Kemi Badenoch has launched a blistering attack on John Healey’s first Budget, mocking Labour’s promise to reverse four decades of neoliberalism as a government reduced to offering Britons cheaper gherkins while failing to confront Britain’s economic and security challenges.
The Conservative leader accused the Chancellor of delivering a package defined by higher taxes, more borrowing and rising welfare spending, declaring it fell far short of what the country needed.
“Most people in the country listening to his Budget will be thinking to themselves: Is that it? Really, is that it?” Badenoch told MPs. “The Prime Minister came in promising to reverse 40 years of neoliberalism. Instead, we got 4p off gherkins.”
The attack came after Healey announced the removal of import taxes on selected food products, including gherkins and marmalade. Badenoch seized on the measure as a symbol of what she portrayed as Labour’s failure to match its sweeping political rhetoric with meaningful economic change.
But the sharpest confrontation concerned defence spending, where Badenoch accused Healey of abandoning his own demands for a clear timetable to raise military expenditure to 3 per cent of GDP by 2030.
Recalling Healey’s resignation from his role as defence secretary in June, she argued that he had previously insisted a firm date was essential to protect Britain’s security.
“Today is the day he should have set that date,” she said, accusing the Chancellor of increasing the risks faced by British personnel. “He has failed his own test.”
“If he had any decency, he would resign again today,” she added.
Badenoch also condemned the government’s fiscal strategy, warning that the country was facing a record tax burden while spending heavily on debt interest and benefits.
“We are overspent, overborrowed, overtaxed, and drowning in an out-of-control welfare system,” she said.
She claimed Britain was spending more on debt interest than on the Army and schools combined, arguing that the Budget offered neither the economic discipline nor the strategic ambition required to meet the country’s challenges.
Her criticism extended to Labour’s recently published resilience plan, which she dismissed with a cutting reference to its suggested emergency provisions.
“Three days of baked beans and a wind-up radio are not going to save us,” she said. “Labour’s Britain has no resilience.”
The assault laid bare the political vulnerability facing Healey: a Chancellor seeking to demonstrate fiscal discipline and support households while confronting accusations that his government is raising taxes without delivering meaningful reform — and promising greater national security without setting out a clear timetable for its defence ambitions.
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