He’ll need a massive shovel to clear up the steaming mess left by Rachel Reeves. She’s pushed taxes to record highs, making it harder for him to push them even higher, as he’d no doubt like. She’s maxed out the nation’s credit card too, with plans to borrow another £130 billion this year. Healey daren’t borrow more. Not with gilt yields nudging 5% and the national debt heading for £3 trillion. He’ll be sad about that.
Every Labour Chancellor wants to tax more and spend more, and Healey is cut from the same cloth. But he can’t. Reeves got there first. And he has another problem. Reeves blamed the Conservatives for absolutely everything, constantly banging on about the “black hole” she’d inherited. But Healey can’t blame the previous Chancellor. Because it’s Rachel Reeves. She may be sulking on the back benches, but she’s still in the Labour Party. So who does he blame instead?
His first choice of scapegoat worries me. Healey has turned his fire on the supermarkets, accusing them of taking shoppers “for a ride”. Just like Reeves did. She accused them of “price gouging”. It was nonsense then, and it’s nonsense now. The likes of Tesco and Sainsbury’s operate in one of Britain’s most fiercely competitive industries, fighting constant price wars while working to wafer-thin margins. In the 2024/25 financial year, Sainsbury’s reported a retail operating margin of just 3.3%. That’s now fallen to 2.7%.
I wish the Government was run half as efficiently. If Whitehall ran Britain’s supermarkets, the shelves would be empty, and the few things left would cost three times as much. Supermarkets aren’t ripping customers off. Labour is trying to pass the buck for its own manifest failures. It’s the one doing the gouging, clawing every possible penny off taxpayers.
Worse, it’s made things even harder for supermarkets by driving up their costs. Tesco is the UK’s biggest private sector employer, with more than 300,000 staff. Reeves’s disastrous employers’ National Insurance hike costs it £250 million a year. Her two inflation-busting minimum wage hikes also squeezed the bottom line. The supermarkets have absorbed some of the cost. The rest they pass on to shoppers.
And it doesn’t stop there. Labour’s £1.5 billion grocery packaging tax will add another £56 to shopping bills. So who does Healey blame? The supermarkets. He’s taken a page out of the Rachel Reeves playbook, and anyone who does that must be desperate.
Here’s another reason Healey should shut up. In its last financial year, Tesco paid a staggering £6.7 billion in tax. These include corporate tax, business rates, VAT, employee payroll, customs and yes, fuel duty. That’s almost four times its £1.8 billion statutory profit. Tesco works harder for the Treasury than for its shareholders.
Healey has also attacked petrol stations, just like Reeves dishonestly did. Again, without evidence. Forecourt workers then reported increased abuse from motorists who suddenly blamed them for rising fuel prices.
British business has had enough of Labour. FTSE 100 giant BP is pulling out of the North Sea. Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, our second biggest company, is considering shifting its stock market listings to New York. That would be a body blow for the City, tax revenues and economy. Healey is playing with fire.
My early hopes for him have been dashed. He’s turning into Rachel Reeves before my eyes. Just like Reeves, he’ll now leave Britain sweating for months before his Budget on October 28, while speculation spirals. After 14 years, the Conservatives left Britain in a hole. Reeves dug an even bigger one in just two years. Now Healey has grabbed her shovel. Instead of clearing up her mess, he’s digging us deeper into the mire.