John Healey betrays working families with a hollow budget

By Maya Ellison · Reporting from Detroit · October 28, 2026

Chancellor John Healey offers temporary pocket change to struggling families while preserving the wealth of banks and elites during a brutal cost of living crisis.

A slap in the face for working people Chancellor John Healey calls it "breathing space." But standing in a cold kitchen while the gas meter ticks upward feels less like breathing and more like suffocating. According to the BBC, forecasts suggest a typical annual energy bill could rise to £2,100 in January. While the rich protect their fortunes, ordinary people are told to survive on crumbs. Prime Minister Andy Burnham and his chancellor delivered their first budget package. The message to the working class is simple: tighten your belt until it snaps.

The centerpiece of this plan is a one-off £100 "Household Energy Payment" for homes in council tax bands A to D in England. An extra tax on banks funds it. The Resolution Foundation states that while most households qualify, 1.4 million poor families miss out because they live in higher band homes. That is not policy; that is a lottery where the poorest often lose. RTÉ notes that this energy bill payment will cost £2.6 billion, financed in part by a time-limited hike in the bank surcharge.

Let us be entirely clear about what is happening here. The banks get a gentle tap on the wrist that raises just under £1.5bn over its run, according to The Guardian. Meanwhile, families face a cost of living crisis defined by soaring fuel prices and stagnant wages. Anadolu Agency reports that diesel prices recently exceeded £2 per litre due to the Iran war. This has pushed up filling costs since late February. Asharq Al-Awsat points out that UK inflation rose to its highest level in nearly a year. A small handout does not cover the monthly increase on a grocery bill. It certainly fails against an energy spike driven by geopolitical chaos.

Protecting the balance sheet while people break The apologists for this budget will argue that the government had no choice. They claim the national debt exceeding three trillion British pounds leaves the Treasury with tied hands. Matthew Ames of Aberdeen Investments suggests that a budget free of surprises lowers borrowing costs and appeals to international investors. This is the oldest trick in the book: prioritize the sensibilities of bond markets while real human beings drown in debt.

The OBR forecasts that living standards, measured by real household disposable income, will rise by just 1% over the post-Covid decade. That averages less than 0.1% a year. David Miles notes that seven years after the pre-Covid base, there is virtually no growth in per person real household disposable income. That is a lost decade codified into law. It is the Financial crisis of 2008 repeated in slow motion. Public funds and policy shielding protect the financial machinery while the social fabric frays.

The parallels to the dark days of Austerity measures in the United Kingdom are glaring. The total tax burden will increase sharply to a record high, with National Accounts taxes peaking at 38.6%, as reported by The Guardian. Yet this tax load is tilted backward. While property income taxes will rise, raising more than £500m a year, the OBR explicitly warns that this "collectively risk[s] leading to a steady rise in rents." Once again, the state lets landlords pass their tax burden directly onto vulnerable tenants.

Tinkering at the edges of collapse The minimum wage will rise in April, pushing the National Living Wage to £13.21 an hour for those 21 and over. Younger workers will see the National Minimum Wage increase to £11.27 an hour. While any raise is welcome, it is completely swallowed by the relentless march of inflation and utility costs. Ellie Chowns rightly criticized the package as a "business-as-usual budget which failed to engage with the real issues facing our country – choosing to tinker round the edges, rather than properly taxing extreme wealth and profits."

There is no serious investment in long-term climate resilience and no permanent restructuring of the energy market. There is no real reckoning with corporate profiteering. Instead, we get gimmicks like removing food tariffs, which saves households up to 40p a week. Forty pence a week. That is an insult delivered with a straight face from the dispatch box. As Nigel Farage noted, unemployment will rise while debt interest payments mount toward £160bn a year.

We are living through a historic squeeze. Working people bear the cost of every macroeconomic shock while billionaires and corporations hoard the upside. This budget does not challenge that dynamic; it enshrines it. Justice would require a permanent, aggressive wealth tax and a permanent doubling of taxes on financial institutions. It demands massive public investment in housing and green energy that permanently lowers the cost of living. Instead, John Healey and Andy Burnham have offered a holding pattern. It preserves the comfort of the top tier while telling the rest of us to brace for impact.

Chancellor John Healey and Prime Minister Andy Burnham have failed working families by trading structural economic transformation for temporary fiscal gimmicks. They leave millions exposed to permanent stagnation and rising poverty while shielding the financial elite from their fair share of the burden.

John Healey betrays working families with a hollow budget

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