Night falls in the European capital. Everything’s quiet, but the nightmares are about to begin.

Viktor Orbán’s ghost haunts the Schuman roundabout; ash from the bonfire of red tape covers the Justus Lipsius building; Ursula von der Leyen’s chief of staff, Björn Seibert, chases after staffers demanding to know what “associate membership” for Canada actually means; and MEPs tremble at the prospect of construction workers uncovering the skeletons of political intrigues past during renovations.

Scared? You should be.

Here’s our guide to who is terrified of whom in the Brussels bubble. 

Everyone is scared of Marine Le Pen

The person haunting EU diplomats, officials and lawmakers is French presidential front-runner Marine Le Pen. Will she really halve Paris’ contribution to the EU budget, as promised? Will she pull Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni away from the Brussels mainstream? And will she demand von der Leyen’s head?

The bubble had warmed (slightly) to the idea of Jordan Bardella in the Élysée Palace, after his years leading the National Rally’s European operation revealed a certain pragmatism toward Brussels — only for those hopes to be shattered when a Paris appeals court cleared Le Pen to be a candidate for the presidency.

The next ECB chief is scared of Jean-Luc Mélenchon

The European Central Bank president is the euro’s last line of defense against unorthodox national economic decisions — but that could be tested by French presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is on course to reach the runoff after vowing to set billions of euros of French debt “on fire.” His incendiary plan calls on the Frankfurt-based ECB to waive interest payments on a vast tranche of French bonds — an unorthodox, perhaps impossible, maneuver that critics warn could even see France kicked out of the euro.

Now that we know Christine Lagarde will step down as ECB president in February, what France’s presidential candidates want to do about its monumental debt pile will haunt the race for her successor, with Dutchman Klaas Knot and Spaniard Pablo Hernández de Cos as the two frontrunners.

Lobbyists are scared of ChatGPT

The number of amendments lawmakers have filed has exploded since generative AI arrived, with key EU laws now facing thousands of proposed text changes. Parliament officials don’t think it’s a coincidence, with some pointing to amendments written in suspiciously bot-like language, and others saying sometimes amendments cite legislation that does not even exist.

The growing pile of amendments is haunting lobbyists, parliamentary assistants and officials forced to track and sort through it all — along with the fear that AI could eventually replace them. Spare a thought, too, for the MEPs who may have to vote through the amendments one by one, with hands raised in plenary. 

Commission officials are scared of Austria’s Europe minister

Well-heeled Commission officials (and their families) are spooked by Austria’s Europe Minister Claudia Bauer, who has been leading a push to slash the Commission’s administration expenditure — which pays eurocrats’ salaries and offices — in the next seven-year budget. The campaign, backed by most EU capitals, resulted in an 8% cut to the admin budget in the latest budget proposal.

Bauer is so feared that EU officials joke they reduce their delegations’ size whenever they travel to Austria.

Jessika Roswall is scared of Stéphane Séjourné and Valdis Dombrovskis

Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall and her department have reason to fear industry boss Stéphane Séjourné, who is taking the lead on the upcoming Circular Economy Act, despite Roswall’s official title of Commissioner “for a Competitive Circular Economy.” Making matters spookier, Roswall’s environment department now shares the Breydel building with Séjourné’s internal market and industry department, setting the stage for some chilling corridor encounters as Roswall pushes for greater environmental protection while Séjourné prioritizes industrial growth.

Roswall is also under pressure from EU simplification chief Valdis Dombrovskis to cut red tape on several environmental laws. The Latvian commissioner, who oversees the omnibus packages, wants a deal before year-end. Meanwhile, the center-right European People’s Party continues to press the Commission to reopen laws on birds, habitats, and water — the EU’s oldest nature protection laws — so they can be simplified too.

Alexander Stubb is afraid of Kaja Kallas and António Costa

Kaja Kallas has not publicly addressed the call that Finnish President Alexander Stubb made to Russia’s Vladimir Putin, but the EU’s top diplomat has made clear she dislikes such outreach. Still, if Putin offered serious talks and concessions, Kallas would be the obvious person to answer: as coordinating EU foreign and security policy is her job. “Of course I will talk if such an opportunity presents itself,” she told Estonian media in September when asked about speaking with Putin or his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Also reaching for the phone: António Costa. EU diplomats note that the European Council president represents the bloc at the leaders’ level abroad. That institutional turf war may explain why Stubb stressed that he and Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Støre spoke only for their own countries — not for Europe.

Manfred Weber is scared of his own group …

What keeps the leader of the European People’s Party — Europe’s largest political family — up at night? Divisions within his own ranks. So far, Weber has kept a tight ship and wants to reunite his troops ahead of the 2029 EU election, which he is casting as a battle against the far right. But that may prove tricky as the EPP’s national delegations increasingly clash over whether to work with the far right or isolate them.

… and the group is scared of Ouarda Bensouag

Central to Weber’s strategy is Ouarda Bensouag, the group’s secretary-general and his chief of staff. One of his most trusted lieutenants, she has a reputation as a smart but ruthless operator who EPP staffers fear when crossing paths in the Parliament’s labyrinthine hallways.

No one is scared of the Parliament … but they should be

Parliament’s attempts to spook capitals over the next long-term budget have been borderline tragic so far: It keeps threatening to kill the budget, but nobody seems to care or believe it will.

They should care. When it comes time to pass the budget, 361 of 720 votes will be needed, and the margin could be razor-thin in a fragmented chamber that’s hostile to plans to pool farm and regional funds. The louder MEPs protest — and the longer the Council ignores them — the more determined they become to prove the threat is real.

By Max Griera, Gregorio Sorgi, Kathryn Carlson, Nick Vinocur, Jakob Weizman, Fiona McNally and Eliza Gkritsi

Ask European Union leaders what they think of Mark Carney’s climate credentials, and you’ll get a gushing response.

“We see the world with the same eyes: from AI to climate change,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in her State of the Union speech last month, where the Canadian prime minister was the guest of honor.

“Canada and the EU are very, very like-minded,” the bloc’s climate chief, Wopke Hoekstra, told POLITICO in an interview when asked about his hopes for climate collaboration between the two powers ahead of this week’s EU-Canada summit in Montreal.

But this rosy view sidesteps a less comfortable reality: Canada is a major fossil fuel producer whose climate ambitions fall far short of Europe’s.

And under Carney, those ambitions are weakening.

Last year, Canada produced more crude oil than any other country outside the big three producers, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States. Oil and gas are Canada’s biggest exports by far, and the industry lobby is an influential force in Ottawa.

In his previous life as a central banker, Carney was considered a climate champion. POLITICO even dubbed him an “eco warrior” in 2018. But since taking over as prime minister last year, he has weakened Canada’s climate policies at a rate few predicted, scrapping a national carbon tax and electric vehicle mandate and opening new oil and gas projects.

The list of climate laws Carney has watered down, repealed and canceled makes the EU’s own recent backtracking on green laws look minor. Some environmentalists argue it is comparable to U.S. President Donald Trump’s wholesale dismantling of environmental protections.

“The track the Carney government has taken on climate and environmental regulation has been a decisive move in the direction of the U.S.,” said Tim Gray, executive director of environmental non-profit Environment Defence. Carney, he said, “seems to be all in on fossil fuels.”

Keean Nembhard, a spokesperson for Canada’s Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin, told POLITICO the Carney government is “committed to fighting climate change and reaching net-zero by 2050 by taking a pragmatic and durable approach.”

“This includes building major clean energy projects across the country, driving mass electrification, and making significant investment in the low-carbon economy,” he said.

But Gray argued that Carney’s support for fossil fuels and weakening of environmental standards may complicate Canada’s attempts to forge closer ties with Europe, which has some of the world’s most stringent green laws.

Still, in Europe, Carney’s green image persists.

Last week, Belgian member of the European Parliament Saskia Bricmont gave expression to this faith in Carney’s commitment to climate issues when she called on him to lead a global push to put climate back on the agenda ahead of next month’s U.N. climate summit.

“Mr Carney … relaunch the fight against climate deregulation and for the restoration of biodiversity, and re-mobilize the international community around concrete, coordinated measures,” she said.

Carney’s green aura

Carney’s reputation as a climate champion is well earned. As governor of the Bank of England, he led a push among central bankers to take the economic risks of climate change seriously — memorably captured in his 2015 ‘Tragedy of the Horizon’ speech, in which he warned: “The catastrophic impacts of climate change will be felt beyond the traditional horizons of most actors.”

In 2021, after he’d left the Bank of England, he became a United Nations special envoy on climate action and finance and launched a net-zero financial alliance with some of the world’s biggest banks.

But things changed dramatically when Donald Trump took back the White House, and Carney replaced fellow Liberal Justin Trudeau as Canada’s prime minister in 2025. At the time, Trudeau and his Liberals had been way behind in the polls, battered by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s attacks on his climate policies — in particular an unpopular consumer carbon tax.

Carney’s first act as prime minister was to scrap that tax.

Following his surprise victory in the elections that April, Carney set about promoting Canada as an “energy superpower.” To the dismay of environmental groups, he supported the “Pacific Link,” an oil pipeline costing tens of billions of dollars, designed to carry Alberta crude to Canada’s Pacific coast for export to Asia.

He then pushed for thawing relations with Beijing in January, a not-so-subtle pitch to find a new crude oil client that isn’t the U.S. Germany, rushing to replace its dependence on Russian energy, signed a long-term agreement in July to buy Canadian liquefied natural gas from a proposed port in British Columbia, despite backlash from environmental and indigenous groups.

He also scrapped laws on electric vehicle adoption, dropped plans for an emissions cap on oil and gas companies, watered down an existing industrial carbon price and introduced legislation to weaken environmental permitting rules for big infrastructure projects, which critics dubbed the “bulldoze nature bill.”

A landmark moment, according to Gray, came in November 2025, when Carney signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Alberta, Canada’s biggest oil-producing province. That document, which promised to turn Canada into a “global energy superpower,” contained a string of promises to promote oil and gas and water down federal climate laws.

So why the dramatic shift?

Carney, who has repeatedly positioned energy sovereignty as a bulwark against Trump’s economic aggression, offered his realpolitik response at an event in the heart of Alberta’s oil patch earlier this month.

“There’s a structural challenge of energy security and the existential challenge of climate change, and these challenges are forcing countries to think differently about where their energy comes from and on who they can rely on to supply it,” Carney said in Fort McMurray, Alberta on Oct. 1.

“Even under any plausible net zero scenario, the IEA [International Energy Agency] forecasts the world will still need tens of millions of barrels of crude a day. So the question is: who will emerge as the world’s trusted suppliers? It should be us. It must be Canada.”

Not black and white

Carney, to be sure, is no Trump. Unlike the U.S. president, he has retained his pro-climate rhetoric and promised to develop the country’s mining of critical minerals essential for the clean energy transition.

In May, he unveiled a national electricity strategy which aims to double Canada’s largely clean electricity grid by 2050 to meet soaring demand. “The path to net zero is electrification,” Carney said then.

In August, he announced C$10 billion in federal support for the Churchill Falls hydroelectric project in Newfoundland and Labrador, saying it will be the largest clean energy project in North America, capable of generating enough electricity to light up the equivalent of Canada’s three largest cities.

Nembhard, Environment Minster Dabrusin’s spokesperson, also pointed to new electricity transmission lines, electric vehicle subsidies and a C$2 billion plan to retrofit homes with heat pumps.

Canadian climate activist Alex Cool-Fergus said she does not think Carney “believes that oil and gas is the future,” but is simply being pragmatic about Canada’s economic reality.

“The electricity strategy that came out in May was incredibly important, and actually gives us a better idea of what his thinking is for the future,” she said.

Trudeau’s approach to climate change was “very much values-based, and it was about doing the right thing,” said Cool-Fergus. “I think that’s hit its limits. Carney’s approach makes more sense for the world of 2025-2026.”

The limits of the partnership

Hoekstra, the EU’s commissioner for climate, said he wants to deepen ties with Canada. “Given all the complications the world is facing, it is imperative to team up more closely with your closest partners,” he said. But he’s realistic about how far that relationship can go.

Hoekstra has ambitions of cementing the EU into a global network of economies with carbon pricing regimes. While he conceded nothing is “off the table,” he acknowledged linking the EU’s Emissions Trading System with Canada’s “quite different” version, which varies from province to province: “You’re talking about a completely different horizon, and that is not something we would attempt in the very short run.”

There are, however, other ways Hoekstra believes the EU and Canada can closely link on environmental issues.

“Doubling down, tripling down on electrification, on solar, on wind, on nuclear, on batteries,” he said, adding “that is one area that I think is potentially very fruitful for my portfolio.”

Another is critical raw materials, a key focus of this week’s summit.

Brussels is exploring ways for the European Investment Bank, the EU’s lending arm, to help finance the mining of Canadian mineral deposits that could supply the bloc with an alternative to Chinese-produced metals, with a framework agreement expected to be signed during the summit. Lithium, copper, nickel, and other key ingredients for electric vehicle batteries and clean energy technologies essential for decarbonizing Europe are abundant but often undeveloped all over Canada.

This week’s summit will also explore investing in infrastructure on Canada’s east coast to liquefy and ship Canadian gas to Europe, a move that could help the EU diversify its supply away from the U.S., which, along with Norway, has become Europe’s dominant supplier since it cut off Russian gas imports following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Many EU member countries will welcome success on these goals. But Gray warns that closer ties with Canada could lead to deeper penetration by the country’s powerful fossil fuel lobby, which he described as a “major, major force.”

“They’ll be spending time trying to make sure the alignment with the EU is in a direction that favors them,” he said.

The EU’s lack of oil and gas resources — and, by extension, the absence of a powerful fossil fuel lobby — has kept climate policy relatively bipartisan in the EU. Could inviting a fossil fuel “superpower” into the fold as an “associate member” change that?

“That would depend very much on what is an ‘associate member,’” Dutch Climate Minister Stientje van Veldhoven-van der Meer said.

BRUSSELS — Quebec’s new separatist government is treating this week’s EU-Canada summit in Montreal as the start of a wider diplomatic push to get the province in the room whenever Ottawa and Brussels strike deals that concern its powers.

The separatist Parti Québécois returned to power this month at the head of a minority government in the province, promising to assert greater control over Quebec’s affairs and eventually hold another referendum on independence. 

“Quebec has to be at the table, and Canada understands that very well,” Hélène Drainville, the province’s delegate general to the Benelux and the EU institutions, said in an interview in Brussels.

Prime Minister Mark Carney hosts Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa on Thursday and Friday for a summit the two sides have billed as a step change in relations, driven by Donald Trump’s tariffs and a shared need for new partners. Von der Leyen has even proposed to make Canada an “associate member” of the EU — an offer that goes too far even for some of the bloc’s member countries. 

Early drafts of a joint summit declaration include a digital trade deal, a pact to let the European Investment Bank finance Canadian critical minerals projects, and a consignment of Canadian water bombers for Europe’s emergency services.

While Canada is responsible for negotiating the text, much of it lands in areas where its 10 provinces have extensive powers, such as over natural resources, education and health. Quebec is the second-largest province by population after Ontario and has a territory more than twice the size of France — with which three-quarters of its people share French as their mother tongue.

“Canada negotiates the umbrella agreement, and where we come in is when what’s negotiated touches our areas of jurisdiction,” said Drainville, who has been in post for a year. Natural resources are a provincial matter, she added, noting that Quebec has deposits of 22 of the 34 minerals on the EU’s critical list.

The province is already talking to the European Investment Bank and DG GROW, the European Commission’s industry department, about the bank’s entry into Canada, she noted. 

Asked whether Quebec’s interests line up with those of Ottawa, Drainville said federal and provincial officials have already set up joint working groups to implement the summit’s outcomes. “Right now, all the signals are green,” she said.

New arrival

The cooperation comes at an unusual moment. Quebec’s new premier, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, won power on Oct. 5 while promising a third referendum on sovereignty, though not as long as Trump is in the White House. His cabinet includes the new position of minister for “accession to independence.”

However, support for independence in the province is the lowest it has been for three decades, around 29% in a poll from earlier this year — hardly a popular mandate for the project.

The Parti Québécois has nevertheless pledged to double Quebec’s 34 offices abroad. A party blueprint published last year would raise the number of countries with a Quebec office from 19 to 38 and, if the referendum delivers a “yes” to sovereignty, would turn those delegations into embassies and consulates.

“Quebec is going to start to exist and shine everywhere in the world,” St-Pierre Plamondon said last year, describing the representative network as a prerequisite for independence.

Drainville said the new government, which has been in office for three weeks, has not yet set its line on Europe. 

“Our political leaders haven’t taken a position yet, which is normal,” she said. “But if they decide to double [the network], it’s because they believe in this partnership.” As for the associate-member label, she declined to engage: “We’re not really into semantics. That’s Canada.”

What Quebec does want from the EU, she said, is “win-win partnerships,” noting that the province and Ottawa complement each other and are stronger together when it comes to relations with Europe.

It hasn’t always been so amicable. 

Quebec’s diplomatic ambitions date back to the 1960s, when the provincial government asserted the right to pursue international relations in areas under its constitutional jurisdiction.

Its international aspirations became politically contentious when French President Charles de Gaulle publicly embraced Quebec’s independence movement in 1967 — ending a speech in Montreal by proclaiming: Vive le Québec libre! (“Long live free Quebec!”) 

The Brussels office opened in 1972, and the province now counts 10 posts in Europe, which Drainville called the most of any Canadian province.

Quebec never consented to the constitutional changes Canada enacted in 1982, and its 1995 independence referendum failed by the narrowest of margins (49.4% to 50.6%). A decade ago, Quebec lobbied Europe for a seat at the table in negotiations on the CETA EU-Canada trade deal.

LONDON — When Prime Minister Andy Burnham arrived a few minutes late to a meeting with regional mayors on Thursday, his Cabinet ally Angela Rayner had a name for it. She joked they were on “Andy Time.”

The rest of Britain is beginning to learn what that feels like.

Burnham entered 10 Downing Street three months ago promising a “new economic model.” However, the prime minister’s first budget next Wednesday will ask voters to wait a bit longer for it.

John Healey, Burnham’s top finance minister, is expected to announce cuts to business regulation, new steps to move power out of Whitehall and targeted cost-of-living help as energy bills surge due to the wars in Iran and Ukraine.

But while London’s banking sector is resigned to a tax rise, Healey is broadly not expected to completely overhaul tax regimes that many in Burnham’s center-left Labour Party have long seen as unfair. These include business rates, which treat high street shops more harshly than out-of-town delivery warehouses; capital gains tax, which charges less on income from assets than from work; and council tax on homes, which is based on valuations from 1991. 

Healey and his allies are already rolling out a pitch for lower-key changes to tax and spending than his predecessor, Rachel Reeves, insisting budgets are about more than their bottom-line “scorecard.” They point instead to thinning the “sludge” of business bureaucracy and helping “bloody-minded” entrepreneurs.

The reason behind this is about much more than war dragging on the British economy and keeping inflation high. Many radical reforms just aren’t ready yet. 

Next Wednesday will mark just 100 days since Burnham took office, after a whirlwind special election that ended the Greater Manchester mayor’s decade-long absence from parliament.

Burnham’s much-touted “10-year plan” to rewire Britain’s public realm is far from finished; its publication date is edging closer to Christmas. And many granular details of his plan for reform — including higher defense spending, welfare reforms and ownership of the water sector — will only come at a multi-year spending review some time in 2027. Healey is still trying to decide when that will happen.

POLITICO spoke to 22 current and former government officials, MPs and people who speak regularly to Downing Street to map out Burnham and Healey’s strategy, most of whom were granted anonymity to speak frankly. 

Several offered the view that Healey’s budget was designed to act as a stepping stone toward the 10-year plan and spending review, while not spooking the bond markets — which Burnham complained Britain was “in hock to” last year. That is despite Britain inching closer to a general election that the prime minister must call by summer 2029.

“They want it to be a non-event,” one person who speaks regularly to both 10 and 11 Downing Street said of the budget. 

Expectation management

This narrative has already left Healey’s allies bristling.

People are “accusing us of not making decisions and kicking the can down the road when actually this budget is incredibly difficult,” said one government official. This person added: “This is the first budget of this country that will have come to the House of Commons for scrutiny while the war in the Middle East is raging and an illegal invasion of Ukraine continues by Russia. The idea that this is by any means small is quite difficult to stomach.”

A second U.K. government official argued the budget would be “as ambitious as possible within the political context.” But a third government official said they believed the budget would be more “steady as she goes” than finished solutions to Britain’s problems.

Ruth Curtice, a former Treasury official who is now chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, a think tank focused on living standards, added: “In some ways it’s quite surprising to have such a small budget, given we have a new prime minister and chancellor and quite a lot has happened in the world since the last one.”

The opposition Conservative Party is preparing to seize on this “deferral budget” theme. Tory strategists are ready to paint it as a cowardly act from an administration they claim prefers sweeping vision to hard decisions. “Why act tomorrow when you can act today?” said one shadow cabinet minister. “Have some balls!”

Cameron Brown, a former Tory special adviser in the Treasury, was more sympathetic. “There’s no need to crystallize any kind of savings or cuts now,” when the spending review is looming anyway, he argued. Brown predicted a “tight and concise” but “intellectually coherent” package: “[Healey] will have some buffer at the end, a nice little cost of living package, Labour MPs will be happy, he’ll target the bad people — gamblers and banks — and he’ll push things down the road a bit.”

A Labour official voiced concern that a cautious budget could lose the goodwill Burnham has built with the public — as happened to his predecessor Keir Starmer, who promised “change” in his 2024 manifesto.

And Reeves’ former Political Secretary Matt Pound urged “caution” on deferring too many decisions to the 2027 spending review. “The truth is that they could end up putting a monumental amount of pressure on that spending review,” he told POLITICO’s Westminster Insider podcast in an interview released Friday. “There are already a lot of pressures they will need to fund.”

Hard to get

“Energy” will be the key thread linking Healey’s messages for the budget, a fourth U.K. government official said — from “breathing space” help with bills to building a more resilient infrastructure network. 

There will also be a “fiscal devolution roadmap” on budget day, setting out terms of how regional mayors can get more power and money and drawn up partly by Burnham’s new Manchester outpost, No. 10 North. Legislation to let them impose tourist taxes will be published in the coming weeks. And officials have talked behind the scenes about procurement and boosting Britain’s heavy industries; the budget needs to find almost £5 billion to plug a hole in a defense investment plan unveiled under Starmer.

Targeted cost-of-living measures appear likely to include scrapping “standing charges” on domestic gas bills, which cost the average household just over £100 a year. Burnham said Wednesday that he had asked Healey to look at the issue — though any help could be eclipsed by a predicted £276 rise in domestic bills this January.

The other message will be that the Treasury can do big, consequential things without raising taxes. Healey will make “a political argument that actually there are other types of budgets that you can have,” said the first government official quoted above, “busting through some of that sludge and ripping up a lot of that red tape.” Cash-strapped chancellors have reached for regulatory reform before, with mixed success.

MPs are looking closely at cost-of-living support. One backbencher in an affluent seat said any help had to be significant, because even their well-off constituents were struggling to take the holidays they wanted. Defense, by contrast, barely comes up on the doorstep: “There are hardly any votes in it, but it’s just something we have to do.”

There has been heavy engagement with Labour MPs, whose detachment from No. 10 helped force Starmer out in July. Treasury ministers Torsten Bell and James Murray are among those engaging while Chief Secretary to the Treasury Emma Reynolds handles tricky negotiations with Cabinet ministers, alongside No. 10 chief of staff James Purnell.

Healey has negotiated with Cabinet ministers and spoken to union leaders, banks and MPs — though not lobbyists. “No one can get to Healey,” said one. “It’s very smart. Let him do his job.”

Markets will look at the “headroom” — a snapshot of the buffer between Healey’s five-year plans and his self-imposed fiscal rules. The fourth official quoted above said Treasury officials have considered having only a small “headroom” buffer compared to the £21.7 billion left by Reeves, as it could be increased in future years. 

Reeves’ former political secretary, Pound, warned against this, telling Westminster Insider: “If the headroom is so low that it’s clear that they can’t clear the defense investment plan, for example, or the wider defense pressures, then I think that that could then start to have a bit of a knock-on effect that would be quite negative.”

However, headroom is merely a snapshot, often out of date by the time it is published. It is likely to be buffeted further by any events in the Middle East arising from the U.S. midterm results on Nov. 3.

And as with all budget briefings, some opposition politicians believe there is an element of expectation management. Conservatives suspect that headroom will come out higher than predicted — which Healey can paint as a victory.

Time is ticking

Then it’ll all be over — and Westminster will immediately start preparing for the next step.

A date was never confirmed for Burnham’s 10-year plan (beyond the latter part of 2026), but some officials believe it has already slipped slightly from the original intention. 

Downing Street and Cabinet Office officials remain determined to publish it in December, though some in Whitehall worry it might be delayed. “Knowing the things on the horizon and how big they are, I genuinely don’t see how you could make space for it,” said one official in another department.

While some Cabinet Office civil servants were first tasked to work on the plan in August, others only joined the team this month as it has grown, according to one person with knowledge of the staffing. Burnham’s ally Louise Haigh, the first secretary of state, is leading three “task forces” ahead of the plan on the cost of living, public control of utilities and the renewal of run-down high streets.

The 10-year plan won’t have all the answers, though. POLITICO reported this week that while it will contain a high-level vision, priorities and principles for the water industry’s future, much of the granular detail of how future ownership models will work is expected in the 2027 spending review. 

One Labour figure who has spoken to the government about the water industry said they believed ministers will choose “different horses for different courses” — an array of ownership models for various firms depending on how stricken they are. A second Labour figure talking to the government said: “You can’t do this in two years.”

The Labour official quoted earlier in this story said they feared the 10-year plan would be a let-down. “These big plans governments are always throwing forward to have a habit of turning out quite thin,” this person said. “At which point we all realize there was never a big plan all along.”

There are other plans to come, including an imminent plan to reform the welfare system by the former Labour Cabinet minister Alan Milburn, and a white paper in December that is due to set out a timetable, legislation and borders for plans to move more power outside Whitehall.

Devolution is one area where Burnham has moved quickly, pleasing many regional mayors. But some officials in the union movement fear that Burnham’s initial focus on devolution risks taking up bandwidth that could have been spent on other issues. A fifth government official added that they were worried all the conversations between different public bodies could crowd out the push for growth. They said: “I sit on Teams calls that are 30 people, all from different arms of the state. Sometimes I think — ‘You do know none of us are making this money?’”

‘Rubber hits the road’

Then there is the 2027 spending review. 

It will set out how the state allocates money across its arms for the next three to five years — turning these plans and the difficult trade-offs they require into reality.

The Treasury has previously confirmed it will set out the entire pathway to lift U.K. defense spending from 2.6% of GDP this year to 3.5% by 2035. It is also likely to address questions about Burnham’s pledge to create a state-funded national service for social care, funded by reducing the rise in the state pension.

There will be months of to-and-fro between Whitehall departments and a Treasury looking for cuts, efficiency savings or both to balance the books.

“The spending review is when the rubber hits the road,” said the fifth government official quoted above. “It’s already beginning. Departments are beginning to work out sacrificial lambs to offer up.”

Three people with knowledge of the conversations said Healey still hasn’t decided when in 2027 he wants to hold the spending review, though it is broadly expected no earlier than the summer. He has been privately musing with allies about the options.

Curtice said Healey’s options are essentially to hold a small fiscal event followed by a spending review next summer, or to hold a spending review with an annual budget simultaneously in fall 2027.

She added: “The big question we’ve posed for this budget — that we’re not necessarily expecting an answer to — is what is the spending total for the spending review that we know needs to come next year? Until we know the answer to that question, we don’t really know whether we can believe the path of tax and borrowing that is set out in the budget.”

Senior Conservatives argue the spending review will be so difficult that Burnham could call a snap election before it is due. He has insisted he will only force it in 2029.

Until then, much of the spending review work will fall to Reynolds. Her predecessor Darren Jones argued the existence of the 10-year plan and spending review meant it would be sensible for next week’s budget to be a little low-octane.

“The prime minister’s been clear that the 10-year plan is going to be the political strategy for the government,” Jones told POLITICO. “So I think it makes sense to do all of your public spending decisions after the publication of the 10-year plan. It would be odd if this October’s budget tried to deal with all the big trade-offs on defense, mayoral budgets, or more ownership of public utilities.

“So I think in many ways, actually the 10-year plan is more interesting this autumn in terms of the political strategy of the government. 

“And then 2027 will be the year in which ministers will have to start thinking about how to implement that strategy operationally, including in public spending decisions.”

Much of that will fall to Burnham himself.

Crowdsourcing

Rayner’s joke about “Andy Time” was not without cause.

Unlike Starmer, Burnham gets into the weeds of an issue even if it derails his schedule. The prime minister chews things over with colleagues so much that some have joked they could just remove his Downing Street desk, said the third government official quoted above. By contrast, Starmer used to retreat to No. 10’s first-floor study to read away from the hubbub.

Burnham’s approach can lead to Downing Street making decisions late in the day. One former No. 10 official said: “A Prime Minister needs to do 80 things in a day and if that goes to 60, then you end up massively behind.”

The flipside is that ministers and officials know what their leader actually wants from them — even if they are left to work out the detail.

“It’s like we’ve woken up from a political coma,” one backbench MP enthused. “I know what the prime minister thinks,” added the third government official quoted above.

Aides used to complain that Starmer, by contrast, tried to be efficient but would end meetings without setting a clear political direction. “Keir was always a stickler for time, even if the issue wasn’t resolved,” as one former colleague put it.

Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, suggested this week that Burnham was failing to flesh out the detail behind his vision. “Talking about it is not making a decision,” she said of social care reform at prime minister’s questions. Burnham was visibly frustrated—insisting he was making the long-term decisions other politicians duck.

And for the prime minister’s allies and most of his MPs, the vibes remain good. The No. 10 environment is more relaxed and open. Junior ministers, in meetings over bacon sandwiches, feel they can share their views and be heard.

“There’s definitely still a buzz,” said the person who talks regularly to Downing Street, who was quoted earlier in this story. “But you don’t want to spend too much time buzzing while Rome burns. There’s a reality check that I feel is going to come imminently.”

Patrick Baker, Sascha O’Sullivan, Esther Webber and Emilio Casalicchio contributed reporting.

LONDON — Water firms and campaigners are set to wait until next year to see the full details of Andy Burnham’s plans to overhaul the sector in England.

Britain’s new prime minister has promised greater “public control” of the water industry as a centerpiece of his domestic agenda, partly reversing a wave of privatization that began in the 1980s. Ministers are due to unveil more detail in a “10-year plan for Britain” that is currently expected in December.

However, while this 10-year plan will contain a high-level vision, priorities and principles for the industry’s future, much of the granular detail of how future ownership models will work in practice is only expected later, said two people with knowledge of the discussions.

Some of these key details will be laid out in Chancellor John Healey’s multi-year spending review at some point in 2027, added the two people, who were granted anonymity to discuss evolving policy. One said the spending review — a date for which has not been decided — was where the full details would be “nailed down.”

These include any fiscal implications for the Treasury, which could have to find billions of pounds if ministers decided to transfer privately-owned shares to the public purse.

This appears to mirror an approach Burnham has taken to policymaking for decades, first as a Cabinet minister and then mayor of Greater Manchester before he took over 10 Downing Street in July. He is known for setting out a broad direction which his officials can later use to pin down detailed policy, while also seeking buy-in from private industry.

With a general election due by summer 2029, however, any wait will compress the prime minister’s window to enact far-reaching reform before he goes back to the electorate.

‘£40 being added to every single water bill’

England’s privatized water firms also argue that uncertainty over the sector’s future is damaging investor confidence.

The industry trade association Water UK has said the entire industry risks being downgraded by the credit ratings agency Moody’s, which would add £40 to customers’ annual bills.

Water UK Chief Executive David Henderson urged the government to move ahead with reforms suggested last year by former Bank of England Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe, before ministers decide the overall path of how the sector is owned.

The Cunliffe report “was given to the government 15 months ago and the credit rating agencies are watching,” Henderson told POLITICO. “If the government doesn’t pretty soon decide what it wants to do with that report, then we risk a downgrade, as Moody’s has indicated. And if there’s a downgrade, that would sadly see £40 being added to every single water bill across England and Wales. That’s the last thing anybody wants.”

He added: “We still have no idea how [a proposed] new regulator will look, what status it will have, what its duties will be, which parts of the Environment Agency will stay in the Environment Agency, and which parts will go into the new regulator. That is causing uncertainty … an important consideration for any investor.”

One government official insisted the 10-year plan would contain some finer details of plans to overhaul the water industry, though they accepted that fiscal implications were always dealt with in fiscal events such as the spending review. 

Environment Secretary Angela Eagle is also due to bring a water bill to parliament before Christmas with separate policy, such as closing what Burnham has called “loopholes used to pay excessive bonuses” to water company executives. It will also contain scrutiny powers for regional mayors.

Burnham announced last month that the bill would lift a ban on the government owning more than 3% of shares in any English water firm. But he has also long made clear that he would not fully nationalize the industry, a move the government previously estimated would cost £100 billion for England and Wales together.

First Secretary of State Louise Haigh, one of Burnham’s most powerful allies in government, is leading three task forces including one on public control of water alongside housing, energy and transport.

Officials have been working through a “spectrum of options” for how public control in the water sector will look, a second government official said. They added that ministers are due to begin deciding which option — or combination of options — will be taken forward before the 10-year plan.