Joanna Marchong

John Healey’s cash cow may have nothing more to give. The latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures show that the businesses Labour is rumoured to want to take aim at in the coming Budget for the third year in a row are already experiencing a lack of demand. Retail sales volumes fell by 0.4 per cent in September, four times the 0.1 per cent dip economists had pencilled in. Annual growth slowed to 0.8 per cent, from 2.4 per cent in August. Reduced sales are evident across the board, so this isn’t a story of a dying high street. From August to September, supermarket volumes fell by 0.4 per cent to below June levels, and no, customers weren’t swapping out their staples for materialistic luxuries elsewhere.

Five weeks out from his first Budget, John Healey is scrambling to make the numbers add up. Figures just released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show the government borrowed £18.3 billion in August, making it the second highest August on record behind 2020. It was also £3.5 billion over the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) forecast for the month. ‘Spending increased more than government income from taxes… partly reflecting the impacts of inflation’, the ONS said, with borrowing for August up £2.9 billion (19 per cent) compared with last year. What’s worse is this borrowing increase came despite an increase in tax receipts, which are £2.5 billion higher than a year ago, with income tax revenue up 6.6 per cent.

The failure to get on the property ladder used to be the modern-day bogeyman for young adults. It was used as a constant reminder for young adults to be good. Save money, stop eating avocados and drinking takeaway coffees so that they could someday climb the highly aspirational property ladder. God forbid you’re stuck renting for the rest of your life.  That being said, today is the 'cost of rent day' for everyone renting in London. Renters in London, up until today, have spent the first 152 days of the year earning nothing but their rent. And this number increases year on year. So, again, save as much as you can and buy. But if this generation ever had hopes of getting on the property ladder, they were sorely misguided. The fear factor was once that the ladder was hard to get on.

Rachel Reeves enters 2026 more unpopular than she has ever been before. YouGov polling from December has 71 per cent of Britons saying they have an unfavourable opinion of Britain’s first female chancellor. Reeves was meant to be a competent economist who could restore credibility to the Treasury and, in her words, ‘revive economic growth’. How’s that going? Reeve’s tenure in No. 11 has so far been more slapstick than good governance. Her CV unravelled under scrutiny; she broke manifesto commitments; she unveiled an appalling Budget, vowed never to repeat it, and then promptly did. Am I judging her too harshly? Am I being a misogynist? Reeves would probably say so. We should judge female politicians just as we do men: brutally.

For a party long described as Britain’s ‘natural party of government’, the Conservatives have spent an astonishing amount of time recently behaving as if the electorate suffers from acute memory loss. Every crisis they now attempt to offer solutions to in opposition is one they helped engineer in government. Every principle they defend today is one they discarded yesterday. And every lecture on restraint or prudence is delivered with the tone of a headteacher whose school burned down on his watch. Take Send as an example. (‘Send’ stands for special educational needs and disabilities.

Gathered beneath the marble columns of the old Banking Hall in the City of London, Nigel Farage did what he does best. He assembled journalists, lobbyists, wonks and a few business representatives for another hour of gesticulations and clarifications. But this time was slightly different; here, there was talk of sensible reform alongside the usual messaging. Talk of ‘common-sense economics’, nods to tax, promises to put ‘Britain first’. Plenty of sound rhetoric, yes. But precious little sound policy. Reform shouldn't be a party of loud statements, here-today-gone-tomorrow policies and U-turns We left with a similar sense of deja vu: bold themes, grim but correct forecasts about Britain’s economic decay and little detail.  One idea, though, hardly fleshed out but familiar.