John Healey had been sent to Coventry, something he will have to get used to after his budget next month, at least if he ever intends to use any form of business again. He was visiting ‘The Manufacturing Technology Centre’ which is the sort of vague, ‘Universal Exports’ style name for a company that might have, in past years, made people think Healey was a double agent.
In the last ministry, Healey had certainly got a reputation as a man of action, of something of a hard man who was prepared to put his job on the line to get what he wanted. That reputation, as it becomes pretty clear that he won’t be giving defence the spending it needs despite resigning because he said it was so important, is in tatters. Healey needs a new brand and Coventry was the place for it. Here, in front of a mysterious robotic arm, we were witnessing the metempsychosis of John Healey.
Healey’s mission was to set out his aim as Chancellor but also give away absolutely no detail whatsoever, lest the markets get even more frightened. A little like being tasked with performing a strip tease in a Victorian diving suit. To square this circle he decided to speak with a profound, gnomic incoherence, like a cross between Confucius and John Prescott.
To add to the effect, Healey eschewed a delivery modelled on the Ken Barlow tribute act we expect from Mr Burnham or the barking idiocy of his immediate predecessor Ms Reeves. Instead, he delivered his pearls of anti-wisdom in a sort of gentle whisper. ‘Growth is the sustainable pathway out of indebtedness and into prosperity’ he purred, perhaps imagining he was halfway up a mountain. Which he sort of is, but it’s made of the national debt.
The self-help style aphorisms continued. Of growth Healey said, ‘It is essential, it is possible, it’s central to my purpose’. By this point one could imagine Healey as an anthropomorphic mole rat-cum-guru in the Kung Fu Panda franchise. It continued as Healey proclaimed, ‘I dedicate myself to this.’ It was beginning to feel a bit Soul Cycle. I couldn’t be sure he wasn’t going to start humming a motivational mantra.
Finally he told us that his aim was ‘to make Great Britain, Growth Britain again.’ This was almost a relief, a dreadful pun workshopped by a bunch of party goons in an ill-lit SW1 side-room rather than another nugget from the Lama of South Yorkshire.
Scholars in Tibet will spend millennia trying to work out what it was the Great Guru Healey actually meant
Of course the point of the speech had been to tell us nothing and so in this sense, it was a ringing success. Now Healey had to navigate questions without his chakras getting shaken up by the advent of reality. Beth Rigby asked him about government borrowing and the astronomical rise in rates. Would, in light of this, Healey commit to not raising taxes?
He talked about all the things – wars, oil prices and other things that can be spun as being not the fault of the government – that ‘weigh on us in UK’. I thought that the failure to use the definite article was taking the impression of the Chinese mystic a step too far. Again, Healey sort of seemed to be implying that with our ‘resilience’ we could somehow make these things go away. He enlightened us with this spectacularly grey bit of enigma: ‘this government’s direction for growth will see growth in more places.’ Scholars in Tibet will spend millennia trying to work out what it was the Great Guru Healey actually meant by this.
All in all, this great spiritual cycle of waffle told us more – like the Via Negativa – by what it didn’t say than what it did. One enlightening phrase never escaped Healey’s lips: ‘I will not raise taxes’.
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