Far from producing a budget for working people, Chancellor John Healey chooses to grovel to the monopoly corporations while running scared of the bond market.
He is under-spending and over-borrowing at enormous public expense because he will not reverse the 40-year halving of corporation tax on company profits and of the top rate of income tax. While small-scale additional help for household energy users and small business job creation is welcome, he could have done much more by taxing banks, energy monopolies, supermarkets and online gambling super-profits and imposing selective price controls.
He could also have equalised income and capital gains tax rates, thereby demonstrating that hard work is rewarded at least as much as reaping profits from asset speculation.
A Labour government worthy of the name would have restored overseas development aid rather than boosting military spending by chopping investment in other departments.
All these steps could have been taken, while still leaving him £20bn ‘headroom’ in the public finances instead of the £15bn demanded by the bond market. To top it all, next year’s minimum and living wage increase is likely to be overtaken by rising inflation as millions of pensioners still face losing one-third of their ‘triple lock’ safeguard in a few years’ time.
Unless it changes course, this Labour government will lose its massive majority at the next General Election, thereby proving its political as well as its fiscal bankruptcy.
Communist Party of Britain,
28 October 2026
ENDS.