Thursday 29 October 2026 1:10 pm  |  Updated:  Thursday 29 October 2026 1:14 pm

This Budget ignored all of Britain’s biggest problems

By: Emma Revell

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The ballooning benefits bill, the terrifying lack of economic growth, our inadequate defence programme: Labour’s Budget had nothing to offer for Britain’s biggest issues, writes Emma Revell

Word on the street ahead of John Healey’s first Budget was that the mantra in Whitehall when preparing the document was “do no harm”. Unfortunately for the country, mandarins and Treasury boffins seem to have confused that idea with “do as little as humanly possible”. In seeking to do no harm, Healey did at least, as my colleague Robert Colvile put it on Budget day, “ignore many of the more lunatic ideas being proposed by his parliamentary colleagues” but that doesn’t mean he has actually done anyone any good.

The biggest challenges facing Britain are our terrifying lack of economic growth, the ballooning size of the benefits bill, the ticking time bomb that is serving our national debt and the total inadequacy of our defence programme, for which John Healey has already resigned once.

The Budget ignored them all. 

On welfare, Healey has been able to hide behind........

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