Autumn Budget 2026: Wary Healey presents a Ming Vase Budget

Healey has tried to avoid breaking anything – including Labour’s poll lead – in his Ming Vase Budget, writes Julian Jessop As expected, John Healey delivered a low-key ‘first do no harm’ Budget, with a few treats for households and businesses and no nasty surprises for investors. What was needed, though, was a ‘do some real good’ Budget. The only ‘rabbit’ was a £100 ‘household energy payment’ for 20m households in council tax bands A–D, costing £2.6bn. But even this merely replaced a widely trailed expansion of the Warm Home Discount. The Chancellor had already ruled out many of the dafter ideas favoured by his colleagues, including equalising capital gains and income tax, or a new wealth tax. Despite their simplistic appeal, the Treasury and Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) will have told him that neither idea would raise much money. Two brave decisions Two decisions were still ‘brave’. The first was to cut fiscal headroom from about £24bn to £15bn in 2029-30, reb