Chancellor Healey stood up for his first Budget and, with the air of a man who has just discovered fire, announced £100 off energy bills. Treasury officials are reportedly calling it “transformative,” a word usually reserved for moon landings and oat milk that finally froths properly.
Here is how the maths works. Spread across a full year, £100 comes to about £8 a month, which is roughly the price of a takeaway curry that arrives cold and forgets the naan. Households will be encouraged to feel grateful for this, and many will, because a curry is a curry.
The Chancellor has also promised a tax on banks, which he describes as asking those who did best to contribute a little. The banks have responded by expressing deep shock and announcing that they will recover the cost through a small fee for reading the letter.
The opposition says he has not been bold enough. Asked what bold would look like, one spokesperson said “more than a hundred quid,” which may be the most radical economic thesis since someone proposed making the pound coin bigger.
Meanwhile the global economy is wobbling like a supermarket trolley with a bad wheel, and the Chancellor has responded by handing out a sticking plaster and calling it surgery.
What this means for you: check your next energy bill, notice that it is still high, and take the £100 with good grace. Then buy the cheap soup and wait for the next bold idea, which, if the pattern holds, will arrive in roughly a year and cost about the same.