The Papers: 'Healey offers cold comfort' and 'A £100 trick or treat?'

Thursday’s papers focus entirely on the Budget delivered in the Commons by Chancellor John Healey. Millions of households are set to receive £100 “to cope with winter energy bills”, the Metro reports. The papers asks whether the pre-Halloween announcement is a “trick or treat” before suggesting the discount “will be swallowed up by rising prices”.

The iconic red despatch Budget box held by the chancellor features on the front of the Daily Mirror along with the headline “for the many not the few”. For his autumn budget, Healey announced a tax increase on banks to fund “breathing space” measures for struggling families, the paper reports.

The chancellor “has started a tax raid on landlords, savers and banks to fund handouts for 20 million households”, the Times reports. The Budget was “deliberately modest”, the paper explains, as Healey kicked forward big decisions on welfare and defence spending until next autumn.

Meanwhile, the Daily Express focuses on Tory leader Kemi Badenoch criticising the Budget, and asks Healey “Really, is that it?” in its headline. The Conservative leader said his plans were “not bold enough” and the government was “overspent, overborrowed, overtaxed and drowning in an out-of-control welfare system”, according to the paper.

The Financial Times describes Healey’s Budget as “modest” after he announced “raised taxes on banks, savers and property owners to help fund a cost-of-living package”. Healey said his measures were rooted in tight fiscal discipline, but critics warns it lacks tough decisions, the paper says.

The Daily Star focuses on the chancellor botching his words when he called Aldershot, “er, Aldersh*t”, in what the paper describes as a “dull Budget”.

Healey has put a “squeeze on savers” by mounting a “£4.3bn tax raid on savers and landlords” in his Budget, the Daily Telegraph reports. Elsewhere, the paper reveals the high street giant Poundland is on the “brink of declaring insolvency”, even as Healey attempts to help struggling businesses and households, the paper writes.

The Sun playfully lists what Healey has achieved in his Budget including “shirkin'” the “ballooning welfare bill” and helping with the cost of “gherkins”. The chancellor has been “accused of ducking tough decisions”, the paper reports.

John Healey was set for the “greatest moment of his life”, according to the Daily Mail, but the Budget he handed down on Thursday “had all the dramatic bite of cotton wool”, writes Quentin Letts in his analysis piece.

UK households in the council tax bands A to D will receive the £100 energy payment, the i Paper reports. According to the paper, the prime minister has ruled out a snap general election and hit back at claims that the Budget is not bold enough, saying the “economy will improve”.

The Independent leads with an image of Spain’s deadliest train disaster in 13 years after two trains collided just south of the capital Madrid on Wednesday. “Spain is grieving”, the paper says. Elsewhere, Healey’s Budget “offers scant relief from ‘grim picture'”, the paper says.

And Healey warned that “global economic storms”, including the war in Iran, were behind the cost-of-living crisis continuing as he handed down his first Budget, the Guardian writes.

Chancellor John Healey is on all of the front pages. Both the Financial Times and the Times describe his Budget as “modest”, external. A senior government figure told the FT the Budget was “not radical, but we don’t think the markets would have worn something bigger”. Similarly, the Guardian says Healey delivered “a low key speech, external designed with febrile bond markets in mind”.

There’s a harsher verdict in the Daily Mail. It says the Budget was “a snoozer”, external. In an editorial the paper says that instead of being a blueprint for national renewal the Budget was a holding statement, putting off every major decision facing the country.

The Daily Telegraph, external and the Sun say Healey has raised taxes on banks, savers, and landlords, while failing to tackle Britain’s ballooning welfare bill. “All the chancellor had to offer was the sound of the cans being kicked down the road,” is the Sun’s verdict., external

On its front page the Daily Express highlights the Conservative leader, external, Kemi Badenoch’s assessment that the Budget was “not bold enough.” The paper has also spoken to the former Tory defence secretary, Sir Ben Wallace, who accuses Healey of putting “benefits before bullets”.

There’s a more positive assessment from the Daily Mirror, external, which titles its coverage “For the Many, Not the Few”. The paper says Healey has unveiled a raft of measures to help cash-strapped families and struggling companies. However the Mirror’s columnist, Kevin Maguire, asks if the chancellor could have been braver and more radical, with a bigger tax raid on the banks and oil and gas companies.

The Guardian is one of the papers highlighting Nigel Farage’s claim that he was absent from the Commons on Budget day to avoid a “physical altercation” with another MP in a row about seating arrangements. Farage said a green paper slip, saving him a seat, had been removed. The Guardian says that’s because the slip wasn’t properly stamped with the date.

And the Mirror reports that a grandmother’s jewellery collection, discovered in a dusty attic during a house clearance, has sold at auction for more than £500,000. The hoard, found in the town of Malvern in Worcestershire, included pieces from the 19th century through to modern times.

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