The UK Labour Government’s Autumn Budget of 2025 is of no real difference from it’s predecessor’s. The overarching theme of the budget is tax – but not for the ultra-wealthy, who hold a combined wealth of £772.8 billion, or the corporations whose profiteering has driven the now baked-in cost-of-living crisis. No, the reality of the tax freeze introduced by Rachel Reeves (Chancellor) in this budget is that average waged working people are being (yet again) asked to carry the brunt of a financial crisis they did not create, with millions now set to be brought into a higher tax bracket. Meanwhile, the eye-watering levels of profit held by planet-destroying corporations like Shell and BP will remain firmly intact in the pockets of their shareholders and CEOs. This is a budget which consciously chooses to foot the bill on working-class people, who will now have less disposable income, rather than go after the grotesque levels of wealth in the hands of the billionaires which could be used to meet the needs of everyone and uplift the majority of people’s living standards.
The scrapping of the energy company obligation scheme – a home insulation scheme which sought to make energy companies pay for measures like insulation and new heating systems for low-income households – is another blow to working-class people in this budget. Reeves has promised a £150 discount off of household energy bills next year as a result. But this is a meagre, short-sighted gesture. Insulation and refurbishment is a key part of the fight in combating fuel poverty by helping to bring bills down – but it’s also a small part of the bigger necessary transition to better equipping homes to withstand the impacts of the climate crisis. To put it bluntly, it’s another move which lets big energy corporations retain their money while ordinary people are forced to live in worsening housing conditions.
One major thing to come of this budget is the much too late abolition of the two-child benefit cap – a callous policy which arbitrarily denied children in need of support because of the order in which they were born. It was a policy widely recognised as one of the key drivers of worsening child poverty, and saw a staggering rate of 1 in 9 kids go without their basic needs being met. As Zarah Sultana put it, the Labour government should and could have scrapped this inhumane policy from day one. Starmer and Reeves even went as far as removing the whip from Labour MPs (including Sultana) who voted to undo it. While we welcome the undoing of a policy which never should have been introduced in the first place, let us not allow this Labour government to whitewash their long record of cruelty and inhumanity with this move.
Political pundits and the mainstream media (both ardently right-wing and ‘centre’) have already begun to decry the budget as further evidence of the Labour party being ‘the party of ‘welfare’ (Kemi Badenoch) i.e., ‘too soft on welfare’. This would be laughable if not so insulting. When writing about the two-child cap policy impact on child poverty earlier this week, The Times made an erroneous racist point that an increase in migration ‘may be a contributing factor’ to the hardship felt by families affected by the policy, particularly ‘British families’ who are ‘less likely than Bangladeshi families or Pakistani families to have three or more children’. Far-Right social media accounts are already flooding platforms with disinformation and racist tropes about BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) groups who will supposedly ‘most benefit’ from the policy change. The irony is, these are the same forces who spent the 2010’s demonising all working-class and poor people for having kids – now they’re trying to pose themselves as the defenders of the ‘white working-class’ families.
It feels like a waste of words to say this – but obviously, Keir Starmer’s Labour government is not a government big on welfare. They are anti-working class to their core – and have willingly propped up the most unequal, exploitative, racist and genocidal aspects of this system every time. The most limited of progressive concessions, like over-turning the two-child cap, have been ‘balanced out’ with further attacks on disabled people, including removing tax relief for the Motability scheme and leases for cars for disabled people – a vital means by which disabled people can live with independence. It’s another disgusting concession from the Labour government to the right in a bid to show they are not a party of ‘hand-outs’ or compassion.
In terms of what the budget contains for here, £370 million is set to be given to the Stormont Executive. Across the board, there has been a recognition that this doesn’t even begin to touch the sides of the gaping holes in our public services, especially the NHS. This budget should not be accepted. The calls from the Northern Irish secretary, Hillary Benn, for Stormont to introduce more ‘revenue-raising’ measures, i.e., further cuts to our public services (leaving them open to privatisation), or hike taxes for ordinary working people, must be rejected, instead what is needed is a taxing of the rich – including lifting the rate cap for the richest families. This is within Stormont’s powers. Stormont must also refuse to implement more austerity, and should instead set a needs based budget.
The North already faces disproportionate rates of child and fuel poverty, low wages, lower standard of living, and lower life expectancy than in Britain. Two local council areas here — Derry and Strabane, and Belfast — have more deprived areas than any of the 374 local authorities in Britain. Health deprivation is particularly high here, with 28% of areas ranked among the most deprived by poor health across the UK.
Benn’s cloaked calls for further neo-liberal logic-driven policies are absolutely not the answer to the crises we face here – it is in fact this logic which got us here in the first place. The means to lift everyone out of poverty and have their basic needs met exist – and there are things which could be done immediately to achieve this. It’s just a matter of political will. A progressive tax system which uses the profits of corporations based in Northern Ireland alone (pre-tax profits of the top 100 wealthiest companies in NI totalled just under £2.5bn, 26% higher than the 2024 list) would be a huge boost to public spending.
There is no ‘wiggle room’ within the constraints of this system any longer – either we continue to accept the logic of a profit-driven system, (meaning further cuts and attacks on public services, working-class people, and a likely total collapse of our NHS here), or we reject it. When the wildly insufficient annual budget was introduced last year, Stormont accepted it, and began announcing cuts to vital services including Nexus – a support service for victims and survivors of domestic and sexual abuse. It was only because of the major backlash from below that they were forced to roll back on this decision for another year. No doubt we’ll see similar announcements be made soon – without a hint of irony from the chorus of politicians pledging to combat gender based violence here.
We need a similar response on a much larger scale this year to this budget – including protests and strike action by the trade unions. This budget once again prioritises the interests of big business and the wealthy over meeting the majority’s needs. There is a complete incompatibility with saving the planet, dealing with inequality, eradicating poverty, stopping the rise of the far-right – and prioritising the false growth of GDP and revenue raising under capitalism. We do not accept the scraps which are so insultingly offered to us as the only option by the representatives of this system. There is another way – and that means boldly fighting against the erosion of our living standards, agency, democracy and expectations. What do we have to lose?
