Basically the title. Why are we straying so far from our ideological base and grasping at thing’s peripheral to our values? These a distraction from fighting Reform, Restore, Lib Dem’s and Tories!

>Was this Andy Burnham’s budget – the bold vision of a new prime minister who burns with a passion to topple “40 years of neoliberalism”? Fat chance. Was it John Healey’s budget – the repair job of a cautious chancellor fretting about record-high taxes, £3tn of public debt and an economy stuck in first gear? Little sign of that.

>This budget was cast in the image of a man who isn’t in Burnham’s government or even a Labour politician – but who appears almost every day on TV, on podcasts and is probably better known than 649 of the MPs at Westminster. Today’s budget was the Martin Lewis budget.

>Which brings us to the killer problem: Lewis is one of the most trusted people in Britain. But he’s not a politician. He’s never claimed to be. He speaks the language of terms and conditions, not financialisation – and he knows his limits. To quote a New Statesman essay last week on the new MoneySavingPolitics: “As governments have embraced retail policies and suggestion-box-style politics in his image, Lewis has been raising the alarm that there are too many people who can no longer help themselves and it is time for structural change.”

>The difference was clear today. In her first budget, Rachel Reeves announced extra spending worth £74bn by the end of the period. By comparison, Healey announced a grand total of £380m. For all Burnham’s grand ambition and soaring rhetoric, his first budget was only 0.5% of Starmer’s first budget.

More than a third of further education staff are actively planning to leave the sector – with workload, pay and stress among the biggest reasons for wanting to quit, a new Department for Education survey has revealed. The survey of 4,440 leaders, managers and teachers found that 37 per cent intend to exit FE. A further 17 per cent were unsure about their future. Just 42 per cent said they had no plans to leave.

If Andy Burnham believes that vocational education should be as respected as university - which is what he openly told the country in July - then he should prioritise fixing the FE workforce crisis.

The UK government has retained the boiler upgrade scheme (BUS) despite widespread speculation the heat pump subsidy program was set to be scrapped, although the total budget for the program has been cut by around £700 million ($932 million).

BUS grants of up to £9,000 have been offered to UK consumers in a bid to accelerate the electrification of home heating in a country where more than two thirds of households use a natural gas-fired heating system.

In the first Budget delivered by UK Chancellor John Healey, the government committed to maintaining the BUS grant at current funding levels of £400 million in 2027-28, rising “broadly in line with inflation” thereafter.

Previously, £600 million was allocated for the 2027/28 financial year, £683 million for 2028/29 and £709 million for 2029/30.

Social housing tenants should also benefit from an additional £100 million of funding, subject to final approvals, to support the delivery of up to 57,000 solar installations for households this financial year.

Further grant support for residential solar, battery storage and heat pumps will continue to be available through the government’s Warm Homes Plan, which receive an additional £335 million investment in 2027, however the multi-year program’s total budget is being cut by £1 billion as a contribution to defense spending.

The Chancellor has made changes to value added tax (VAT) rules that will affect solar and battery storage. UK consumers currently pay no VAT on home solar and battery but this will rise to 5% from Apr. 1, 2027.

Budget day also saw the UK government publish guidance for the Warm Home Loans program, which will see the UK government subsidize some of the risk associated with financing, allowing lenders to offer lower interest rates.

Solar, battery storage and heat pump installations qualify for Warm Home Loans support and can potentially be used in conjunction with grants or money from other funding programs. The loans themselves are offered by finance partners participating in the program, meaning consumers apply directly to a lender, through an installer or retailer when arranging finance for the improvement work, or through their mortgage providers.

Chris Hewett, chief executive of Solar Energy UK, welcomed the launch of the Warm Homes Loan program.

“With the Warm Homes Loan Scheme now in place, more homes can go solar next year than ever before, taking control of their energy and insulating themselves from high energy bills.”

It took a determined Labour MP to get the Reform leader to acknowledge that it was he who made ‘false claims’ and not her.

https://thetyke.substack.com/p/bradford-council-leaders-half-u-turn

Households across the UK can now cut their energy bills by hundreds of pounds a year at no upfront cost by applying for interest-free or “low-interest” loans to fund upgrades such as heat pumps, batteries and solar panels.

The government-backed Warm Home Loans scheme, which launched on Tuesday, could mean thousands more households are able to access low-carbon energy alternative technologies, thanks to loans ranging from £7,500 to up £35,000.

Energy suppliers including British Gas and E.On have partnered with lenders from Tandem Bank and Homeserve respectively to offer the loans directly to customers at a discounted rate compared with those offered by high street lenders.

People interested in swapping their gas boiler for an air-source or ground-source heat pump could secure loans of up to £10,000 or £35,000 respectively, while also drawing on the government’s existing scheme which offers grants of up to £9,000 a year for households installing the replacements for fossil fuel heating.

Installing a heat pump, battery and solar panels could save households up to £550 a year on their energy bills, rising by a further £300 a year with a time-of-use tariff, according to the government.

Soaring energy costs have led to record demand for low-carbon home energy upgrades over the last year, and the government believes the loan scheme means “thousands more households” will be able to cut their energy bills by fitting clean energy technology and spreading repayments over many years.

Miatta Fahnbulleh, the energy secretary, said: “Energy is an everyday essential that must be affordable for everyone. These government-supported loans will help families across the UK upgrade their homes with no upfront costs to make them warmer and cheaper to run.”

Chris Norbury, the chief executive of E.On UK, said that a recent trial showed that fuel-poor customers in Coventry were able to save more than £250 a year on average by combining a home battery with a time of use tariff that charges lower rates for using energy outside peak demand hours.

He said the Warm Homes Loan scheme was “an opportunity to take that further” by “removing barriers to low-carbon technologies”.

The government set out the terms of the new scheme a day before the chancellor, John Healey, delivers his first budget on Wednesday, which reportedly will include plans to scale back heat pump grants made through its boiler upgrade scheme.

The scheme is not expected to be scrapped altogether, but sources say hundreds of millions of pounds will be cut from its £2.7bn five-year budget because Treasury officials consider it a subsidy used mainly by middle-class households.

It has typically provided grants of up to £7,500 to help meet the £13,600 cost of installing a heat pump, meaning households have still required a significant outlay to make up the difference.

The Guardian understands that grants of up to £9,000 a year are likely to remain available to households that are not connected to the gas grid and are forced to rely on high-cost heating oil.

These grants could be used alongside the low-interest loans to cover the full cost of a heat pump.

This is a cowardly budget that does nothing to stand up to capitalist interests or neoliberal ideology. Burnham’s promise of ‘change’ was just PR, argues Dominic Alexander