Expectations are ramping up for John Healey’s statement next week. But with Treasury officials briefing that the Budget will be more of a process than an event, it may well not be the great crunch moment for this government than some were predicting. Instead, Andy Burnham’s ‘Ten Year Plan’ is assuming an increasing importance in the mind of Whitehall planners. To that end, a familiar face in Labour circles has been brought in to help the drafting of the Prime Minister’s agenda.
I understand that Peter Hyman, a long-serving aide to Tony Blair during the New Labour years, is going in to No. 10 to help chart the course of the next few years. It is a sign that Burnham is going back to the Blairite playbook as he looks to forge the future. Back in 1997, there was a media buzz around a group of high-flying young Labourites who often kicked a football around Highbury Fields on a weekend: Hyman was one but others in his Islington circle included James Purnell, now the Prime Minister’s chief of staff.
Well-respected in the policy world, Hyman previously served as a senior advisor to Sir Keir Starmer and boasts on his LinkedIn that he was the ‘strategist and architect of Labour’s five national missions.’ His appointment will likely reassure some older heads within the government and will not dampen excited speculation that an election prior to 2029 is not impossible, given his role in Blair’s landslide election victories in 1997 and 2001.
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