s inaugural and hopelessly over-speculated about budget certainly did manage the largest number but smallest scale of measures, for decades.
No complaints, mind, about the one-off hundred quid payout to folk on council tax bands A to D to help them cope with their energy bills. Nor over the scrapping of gas standing charges and the green power top-up.
And few of us will lose sleep over so much of that being paid for by taking more off banks, landlords, gambling companies and vape shops.
But the giveaways won’t add up to a hill of beans when set against the big hikes coming everyone’s way in the cost of just about everything. Largely thanks the orange man in the White House. More of him in a minute.
For now it’s worth exploring not cause but effect. In the shape of what two of the nation’s most highly respected think tanks make of the way things are going.
They both paint a thoroughly miserable picture. One saying the 2020s will be the worst decade ever for real income growth. And the other predicting that for most of us it’ll actually drop for the next few years.
Happy days? Er, not.
Against all that, the message that Healey and Andy Burnham are trying to get out is that they do have a plan to make things better. Just hold on to your hats, everyone, you’ll see.
In essence, this boils down to a thorough restructuring of the way Whitehall works, to enable risk-taking entrepreneurs to do their stuff. In the process making the rest of us richer, as well as themselves.
Indeed, there’s a hint of that in an idea they’re said to be working on to get round one of the biggest bugbears so strikingly swerved in the budget. Defence spending.
Healey’s problem is that hardly anyone wants to fork out for it, even though it’s so obviously got to ramp up big time, given how vile the Russian regime’s become – and how sketchy American backup’s looking.
Only last week the Kremlin’s brute-in-chief was praising to the rooftops Trump’s on-off bestie Elon Musk for making it harder for Ukraine to defend itself. Makes you wonder whose side the Yanks are on.
Anyway, the wheeze the Treasury’s looking at is getting private companies to shell out for the vital military hardware – instead of dipping its hands into taxpayers’ pockets.
Everybody happy then, if it works. Certainly did for a while when Tony Blair’s lot got new schools and hospitals built via the same route.
Only drawback was that it cost a fair bit more in the long run, which is after all why lenders put up the cash in the first place.
The Defence Secretary insists it won’t pan out that way this time. But he won’t be the first or the last minister to end up looking rather silly. So we’ll see.
But, more broadly, Healey’s post budget pitch is, to paraphrase Neil Armstrong’s iconic line when he first set foot on the moon: ‘One small step for me, one giant leap for the rest of you.’
Once again, we’ll see. Has to be said though that the astronaut’s experience harks back to earlier and happier times, when the Americans were more into crossing new horizons than blowing them up.
You’d think Donald Trump might have figured out by now that starting wars, and maybe restarting them, is a less than surefire way of getting the Nobel Peace Prize.
But he all too clearly hasn’t, as he’s threatening in his usual not understated way to start beating seven bells out of Iran again as soon as he’s got those pesky elections out of the way.
Given how hard his harebrained escapade is hitting motorists and shoppers in America, as well as everywhere else, including here, he’s expected to lose control of one if not both arms of government.
In normal times that would rein in a president. But everything’s so utterly abnormal it’ll be so surprise if, instead of taking the hint, he lashes out like a cornered animal.
Already he’s gearing up to challenge any voting outcomes that he doesn’t like. Same as when he lost out to Joe Biden back in 2020.
Difference being he’ll be in a position to do more than just egg on his violent supporters who attacked the Capitol. This time he’ll have the US security apparatus under his command.
He’ll also fight by fair means or foul the official inquiries expected to be launched all over the place into the billions of dollars he and his little gang are squirrelling away.
It’s reported that last year alone he managed to trouser well over two billion dollars. If all else fails he should just about be able to retire on that. At a pinch.
Such a sorry contrast to UK’s strapped-for-cash finances. So much of which is all down to him. And which he could be on the point of making that bit worse.
This in turn may help explain why the budget was so risk-averse. If the Iran war does kick off once more then our economy will be hit hard yet again. Thus chucking all Healey’s carefully worked-out sums in the bin.
Worth bearing in mind too that it’s not just Putin’s vicious invasion of Ukraine nearly five years ago that caused energy prices to spike over here. The 2008 bank crash caused by the Americans also did untold damage.
The worldwide panic that it caused, and the Tory-led government’s equally panicky austerity programme that came in its wake, dealt the British economy a blow from which it’s never fully recovered.
Still, it’s not like nothing nice ever wafts across The Pond.
Take this story in the Washington Post about vet Paul Bookbinder. Once, on a childhood camping holiday, he shared a few marshmallows he’d been roasting with a racoon.
And he’d never forget the generosity the little creature showed. Instead of just sticking around in the hope of more treats, it rounded up its mates so they could all share the feast.
Scroll on to adulthood. Paul and his wife Sarah, who’d also decided at an early age that racoons were cute, now run their very own rehabilitation centre for them in Earlville, New York.
‘There’s an intelligence behind their eyes that, once you connect to that intelligence, it’s not like any other animal,’ Sarah said. ‘It takes your breath away.’
Since opening up they’ve helped, often saved the lives of, the best part of a thousand of them. Also pretty breathtaking.
But they wear their laurels lightly. ‘My mother has resigned herself to the fact that her grandchildren are mostly raccoons,’ Sarah says. With a wicked smile playing on her lips.
Watch Peter’s report at peterspencer.org
Peter Spencer has 40 years experience as a Political Correspondent in Westminster, working with London Broadcasting and Sky News. For more of his fascinating musings on the turbulent political landscape, follow him on Facebook & Twitter.