The home stretch

Andrew McDonald opened Tuesday’s update with the final stretch of John Healey’s budget process in the UK. Officials sworn to secrecy were handling pages of Healey’s budget after it was printed overnight, with the chancellor already staging traditional photo-ops. The last day’s content includes Healey joining BBC correspondent Adam Fleming in a London park for a jog, as Fleming wraps up 500 kilometers in 100 days of the Andy Burnham mission. Healey’s priorities are “everyday fixes,” including five pre-announced measures: removing import tariffs on more than 100 products, making tax-free mileage rates permanent, extending parental pay to 150,000, adding Post Office drop-off boxes, and a digital taper system to prevent carers losing benefits entirely when earnings exceed the limit.