Andy Burnham surprised the pundits of Westminster by shrewdly appointing John Healey as Chancellor of the Exchequer yesterday. At 66, Healey is the oldest Chancellor on appointment since William Gladstone. He is experienced, solid and respectable.
Strangely, he resigned from the post of defence secretary, citing a difference of opinion from the Treasury. Political events move so quickly these days it’s remarkable to think this happened little more than five weeks ago. Now, he has been summoned to run the very department whose intransigence caused that resignation. He clearly needs to focus on delivering what he asked for as defence secretary. If he fails to do this, he will be seen as ineffectual and impotent.
Burnham has already outlined a generous flurry of spending pledges. Help for the “cost of living”, a cut in VAT on electricity bills, more council houses, more on social care. How will all these promises be paid for? We also know that the Labour backbenchers have absolutely no appetite to reduce welfare spending. So, more spending will likely have to be paid for by more taxes. Who will pay for these? As a matter of course, any chancellor has a tightrope to tread. He or she needs to be loyal to the prime minister, while at the same time maintaining a degree of independent judgement. A chancellor has to be close to the PM, but not too close. The Treasury has to be a firebreak on the extravagant plans of an errant PM. This is a difficult role. I remember thinking Liz Truss had won her mandate and deserved to be supported fully. I did not, on reflection, act as a break. Our plans were certainly ambitious but everything moved too fast. According to Truss’s own account, the late Queen Elizabeth II told her to “pace yourself”. This we manifestly did not do. A monarch of 60 years, Elizabeth II had the experience and had honed the intuition to advise prime ministers. This seems to be a good piece of advice to anybody taking over a large organisation.
Beyond the dramas of Downing Street, the Chancellor will be a lightning rod for Burnham. I have no doubt that if things don’t go according to plan, if the economic picture doesn’t improve, a people-pleaser like Burnham may well seek to blame his Chancellor. This may happen through secret briefings from No 10 or general dissent from Burnham loyalists who want to blame a senior figure for the sins actually committed by the Prime Minister. More dangerously, as is often the case in politics, many of the Burnhamites today are backing him not out of conviction, but because they see him as the key to advancing their careers. As Sir Keir Starmer would no doubt attest, many of these people will turn on Burnham should he not sustain the instant poll bounce they have all wanted to see. Healey, as far as I know, has no independent political base. He is popular but has never harboured overt ambitions for the highest office in the way, let’s say, that Wes Streeting has. With no political base, he is dependent on the good will of the Prime Minister. From personal experience, such a loyal Chancellor is only as strong or durable as his boss. And, of course, the boss can sack him at any time. This is usually, I can assert from experience, a consequence of panic or deep crisis. In such a case, the prime minister’s own demise will follow very swiftly, as though it were a chemical reaction. Healey is hemmed in by Burnham’s own pledges and desire for popularity. He is also hostage to his own disagreements with the Treasury when he was defence secretary. Wes Streeting has taken over Healey’s old job as Secretary of State for Defence. He is an ambitious, media-hungry rival who will do his best to ensure Healey provides the funds he resigned over only a few weeks ago. Healey has to stick to his job and rely on trusted officials. He has to be loyal. He may well feel at his age that this represents the summit of his career. That is all for the good. Scheming, ambitious chancellors are too preoccupied with their own advancement to be effective in their job. Their ambition will destabilise the prime minister thereby weakening the government. However, it is vitally important they maintain some independence to rein in a profligate or delusional No 10.
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