John Healey, the diligent defence secretary who would tether a desk inside his military aircraft to keep working, has been handed the Treasury – and a fiscal straitjacket. The appointment of the 58-year-old as chancellor on Monday confounded journalists who had expected a head-to-head between Ed Miliband and Shabana Mahmood, with the latter in the lead. Instead, Healey got the job, Mahmood remained at the Home Office, and Miliband moved to the Foreign Office.
Prime minister Andy Burnham’s unexpected pick is seen as a safe choice who can unite a fractured party without scaring the markets. But allies say Healey is far more ideologically driven than he appears, and that the PM will come unstuck if he treats his most senior minister as little more than a factotum. “This is being billed as equivalent to Gordon Brown appointing Alistair Darling,” said one Labour official. “But it turned out Darling had views of his own which did not always chime with Brown’s – Andy has to avoid making the same mistake.”
“John Healey appointed chancellor in surprise move, tasked with funding Burnham's promises while bound by no-tax-rise pledges.”
Healey’s immediate task is to find money for Burnham’s policy promises: higher defence spending, public control of utilities, and cuts to voters’ living costs – all while bound by the PM’s pledges not to raise income tax, VAT or national insurance, and to stick to the last government’s borrowing rules. The same straitjacket hampered his predecessor, Rachel Reeves. The first big announcement of the new government, a VAT cut on energy bills, was decided before Healey even knew he would be chancellor.
A former Treasury minister under Gordon Brown from 2002 to 2007, Healey has largely avoided alignment with any faction since entering parliament in 1997, bridging the gap between Blairites and Corbynites. One minister close to Burnham said the case for Healey rested on his Treasury experience, his understanding of industry – reindustrialisation is key for Burnham – and his strong relationships across the Labour “family”. Yet his team has a low profile: one top special adviser is not even in the large Spads WhatsApp group, staffers note wryly.
What Burnham actually wants, according to sources close to him, is a malleable chancellor who will take orders from a beefed-up No 10 economics team. “Anyone who worked with Keir will have a big gear shift,” said one Burnham adviser. “They might be quite shocked at how many strong views Andy has in a range of areas and how involved he will want to be in decisions. It will be night and day.”
