QUENTIN LETTS: We are urged to consider John Healey a sober presence. Yet there he was in the pub sinking a pint of beer in one go

The morning after a Budget, Chancellors used to tour Westminster’s broadcasting studios. John Healey broke with that custom and recorded his ‘morning-after’ interviews at teatime on Wednesday. They were broadcast some 15 hours later.Given Mr Healey’s activities in the Two Chairmen pub on Wednesday night, it was perhaps wise that he was spared a pre-dawn start. Video footage caught him that evening sinking a pint of beer in one go, to the cheers of aides.As the ale gurgled down his gullet he flung his red tie over his shoulder, a Mediterranean flourish for one so baldly English. On finishing the pint he held the dripping glass upside down over his head. BURP!Yet we are urged to consider Mr Healey a sober presence, the new Geoffrey Howe.In one of those recorded interviews he told Radio 4’s Nick Robinson (v. scruffy these days) that ‘there will be a reduction in the benefits bill’.A Treasury official complained to the BBC after the interview was broadcast. Apparently ‘there will be a reduction in the benefits bill’ was not to be interpreted as a promise to cut... the benefits bill.At such moments the public may glimpse the joys of journalism. Minister says something. Newshound reports it. Stroppy special adviser then telephones to rage that the minister said no such thing. The minister, meanwhile, is still in his pyjamas at No 11, nursing a beaker of liver salts.In the Commons it fell to Wes Streeting to defend a hungover Budget.The debate was opened by Shadow Chancellor Andrew Griffith, a blurty, blinky orator. Mr Streeting had little difficulty outperforming him.He did so by: a) shouting; b) insisting the economy was just dandy; c) praising Rachel Reeves; d) mocking Mr Griffith for having been in Liz Truss’s ministry. Given Mr Healey’s activities in the Two Chairmen pub on Wednesday night, it was perhaps wise that he was spared a pre-dawn start. Video footage caught him sinking a pint of beer in one goThere was ‘a Trussian sleeper cell in the shadows of the Conservative Party’. Having alighted on this good joke, Mr Streeting overdid it. ‘They walk among us, the Trussians, hiding in plain sight, deep-cover sleeper agents masquerading as responsible fiscal Conservatives.’He talked rather more about Liz Truss than he did about Mr Healey.Budget debates, historically, were high-flown and reasonably intellectual. This one felt slimmer. Speeches were tightly time-limited and neither Mr Griffith nor Mr Streeting aimed high.Deputy Speaker Nusrat Ghani, again trying too hard to make herself a character in the drama, complained at one point that she could not hear Mr Streeting for all the Tory heckling. She needs to get herself to audiologist. Wes was bellowing like Brian Blessed.As he roared away, full of vim, Labour backbenchers may have found themselves thinking ‘he would have made a better Chancellor than boring old Healey’.And yet a speech soon afterwards by Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Con, N Cotswolds) brought him down a few pegs.Sir Geoffrey, 73, is a fair-minded codger who chairs the public accounts committee. He suggested Mr Streeting’s effort would have been fine for the TV show Have I Got News For You but was inadequate for the Commons. He was not entirely wrong.Earlier the House heard a personal statement by Tony Vaughan (Lab, Folkestone & Hythe), a 44-year-old KC from Doughty Street chambers who specialises in immigration law.From what I have heard of Mr Vaughan in the chamber he seems bright and reasonably eloquent, if dry.He rose to make a long mea culpa after a complaint to Parliament’s Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme. He had once hugged a woman who worked for him, and took her telephone out of her hand without asking.He spoke of his ‘behaviours’ in the language of modern puritanism. He regretted ‘the imbalance of power’ between himself and his employee and said he was now undergoing ‘one-to-one training’.There was a faintly Maoist tone to this act of enforced self-abasement. In the Commons it fell to Wes Streeting to defend a hungover Budget. Mr Streeting had little difficulty outperforming Andrew GriffithNo doubt it is mere coincidence that hard-Left Mr Vaughan, who has rebelled against the Government on welfare and asylum policies, is no favourite of his party’s Whips.He did so by: a) shouting; b) insisting the economy was just dandy; c) praising Rachel Reeves; d) mocking Mr Griffith for having been in Liz Truss’s ministry.There was ‘a Trussian sleeper cell in the shadows of the Conservative Party’. Having alighted on this good joke, Mr Streeting overdid it. ‘They walk among us, the Trussians, hiding in plain sight, deep-cover sleeper agents masquerading as responsible fiscal Conservatives.’He talked rather more about Liz Truss than he did about Mr Healey.Budget debates, historically, were high-flown and reasonably intellectual. This one felt slimmer. Speeches were tightly time-limited and neither Mr Griffith nor Mr Streeting aimed high.Deputy Speaker Nusrat Ghani, again trying too hard to make herself a character in the drama, complained at one point that she could not hear Mr Streeting for all the Tory heckling. She needs to get herself to audiologist. Wes was bellowing like Brian Blessed.As he roared away, full of vim, Labour backbenchers may have found themselves thinking ‘he would have made a better Chancellor than boring old Healey’.And yet a speech soon afterwards by Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Con, N Cotswolds) brought him down a few pegs.Sir Geoffrey, 73, is a fair-minded codger who chairs the public accounts committee. He suggested Mr Streeting’s effort would have been fine for the TV show Have I Got News For You but was inadequate for the Commons. He was not entirely wrong.Earlier the House heard a personal statement by Tony Vaughan (Lab, Folkestone & Hythe), a 44-year-old KC from Doughty Street chambers who specialises in immigration law.From what I have heard of Mr Vaughan in the chamber he seems bright and reasonably eloquent, if dry.He rose to make a long mea culpa after a complaint to Parliament’s Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme. He had once hugged a woman who worked for him, and took her telephone out of her hand without asking.He spoke of his ‘behaviours’ in the language of modern puritanism. He regretted ‘the imbalance of power’ between himself and his employee and said he was now undergoing ‘one-to-one training’.There was a faintly Maoist tone to this act of enforced self-abasement.No doubt it is mere coincidence that hard-Left Mr Vaughan, who has rebelled against the Government on welfare and asylum policies, is no favourite of his party’s Whips.