𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Andy Burnham, who has pledged to deliver radical change for the country, has admitted his first Budget as Prime Minister could have been bolder. Political opponents accused Mr Burnham and Chancellor John Healey of failing to do enough in the Budget, with Tory leader Kemi Badenoch saying: “Is that it?” The announcement on Wednesday came just weeks after Mr Burnham vowed to end 40 years of “flawed thinking” in his first Labour conference speech as PM. On Friday, Mr Burnham acknowledged the Budget had not offered as many sweeping changes as he would have liked, blaming the Iran war and prevailing global headwinds.

In a three-word admission, the Labour conceded a Budget is a “very difficult thing” as he was pressed on whether it was the one he wanted to deliver. He told ITV: “I don’t think any Prime Minister and Chancellor would say that, because a Budget is by definition a very difficult thing.

“In the times that we’re currently in, I feel that the volatility of things means you just can’t necessarily deliver the Budget that in an ideal world you would want to deliver.” The broadcaster, which is producing a documentary marking the PM’s first 100 days in office, also asked Mr Burnham whether he would describe the Budget as radical.

He suggested he did not think it was, saying: “We took a decision on the Budget early on. The Chancellor came to me and said given everything, given the way the world is, and things changing by the, not even week, by the day, he felt it was right to go early and to close down some of the speculation we’ve seen in the past, because that’s added to the difficulties with budgets.

“And as we were going through, the numbers were changing a lot because of what was going on in the world. So, to come to your question, the room for manoeuvre wasn’t what I would have hoped it to be.

“I guess then the question is, you know, radical within what we were able to do. It was quite a big call to ask the banks to repay the help they had off people 20 or so years ago.”

Despite this, he argued plans to give £100 energy bills relief to millions of households at the Budget was “quite a significant, significant step”. Mr Burnham also suggested Labour’s manifesto constrained some of his ambitions for government.

Meanwhile, Wes Streeting defended Labour’s record on defence after criticism the Budget did not do enough to map out increases to military funding. The Defence Secretary said the government is doing “as much as we can, as fast as we can” to ramp up spending after warning Britain must be ready for war in 1,000 days.

In the Budget, Mr Healey confirmed a £4.7billion black hole in the Defence Investment Plan had been plugged and committed to hiking defence spending to 3% of GDP on defence by 2030. However, he admitted details of how this uplift will be funded won’t be revealed until next year’s spending review.