Looking for a way to placate demanding kids while money’s tight? Try pick’n’mix. John Healey has done exactly that in his first budget as Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer. He delivered 98 new policy measures — lots of little sweet treats, at a reasonable price. The last time there were so many items in this yearly event was back in 2010, and this latest batch costs a lot less on average (as a percentage of gross domestic product).

He had two fussy customers that he needed to keep quiet and hustle out of the shop: backbenchers and bond markets. I’m not certain that they will stay happy when the sugar rush wears off next year.

Bond markets have reacted calmly for now to the headline number of the UK’s fiscal headroom falling to £15 billion ($20 billion). If anything, the Debt Management Office’s announcement that £250.6 billion of gilts would be sold in 2026-27, only marginally more than expectations of £249.6 billion, made more of a difference than anything Healey said.

The ruling Labour Party’s lawmakers, meanwhile, aren’t vocally disappointed, even though the budget’s biggest measure for the hard up — £100 to 20 million households to help with energy bills — will cost only £2.6 billion. That’s a small fraction of the £56.2 billion that the Conservatives spent on similar support after Russia’s Ukraine invasion. All told, assistance in this budget for Britons struggling with the cost of living amounts to just £4.1 billion.

The real concern for both bond traders and Labour members of Parliament was how the chancellor would raise money. What would get cut? What would be taxed? Banks are relieved that Healey added only three percentage points on to an existing 3% surcharge on their profits, and for a fixed period of 15 months. That raises only £1.5 billion, less than the government intends to get over the next five years by applying sales tax to large minicab operators.

The biggest contribution to getting Healey’s five-year estimates to add up comes from making tax collectors efficient. That, he hopes, will raise slightly less than £8 billion over the years to 2031-32. The budget promises to “make everyone pay what they owe,” including those who’ve “avoided repeated contact.”Don’t chuck any letters from HM Revenue & Customs in the bin.

Any new revenue-raising measures are rendered insignificant, anyway, by how much more Healey will be getting from simply doing nothing. Even as inflation soars — according to the Office of Budget Responsibility, it will now average 3.1% this year — income-tax thresholds are staying frozen. Last year, the OBR estimated that this alone would raise an additional £67 billion in 2030-31 as salaries rise. And that will rise again if wage growth keeps pace with inflation, dragging more people into higher tax brackets.

And yet, this all gets you only get you so far given Britain’s overstretched finances and soaring debt costs. Healey needs cuts. A hole in the £15 billion defense-investment program, for one, is meant to be filled with £3bn that comes from reducing other departments’ budgets. We don’t know which ones, and what that will mean for public services. Labour is the party of public services, Healey said in his speech. We’re about to find out what that means.

That biggest call has been postponed to next year’s spending review. The chancellor — who brought down Keir Starmer by resigning as defense secretary over spending restrictions — said the government is committed to raising military budgets to 3% of GDP by 2030 and 3.5% by 2035. The OBR estimates that if defense spending reaches that level, while spending on health, schools and overseas development jumps in line with inflation, then all the other departments will have 2.6% less money each year in real terms.

And that doesn’t even account for Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s promise of a brand-new, presumably expensive, National Care Service to take over tending to the elderly. His insistence that national security “can’t come at the expense of social security” may come back to haunt him.

Or perhaps not. The chancellor reminded the Commons that “the prime minister and I have both said we will bring down the welfare bill, and we will do it in a Labour way.”What that means, essentially, is a promise to Britain that the pair intend to somehow get their soft-left backbenchers on board with the cuts.

Starmer provoked mutinies when he dared try the same, another reason for his political demise. That the welfare bill has jumped yet again this year to £353 billion shows the scale of the task. The OBR reckons it will rise to £431 billion in 2031/32, driven primarily by spending on health and pensioners.

Healey has already given us a clue of the rhetorical artillery likely to be deployed in that battle for Labour’s soul by saying at the party’s conference last month that “benefits should be a bridge to work, to wider participation, to a better life, not a trap that people can't escape.”That may be too bitter a draft for the most left-wing Labour MPs. Downing Street will hope that many of the others can be persuaded that a basket of small, sweet giveaways will get them a hearing at voters’ doorsteps when the next election arrives.

Meanwhile, bond traders will note that the budget forecasts £6.3 billion and £7 billion of additional borrowing in 2026-27 and 2027-28, then reduces it by £2.6bn, £3.5bn and £9.3bn in the final three years to 2031-32. At some point, the UK government is going to have to eat its vegetables.

The problem with pick-n-mix is, of course, that it’s not exactly nutritious. It’s dangerous to gorge on sweets when dinner’s still to come.