The facts
On October 28, 2026, UK Chancellor John Healey presented the 2026 budget. Key measures include a £100 council tax rebate for households in bands A to D to assist with winter energy bills, costing £2.6 billion and expected to benefit 80% of households. The bank surcharge will rise from 3% to 6% for 15 months starting January 2027, projected to raise approximately £1.5 billion, though the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimates £190 million in lost revenue as some banks may shift profits abroad. The budget also includes a two percentage point rise in property income taxes, expected to raise over £500 million annually by 2028-29, which the OBR warns could lead to increased rents. The OBR forecasts real household disposable income (RHDI) to rise by only 1% over the entire post-Covid decade, marking a historically slow growth rate. The Institute for Fiscal Studies noted the budget's reliance on tight public spending plans, with departmental spending projected to fall significantly in real terms by 2031-32. The Resolution Foundation criticized the £100 rebate for being poorly targeted, missing one in eight of the poorest families.
Our take
Let’s get this straight. John Healey, a man whose job title suggests he controls the nation’s purse, has presented a budget whose headline act is giving you a hundred pounds. A hundred. Fucking. Pounds. In the grand pantheon of political bribes, this is the equivalent of finding a sticky two-pence piece in a pub urinal and calling it economic stimulus. You are expected to be grateful for this microscopic crumb, this insult wrapped in a direct debit. And the real kick in the cunt? The Resolution Foundation says this masterfully targeted measure misses one in eight of the poorest families. So the people shivering in the dampest, coldest shitholes don’t even get this pathetic consolation prize. Well done, you bureaucratic bastards. Your aim is so shit you couldn’t hit a barn door with a shotgun.
Then this fiscal wizard turns his attention to the banks. He’s going to show them! He’ll double their surcharge! For fifteen whole months! What a tough guy. What a brave stand. Except the Office for Budget Responsibility, the adults in the room, immediately points out the obvious: the greedy pricks will just shift their profits somewhere nicer. The result? This big, bold tax rise is projected to lose the Treasury £190 million. It’s not a policy; it’s a fucking donation to corporate accountants. Healey might as well have stood at the dispatch box and lit a bonfire of banknotes while winking at the C-suite wankers in Canary Wharf. It’s a performance of strength for the gallery, utterly hollowed out by the reality that the people he’s taxing have a fucking escape hatch he built for them.
And because he’s clearly on a roll of catastrophic ideas, he’s jacking up taxes on property income. Every sentient being knows this cost will be passed straight to renters. So congratulations, you absolute dickhead, you’ve just invented a new stealth tax on people already being gouged for every penny they have. You’ve managed to make being poor even more expensive. This isn’t governance; it’s a protection racket where the government is the one shaking you down.
The overarching picture, painted by the OBR with the grim detachment of a coroner, is that real household income will rise by a pitiful 1% over the entire post-Covid decade. Let that sink in. A decade. One percent. That’s not growth; that’s the financial equivalent of a stalactite forming. It’s statistical flatlining. Meanwhile, public department spending is set to plummet in real terms, meaning the services you rely on are about to get even more shit, if they exist at all. So here’s the Healey legacy: a useless hundredner that won’t cover a week’s heating, a bank tax that costs us money, a renter tax disguised as something else, and a future where your life gets microscopically, imperceptibly worse for ten straight years. He stood up there with his slides, a smug cunt presiding over managed decline, and called it a budget. It’s a suicide note for a country, drafted by a man who thinks a century is a king’s ransom. He is a chancellor in title only. In practice, he’s the chief usher at a funeral, handing out worthless vouchers for the wake.
