Don’t tell John Healey this is a boring Budget. ‘We have to get people out of this frame of mind that the only way to judge a Budget’s significance is the size of its tax line,’ complains one Treasury official of what is being billed as a ‘steady as she goes’ statement by the Chancellor next Wednesday. With green shoots of growth finally showing themselves after back-to-back Budgets by Rachel Reeves, which hiked tax by £75 billion, Healey’s team is making a virtue of fiscal minimalism.

‘The worst thing to do at that moment would be a Budget that pulls huge levers and risks shutting off some of that economic growth,’ one aide says. Another has had the history books out. ‘George Osborne had a Budget where there was under half a billion of revenue raising and no one accused him of having a small Budget,’ he says. ‘We don’t think it would be the right strategy to have a third large revenue-raising Budget in a row.’

‘There is going to be a big focus on doing immediate action today and setting up the action to follow’

‘There is going to be a big focus on doing immediate action today and setting up the action to follow’

What Osborne did always have on Budget day was a strong political narrative and Healey has been working hard to form his. An ally recalls how, on a recent flight to Bangkok for IMF meetings, ‘he was working on the plane, scribbling away while everyone else was watching movies’. And when Healey landed back home at 7 a.m., he did a full day at the Treasury, then sped to south-east London in time for last orders at the wedding reception of his special adviser Rachel Smethers. ‘He was determined to buy a round,’ the ally notes.

Such small but symbolic gestures will be the order of the day in the Budget as well. Just as Andy Burnham has spent the week making pointed, but small, interventions on issues such as people playing music without headphones on public transport, so Healey will aim to map out a direction of travel for the economy with policies that signal intent without a multi-billion-pound price tag.

Healey’s catchphrase with his officials is that this will be a ‘breathing space Budget for households and businesses’ providing ‘hope for the future’. What he really wants is to give the government a bit of breathing space from the bond markets. He and Burnham will offer some targeted help with the cost of energy bills to families (likely to involve a boost to the Warm Homes Discount), ditch planned rises in fuel duty and introduce some tax cuts for business. The buzzword you’re going to hear next week is ‘the Budget and beyond’.

A Whitehall source explains: ‘We’re realistic that you can’t solve all the problems in one Budget. But there is going to be a big focus on doing........

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