I’m a gob on a stick. Not an economist. My reaction to the budget will probably be as tepid as the budget itself as most of it was briefed out via the press beforehand. The OBR (Office For Budget Responsibility) even managed to leak the bloody thing before the Chancellor delivered her statement to Parliament! Without further ado, here’s my ten takes on the Budget:

1) How Does One Get The Un-Snip?

News that the two-child benefit cap will be removed is genuinely fantastic news. It is something that everyone left to the Tories called for. Now that this hugely unpopular limit will be scrapped, Labour MPs can breathe a sigh of relief that they won’t have to defend the indefensible anymore, but the whole fiasco of Labour MPs having the whip suspended or withdrawn for having a conscience made Keir Starmer look weak yet dictatorial.

I make no secret of the fact that my self-imposed two-child cap was partly influenced by this policy. It doesn’t matter what your family’s income is, children will eat into it like a grazing cow. I have absolutely no desire to reverse my vasectomy. Mostly because I don’t want my nuts to swell to the size of grapefruits for a week again while feeling considerable pain. This decision will definitely encourage some families who were facing a similar quandary to try for a third or even more children. It also renders the so called “rape clause” obsolete. That such a measure was even necessary in Austerity Britain made me ashamed of this country. I dread to think how you’d even approach the DWP (Department for Work and Pensions) to ask for a '“Product of Rape Exemption” form.

This will lift hundreds and thousands of kids out of poverty, bringing significant relief to struggling families. Well done Labour.

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2) Sheeeeee’s Electric, And taxing per mile’s eccentric!

Making the transition to electric vehicles is expensive. As I alluded to last week, the cost of leasing is prohibitively expensive, so it was good to see that the threshold for taxing more expensive electric vehicles will be raised from £40,000 to £50,000. There’s also increased funding for the Electric Car Grant scheme to help drivers make the transition. However, the well-briefed pay-per-mile charge for electric vehicles will be implemented by April 2029. That’s 3p for electric vehicles and 1.5p for hybrids.

Having done some quick maths, based on my mileage, current spend on diesel, and rates of car tax that I currently pay, I’d reduce those costs by a third. My mind has been altered slightly by this measure as having seen the reaction on Threads, most EV drivers are happy to accept it as an inevitability.

However, obtaining an electric car in the first place is still a significant obstacle. The OBR has revised their forecast to account for 440,000 fewer electric car sales as a result of this change by 2030/31. Unless more employers sign up for salary sacrifice schemes, this needs to be supplemented by a generous scrappage scheme to overcome barriers such as income and credit history.

3) Fiscal Drag Queen

Fiscal Drag continues until 2030/31. As incomes rise, along with the cost of living, it is inherently unfair that British taxpayers are being asked to face effective tax rises for 9 years on the trot. This passage at the end of the Chancellor’s speech feels quite contradictory:

I have asked everyone to contribute – yes,

For the security of our country and the brightness of its future.

But I have kept that contribution as low as possible by reforming our tax system…

…making it fairer and stronger for the future.

I have protected our NHS – maintaining public investment and driving efficiency in government spending.

I have taken action on our broken welfare system – rooting out waste and lifting children out of poverty.

And I have cut the cost of living – with money off bills and prices frozen.

All while keeping every single one of our manifesto commitments.

Too many people are familiar with the concept of fiscal drag to keep up this facade. Under the first term of a Labour Government, you will pay more income tax. As you get a promotion, do more overtime, win a pay rise in work etc. you will creep into a tax band that will see you either paying basic rate income tax for the first time or creeping into the higher rate.

These measures will disincentivise personal progression. Raising income tax rates would have been politically catastrophic for Labour, but as I discussed in a previous substack, it would have been a simpler and cheaper cost to bare.

4) Relief for SEND families AND local councils

Central Government will absorb the cost of providing SEND provision after 2027/28, which will be a huge relief to local councils. A balance sheet offset is currently in place to help them balance their current books, but local government officials are concerned about any legacy debt that will hang over future budgets. This is a lovely bit of business from the Government that deserved a lot more attention, so thank you to the Institute for Fiscal Studies for pointing it out!

5) Tickets please!

Freezing rail prices for the first time in 30 years has been a long time coming. I can’t remember the last time I took a train and I would have genuine anxiety about doing so, because delays and cancellations are so common. Labour’s policy of bringing rail franchises back into public ownership will take time, but it still does not address our rail network’s fundamental problems. I drive to Birmingham on a regular basis and it genuinely upsets me to see the progress of the HS2 works, knowing that’s where they’ll terminate.

He’s normally inflated by a combination of hot air, wine and cheese, but Boris dared to dream. We need more high-speed rail in this country to improve interconnectivity between our cities. Many will have fiscal and environmental objections, but this is classic Keynesian economics. Large-scale public works that bring subsequent economic benefits both during and after construction. This lack of bold ambition has been an overriding theme of the Budget.

6) Can you get pork on prescription?

The freezing of prescription charges is also welcome, but it does little to genuinely bring down the cost of living. The OBR has acknowledged a raft of technical measures to help reduce the cost of food inflation. An Agri-Food deal with the European Union is currently being negotiated to eliminate shipment costs, a Food Inflation Gateway will be created to monitor prices, and the Food Standards Authority will be streamlining quality and hygiene standards for supermarkets, as they are largely compliant anyway.

Potential reductions in food inflation from technical tweaks simply won’t compare to dealing with the elephant in the room. Farmers are already incensed with the Chancellor regarding Family Farm Tax and the loss of the Substainable Farming Initiative. All of these issues would be confined to the dustbin, if they were bold enough to do the unspeakable.

7) Brexit is a fucking disaster.

Ed Davey’s response to the Budget Speech was spot on. You cannot tax your way to growth. Yes, I’m biased, but my very raison d’être in politics and my reason for joining the Lib Dems in the first place was Brexit.

It is there in black and white.

Productivity has been revised down from 1.3% to 1%. Trade intensity (basically how much trade is conducted between the UK and the EU) will plummet by 15% in the long term according to the OBR. Our GDP has reduced by 8%, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. The UK is losing £90bn a year in tax revenues, and to make up for it, the Chancellor is increasing OUR taxes to such an extent, by 2030/31, Brits will endure a tax to GDP ratio of 36%. That’s HIGHER than under the last Tory Government!

In a couple of weeks, the Lib Dems Europe Spokesperson, Dr. Al Pinkerton MP, will put forward a bill to create a new UK-EU Customs Union. It’s not the whole Brexit hog, but it will be interesting to see how many Labour MPs, even those with obvious pro-EU sentiments, will vote against it. This is political theatre more than substance, but we need to stop pandering to Nigel Farage. He campaigned for this chaos. He achieved it. He refuses to own up to it. Stop the pussyfooting around! I will never stop campaigning for Britain to rejoin the European Union, and I’ll take anything that brings us closer to that goal.

8) The Bloody Yoof!

I’m grateful for the minimum wage. Not that it impacts me personally, but it is universally agreed that there needs to be a standard. I don’t blame employers for raising the alarm with regards to their outgoings, especially those impacted by last year’s hike in National Insurance Contributions for Employers.

Morally, I find it distasteful when employers whinge about minimum wage increases when they’re prepared to pay their staff the absolute minimum they’re legally allowed to. It just goes to show how little they must value their staff. I find it even more galling that they oppose wage rises for younger workers.

Unless they’re working part-time whilst at Uni, or still living at home with their parents, the cost of living isn’t adjusted proportionate to age.

9) Trumped Up Charges

Digital Services Tax is a bugbear of mine. 2% is a paltry levy, compared to Labour’s quietly dropped 10% rate whilst in opposition, and the Lib Dems 6% rate as per our Fair Deal.

The Government’s very own review of DST concluded that it raised approximately £800m in revenue in 2024/25, with no avoidance or fraud identified. Social Media giants are prepared to accept this cost of doing business. The OBR acknowledges that if DST were to rise, there would be some behavioural changes by these multinational conglomerates in response. If it meant that Elon Musk would pay less to the very content creators that feed his algorithm of bile, then that’s a positive outcome.

But we have to be realistic. Donald Trump wouldn’t accept this raid on American conglomerates. He would probably threaten to withdraw the UK-US ‘Trade Deal,’ sending our car manufacturers into freefall. Until the Nectarine Napoleon is out of office, DST rises are a non-starter.

10) Badenoch Was Bad Enough!

A picture says a thousand words. Kemi Badenoch’s response to the budget didn’t deal with detail. It was an exercise in obfuscation of the previous Government’s failures, dealing more in superficial matters than substance. Meshed with a typical Tory response regarding taxation and welfare were jibes about Reeves dismissing criticism as “mansplaining” and “misogyny.” As I said last week, the Chancellor should absolutely face scrutiny for her policy choices, but the atmosphere in which Rachel Reeves delivered her speech was vile.

The Commons can be rowdy, but this was something else. There is absolutely no chance in hell that the Tory opposition would have behaved so appallingly towards Gordon Brown back in the day. He’d have threatened to kick their heads in for that level of disrespect, and I’d have believed him. Gordon Brown was a Chancellor who passionately cared about lifting children out of poverty, but so passionate it could explode into anger. You didn’t fuck with Gordon.

That was misogyny on display. Without question. It was a detriment to parliamentary standards, as was Badenoch’s “Benefits Street” jibe that belonged in the previous decade.

A further detriment to Parliamentary standards was the drip-feed of Budget briefings over several weeks before the Chancellor gave her statement. It used to be sacrosanct that Budget leaks were career suicide, given their market sensitivity. I don’t know Erskine May cover to cover, but if both Tory and Labour Governments feel that they can get away with promoting policies before they’re announced to Parliament, then the Speaker and his deputies need to redress that balance of power, and deliver meaningful sanctions to ministers who do this.

With Parliament being self-regulating, MPs may live with the regular routine of taking a bollocking and promising not to do it again in a dull doomloop, because feeding the lobby is more important.

There’s loads more I could have spoken about but I’ve been sat in Costa for the past 2 hours getting this finished and I’m busting for a whizz, so that’s all you get! If you’ve enjoyed reading this then feel free to take advantage of my Black Friday Subscription Special Offer! Open until Tuesday 2nd December. I’m offering paid subscriptions for roughly £1 a month or £10 a year. This is a self imposed financial disaster for me, but a big budget win for you. So do take advantage!

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