Within hours of John Healey's appointment as the UK's chancellor of the exchequer on Monday evening, the jokes wrote themselves.
Give the Treasury to the man who complained there wasn't enough money, quipped some, referring to John Healey's resignation last month as Keir Starmer's defence secretary, angry at what he saw as inadequate spending on rearmament.
Others reached further back: the last time Labour had a chancellor called Healey (Denis, 1974-9), he ended up having to borrow from the IMF.
The second jibe is the better one, though not for the reason its authors think.
Denis Healey went to the IMF in 1976 because Britain could not finance itself at a reasonable cost while sterling collapsed. John Healey faces no such threat.
The UK borrows entirely in its own floating currency. The Debt Management Office has pushed annual funding programmes of more than £300bn through the market without incident.
The Bank of England is a useful friend. In September 2022, when the Gilt market went into a tizzy after Kwasi Kwarteng's alarmingly loose, pro-growth Budget, the Bank rode in to buy bonds.
Truth to power
What survives from 1976 is a different lesson: the bond market, not the party, sets the limit of a Labour government's programme.
Denis Healey's real legacy was not the humiliation of the IMF loan, but that he became the chancellor who told his own party there was no money.
John Healey arrives labelled as the steady choice — a serious figure with Treasury experience, picked ahead of others to be a safe pair of hands.
But look at what Healey did most recently — quitting because defence was underfunded. Straight after his appointment as chancellor, talk of a larger defence settlement began. Equity investors marked the sector up sharply, even as Gilts held still.
The Gilt market, meanwhile, has spent the week administering its own version of the old discipline, basis point by basis point.
On Monday the 10 year yield rose by 8bp, popping back above 5% after Andy Burnham promised to use "any flexibility" within the fiscal rules.
On Tuesday, with a new chancellor installed, the yield legged higher again. But with the cabinet performing prudence for the cameras, Gilts steadied, on a day when Bunds, OATs and BTPs all cheapened.
Still, stabilisation is not endorsement. The market has smiled at the new government, but flashed its teeth.
Watch the numbers
The same problem that defeated Denis Healey is already sitting on his namesake's desk.
June's borrowing came in a shade under forecast, but for the fiscal year so far is running £2.7bn above the Office for Budget Responsibility's profile. Once again, the money is not there.
Rhetorical nuances can move Gilt yields for a day, but borrowing shifts them for a fiscal year. When Burnham's spending arrives it will come in the Gilt remit. That is where investors should look for the true measure of this government, not its promises about fiscal rules.
Denis Healey devoted his credibility to telling his party to spend less. John Healey, so far, has devoted his to arguing for more. Same surname, opposite instincts.
Gilt investors will find out which Healey they have been given at the autumn Budget. If it turns out to be the wrong one, they will not wait for the IMF to set out its recipe for fiscal rectitude. They will impose the conditions themselves.