‘Budget deserves to be remembered as the moment the UK Labour Government found its moral purpose and consigned the callous, cruel and cynical Tory two-child benefit to the dustbin of British history’
In one short Budget intervention, thundered Labour lay preacher Gordon Brown, Rachel Reeves did more to transform the lives of 450,000 of Britain’s poorest children than any of seven Conservative predecessors who, over 14 grim years, did nothing but harm to the lives of vulnerable kids.
Boosting at a stroke so many young lives was the glittering jewel in an otherwise largely tough Budget from Reeves, a Chancellor of the Exchequer who finally played a bad hand decently. The £150 household fuel bill cut, higher minimum wage, rail fares and, in England where the sick still pay for medicines, prescription charges all help reduce the cost of living for workers and families.
But November 2025’s Budget deserves to be remembered as the moment the UK Labour Government found its moral purpose and consigned the callous, cruel and cynical Tory two-child benefit – with its obscene rape tests – to the dustbin of British history. Reeves, Keir Starmer, Cabinet Ministers jockeying to succeed him as Prime Minister and all Labour MPs still have a bruising battle ahead to sway voters who likely received child benefit for their own yet parrot reactionary lines about why parents shouldn’t have kids they can’t afford.
READ MORE: Huge cheers as Rachel Reeves abolishes DWP two-child benefit limitREAD MORE: Head of Budget leak watchdog refuses to quit over ‘technical error’ blunder
It’s a debate worth winning when three-fifths of kids whose lives will be improved are in households with at least one working parent, dispelling the Tory scrounger myth. Brown, who as Chancellor and PM and now as a hands-on charity campaigner viewed the heinous cap as a scar on the nation’s soul requiring healing, never stopped believing as did seven Labour MPs temporarily excluded from the party for demanding action last Summer.
But Reeves, a Minister who’d hitherto resisted the immediate £2.3billion cost, should also be commended as the Chancellor who saw the light, transformed from Scrooge to Mother Christmas with an anti-child poverty present. Nobody should pretend that the Budget freezing tax thresholds from seven years bequeathed by the Conservatives up to 2028 for another three years won’t pinch pay packets. It will.
Living standards, however, are forecast to continue rising albeit slowly and at a reduced rate and this Labour Parliament will be better than the last Conservative disaster. Figures show a clear majority, 60%, of all households will receive more in public spending than they contribute in tax
So it tells us much unpleasant about a divisive, selfish British Right that Tories and their ilk are angry both at 450,000 working class kids enjoying a better start in life and 100,000 owners of homes worth £2million and more contributing a bit extra. Politics is essentially whose side you are on and while Reeves may still lose her Chancellor’s job, early release of the Budget main report another unbelievable shambles, but credit where it’s due and she axed a horrible wrong.