Monthly Archives: November 2025

As the famous song goes, “It’s oh, so quiet, it’s oh, so still”.

That’s how it feels anyway when it comes to the Budget.

Usually by this time (6 days out and counting), we would have the press reporting on all manner of leaks and ‘off the record’ comments from those within Government. These leaks often tend to be fairly accurate and detailed and so, for Budgets gone by, we have gone into the big day with at least a pretty good idea of what to expect.

This time around, we have very little to go on. This would suggest one of two things. Either:

A – the Government has been very good at keeping leaks under control this year.

or

B – the Government themselves still have not figured out what’s going to be in the Budget.

I fear it may be more the latter than the former!

Don’t get me wrong, we have a pretty good idea of what they are not going to do. We had Rachael Reeves’ oh-so-bizarre Downing Street speech to lay the ground for them to break the manifesto promise and increase income tax, only for them to seemingly U-turn on this measure a few days later.

We know there were discussions around changes to tax free cash on pensions which again would seem to have been abandoned.

But the details of what to expect on Wednesday lunchtime next week are very sparse indeed.

It seems like we will be seeing some kind of tax proposed on electric vehicles to make up for dwindling fuel duty receipts and perhaps an increase to the higher bands of council tax in London and the South-East. Beyond that, we are shooting in the dark.

A few months back, there was all of the usual rumour, speculation and opinion on what they might do or should do, however none of that counts for anything now.

What we do know is that they will be looking to raise more money and there are unlikely to be any substantive tax giveaways.

Whatever happens, we at least don’t have long to wait to be put out of our misery (or into it as the case may be). Rest assured the Buckingham Gate team and I will be following the budget statement closely, followed by a deep dive into the Budget document itself as well as the countless technical documents and consultations that come alongside it.

We have our post-budget Webinar scheduled for 2nd December at 2pm where we will unpack the full Budget statement (including the devil in the detail) and look at planning solutions to work with whatever new announcements are made. You can sign up on the link below:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_aR6ge3YXQEmWF1id7ddJsA?mc_cid=c9c89c68db&mc_eid=ec91e5a07d#/registration

This week saw Chancellor Racehel Reeves take to the podium in Downing Street for what was a most bizarre press conference. It was bizarre for a number of reasons.

First off, it is almost unprecedented for a Chancellor to give a major statement to the media in such close proximity to the Budget itself. Second, having made this most unusual move, the actual speech itself contained… pretty much no information at all.

The BBC summed it up perfectly (and I am paraphrasing slightly here) when they said that the speech this week was to make sure that the first 5 pages of the Budget document (usually dedicated to the economic backdrop – read: excuses – which has led them to their chosen budget measures – read: tax rises). Usually this part of the Budget speech and the document itself are immediately forgotten and overshadowed by the actual announcements in the budget – as such, the Government’s thinking seems to be to get the excuses out in a separate speech and as a result people might pay a modicum of attention.

While this press release did not actually tell us anything, in reality, it told us a huge amount. It would seem that the foundations have been laid for the big manifesto promise to be broken. Just this morning the papers are reporting that a 2p increase to income tax has been presented to the OBR as a potential Budget measure.

Please don’t get me wrong, I always thought it incredibly foolish for Labour to have made the big tax promise in the manifesto in the first place. The issue with these kinds of promises is that they sound great at the time, but things can (and do) change.

To have ruled out changes to the 3 main taxes, collectively responsible for circa 75% of tax revenue, has painted this Government into a corner so tight it is unlike anything we have ever seen before. Clearly the public finances are in a dire state and action is going to be required, so that brings us to the present day where it does seem that Labour are setting us up to break the most prominent promise of all from a manifesto barely 18 months old.

In my humble opinion, that would surely be political suicide. For a Government seemingly the least popular in many generations to give the media (and the opposition) such huge ammunition to attack them surely would spell their downfall.

Despite all of this… it does seem like a very real possibility that this is what we will see on 26th November. I have a feeling that the next 3 weeks could be very interesting indeed from both a political and economic point of view!