Some things never change. Fifty years ago, Britain was sweltering in the long hot summer of 1976. The Labour government was acutely aware that the financial markets were scrutinising its every move. And a man called Healey was running the Treasury.

On the surface, the challenges facing John Healey are less severe than those Denis Healey had to grapple with half a century ago. Inflation is a lot lower and the City has reacted calmly to Andy Burnham as prime minister. And, while things could turn nasty pretty quickly, they would have to get a lot worse before Healey Mk II felt the need to ask the International Monetary Fund for an emergency loan.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that today’s Healey has big problems of his own to solve, not least how to reconcile his pledge to run a tight ship with the new administration’s aims of rolling back more than 40 years of Thatcherism and reindustrialising Britain. Fine aspirations will eventually run into the quicksands of fiscal orthodoxy.

But so far things have gone as well as Burnham and Healey could have hoped. The message of optimism – a deliberate contrast with the doom and gloom when Keir Starmer arrived in Downing Street – was the right one. The cut in VAT on electricity bills and the cap on bus fares were largely symbolic but symbols matter. Burnham was keen to avoid a repetition of........

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