Share

cover art for The man behind 20 budgets on what Burnham & Healey must do | Lord Burns, David Davis & Guto Harri

Politics Unleashed

The man behind 20 budgets on what Burnham & Healey must do | Lord Burns, David Davis & Guto Harri

Ep. 2
•

He worked on 20 Budgets for six Chancellors. On the eve of the new government's first, Lord Burns tells David Davis and Guto Harri what it really takes, and what has to happen next.


In this episode of Politics Unleashed, former Cabinet minister David Davis and former Downing Street director of communications Guto Harri are joined by Lord (Terry) Burns, the Treasury's former Chief Economic Adviser and Permanent Secretary, who taught David at the London Business School.


From Geoffrey Howe to Gordon Brown, he takes us inside the Treasury: the secret final days before a Budget, why advisers advise and ministers decide, and the crises he lived through, from the 1981 Budget to crashing out of the ERM. Then the big question: with debt this high and so little room to manoeuvre, what should Andy Burnham and John Healey actually do? Can growth save us? Is welfare reform unavoidable? And is someone in the Treasury working on a plan B?


Plus the inside story of the Barings collapse, a QPR match and how Ken Clarke coined the phrase "rogue trader".

More episodes

View all episodes

  • 1. 7 Prime Ministers, One Budget, and AI: What’s the Answer? | David Davis & Guto Harri

    28:46||Ep. 1
    Seven prime ministers in ten years. So what's actually gone wrong – and what's the answer? In the first episode of Politics Unleashed, former Cabinet minister David Davis and former Downing Street director of communications Guto Harri ask the question politics too often avoids: how do we make things better? They dig into why Britain's problems were decades in the making, from the 1990s to the 2008 crash. They look at Andy Burnham and Kemi Badenoch's conference season, and why the Budget will be the moment of truth. Should the triple lock go? Why does the Treasury hold so much power? And how would you spend £1.4 trillion a year? Two insiders who never saw themselves as part of the establishment. Wit as well as wisdom. More light, less heat.