The real political test for a Budget, certainly since Osborne’s omnishambles of 2012, has been whether it can survive the following Sunday’s papers. Some survive the carcass-picking and some don’t make the weekend. In that regard, good news for Burnham’s ‘nothingburger’ Budget.
In the short term, ‘nothingburger’ feels better than ‘omnishambles’, but at least with the latter you get a solid crisis to resolve. The former is more a lookout quietly remarking it might be iceberg-heavy ahead to nobody in particular, before bedding down for the night. A diagnosis of worse to come, without the urgency to change course.
The Budget was signed, sealed and delivered. But Downing Street seemed to think that was the end of the exercise rather than something it could put to use. With Milburn’s review and Mahmood’s immigration reforms lined up, there was an opportunity to build on that breathing space. Instead, the plan apparently extended as far as Wednesday, at which point everybody clocked off.
Friday’s National Economic Council meeting in Glasgow should have provided the next chapter. Reindustrialisation and ‘good growth in every postcode’ were on the agenda. An opportunity to explain where growth would come from, and who would benefit.
Instead, hours later, Burnham published an op-ed ahead of the Commonwealth summit, opening the door to a formal apology for Britain’s role in the slave trade while ruling out financial reparations. It feels like a fairly standard international summit scene-setter which nobody really interrogated strongly enough. It is surprising nobody in Downing Street thought the apology might become the story. The chance to capitalise on the Budget was, frankly, squandered.
The government has focused relentlessly on small-scale domestic delivery. Where it has ventured further afield, as with closer EU ties, there has at least been an electoral opportunity. It is harder to see one here.
In January 2026, just 12% of Brits ranked the Commonwealth as Britain’s most important relationship, against 50% for Europe and 21% for the United States, according to Ipsos. More in Common’s focus groups found some saw Starmer’s international commitments as a distraction from domestic problems.
Number 10 handed its opponents a stick with which to beat Labour. The debate runs counter to the cost of living narrative, puts the King in an awkward position and divides Labour’s bloated coalition, containing both the re-won Red Wall (try saying that five times quickly) and the North London public sector culture warriors.
Perhaps the row helped by supplanting speculation about the Milburn review and Mahmood’s reforms to indefinite leave to remain. But that assumes the government wanted to avoid talking about them.
Both are meaty pieces of domestic policy. It doesn’t seem hard to build on your ‘breathing space Budget’, drawing together access to work and training, fairness in migration and government gripping the levers of power to address failings by previous governments. Glasgow had already provided the regional economic growth piece. All the ingredients were there, without the need to invent anything new.
Instead, immigration reform has become a political fight between Mahmood and Rayner, and a question of whom the PM will back, growing out of muddled conversations about slavery reparations.
Perhaps Downing Street failed to recognise its political advantage. Rishi Sunak made a habit of announcing something new before anyone had heard the last thing. Burnham has managed remarkable message discipline in keeping the conversation on slavery reparations, apparently through an inability to stop talking about it.
More surprising is how muted concern in pro-Labour circles has been about Burnham snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The solid polling could provide confidence to overlook any shortcomings. Perhaps the absence of an immediate crisis explains it. That is the danger of the nothingburger: political advantage can be squandered without anything dramatic enough to demand a change of course.
Asking why the media is covering something you don’t want is a bit like pissing into the wind and complaining about it blowing back at you. The Prime Minister has chosen where to stand and nobody on his side seems to mind that his shoes are getting wet.
