Defense Gets Most Mentions in UK Budget Since World War Two

UK Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey’s first budget contained a series of small measures to help with the cost of living, including minor savings for most households for winter energy bills, paid for by banks.

It was a significantly lower-key affair than the two budgets of his predecessor, which put the tax burden on course for a post-World War II high in order to fund the Labour government’s public service and investment priorities.

Healey insists bigger decisions are coming in areas such as defense in the upcoming 10-year plan and welfare and spending reviews. In the meantime, we hunt for the real meaning of Healey’s budget in eight key charts.

Healey mentioned defense more than any other Chancellor in a budget since World War II, according to Bloomberg’s analysis of parliamentary transcripts. That includes even the Korean war rearmament budget at the start of the 1950s, and Gordon Brown’s budget three weeks after the Iraq invasion in 2003.

The chancellor, whose resignation as defense secretary over funding earlier in the year contributed to the downfall of then-prime minister, Keir Starmer, pledged to ramp up military spending to 3% of economic output by the end of this decade.

However, he left the details about how to pay to pay for the increase to next year’s spending review. In the meantime, he plugged a gap in defense investment plans from earlier in the year by reallocating some capital spending, costing £4.7 billion over three years.

Deferring bigger decisions, while announcing smaller ones, Healey’s budget contained more measures than any other since 2010, according to Bloomberg’s analysis of Treasury Red Book documents. However, the average size of each measure, as a percentage of GDP, was only a quarter as large.

Top UK business groups gave the budget a thumbs-down, calling out the lack of measures to support companies. Only a handful of their pre-budget requests were met, according to a Bloomberg analysis of data compiled by the 2030 Prosperity Alliance think tank, which details the measures that business groups and companies had called for.

The most common requests included lower business rates — an unpopular commercial property tax — no further tax rises, and relief from national insurance contributions.

While lobby groups often ask for more than they expect to get, the results show how Healey’s budget still left them wanting.

Some of the pro-business measures that were announced included a tax cut for businesses in the retail, hospitality and leisure industries, and billions more for the National Wealth Fund and British Business Bank.

Healey announced that he’s giving HMRC, the UK tax authority, funding “to improve compliance and stronger powers to collect overdue tax from those who can clearly afford to pay but ignore repeated contact.”

While that line sounds quite technocratic, it was the biggest revenue-raiser in the budget. HMRC measures to close the tax gap raise the most money when summed over the six years — almost £8 billion ($10.7 billion) in total.

That’s a lot more than the £1.5 billion from the bank surcharge increase, which is only in force for 15 months. The biggest cost is the £100 household energy payment, coming to £2.6 billion.

Yesterday’s budget was mostly a giveaway, delivering £4.1 billion of “breathing space” to households. However, tax increases kick in from next year — banks, gaming firms, landlords and savers bear the brunt — and spending plans beyond 2028 are so tight that many economists doubt they can be delivered.

Overall, the measures add £7.6 billion to government borrowing this year, but that turns into a £11.7 billion reduction by 2031-32, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. Taxes are set to reach a record 39% of GDP by the end of 2031.

The OBR’s disposable income figures show why people are feeling the pinch: forecast growth in real household disposable income per person in the current parliament is set to be the second-lowest since the 1950s.

“What an unbelievably awful decade,” former head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Paul Johnson, said in a post on X. “It used to grow by 2%+ every year, not 1% in 10 years.”

The Resolution Foundation think tank also criticized “a complete failure to target help at those who need it most.” According to their calculations, the poorest half of households will gain £158 on average from cost of living support by the end of next year, just £14 more than the richest half.

The OBR slightly upgraded its forecast for economic growth this year to 1.2% — but former Goldman Sachs Group chief economist Jim O’Neill told Times Radio he thinks it should’ve gone further, saying he’s “baffled” because the forecast implies negative growth for the remainder of the year.

O’Neill said he thinks growth for the year will be “somewhere not far off 2%,” adding: “It is almost like the OBR hasn’t paid any attention to the past three months’ worth of data.”

The OBR finalized its forecast before second-quarter GDP growth was revised up by the Office of National Statistics, and before strong July and August data was released, the fiscal watchdog told Bloomberg.

The OBR downgraded next year’s growth forecast, and increased its expectation for inflation.

The budget came on the 101st day of Burnham’s administration. He’s so far helped Labour record one of the biggest popularity boosts enjoyed by a party that has switched prime ministers outside of a general election in over 70 years — according to Bloomberg’s analysis of polling data compiled by Liberal Democrat peer and poll expert Mark Pack that stretches back to 1955.

But the budget got a “mixed reaction” from voters in a focus group conducted by Luke Tryl of More in Common. The energy payment and bank tax were popular, and reinforce the idea that Burnham “gets it and is trying to help,” Tryl said.

It matched their pre-budget polling showing that people want to prioritize keeping taxes on working people low more than improving the health system, a reversal since the last general election. But his focus group members were also asking: where’s the beef?