Burnham and Healey are gambling that they will get another chance to do a big budget. But they may look back on this as the best opportunity they had. There are, to my mind, three possible explanations for their approach. One is that they would rather not level with their MPs and the country now. The argument goes that they will be in a better place to confront the trade-offs next autumn. But political capital is a depreciating asset. The second is that they are doing a Mr Micawber, hoping something will turn up to improve the public finances. That could be faster-than-expected growth or a big reduction in government borrowing costs. Either is always possible, but look around the world and you will see the opposite is expected. The other possibility is that they are planning an early election. That would push the reckoning beyond polling day, giving them more flexibility. As I know all too well, elections are never risk-free. The problem is that Wednesday’s budget, and the IMF’s praise for Britain, are founded on fantasy - the idea that the Labour Party will accept the tight spending limits that are meant to kick in as the next election approaches. My preference would be for a budget that cut spending, reduced business taxes and enacted growth-enhancing supply-side reform. Yet with his party in no mood for cuts, you can see why Healey is likely to avoid doing anything too bold on Wednesday. They will never have more room for manoeuvre than now. I know, having done both jobs, that you regret the decisions you don’t take far more than the ones you do. More on the budget in my @thetimes column today 👇

In a world this unpredictable, friends and partners matter all the more. Good to join friends @DrSJaishankar, @MrKRudd, @AnitaAnandMP, Jon Gray, N Chandrasekaran and @ErikSchatzker at @BBGNewEconomy last week. The rules-based order most of us grew up with, largely enforced by American strength, is over. What replaces it is still taking shape. One grand new alliance of middle powers is unlikely. Coalitions will form issue by issue, from Ukraine to energy and trade, and the countries that thrive will be the ones that make themselves indispensable, even if only in one area. Britain is well placed for that world. AUKUS, CPTPP, our trade deal with India and the fighter jet we are building with Japan and Italy all show what agile partnerships can deliver.

How should the West respond to China's wave of cheap goods? A shock is coming for economies across Europe, one that will reshape their politics and catalyse the rise of populism. They are being battered by the relentless rise of Chinese manufacturing. Last year Beijing recorded the highest goods trade surplus in history, almost $1.2trn. China used to be a big market for European exporters, particularly Germany. But it is now buying less and less of what Europe produces while exporting more and more of what it makes. Its share of global manufacturing is growing rapidly and is already larger than that of the US, Japan and Germany combined. 🔗 Tap the link to read more from @RishiSunak :

Hosted former UK PM Rishi Sunak for lunch today. We discussed developments in the UK and Europe, global affairs, and AI. Good seeing Rishi again, and hearing his perspectives on a rapidly changing world. – LHL

Prime Minister @narendramodi great to see you in New Delhi today. Congratulations on 25 years in public service, a remarkable achievement. It was a pleasure to work with you when I was Prime Minister. Your commitment, your work ethic, your energy is an example to us all. The UK India relationship is going from strength to strength under your leadership. Our two countries cooperating more on trade, tech and AI is vital in a less predictable world. I know that Britain and India will continue to grow ever closer in the years ahead 🇬🇧🇮🇳

Great catching up with former UK Prime Minister @RishiSunak this week. We both became Finance Ministers around the same time during Covid, and have kept in touch since. We had plenty to discuss— global developments, AI and trade. Always good to exchange perspectives and views!

The small boats crisis has gone on longer than WWII. I will always regret that I could not solve it. We have to show people the journey is pointless. Rwanda was criticised as a fantasy, but the real fantasy is thinking you can stop the boats without it. For some time I had said that if forced to choose between membership of the ECHR and our national and border security, I would pick the latter. During my tenure, attempting to leave the ECHR with only two years left in the parliament and with no mandate to do so would have been a recipe for constitutional chaos. You couldn't resolve all the issues thrown up by leaving in 24 months with a fractious parliamentary party, a sceptical House of Lords and limited diplomatic capital. Other countries can read our opinion polls. With the help of KCs, we'd done extensive work on leaving. The plan was to say in the election campaign that we'd seek radical reform of the convention and the court, and leave if that could not be achieved quickly. Like so many things in that campaign, it didn't go to plan, and we dropped the idea after Nigel Farage entered the race, for fear it would be dismissed as a panic move and make it harder to focus the election on tax and the economy. With a mandate, a majority and a five-year term, it would be very different, and worth doing. My Sunday Times column today looks at how 👇

Great to catch up with my good friend Prime Minister @LawrenceWongST this week. Britain and Singapore share one of the closest and most enduring friendships in the world. On AI, on trade, on security, the best lies ahead. 🇬🇧🤝🇸🇬

Today we remember the 1,200 innocent people murdered by Hamas in the worst attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust. Last year an Islamist attacked a Manchester synagogue. Confronting antisemitism, and standing with Britain's Jewish community, is a duty for all of us.

November 3 will be another bad night for incumbents. As one long-serving US politician put it to me, voters across the western world don't know how to get what they want, but they do know how to punish those in charge. My column in today's @thetimes 👇

Russia has found a way to overwhelm Ukraine's air defences with Iranian drones and Chinese engines. Kyiv is bracing for its hardest winter yet. $300bn of Russian assets sit frozen in western banks. We must now put them to work for Ukraine.

I was a very fortunate kid. My dad's GP surgery sat between the Dell and Hampshire's County Ground, so at weekends I could go to a game and get a lift home afterwards. It left me with a passion for both sports and a belief that sport opens a window onto who we are. When I was growing up, the Tebbit test was a matter of intense debate. Which side did you cheer for at the cricket? For all the criticism it received, it was a test anyone could pass. If you supported England because you saw it as home, you were part of the team regardless of the colour of your skin. Born in Southampton, 10 year old me passed it without even knowing about it. Giving the @MCCOfficial's Cowdrey Lecture on Thursday made me think about cricket's place in our national life and the current arguments about identity. In Britain we've built the world's most successful multi-faith, multi-ethnic democracy. I was a beneficiary of it. Whatever issues people had with me as PM (and there was no shortage) my race and religion weren't among them. I could read a lesson at the King's coronation or light Diwali diyas on Downing Street with my daughters without controversy. Foreign leaders assumed these must be huge symbolic moments. For most Brits, they just weren't that big a deal. But Britain's democratic achievement is now under strain. Some of the challenges are ones I've written about before, like Islamism, and the failure of governments, including the one I led, to adequately control immigration. But something else is going on - a risk that we start equating skin colour with nationality. After I left office, a debate kicked off here on @X about whether I was English at all, because I was a "brown Hindu". During the election campaign I'd been shocked when footage was broadcast of someone calling me a "Paki." It was shocking precisely because it was so unusual. That kind of abuse had simply not been a feature of my political life. But the Englishness argument was stranger still. Call it the reverse Tebbit test. If you're not white, it no longer matters who you support at the cricket, because you can never be English. It's a test no non-white person can ever pass. I have no truck with people who offend our sense of fairness and come here illegally; I spent half my premiership trying to deport them to Rwanda. I think the bar for legal migration should be high. It is entirely possible to want a radical reduction in immigration and a far more robust approach to integration, and still totally reject the attempt to turn Britishness into a DNA test. If you're born and brought up in England and view it as home, what are you other than English? Denying people their Englishness or their Britishness because of the colour of their skin is a recipe for alienation and a two-tier society. How are children who hear this meant to feel? Sport can play a small but significant role here. Cricket is played by nearly every major ethnic group in this country. Ask what my largely white rural constituents in the Dales and the British-Asian kids in Bradford have in common, and the answer is cricket. If cricket can produce England teams in which every kid can see themselves, the impact reaches far beyond the boundary. As I write in @thetimes today, we must all be on the same side, cheering for the same team. We cannot allow race to be reintroduced into our politics. We cannot allow Briton to be set against Briton.