This, the Treasury has been at pains to tell us, will be a very “low-key” budget. After weeks of speculation from journalists, a flurry of press releases from thinktanks, and a photoshoot with an obligatory red box, the chancellor, John Healey, will announce the details of the Burnham government’s first budget in the Commons today at 12:30pm. Healey has been selling this as a series of measures designed to relieve pressure on low- and middle-income households under the mangled tagline of “breathing space for today, fresh hope for the future”.
Many of the proposals have already been briefed, and their modesty is a sign of the constraints – both real and self-imposed – that his government faces. He has rejected calls to raise capital gains tax or lower the mansion tax and has promised to stick to Labour’s fiscal rules, while the Iran war has increased the cost of borrowing and eroded his spending power. Voters might be hoping for something transformative from a government that risks presiding over the worst parliament for living standards on record.
That’s the impression I got from First Edition readers and people struggling with the cost of living, who I spoke to for this morning’s newsletter about what they’d like to see from today’s budget. First, here are the headlines. Israeli elections | Israel could be in for weeks of political haggling after exit polls and partial official results showed neither Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition nor the opposition bloc led by former general Gadi Eisenkot had won enough seats to form a government.
Energy | The government’s plan to fund a multibillion-pound nuclear plant at the Sizewell site in Suffolk represents a “terrible deal” for the UK taxpayer over the rest of the century, according to the government’s spending watchdog. Middle East | A multipronged peace deal to reopen the strait of Hormuz within four days of sanctions being lifted and for the Houthis to withdraw substantial forces inside Yemen are at the heart of Gulf states’ plans to avert what they regard as a disastrous renewal of war between Iran and the US. UK news | A 78-year-old volunteer has claimed a Reform UK councillor accused her of “facilitating the invasion” and being akin to a Nazi collaborator during the second world war because she has helped asylum seekers learn English.
Brazil | The far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro has reportedly fled Brazil and is on his way to the United States after losing Sunday’s presidential election to the leftwing incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. There was some detectable grumbling earlier this week over the lack of information about this budget compared with those of Rachel Reeves, and Healey has made much of the “military-style protocols” that have allegedly stopped the Treasury’s secrets from leaking out. But it seems more likely that there hasn’t been much to leak.
The government was criticised yesterday for pausing the process of equalising the lower national minimum wage, paid to people under 21, with the more generous “national living wage” for older workers, and has also announced a series of “everyday fixes” to ease the cost of living pressures facing UK households. That is expected to include support for poorer families with energy bills this winter and to pledge energy market reforms aimed at bringing down bills for all households in the longer term. The extent of those pressures is remarkable.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
