Also, it's not immediately clear how the government can publish the Mandate unless the Planning Guidance is agreed, as it confronts the same issues (not that the Mandate has ever been a particularly impactful document, but you might hope that a new government could take a different approach)

Oh indeed, I suppose the gamble is whether they can afford to effectively lose a year when the public's expectations are pretty high that things will get better - whatever its merits, 'the other lot broke it' line is already coming under a fair bit of strain across government!

Quite a brave choice to have a holding year given the current policy is that the NHS is broken! Will be interesting to see if they manage to avoid cutting the usual suspects (tech/capital), given the rhetoric on the 'shifts'