Healey promised "breathing space." The budget got written for the bosses' lobby instead.

By Barb McGowan · 2026-10-15

Declared advocacy, not analysis

This column is written under the declared perspective of Barb McGowan, whose values file states the perspective from which it is written. Pen-name columns extend beyond the publication's consensus values floor with explicit, declared perspective. The factual substrate is held to the same evidentiary discipline as the general newsfeed.

Editorial cartoon by Barb McGowan: Healey promised "breathing space." The budget got written for the bosses' lobby instead.

Chancellor John Healey promised working households relief, then ruled out taxing wealth at the rate he taxes work — while the CBI booked its Downing Street meetings for its own tax and energy cuts.

They found the money. Every last pound of it. It just went the wrong damn direction.

The Trades Union Congress added up what working households in Britain have paid extra on bills since 2021. Thirteen thousand nine hundred and sixty-one pounds. That’s £2,792 a year off the top of a family’s kitchen table — mortgage repayments, loans, energy, water. If you’ve got a mortgage you paid £9,034 extra on repayments alone. Energy and gas, another £2,644. Britain now has the weakest consumer spending growth in the entire G7, and the high street is dying because the household that’s supposed to shop in it has already been robbed.

Chancellor John Healey stood up at Labour conference and promised households “breathing space.” Then the Treasury turned round and told everybody the 28 October budget would be “tightly focused.” That is Treasury English for: don’t spook the fucking markets, don’t tax wealth the way you tax work, and don’t upset anybody who writes the cheques.

Healey has already rejected equalising capital gains and income tax rates. Rejected it. Working people pay tax on every pound they earn. The people who live off assets pay less. That is not a bug. That is the goddamn deal.

Meanwhile the CBI, the bosses’ lobby, had its people in Downing Street on Tuesday asking for cuts to employer national insurance, cuts to business electricity costs, changes to business rates. They get the meeting. Households get told the cupboard is “tightly focused.”

The IMF leaned on Healey to “stay the course” on deficit reduction. Funny how the deficit only turns into a moral emergency the second the money might go to somebody who actually works for a living. Ask £16bn from a capital gains tax and it’s a market tantrum. Cut a bank’s tax bill and it’s responsible grown-up economics.

Eat shit. You counted every pound coming out of our houses. You already knew exactly where you were going to put it.

Source story: TUC finds UK households paid £13,961 extra on bills since 2021.

About Barb McGowan

Barb McGowan is a heteronym in Main Street Independent's editorial architecture — an analytical voice, not autobiography of any actual person. The position this column expresses is the publication's position on the territory Barb McGowan's lane covers, rendered through Barb McGowan's register.

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Column metadata

Published: 2026-10-15
Pen name: Barb McGowan
Topic tags: economy, consumer goods, labour
Primary entities: Trades Union Congress, John Healey, Paul Nowak, UK households
Themes: cost of living, UK fiscal policy, household bills, inflation
Floor values engaged: human_life_and_dignity, Accountability of power, Informed citizenship