How the Budget felt to us, and what it could mean for places
What story is the budget telling?
For a policy moment grounded in hard data and concrete numbers, the Budget lives or dies by the story it’s able to tell.
It’s a chance for the government to set the direction of travel, signpost future priorities and acknowledge the challenges facing the country. It can offer reassurance to jittery markets, and hope to a jaded electorate.
It’s also a moment of profound risk. Just look at the fall-out from recent toxic policy announcements, from the Winter Fuel Allowance U-turn to Theresa May’s so-called ‘dementia tax’.
The budget is where political idealism meets fiscal reality. Without a strong, coherent set of key messages and an overarching narrative, politicians are likely to be accused of watering down their promises – or abandoning their principles, and their voter base, entirely.
All quiet on the Westminster front
In recent years, pre-budget pitch-rolling has been central to the government’s comms strategy. Who can forget the press conference where Rachel Reeves told hastily assembled journos that they’d have to wait until, erm, the actual budget for any actual details?
The new Chancellor has taken a different tack. According to reports, John Healey instilled a cast-iron approach to leaks, demanding ‘military-level’ secrecy from staffers and systems. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As we wrote last year, feverish pitch-rolling can feel too much like spin.
Messaging has been tightly controlled, with an emphasis (unsurprisingly) on big ticket items like the proposed National Care Service or adjustments to the Triple Lock. A drip-feed of measures designed to tackle the cost of living has created a drumbeat of ‘every-little-helps’ positivity.
For everyone who finds this patronising and trite, there are others who appreciate the clarity of the story Healey and Andy Burnham have been telling. Headlines about saving money on marmalade aside, it feels like a contrast to Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘jam tomorrow’ style of comms. Either way, they’ve kept a tight grip on the narrative in recent weeks.
Making the message resonate
If the messaging around the Budget can be distilled into two words, it’s this: ‘breathing space’.
This homely, human hook has been used by both Healey and Burham to describe the incremental changes they want to make to people’s lives. By bringing down household costs, removing standing charges and pledging £100 energy payment to millions, they’ve committed to putting money back in people’s pockets.
The phrasing Healey used yesterday (28 October 2026) reflected this focus on kitchen table economics. He spoke of how “the home is the office, the van is the family car,” and about “the bakeries, the cafes, the hair salons which make the places we live and work, the places we love.”
The changes themselves are societal as well as purely financial. Healey announced paid parental leave for self-employed fathers and partners for the first time, reiterated the commitment to tackling homelessness through funding, and spoke about renewed growth outside London via devolution. This consistency of message is important. They clearly want to bring people along with them on the journey, not lose them in jargon and wonkery.
Critics are already accusing Labour of tinkering around the edges and kicking the can down the road. The complex issues dominating the news cycle – rising energy prices, youth employment, the rise of AI – still loom. Crowing about the reduced price of pickles in this economy risks pissing people off.
But there’s merit in focusing on the micro and the immediate over the long-term, because these are things that affect people’s lives. Burnham and Healey seemed to have learned from predecessors’ mistakes. By grounding the language of the Budget in everyday realities, the government clearly hopes to avoid the unpopularity that plagued Keir Starmer.
Whether this is enough to placate a nation that feels fractious and short-changed remains to be seen. This Budget, it’s fair to say, offers no revolutionary solutions and good comms can only take you so far.
Policies – and messaging – that speaks to businesses, homeowners, pensioners, students and everyone in-between is nigh on impossible to achieve.
The real test will be whether this Budget can give Burnham’s government enough of an electoral runway to make the story they’re telling a reality.
Ben Lowndes writes
Now we start to get an idea what ‘good’ growth – as opposed to any old growth – could look like in Andy Burnham’s eyes.
Rate relief for high street businesses, but not for big betting shops or vape stores.
Twenty-five per cent off energy bills for businesses, with banks asked to meet the cost of lower bills for households.
Loan funding for infrastructure and regeneration projects. Regional mayors to get a share of income tax receipts to spend locally. Another £1.5bn for social and affordable housing (aka council housing).
And, strikingly, a new deal for data centres which aims to strike a balance between national gains from this vital infrastructure and local benefits – that’s jobs, community investment, environmental safeguards.
If these measures get the economy firing, so much the better. The government’s more strident critics were quick to say that they don’t amount to much in the scheme of things. A ‘nothing burger’ said Reform’s Robert Jenrick, who served as minister during the most consequential budget of my lifetime.
It seems my memory is less selective than many commentators lamenting yesterday’s budget. Distinctive was three months old when Liz Truss’ mini budget unleashed chaos in 2022. I will never forget how it felt as work slipped away and our remortgage costs ballooned. We couldn’t outrun the impact. We just had to deal with it.
After decades of working closely with the media, I’ve never looked at the titles who breathlessly cheered the Truss government on in the same way since. Read the front pages again and tell me they’re serious. It felt weird at the time. It’s excruciating to look back on in light of yesterday’s budget.
We’re in a better place today, all things considered. The challenges facing an economy scarred by decades of stagnation and inequality are real. One single budget won’t fix them all, and ministers would do well not to overstate the impact of the measures announced yesterday.
But will they help us turn a corner in an uncertain world?
We can hope.
Written by Katie Howick and Ben Lowndes
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