John Healey: The trade unionist with his hands on the public purse

Andy Burnham’s long political experience counts against him in some quarters. As the Westminster joke goes: “A Blairite, a Brownite and a Corbynista walk into a bar. The barman says, ‘What can I get for you, Mr Burnham?’” Yet his Chancellor, John Healey, does not get the same reception, despite having served even more Labour leaders. He has been a minister, in opposition or as a shadow minister under each leader since Sir Tony Blair was elected in 1997. Conservatives worry. A man who served under Jeremy Corbyn now has his hands on the public purse. So as he prepares to present his maiden Budget, who is the real John Healey? No one can doubt that he is dyed-in-the-wool Labour. Healey met his wife at a trade union conference. He held a senior post at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in the Nineties, and has been an MP for 29 years, having been elected to his constituency in Rawmarsh and Conisbrough in South Yorkshire in Blair’s 1997 landslide. But despite being appointed by a Prime Minister who seeks to reverse Thatcherism, the Chancellor is not an old-school Leftist. Nor does he show a desire to turn back the clock to the Seventies . Rather than bemoan industrial decline, Healey’s conference speech brimmed with mentions of closed coalmines and plants that are now thriving high-tech business sites. He harks back to the Nineties and 2000s as a source of optimism, not concern. Even Healey’s pastime of choice, darts, is enjoying a major popular revival. Those close to him say Healey seeks to strike a very different tone to Burnham. “There is clear water between him and Andy. He is a forward-looking person, not a backward-looking person. He genuinely believes Britain’s best days are ahead of us,” one said. That is a hallmark of his whole career, according to Lord Monks, his old boss at the TUC. He said Healey was “a breath of fresh air” when he joined the TUC in the Nineties. “In union terms he was a moderniser; he was always diplomatic with it, though,” said Monks. “He was very loyal to trade unionists and very respectful of the traditions and history. But he also recognised things had moved on.” Healey campaigned with Monks for the introduction of the minimum wage and opened up TUC conferences to Conservatives, at a time of declining union membership. Unlike some of his union peers, contemporaries of Healey say he is not a hardliner trying to turn back the clock, but rather a networker who tries to build bridges. Every year, old comrades say Healey sends a Christmas card, whether the recipient is in an important job or not. One person who has witnessed Healey in action says he has “always been open, always been friendly”. “It is partly because he has been around for years. He is comfortable in his own skin,” says the veteran. “He is not going to go on a voyage of self-discovery. This is what 30 years in politics has shaped him for.” This is a stark contrast to Labour’s previous lineup. Rachel Reeves, and even Sir Keir Starmer, were also said to be warm and affable in private, yet never gave the public that impression. However, despite his warmth, his style of leadership is not universally admired. Healey has a fondness for consensus and a desire to be thoroughly briefed on every aspect of every policy. Some working on the Budget say he takes longer to reach decisions, compared to Reeves’s more direct approach. Others say this thorough approach has paid off. Stephen Timms, a fellow Blair-era minister, says that when a fraud scandal engulfed the Individual Learning Accounts scheme backed by Gordon Brown, Healey was appointed to deal with the problem. “It happened very suddenly as the crisis broke. He stayed up all night going through the briefing for this horrible subject in order to make a statement in the Commons about it the following morning,” says Timms. The next year, Healey took on bigger roles in the Treasury under Brown. His influence in the corridors of power is debated. Allies credit him with successfully lobbying for the approval of drilling in the Jackdaw gas field. Sceptics in Whitehall claim Burnham controls the Budget with the Chancellor largely “irrelevant”, in contrast with the initial close partnership of the Starmer-Reeves axis. Business groups have been heartened by one particular part of the break with Reeves. “Profit is a dirty word in some places, [but] it is not for John. That is a major step forward,” says Craig Beaumont, at the Federation of Small Businesses. Yet profit is not always something businesses might want to shout about. Banks are painfully aware that Healey’s praise of the sector as a “jewel in the British economic crown” is set to be followed by a £2bn tax raid . The Chancellor is short of cash, boxed in by political promises and facing a rising interest bill on the £3tn national debt. Healey might talk warmly to businesses, but he still has to make the numbers add up. “He is really good at giving the impression that he is really engaged,” observes one business figure. The Chancellor talks up the Government’s commitment to the fiscal rules, hoping it will instil stability in the economy. But bosses fear the opposite: “Fiscal stability does not deliver if you are paying for it yourself,” one said. If every time the Government misses its fiscal rules it hammers businesses with more taxes, “the stability does not give certainty, it reinforces instability”, the person said. When it comes to big political or economic thinking, Healey cites the work of Anthony Crosland, a Labour minister of the Sixties, who over time realised Labour governments could not merely redistribute private-sector wealth, but had to enable the economy to grow in the first place. Healey has engaged in his own modernising efforts, editing a collection of essays called Hearts and Minds: Winning the Working-Class Vote in 2021. The publication criticised the party’s failure to show that it respected the Brexit vote under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, and its “remote” language, which alienated voters. When it comes to emulating Crosland’s call for the Government to put growth first , the Chancellor has launched a charm offensive for entrepreneurs. That included a promise to put “the interests of business back at the heart of government”. A rebuke to Sir Keir’s government, which by implication had little thought for growth. But his underlying motivation is formed by memories of agonising levels of youth unemployment in the Nineties, which ravaged areas including his South Yorkshire constituency. That is hardly a thing of the past. Youth joblessness rose this year to rates not seen since the aftermath of the financial crisis. Labour is confronted with almost one million Neets: under-24s not in employment, education or training. Healey detests the term. He corrects those who use the dour statistical acronym in favour of “our young people” or similar more protective phrases which do not write off those with potential. “He knows that some of those young people currently sat in their bedrooms could be the next phenomenal entrepreneurs,” says a person close to the Chancellor. Carrie Sudbury, the chief executive of the Barnsley & Rotherham Chamber of Commerce, says Healey works hard on youth jobs locally, and is confident he will do the same on the national stage. “He gets it. He understands the importance of business,” she says. “He sees it from every angle. He sees it from the employers’ side. He sees it for young learners having the opportunity to get into work.” Translating personal compassion and pragmatic local politics into success as Chancellor of the Exchequer is a different matter. Monks is confident the man he hired more than three decades ago can deliver substance without anything too flashy. “The economic situation is grim. It is a very difficult task he has got. I know he will approach it with steadiness and thoughtfulness,” says Monks. “He is not a showbiz guy, but he does understand the need to reach out to people and try to persuade them.”