Statement from SSP Co-Spokesperson Colin Fox
‘This is a Budget for the working people of Britain’ claimed John Healey in the opening sentence of his first Budget to Parliament. It was nothing of the kind.
Offering 30p a week [via the abolition of gas bill standing charges] to those enduring the cost of living crisis that never seems to end, it is little wonder the BBC’s Political Editor Chris Mason dismissed it as ‘a flotilla of small measures’.
He was too generous.
There was no ‘flotilla’ here more a single rubber dinghy. As anti-climaxes go his statement was a big one. This was after all a Budget that had been anticipated for months with expectations of breakthrough announcements on the cost of living crisis, public spending and government borrowing.
In the event there was virtually nothing in Healey’s statement. Nothing that hadn’t been revealed in advanced. Scrapping the standing charge on household gas bills, that was there.
Freezing fuel duty for another year – he could hardly have increased it when diesel is already £2 a litre!
Raising pensions and the minimum wage by the rate of inflation, quelle surprise!
The former Director at the Institute of Fiscal Studies Paul Johnston predicted well in advance that there would be nothing in Healey’s revelations to Parliament and he was right.
‘We are providing a breathing space for those suffering from the cost of living crisis; from rising energy bills, fuel prices and food costs’ insisted Healey echoing similar empty promises from his predecessor.
Indeed he paid tribute to Rachel Reeves [herself absent from the Chamber] at one and the same time the first female Chancellor in 800 years and arguably the worst. And such ‘continuity Starmerism’ was clear throughout his statement.
This was the Autumn Budget Reeves would have delivered had Burnham not displaced her regime in the summer.
It reassured the bond markets, offered little relief to millions suffering from the cost-of- living crisis, promised no end to widening inequalities, but delivered more warnings about ‘unsustainable’ public spending levels and more empty promises on the NHS, social care, housing, transport infrastructure and justice.
On the much anticipated increase in defence spending it was revealing that not a murmur was heard from those ‘Soft Left’ MP’s on Labour’s benches [who purport to control the Parliamentary Party] when Healey [the standard bearer of the Labour Right] announced not only that he was increasing military spending by £14bn/year more than the Tories ever had, but that he would deploy private finance initiatives [PFI’s] therein despite the crescendo of criticism such plans have attracted over the past 30 years.
His privatisation of defence spending will mean greater profits for armaments manufacturers and other warmongers and less ‘bang for the public buck’ [pardon the pun] so to speak. It went through without a Labour whimper!
On housing Healey employed the classic tactic of obfuscation by crying ‘crocodile tears’ over the ‘170,000 children living in temporary accommodation tonight’ whilst offering no explanation to the big story of the week namely Labour’s abandonment of Starmer’s promise to build 1.5million new homes by 2029 (‘Labour’s 1.5mn homes target fades’ revealed the Financial Times [27/10/27] as ‘The target is effectively dead admitted a senior government figure).
The politics of all this is at least clear. Starmer may be gone – Reeves too – but their politics have not.
Their empty promises on the cost-of-living crisis, on the immense problems facing our NHS, care homes and council housing sectors were delivered once again.
Let’s be clear here Andy Burnham and John Healey are heading for the rocks. Labour’s current standing in the polls [they lead by 8%] will not last, not if they continue to offer up Budgets which obfuscate and ignore the real problems facing ‘the working people of Britain’.
Badenoch is waiting in the wings, and both Burnham and Healey are playing into her hands. We have been warned.