Chancellor accepts Labour has put a ‘lot of pressure’ on business and says helping entrepreneurs will be a budget priority – UK politics live

John Healey is expected to cut red tape requirements, particularly for smaller businesses Kalyeena Makortoff is the Guardian’s banking correspondent. CS Venkatakrishnan, CEO at Barclays , seems to have admitted defeat over bank tax hikes, which are expected to be a headline measure in Healey’s budget next week. I recognise that the chancellor and the government has been entrusted with an important duty by the public and the people. And they have to balance a host of considerations. He [Healey] is the man in the arena, and I deeply respect the responsibility he bears on his shoulders and wish him well. His long term goal is the same as our long term goal, which is to get growth. So what is the chancellor now concentrating on? One could be forgiven for thinking him utterly unreconstructed: a party man and proud of it.

There is no such thing as Healeyism, he says when the conversation turns to Anthony Crosland’s evangelism for the mixed economy: “I’m just Labour. ” “Just Labour” is exactly what the bond markets fear — and, indeed, it is what gives Kemi Badenoch hope of pulling off a comeback to rank alongside Lazarus and Bobby Ewing for utter implausibility. Healey argued that his budget next week would refute the claim made by Andy Haldane, the former Bank of England chief economist, about Labour not having the right policies to promote growth . In an article for the Financial Times, Haldane said Conservative policies were better for the economy, partly because they were more likely to support “cuts to business and employment taxes and regulation to unleash animal spirits”. In his write-up, Maguire says: It was Haldane who also said , memorably and mercilessly, that the markets had concluded that this was a “traditional tax-and-spend socialist government with better…